Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 06.djvu/379

 LAWS

LAWSON

interest of free trade, which were repeated be- fore the Mercantile Library association, and pub- lislied. He \vas counsel and a member of the ex- ecutive committee of the Erie raihvay. In 1845 he purchased Ochre Point, Newport, R.L, and made it his permanent residence in 1850. He was elected lieutenant-governor of Rhode Island in 1851, and in a short time, by the provision of the constitution of the state, he became gov- ernor. He gained distinction in the case known as the " Circassian," before the British and American joint high commissioners at Washing- ton in 1873, wlien he obtained a reversal of the decision of the supreme court of the United States. He was a member of the " Institute of the Law of Nations "; vice-president of the New York Historical society, 1836-45, and lectured on international law at Columbia, 1872-1873. He re- ceived the honorar\' degree of A.B. from Yale in 1826; that of LL.D. from Brown in 1869, and that of D.C.L. from the regents of the University of the State of New York in 1873. He is the author of: Address to the Academy of Fine Arts (1825); A Translation of Marbois's History of Louisiana (1830); Bank of the United States (1831); Institutions of the United States (1832); Lectures on Political Economy (1832); Origin and Nature of the Representative and Federative In- stitutions of the United States (1832); Discourses on Political Economy (1834); Inquiry into the Causes of the Public Distress (1834); History of the Negotiations in Reference to the Eastern and Northeastern Boundaries of the United States (1841); Biographical Memoir of Albert Gallatin (1843); The Law of Charitable Uses (1845); an edition of Wheaton's Elements of International Law (1855), which was published for the benefit of Mr. Wheaton's family; Visitation and Search (1858); Commentaire sur les elements du droit international (4 vols., 1868-80); Etude de droit international sur le mariage (1870); The Treaty of Washington (1871); Disabilities of American Women Married Abroad (1871); The Indirect Claims of the United States under the Treaty of Washington (1872); Belligerent and Sovereign Rights as Regards Neutrals during the War of Secession (1873); Administration of Equity Juris- prudence (1874); Etudes snr la jurisdiction con- sulaire et sur Vextradition (1880). He died in New York city, March 26, 1881.

LAWS, Samuel Spahr, educator, was born in Ohio county, Va., Marcli 23, 1824; sou of James and Rachel (Spahr) Laws; grandson of Judge Tliomas Laws, of Delaware, and of John Spahr, of Virginia, and a descendant of one of two brothers named Law, Quakers, who came to the colony of Maryland in 1672, and entered on a grant of land. He was graduated valedictorian from Miami university, Oxford, Ohio, A.B.,

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1848, A.M., 1851; and at Princeton Theological seminary, class orator, in 1851. He was ordained by the O.S. presbytery of St. Louis in 1851, and was pastor of West church in that city, 1851-53. He was professor of physical science in West- minster college, Ful- ton, Mo., 1854-55, and president of the college, 185.5-61. He sympathized with the south at the outbreak of the civil war, and was banished from Missouri by the Fed- eral authorities on a parole to the loyal states, Canada or Europe. He went to Europe, where he pursued his studies, 1861-62. He settled in New York city

in 1862, where he engaged in financial opera- tions. He invented the simultaneous telegraph- ic (or so-called ticker) system of transmit- ting the fluctuations of the markets of the exchanges, which came into universal use, and from which he acquired a fortune. He took a graduate course in law at Columbia college, New York city, receiving the degree of LL.B. in 1869, and also a four-years' course at Bellevue Hospital Medical college, receiving his M.D. degree in 1873. He returned to Missouri in 1876 to accept the chancellorship of the University of the State of Missouri, which under his administration be- came one of the leading institutions of learning in the west. He resigned in 1889, and was professor of Christian apologetics in the Presbyterian Theo- logical seminary, Columbia, S.C, 1893-98. He was visitor to the U.S. Military academj-, West Point, 1882, and urged the reduction of the course to two years, by making it a strictlj' professional militarj^ school. He received the honorary degree of D.D. from W^ashington and Lee university, Va., and that of LL.D. from W^estminster college. Mo., in 1871. He is the author of numerous inaugural and other addresses between 1874 and 1901, the subjects including: The Philosophy of Christian- ity; Dual Constitution of Man: New Analysis of the Cranial and Spinal Nerves; Life and Labor of Louis Pasteur; The Relation of Religion to State Education; The Presbyterian Church; Political and Constitutional Issues in the War Between the States, and a volume on Metaphysics (1879).

LAWSON, Alexander, engraver, was born in Ravenstruthers. Scotland, Dec. 19, 1772. He im- migrated to the United States in May, 1792, and settled in Philadelphia, Pa., as an engraver. His four plates for Thompson's "Seasons" exe-