American author, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 28th of April 1832; educated in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he entered the book business with his father, later moving to Chicago, and there publishing the first literary paper in the Northwest. He was commissioned major of the Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry; served under Banks and Grant; became colonel of the Fourth Regiment Colored Cavalry; and was brevetted brigadier-general in 1865. After the war he settled in New York, and engaged in literary pursuits. Besides being a member of many historical and other societies, he was chosen, in 1884, president of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and was also one of the founders and for three years president of the American Authors’ Guild. Besides editing a number of valuable books of history and biography, including Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography (1886–89), he also published Andrew Kirkpatrick and His Wife, Jane Bayard (1870); Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers (1874); Poets and Poetry of Scotland (1876); Bryant and His Friends (1886); Commodore Isaac Hull and the Frigate “Constitution” (1889); a Memorial History of the City of New York (1892–93); and The World’s Largest Libraries (1894).
