Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 09.djvu/391

 SIMMS

SIMON

19, 1826, to Anna Malcolm, daughter of Othnie J. Giles of Charleston, S.C. On April 17, 1827. he was admitted to the bar. Simms's chief in- terest was in literary matters, and he felt that the great need of the Soutliern states and especially of South Carolina, was a literary journal. He ac- cordingly started a paper, The Tablet or Southern Monthly Literary Gazette, Sept. 6, 1828, but he was poorly equipped in both experience and means, and the paper was short-lived. On Jan. 1, 1830, in company with E. S. Duryea, a Charles- ton printer, Simms bought the City Gazette, which he edited and published until June 7, 1832. His wife died that same year, and Sirams left Charleston, visiting Massachusetts and New York, the two literary oases of America, starting life- long friendships with Bryant and the other literati of the North. Simms returned to Charleston, but it impressed him as a "city of tombs " and in 1833 he removed to New Haven, Conn. The North was not congenial to Simms's peculiarly Southern nature, and in 1835 he re- turned South, settling in Barnwell, S.C. He was married to Chevillette, daughter of Nash Roach of Barnwell, who bi'ought him as a dowry a large plantation and many negroes. He had been writing romances up to this time, but for the next eight years, he wrote practically none. He became editor-in-chief of the Magnolia or South- ern Monthly in June, 1842, but after struggling along, the magazine was discontinued in June, 184B. In January, 1815, he started the Southern and Western Monthly Magazine, which in Jan- uary, 1846, was absorbed by the Southern Lit- erary Messenger, and in March, 1849, he was made editor of the Southern Quarterly Revieio. In the meantime he had been active in politics, and during the nullification excitement of 1833 sided ' with Jackson rather tlian Calhoun; but as he saw the abolition sentiment gaining ground in the North, he feared for the welfare of the South where prosperity was so largely dependent on slavery. He represented Barnwell county in the state legislature, 1844-46, and in 1846 lacked only one vote of being elected lieutenant-governor of his state. He was an active secessionist in 1860 and was closely identified with the leaders in his own state, one of his sons serving in the Con- federate States army. In 1863 his wife died, and of the fourteen children that had been born to liim, only six were living, and when, in 1865, he saw Columbia destroyed before the invading army and his house marauded, he, the most san- guine of all the Confederates, was forced to acknowledge the cause lost. Then it seemed to him that all pleasure had gone out of life, and though he accomplished some literary work after that time, it was done for much needed money and not for love of the task, and it lacks the

artistic beauty of his other works. He is the author of many poems, romances, biographies and histories, the most significant of which are the following: poetry: Monody on General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1825); Lyrical and Other Poems (1827); TJie Vision of Cortes. Cain and Other Poems (1829); TJie Tri-Color (1830); Ata- lantis (1832); Southern Passages and Pictures (1839); Donna Florida (1843); Groujjed Thoughts and Scattered Fancies (1845); Areytos (1846); Charleston and her Satirists (1848); Lays of the Palmetto (1848); Sabbath Lyrics (1849); TJie City of the Silent (1850). Dramas: Norman Maurice (1851), Michael Bonhum (1852), and Benedict Arnold (1863). Romances: Martin Faber (1833); The Book of My Lady (1833); Guy Rivers (1834); The Yemassee (1835); The Partisan (1835) MelUchampe (1836); Richard Hurdis (1838): Carl Werner (1838); Pelayo (1838); Damsel of Darien (1839); Border Beagles (1840); The Kinsman (1841); Confession (1841); Beauchampe (1842); The Prima Donna (1844); Castle Dismal (1845).; Helen Halsey (1845); Count Julian (1845); Wig- wam and Cabin (1846); Katherine Walton (1851); The Golden Christmas ( 1852); As Good as a Comedy (1852); The Sword and Distaff (1852); Vasconse- los (1854); Southward Ho (1854); Charlemont (1856); Eiitaio (1856); The Cassique of Kiaivha (1859); Joscelyn (1867); The Cub of the Pan- ther (1869); Voltmeir (1869). History and biog- raphy: The History of South Carolina (1840); Life of Francis Marion (1845); Life of Captain John Smith (1846); The Life of Chevalier Bayard (1847); The Life of Nathanael Greene (1849); The Lily and the Totem, or the Huguenots in Florida (1850); and South Carolina in the Revolutionary War (1853). In 1865 he published a pamphlet on the destruction of Columbia. S.C, which was in part republished in " The War between the States " by Alexander H. Stephens, vol. II. (1870). He was also a voluminous contributor to maga- zines. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. He died in Charleston, S.C, June 11, 1870.

SIMON, Joseph, U. S. senator, was born in Germanj" in 1851. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1852 and settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1857, where he attended the public schools and was admitted to the bar in 1872. He was citj' councilman, 1877-80; secretary of the Republican state central committee in 1878; chair- man of the committee in 1880, 1884, and 1886 and a delegate to the Republican national convention held at Minneapolis, Minn., in 1892, serving on the national committee for Oregon. He was state senator from Multnomah county, 1880-88, and 1894-98, and was chosen president of the senate at the sessions of 1889, 1891, 1895, 1897. and 1898. He was elected U.S. senator, Oct. 6. 1898, for the vacant term expiring March 8, 1903. He