Edward Duffield Ingraham

Background

Edward Duffield was born on February 12, 1793 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The son of Francis and Elizabeth (Duffield) Ingraham and a grandson of Edward Duffield, Benjamin Franklin's executor.

Education

Ingraham studied law from 1811 to 1813 with Alexander J. Dallas, United States attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

Career

Called to the bar at twenty, Ingraham found the strongly Federalist, Quaker city a difficult field for his political activity. Although he frequently sacrificed himself as his party's candidate for elective office he was never chosen, and did not attain even an appointive office until after nearly a score of years. A delegate to the Free Trade Convention at his native city in 1831, he became, three years later, secretary of the congressional committee investigating the United States Bank and, later in the same year, one of the bank's directors, continuing to serve as such until the expiration of its charter.

Warmly espousing the cause of General Cass as his party's candidate for the presidency in 1848, Ingraham was undaunted by the defeat which followed and, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, he was appointed a commissioner thereunder. Barred by his party affiliations from a successful political career in his native city and state, he turned his activities to the literary side of his profession.

In 1819 he published a translation, from the French edition of Voltaire, of Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene. It was not the first translation of that famous work into English nor even the first published in America; but, as Ingraham explained in his preface, the previous edition, whose translator he had "never been able to ascertain, " appeared "to be a studied attempt to burlesque the style and misrepresent the sense of that celebrated writer. " Hence, the new translation was offered "with the hope that. I might render M. de Voltaire intelligible to the American reader. " He further declined to "offer any apology for an attempt to render more intelligible any subject connected with the study or improvement of law. "

He died in 1854.

Achievements

• Edward Duffield Ingraham was mostly famous as the author of several essays in the field of American history, notably A Sketch of the Events which Preceded the Capture of Washington by the British (1849). Besides, he published an original work entitled A Sketch of the Insolvent Laws of Pennsylvania.

Works

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• book

  • A sketch of the events which preceded the capture of Washington by the British, on the twenty-fourth of August, 1814.

    (Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary...)

  • A treatise on the law of slander, libel, scandalum magnatum, and false rumours: including the rules which regulate intellectual communications, ... public : with a description of the practice a

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Politics

Ingraham was an ardent Democrat. He was a strong supporter of the Mexican War, and his address in its behalf before the "town meeting" at Philadelphia was notably effective.

Personality

Ingraham had a working knowledge of Spanish and French and became especially familiar with French literature.

Connections

Ingraham was twice married: first, to Mary Wilson of Snow Hill, Maryland, and second, to Caroline Barney of Baltimore.

Father:

Francis Ingraham

Mother:

Elizabeth (Duffield) Ingraham

Spouse:

Caroline Barney

Spouse:

Mary Wilson of Snow Hill

Grandfather:

Edward Duffield

References

• The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, Now Deceased: Collected From Original and Authentic Sources (Classic Reprint)