Higginson

captain in October 1861, and major in March
1862. Typhoid kept him from his command sev-
eral months. At Beaufort Island, S. C, he showed
marked ability in handling men and horses, yet,
when the others attacked Charleston, in June

1862, his company stayed on guard at Beaufort
—"cussedest luck," he wrote. Ordered later to
the northern front, he was severely wounded in
the indecisive skirmish at Aldie, Va. During a
long convalescence he married, in December

1863, Ida, daughter of Prof. Louis Agassiz. He
rejoined his regiment at City Point, Va., but
just missing the spectacular battle at Peters-
burg, he was invalided home again, where he
resigned. From January to July 1865 he was
employed in the Ohio oil fields.

With two other Boston men he undertook the
Utopian experiment of operating a cotton plan-
tation in Georgia in 1866-67. They expected to
demonstrate that free negro labor could be profit-
ably and pleasantly employed. Their losses from
two cotton crops were $65,000, and they gladly
sold for $5,000 land which had cost them $30,000.
On Jan. i, 1868, Higginson became, somewhat
reluctantly, a member of the Boston banking
firm of Lee, Higginson & Company with which
his father, an uncle, and a brother were already
connected. "The Major," as he was known in
State Street, never believed himself meant by
nature to be a banker. Others have said that his
character rather than his commercial ability
brought him success. People's trust in his hon-
esty and judgment was a very valuable asset of
the house. Attending faithfully to multitudinous
responsibilities he became a prosperous and mod-
erately wealthy man, and was rated as worth
$750,000 when he founded the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. His youthful interest in music was
renewed when in 1873 he represented Massa-
chusetts as an honorary commissioner at the
Vienna Exposition. He then resumed acquaint-
ance with former teachers and other musicians
and began to formulate plans for a Boston or-
chestra of Continental standards. The depres-
sion following the 1873 panic caused postpone-
ment of his design, but in 1881, selecting Georg
Henschel as its first conductor, he launched the
Boston Symphony, which under successive con-
ductors, Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil
Paur, Max Fiedler, and Karl Muck, became the
leading organization of its kind in America.
Preferring to be its sole underwriter, he paid
during his long connection with it, deficits ag-
gregating nearly $1,000,000. Although strongly
pro-Ally, he endured personal humiliation dur-
ing the World War because of his loyalty to its
conductor, Dr. Muck. On May 4, 1918, he an-

Higginson
nounced from the platform of Symphony Hall
that others must carry the burden of the concerts.
Aside from his support of the Orchestra his prin-
cipal benefactions were to educational institu-
tions : to Harvard, to which he conveyed, June
10, 1890, land for Soldiers' Field in an address
that ranks high as an example of oratory, and, in
1899, $150,000 for a Harvard Union building,
designed to promote democracy among Harvard
men; to Radcliffe College, of which he and Mrs.
Higginson were supporters while it was still
"the Annex" and which he served for eleven
years as treasurer; to Princeton, Williams,
University of Virginia, and several secondary
schools. For twenty-six years, 1893-1919, he
was a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, in
which he had a large influence. He is generally
credited with having thwarted, in 1909, a plan of
electing Theodore Roosevelt president of the
University. His virtues and limitations were
those of an earnest, confiding man, loyal to his
friends and distrustful of their critics. He hated
labor unions and resisted unionization of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. He disliked gov-
ernment regulation of railroads and other big
business. In politics he was a Republican "with
frequent lapses"; in religion, a Unitarian.
Friendly as he was toward the Teutonic mu-
sicians in his own orchestra, he believed whole-
heartedly in the atrocity stories of the war era.
He was an advocate of national preparedness,
and, after the Armistice, of the League of Na-
tions. His death and interment in Mount Au-
burn Cemetery followed an operation in Novem-
ber 1919. His wife and a son survived him.
t [Higginson's Four Addresses (1902) contain auto-
biographical material of interest; Bliss Perry, Life and
Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (1921), is based on
diaries, letters and other documents of a personal na-
ture; see also T. W. Higginson, Descendants of the
Rev. Francis Higginson (1910); M. A. DeW. Howe,
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (1914; rev. ed.,
1931) and A Great Private Citizen: Henry Lee Hig-
ginson (1920) ; John T. Morse, Jr., "Memoir of Henry-
Lee Higginson," in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. LIII
(1920) ; B. W. Crowninshield, A Hist, of the First
Reg. of Mass, Cavalry Volunteers (1891) ; Sunday
Herald, Boston, Nov. 16, 1919.] F.W.C.
HIGGINSON, JOHN (Aug. 6, i6i6-Dec. 9,
1708), clergyman, son of the Rev. Francis Hig-
ginson [#.z>.] and Anna (Herbert) Higginson,
was born at Claybrooke, Leicestershire, Eng-
land. The family soon moved to Leicester where
John attended the grammar school. He had
no university training, however, since his father
took him with the rest of the family to New
England when he was only thirteen years old,
settling at Salem. After his father's death his
education was looked after by John Winthrop,
Increase Nowell, John Wilson, John Cotton and