Hicks

gelist, Hicks fitted himself for the more arduous
service required when, in the following year, a
daily was established. While temporarily en-
gaged in editorial work on the Milwaukee Sen-
tinel he was absent from Oshkosh, but returned
in 1869 as editor of the Daily Northwestern, and
within a year he was able to form a partnership
with Gen. T. S. Allen for the purchase of the
paper. Oshkosh at that time had a population of
over 12,000. It had emerged from the pioneer
stage; wood-working industries had been start-
ed; the surrounding country was settled and
prosperous. The partners gradually added im-
provements to their plant to keep pace with the
growth of the town, and by 1886 it had become a
valuable newspaper property. Hicks bought out
his partner's interest in 1884 and continued as
editor for the rest of his life, and sole proprietor
till 1889 when a stock company was formed. The
Northwestern was always Republican in politics
but gained and kept a reputation for fairness in
news reporting. Citizens were invited to com-
municate their views on matters of public inter-
est and the editor freely gave space for the ex-
pression of sentiments contrary to his own pol-
icy. His chief concern was to make his paper a
community organ.

He was absent from the office for long periods.
From 1889 to 1893 he served as United States
minister to Peru by President Harrison's ap-
pointment. In that interval he wrote The Man
from Oshkosh (1894), an amusing portrayal
of a Middle Westerner's contacts with Latin-
American life. In 1905 President Roosevelt ap-
pointed him minister to Chile, where he served
four years. At both posts he was keenly inter-
ested in South American history and archeology.
Travel in Europe, Egypt, and Turkey opened to
him still other vistas. The Oshkosh public li-
brary, to which Hicks was whole-heartedly de-
voted for many years, was the beneficiary of his
enthusiasm for art awakened by these excursions
abroad Through his efforts also, several worthy
examples of sculpture were brought to Oshkosh
—notably the Civil War memorial, with figures
by the Florentine sculptor Trentanove; the heroic
figure of the Menominee Chief, Oshkosh, by the
same artist; the statue of Carl Schurz, and the
bronze replica of Houdon's Washington. His
gifts of statuary and pictures to the public li-
brary and the city schools were many and valu-
able. In 1910 he published Something about
Singlefoot: Chapters in the Life of an Oshkosh
Man. He was married in July 1872 to Alice J.
Hume, and in 1914 to Mary Powers. For some
time previous to his death, which occurred in
San Antonio, Tex., he suffered from ill health.

Hicks

[R, J. Harvey, Hist, of Winnebago Co., Wis., and
Early Hist, of the Northwest (1880); Commemorative
Biog* Record of the Fox River Valley Counties of
Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago (1895); Bull of
the Pan Am. Union, Feb. 1918; Who's Who in Amer-
ica, 1916-17; Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wis.),
Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal, and San An-
tonio Express, Dec. 21, 1917.] W—mB.S.

HICKS, THOMAS HOLLIDAY (Sept. 2,
!79&-Feb. 13, 1865), governor of Maryland at
the outbreak of the Civil War, was born on a
farm in Dorchester County, Md., the eldest son
of Henry C and Mary (Sewell) Hicks. He ac-
quired only the most rudimentary education in
the local school and assisted his father on the
farm until he was old enough to claim a career of
his own. He was made constable at twenty-one,
elected sheriff when he was twenty-six, and from
that time on he was almost constantly in office
until his death. In 1830, while living on a farm
on the Choptank River, he was sent to the state
legislature. In 1833 ne removed to a village in
the southern part of the county to engage in
mercantile business, but it was not long before
he was made a member of the electoral college.
In the same year, 1836, he was returned to the
House of Delegates and was elected by the legis-
lature the next year to the last governor's coun-
cil. In 1838, when the governor's council was
abolished, he was appointed register of wills in
Dorchester County, in which post he was kept
on duty, with a brief intermission, for seventeen
years. He also served as a member of the state
constitutional convention, 1850-51.

Although Hicks started his political career as
a Democrat and served in the General Assembly
as a Whig, it was as a member of the American
party that he was elected governor in the fall of
1857. On the question of secession, sentiment in
Maryland was bitterly divided, and after Lin-
coln's election, tremendous pressure from within
and without the state was brought to bear on
Hicks to call a special session of the legislature
to define the state's position in the crisis. Mass
meetings were held from November to March,
some denouncing, some commending, his inac-
tion. Hicks resisted the demand until the pres-
sure of events in the riot of April 19 brought a
revolutionary call for the Assembly to convene
of its own initiative, later justifying his action
by insisting that the legislature would have led
Maryland blindly "into the vortex of secession."
His conduct throughout the month of April 1861
is not easy to understand. If we may trust the
testimony of a close friend, he was stanchly
Unionist at heart and wavered either because of
fear—for his life was repeatedly threatened—or
of duplicity. Possibly he delayed because he be-

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