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Clarke, James
Freeman
(b. April 4, 1810, Hanover, N.H.,
U.S.--d. June 8, 1888, Jamaica Plain, Mass.), Unitarian minister, theologian,
and author, whose influence helped elect Grover
Cleveland president of the United States in 1884.
After graduating from Harvard College in
1829 and Harvard Divinity School in 1833 and serving his first pastorate in
Louisville, Ky., from 1833 to 1840, Clarke established in 1841 the Church of the
Disciples in Boston, where he was minister from 1841 to 1850 and from 1854 until
his death. He was also professor of religion at Harvard (1867-71). He worked
closely with many of the significant persons of his day, and he printed original
works by his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne in the Western Messenger, a
short-lived magazine he edited while at Louisville. A versatile reformer, Clarke
opposed slavery and advocated changes in the civil service. The latter reforms
were part of Grover Cleveland's platform as a candidate for president in 1884,
and Clarke lent his influential support to Cleveland's campaign.
In addition to editing such magazines as
the Christian World (1843-48) and the Monthly
Journal of the American Unitarian Association (1859-61), Clarke published
more than 1,000 articles and sermons and 32 books, including Ten
Great Religions, 2 vol. (1871, 1883). His Autobiography,
Diary, and Correspondence, edited by Edward Everett Hale, appeared in 1891.
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