James

plete reversal by the court of appeals, was prac-
tically a personal triumph for James. In People
vs. McLaughlin (150 N. ¥., 365), a criminal ac-
tion, he fought the case through two trials and
finally successfully obtained for his client, the po-
lice commissioner of New York, a reversal of
conviction. In several damage suits he won large
verdicts. In an action to recover broker's com-
mission upon the sale of a ferry (Grade vs. Ste-
vens, 56 A. D.j 203), he won a verdict of $112,-
500. Again in an action for libel against a news-
paper (Crane vs. Bennett, 77 A. D.., 102) he won
a verdict of $40,000 which later was reduced to
$25,000. His last notable case involved the con-
struction of the will of Jay Gould (Dittmar vs.
GoMj 60 A. D., 94).

[Albany Law Jour.t May 1901; Ann. Reports, Char-
ter, Constitution, By-Laws, Officers, Committees, and
Members of the Asso. of the Bar of the City of N. Y.
(1902) ; AT. F. Times, Mar. 25, 1901.] L.H. S.

JAMES, EDWIN (Aug. 27, 1797-0ct. 28,

1861), explorer, naturalist, physician, was born
at Weybridge,, Addison County, Vt, the young-
est of the thirteen children of Daniel and Mary
(Emmes) James. He attended the Addison Coun-
ty Grammar School and Middlebury College,
from which he was graduated in 1816. The next
three years he spent in Albany studying botany
and geology with Dr. John Torrey and Prof.
Amos Eaton [qq.v."] and medicine with his broth-
er, Dr. John James. In the spring of 1820 he be-
came botanist, geologist, and surgeon of the ex-
pedition commanded by Maj. Stephen H. Long
[g.z/,], sent to explore the country between the
Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The expe-
dition took the route along the Platte and South
Platte and reached the Rockies in July 1820. On
July 14, James and two companions reached the
summit of Pike's Peak, the first white men to ac-
complish the feat. The mountain was christened
James' Peak by Major Long, and the name ap-
pears on some of the earlier maps, but has since
been supplanted by the name of the reputed dis-
coverer. After exploring the Arkansas, Red, and
Canadian rivers the expedition disbanded at Cape
Girardeau, Mo. Using the notes of Maj. Long
and other members of the party, James wrote an
Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the
Rocky Mountains Performed in the Years 1819
and 20 (2 vols. and atlas, Philadelphia, 1822-23,
and 3 vols., London, 1823, each edition containing
material not included in the other). In the ab-
sence of any detailed narrative by Major Long,
this work became the official report of the expedi-
tion. While it is still valuable for its accounts of
the native fauna and of the Indian tribes, the re-
port *'was not fitted to its purpose; it belonged to
the scientific explorations of later times" (Chit-

James

tenden, post, II, 584). Congress and the public
looked for "a comprehensive view of the country
from a practical standpoint" and found instead a
geological survey. The unfavorable descriptions
of the trans-Mississippi country by Long and
James were "not welcomed by an expansive peo-
ple" (Thwaites,'/>0.sf, XIV, 20-21) and for many
years afterwards the report served as the most
powerful weapon available in the hands of men
like Daniel Webster "whenever they felt called
upon to resist 'too great an extension of our pop-
ulation westward'" (Chittenden, post, II, 586-
87). In 1823 James became an assistant surgeon
in the United States army. He was appointed
botanist, geologist, and physician of the second
Long expedition (1823), but the news failed to
reach him until after its departure. On Apr. 5,
1827 he married Clarissa Rogers, of Gloucester,
Mass. (National Gazette, Philadelphia, Apr. 7,
1827), by whom he had one son. Stationed at
Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) and Mack-
inac, he became interested in Indian languages
and compiled several Indian spelling books,
translated the New Testament into the Ojibway
tongue (1833), and wrote an article on Indian
language for the American Quarterly Review
(June 1828) and A Narrative of the Captivity
and Adventures of John Tanner (1830). From
these George Bancroft [q.v.~\ drew freely in pre-
paring the sections on the languages, manners,
religious faith, and political institutions of the
Indians in his History of the United States. Re-
signing from the army (1833), James was for a
time associated with Edward C. Delavan [g^.]
in editing the Temperance Herald and Journal at
Albany. In 1837-38 he was sub-agent for the
Potawatamie Indians at Old Council Bluffs,
Nebr., after which he settled on a farm at Rock
Spring, near Burlington, Iowa. Here he spent
the remainder of his life, running a station of the
Underground Railroad (for he was "an aboli-
tionist of the most ultra kind") and giving thanks
unto God "for raising up among us so great a
man as John Brown." He died at Rock Spring
at the age of sixty-four. In an obituary he is de-
scribed as a man of unorthodox religious and po-
litical views.

[C. C. Parry, in Am. Jour, of Sci. and Arts, May
1862; Louis H. Pammel, in Annals of Iowa, Oct. 1907,
Jan. 1908; G. W. Frazee and Chas. Aldrich, Ibid., July
1899; W. H. Keating, Narrative of an Exped. to the
Source of St. Peter's River (1824), I, 12 ; H. M. Chit-
tenden, The Am. Fur Trade of the Far West (1902),
vol. II; R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels,
vol. XIV (1905), preface; T. S. Pearson, Cat. of the
Grads. of Middlebury College (1853) ; Cat. of the Of-
ficers and Students of Middlebury Coll. (1901) ; J. C.
Pilling, Bibliog. of the Algonquian Languages (1891);
F. B. Heitrnan, Hist. Reg. of the U. S. Army (1890);
Iowa Jour, of Hist, and^ Politics, July 1913 ; Burlington
Daily Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Oct. 29, 1861.]

F.E.R.

576