William Hayden English

William Hayden English 1822-96, U.S. Congressman (1853-61), b. Scott co., Ind. A lawyer, he entered politics and served in the House of Representatives (1853-1861). In 1858, when the terms under which Kansas would be admitted to the Union were a crucial question, he proposed a compromise; Kansas was offered a land grant if it would accept the proslavery Lecompton Constitution. Southern votes passed the "English compromise," but the Kansans—as English is said to have foreseen—refused it. He was vice-presidential running mate to Gen. W. S. Hancock on the unsuccessful Democratic ticket in 1880.

Hayden, Robert (1913–80), born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan, was a professor of English at Fisk and his alma mater. His first volume of poems, Heart‐Shape in the Dust (1940), shows him as a spokesman for his fellow blacks, but though he continued to use racial subjects, e.g. The Ballad of Nat Turner, his fine craftsmanship and broader view of human experience rise to a more universal level in the poems of later volumes: Figure of Time (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), Selected Poems (1966), Words in the Mourning Time (1970), and American Journal (1978).

English Hymnal, The. Coll. of Eng. hymns and tunes pubd. 1906 (rev. 1933) ed. by Percy Dearmer with Vaughan Williams as mus. ed. Incl. several hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams and others by his Eng. contemporaries, several being adaptations of folk-songs.