Plain counsels for freedmen: in sixteen brief lectures
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Clinton Bowen Fisk, for whom Fisk University is named, was a senior officer during Reconstruction in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.
Background
Clinton Bowen Fisk was born on that frontier of western New York to which the newly opened Erie Canal had brought opportunity and hope. Benjamin Bigford Fisk, his father, was a descendant in the fifth generation from William Fiske, who came to Salem, Massachusetts, before 1637. Lydia Aldrich Fisk, his mother, was of Welsh extraction. Benjamin Fisk failed to find his opportunity in New York, and moved his family into Michigan Territory while Clinton was still an infant.
Education
In New York his father died, leaving Clinton to educate himself and grow to manhood in almost “pinching poverty”
Career
The outbreak of the Civil War found him living in St. Louis, Missouri, acquainted with both Lincoln and Grant, and ready to turn to arms. He served first in the home guards and took part in the seizure of Camp Jackson (May 9, 1861) ; the following summer he recruited and became colonel of the 33rd Missouri Volunteers (J. T. Scharf, History of St. Louis, 1883, I, 468).
His career as a civilian soldier was distinguished. On November 24, 1862, he became a brigadier-general of volunteers, and before he was mustered out he received his brevet major-generalcy. He fought over Arkansas and Missouri, took part in the campaign against Price, and was on the verge of retirement when the murder of President Lincoln postponed his discharge from the service.
Fisk was detailed to the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 as assistant commissioner of the bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands for Kentucky and Tennessee. It is reported that Johnson defended his appointment with the remark: “Fisk aint a fool, he wont hang everybody” (A. A. Hopkins, Life, 1910, 94). He found in this office the most distinctive portion of his career (American Unitarian Association, From Servitude to Sendee, 1905, 201).
The American Missionary Association took Fisk University under its charge, and Fisk, who soon appeared as a prosperous banker in New York, continued to support it.
As it developed along the lines of the small college and normal school it was one of the earliest approaches to the large problem of negro education. Fisk’s interest in this need of the colored race marked him for broader service.
In 1874 President Grant placed him on the Board of Indian Commissioners, of which he was president from 1881 until his death (Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1890, II, 780). The Methodist Book Concern owed much to his services on its governing committee after 1876 and he continually attended the national and international conferences of his church.
In this contest the Prohibition nominee, Governor John P. St. John of Kansas, polled some 150, 000 votes, nearly fifteen times as many as a Prohibition candidate had hitherto received.
His total was perhaps due to protest votes of Republicans who would not vote for Blaine and could not bring themselves to vote for Cleveland ; but to the Prohibitionists it looked like the dawn of a new era.
A wave of temperance emotion swept the country, and two years later the party in New Jersey induced Fisk to become a candidate for governor in that state (New York Tribune, May 29, 1886).
In 1888, with the renomination of Cleveland a foregone conclusion, and with an impressive Blaine boom suggesting that once more Blaine might be the Republican candidate, the Prohibition party met at Indianapolis on May 30. Before the eastern delegates left home it was agreed that Fisk was to be the candidate (D. L. Colvin, Prohibition in the United States, 1926, 187).
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Religion
An ardent Methodist, and imbued with the spirit of missionary activity, he saw in the freedmen an opportunity for social and spiritual service. In an abandoned army barrack at Nashville, where he exercised almost dictatorial power for a time, he opened in 1866 a school for the negroes which developed after his discharge, and which was chartered in 1867 as Fisk University (J. Wooldridge, History of Nashville, 1890, 422).
Politics
Fisk appears in his private life to have been both popular and austere. In the army his aversion to drink and profanity was thrown into contrast by the readiness with which his associates took to both. He was an abstainer, with interest in the movement which placed the national Prohibition party in the field in 1872; but he continued to vote the Republican ticket until the campaign of 1884.
Interests
In Coldwater, a county town on the Michigan Southern Railroad, Clinton played tuba in the village band.
Connections
In Coldwater, a county town on the Michigan Southern Railroad, Clinton played tuba in the village band, married Jeannette Crippen in 1850.