Kurd

of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the
United States of America, the General Council
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North
America, and the United Synod of the Evan-
gelical Lutheran Church in the South into the
United Lutheran Church in America, and from
1919 to 1930 he was literature manager of that
body's publication house. His duties included
the editing of manuscripts and publications, and
the preparation of pamphlets, hymnals, and other
denominational literature. He was associate ed-
itor of the Lutheran (1907-19) and of various
Sunday-school publications, and editor of the
Lutheran Messenger (1908-18), and of Lu-
theran Young Folks (1908-30). In addition to
many pamphlets and articles for the religious
and secular press, he was the author of Favorite
Hymns (1917), / Believe (1922), and Facts of
Our Faith (1925), books which had a large cir-
culation among Lutherans. His versatile gifts
enabled him to accomplish an extraordinary
amount of work involving an enormous number
of details. In all his writing he was guided by
consistent fidelity to his comprehensive ac-
quaintance with Lutheran theology. On July 3,
1894, he married Emma M. Hoppe, who with a
son and a daughter survived him.

[L. B. Reed, The Phila. Sem. Bioff. Record, 1864-
1923 (1923); Lutheran (Phila.), Oct. 23, Nov. 6, 1930;
Augsburg Sunday School Teacher (PMla.), Jan, 1931;
Who's Who in America, 1928-29,] H.D.H—v—r,

KURD, JOHN CODMAN (Nov. 11, 1816-
June 25, 1892), publicist, son of John Russell
and Catharine Margaret (Codman) Hurd, was
born in Boston, though he was reared and lived
much of his life in New York City. As a boy he
attended the grammar school connected with
Columbia College. His father was a sufficiently
successful merchant to afford his son a college
education, and having completed the freshman
and sophomore years at Columbia College, he
went to Yale, where he graduated in 1836. For
a year longer he remained in New Haven, study-
ing in the Yale Law School; he then returned
to New York, where he spent two years more
in a law office before being admitted to the bar.
Though nominally engaged in the practice of
law, he was never active in that profession. Be-
ing a man of independent means, he devoted
much of his time to business and indulged his
scholarly inclinations. After his father died in
1872, he traveled far and wide, particularly in
the Orient, and returned to live the remainder
of his life in Boston. He was never married.

At the time when the slavery controversy was
at its height, Hurd was engaged in a painstak-
ing analysis of the legal phases of that problem.

Hurd

In 1856 he published Topics of Jurisprudence
Connected with Conditions of Freedom and
Bondage. The first thick volume of his Law of
Freedom and Bondage in the United States ap-
peared in 1858 and the second volume, four
years later. For thorough research, exhaustive
discussion, and impartial treatment, this treatise
on the most exciting topic of the age has never
been excelled. Beginning with elementary prin-
ciples of jurisprudence pertaining to personal
bondage, he traced the legal history of chattel
slavery from ancient times as a background for
his analysis of American constitutional and
statutory law, including the judicial decisions
and dicta relating to such legislation. This work
established his reputation as one of the most
learned legal writers in the country. After the
Civil War he directed his attention to the prob-
lem of reconstruction. This led him into the
realm of political philosophy and in January
1867 he contributed a discriminating article on
"Theories of Reconstruction" to the American
Law Review. After many years of careful study
he came to the conclusion that the United States
was a nation in fact He believed that the nature
of the Union was determined by social and po-
litical forces, not by the provisions of the fed-
eral constitution. Sovereignty he conceived to
be the authority behind the law rather than the
law itself, and therefore the location of supreme
power in the United States could be discovered
only by an examination of actual conditions and
events. In basing his explanation upon facts in-
stead of premises selected to justify a precon-
ceived opinion of what the American Union
ought to be, he considered himself unique. These
ideas he expounded with many nice distinctions
in The Theory of Our National Existence
(1881 ) and in The Union-State: a Letter to Our
States-rights Friend (1890).

IHist. and Blog. Record of the Class of x8$6 in Kate
Cott. (1882); Obi*. Record Grods. Fate Cfefe, 1890-
rpoo (1900) ; Boston Transcript, Jwat z$r 1894.]

J.E.B.

HURD, NATHANIEL (Feb. 13, 1730-Dec,
17, 1777), silversmith, engraver, was born in
Boston, Mass., a descendant of John Hurd who
settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1639. His fa-
ther was Jacob Hurd, a silversmith of Boston;
his mother was Elizabeth Mason. Nathauid fol-
lowed his father's trade and was the latter's suc-
cessor in a flourishing business. Trained by his
father to engrave on silver and gold, he began
at an early age to experiment on copper, and at
nineteen he executed a bookplate for Thomas
Dering which is still in existence. In 1763 be
engraved a cartoon of two counterfeiters who

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