Holmes

Va>. (19^0) ; Biog. Geneals. of the Va.-Ky. Floyd Faw-
.} S.C.M.

HOLMES, ISAAC EDWARD (Apr. 6, 1796-
Feb. 24, 1867), congressman, son of John Bee
Holmes and Elizabeth (Edwards) Holmes, was
born in Charleston, S. C. Under the tutelage of
his cousin, the Rev. Christopher Gadsden, after-
ward Bishop, and at the Hopkins Grammar
School, New Haven, young Holmes was pre-
pared for college. He entered Yale at the age of
fifteen, graduated with the class of 1815, re-
turned to Charleston for the study of law, and
was admitted to the bar in 1818. He married in
this year his cousin, Mary Fisher Holmes. His
first local distinction was the result of amateur
literary undertakings, particularly his Recre-
ations of George Taletell (1822), an imitation
of Irving's Sketch Book. Attracted to politics,
he identified himself with the extreme Southern
party, joining in 1823 with others in founding
the South Carolina Association, an organization
created for the express purpose of countering
abolitionist influences from the North. As coun-
sel in a legal attempt forcibly to hold a colored
cook taken from a British merchantman, Holmes
delivered speeches characterized by the presid-
ing judge as inflammatory. In the legislature, to
which he was elected in 1826 and again in 1828,
he vehemently opposed the tariff. Defeated by
the power of Union sentiment in 1830, he was
returned in 1832 with renewed energy to expend
in behalf of the Nullification program. The year
before he had initiated a test case by refusing to
pay duty upon certain imports from England.

Aided by the powerful friendship of Calhoun,
Holmes in 1838 defeated the conservative H. S.
Legare [q.v.~\ for Congress and sat during the
next twelve years as representative of the ist
South Carolina District. He served as chairman
of the Committee on Commerce, 1843-44, and as
chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs,
1846-47. He strongly championed adequate na-
tional defense, urged improvements in the great
interstate waterways of the West— though he
opposed federal aid within the states — and advo-
cated the annexation of Texas. He delivered a
memorial address upon John Quincy Adams,
Feb. 24, 1848 (quoted in part in W. H. Seward's
Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams,

1849, PP« 340-41), and upon Calhoun, Apr. I,

1850. His point of view in national affairs was
consistently that of the slave-holding South. In
August 1847 he wrote to Howell Cobb, pleading
for the establishment of an effective Southern
bloc (U. B. Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs,
I9I3* P* 59) J and i*1 a fervent speech before Con-
gress, Dec. 27, 1849, he proclaimed that the rep-

165

Holmes
resentatives of the South "must now assume the
attitude of bold defiance to the circumscription
of their rights in the Territories" (Congressional
Globe, 31 Cong., i Sess., p. 82).
Yielding political ambitions in an effort to bet-
ter his private fortune, Holmes went to Cali-
fornia in 1851, practising law for a while in San
Francisco and farming for a while at Bushy Glen
in Alameda County. The illness of his wife,
who died in 1856, was the occasion of his only
return to Charleston in a decade. When the or-
dinance of secession was passed he hurried to
Washington for a conference with Seward and
others concerning a possible way of maintaining
peace. When the conference failed, he went on
to Charleston, threw his support to the Confed-
eracy, and as a member of the council and in
other ways served his city. After Lee's surren-
der, he was sent as one of the commissioners
from Charleston to Washington to propose a
plan of provisional government; the appointment
of Governor Perry was in some measure a result
of this mission. Holmes was genuinely con-
cerned for the welfare of his country, though the
necessity of slavery was with him cardinal doc-
trine. In social relations he was genial, almost
gay; and it is worthy of comment that he was
capable of true affection, as witnessed by his
friendships with Adams and Webster, both of
which rose above clamorous partisan politics.
He died in Charleston in his seventy-first year.
[Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vols. X-XII
(1876-77) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; F. B. Dex-
ter, Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll, vol. VI (1912) J
H. G. Wheeler, Hist, of Cong., vol. I (1848) ; Charles-
ton Daily Courier, Feb. 26, 1867; clippings in posses-
sion of Mrs. George S. Holmes, Charleston, S. C.]
F.P.G.
HOLMES, ISRAEL (Dec. 19, i8oo-July 15,
1874), brass manufacturer, was born at Water-
bury, Conn., the third son of Israel and Sarah
(Judd) Holmes. The father died when Israel
was two years old, and from that time he lived
and worked on the farm of his grandfather, Cap-
tain Samuel Judd. At the age of sixteen, hav-
ing completed the district school education, he
taught in the West Centre district school of Wa-
terbury. About 1818 he entered into partnership
with Horace Hotchkiss for the manufacture of
hats and went to Augusta, Ga., to take charge of
a store for their sale. Two years later he re-
turned to Waterbury and entered the employ of
Leavenworth, Hayden, & Scovill (later J. M. L.
& W. H. Scovill), manufacturers of brass but-
tons, and took charge of their store. In 1829 he
went to England for the Scovills to obtain skilled
workmen and a knowledge of the methods and
materials used by the more successful English
manufacturers. After much difficulty, since the