The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Abbott, John Stephens Cabot

ABBOTT, John Stephens Cabot, American author: b. Brunswick, Me., 18 Sept. 1805; d. Fairhaven, Conn., 17 June 1877. He was graduated at Bowdoin 1825, and Andover; was ordained Congregational minister 1830, and held pastorates at Worcester, Roxbury, and Nantucket, Mass. He resigned the ministry in 1844 and devoted himself to popular literature. A fertile writer like his brother Jacob, and with an interest in his own manner that gave a certain charm to his style and excited equal interest in uncritical readers, but with too little acumen and too much rhetoric for the solid historical subjects he had a passion for, he issued very many works useful in stimulating public curiosity in history, but of too little weight to endure. The most famous was the ‘Life of Napoleon’ contributed as a serial to Harper's Magazine, and a great popular success; others were ‘The French Revolution,’ ‘Napoleon at St. Helena,’ ‘The Civil War in America’ (1863–66); ‘Napoleon III’ (1868); ‘Romance of Spanish History’ (1879); ‘Frederick the Great’ (1871), and many volumes of small histories and biographies.