which he was admitted to the institute for colored youth, whose principal was the learned Prof. E. D. Bassett.
Our subject graduated in 1864, after which he began what proved to be a most successful career as a pedagogue. He is regarded as one of the finest English scholars in the Union. He was an active worker in the Reconstruction period, laboring for his people at the risk of his own life. He has held excellent government positions, some of them highly honorary, to which we cannot further refer, as we desire to dwell more particularly upon his journalistic career.
He graduated from the Law Department of Howard University in 1874, and was admitted to the bar. He has not done much as a lawyer, though he has been almost invariably successful in the few cases intrusted to him. His success as senior counsel in the cases against the Georgia Railroad, under the Inter-State Commerce Act, is very flattering to his ability. He and his associate, Mr, W. C. Martin, are the only Afro-American lawyers that have appeared before that Commission. When Hon. Grover Cleveland assumed the Chief Magistracy of the nation, he was removed from the government service for "offensive partisanship," which consisted in the publication of a Republican newspaper, The Peoples Advocate, which, by the way, is Mr. Cromwell's most conspicuous public service.
The Advocate was first thrown to the breeze at Alexandria, Virginia, April 16, 1876. After a spirited fight against it during Mr. Cromwell's absence, it received the commendation and endorsement of the Republican Convention, assembled at Lynchburg to select delegates to the Chicago Convention. T. B. Pinn was publisher, R. D. Beckley business manager, and John W. Cromwell editor. A few weeks after its publication, it absorbed The Sumner Tribune, irregularly published at Culpepper Court House, and afterwards at Alexandria, by Hon. A. W. Harris. The connection of
