journalist military politician Soldier
Joseph Carter Abbott was born on July 15, 1825 in Concord, New Hampshire, United States, the son of Aaron and Nancy (Badger), Abbott was a descendant, in the seventh generation, of George Abbot of Andover, who came to New England from Yorkshire as early as 1640.
Abbott graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, and was admitted to the bar in Concord.
Abbott entered New Hampshire politics by the road of journalism. For five years he owned and edited the Manchester Daily American. His success in this venture brought him the editorship of the distinguished old "Whig organ of New England, " the Boston Atlas and Bee, from 1859 to 1861.
As adjutant-general of New Hampshire he was among the first to offer troops to President Lincoln in April 1861. By December he had become lieutenant-colonel of the 7th Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers, and two years later he was made its colonel. In the operations around Petersburg he several times received favorable mention. He commanded a brigade in the attack on Fort Fisher.
His further public career had been marked by correct and well-balanced conduct and by remarkably good fortune. Settling in North Carolina, at Wilmington, he reentered journalism and politics and was soon recognized as a leader in the new Republican party of the state. His strength came primarily from the Negroes, in whose capacity he apparently believed and whom he organized and counseled in ways that brought him blunt warnings from white Wilmingtonians. In the constitutional convention of 1868 he manifested neither chivalry nor idealism. His chief interests, aside from politics, were internal improvements and state finance. Next year, while in the legislature, he entered into the pay of a "ring" that had similar major interests.
Elected to the federal Senate in 1868, he at once became, as was his custom, attentive and busy in that body. He spoke orthodoxly on suffrage matters. He strove earnestly for the improvement of the Wilmington harbor and hoped for a federal charter consolidating the railroads of the Carolinas and making them the eastern part of a southern transcontinental system. But his claim of altruistic service in the rebuilding of North Carolina obtained no favorable response.
For ten years more (1871-1881) he lived on in Wilmington. Most of this time, as previously, he conducted a lumber manufacturing business and edited the Wilmington Post. The latter, a Republican weekly newspaper, compared favorably with its contemporaries. But, although during this period he was given campaign funds to disburse by political sympathizers outside the state and received federal office in Wilmington from Hayes as well as from Grant, he never recovered party leadership. The historians of the state even now mention him only to condemn him.
Abbott was a member of the Republican party.
Abbott was a short, stout man of soldierly bearing and speech.
Abbott was thrice married. He had one daughter, but she died in infancy.
