John Bigelow

John Bigelow , 1817-1911, American editor, author, and diplomat, b. Malden, N.Y. In 1838 he was admitted to the New York bar. From 1848 to 1861 he shared with William Cullen Bryant the ownership and editing of the New York Evening Post. His antislavery and free trade editorials were especially vigorous. In 1861 he was appointed consul general at Paris, and later (1865-66) he served as U.S. minister to France. He is given much credit for preventing French recognition of the Confederacy; he also treated with great skill the problems arising from Napoleon III's attempts to establish an independent state in Mexico. His France and the Confederate Navy (1888) is a valuable historical work. Bigelow found in Paris the original manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, which he edited and published in 1868. His other works include a life of Franklin (1874) and an edition of Franklin's complete works (10 vol., 1887-88).

Bibliography: See his Retrospections of an Active Life (5 vol., 1909-13).

Bigelow, John (1817–1911), associate editor and owner of the New York Evening Post (1848–61), whose Free‐Soil interests led to his campaign Life of Frémont (1856). As consul general at Paris (1861–65) and minister to France (1865–66), he helped swing sympathy away from the Confederacy. Foreign experiences led to his writing Beaumarchais the Merchant (1870), France and Hereditary Monarchy (1871), and France and the Confederate Navy (1888). His other works include an edition of Franklin's Autobiography (1868) from the manuscript he discovered in France; a ten‐volume edition of Franklin's Works (1887–88); a Life (1895) and Writings (1885) of Tilden, with whom he was politically associated; and two Swedenborgian works, Molinos the Quietist (1882) and The Mystery of Sleep (1897). He wrote Retrospections of an Active Life (5 vols., 1909–13), and he is the subject of Margaret Clapp's Forgotten First Citizen (1947).