Biography of richard henry dana jr
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Richard Henry Dana Jr
American author and lawyer Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (), wrote one of the most persistently popular nonfiction narratives in American letters, Two Years before the Mast. He was also an adviser in the formation and direction of the Free Soil party.
Son of Richard Henry Dana, Sr. (), the Massachusetts poet and editor, the younger Dana distinguished han själv in , when he abruptly left the security of Harvard undergraduate life and shipped round Cape Horn to California on a tiny hide-trading brig. He returned 2 years later, completed his studies, and in was admitted to the bar. In the same year Two Years before the Mast was published by Harper and Brothers, and though the publisher had deftly lifted the copyright (paying Dana just $), the author hoped that the book would at least bring him some lag practice.
Dana's hopes were realized—indeed his office filled with sailors and he became known as the "Seaman's Champion"—and he eventually shaped an impressive
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Richard Henry Dana Jr.
American author and lawyer
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (August 1, – January 6, ) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of a colonial family, who gained renown as the author of the classic American memoir Two Years Before the Mast and as an attorney who successfully represented the U.S. government before the U.S. Supreme Court during the Civil War in the Prize Cases. Both as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a mästare of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves and freedmen.
Early life and education
[edit]Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 1, into a family that had settled in colonial America in , counting Anne Bradstreet among its ancestors.[2] His father was the poet and critic Richard Henry Dana Sr. As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strict schoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell. Barrett was infamous as
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Dana rose to fame as the author of Two Years Before the Mast, and spent his legal career advocating for the rights of sailors and the abolition of slavery.
Richard Henry Dana Jr. was born in Cambridge at 6 Green St., the second child of Richard Henry Dana Sr. and Ruth Charlotte (Smith) Dana. He attended schools in Cambridgeport and Westford, MA. He entered Harvard College but became embroiled in a student rebellion at the end of his second term and was suspended for six months. He returned to Harvard and at the end of his sophomore year contracted measles which apparently damaged his eyes. Richard resolved to go to sea as a sailor before the mast: "I can hardly tell which predominated, a desire to cure my eyes, my love of adventure & the attraction of the novelty of a life before the mast, or anxiety to escape from the depressing situation of inactivity & dependence at home."
Dana left Boston August 14, on the brig Pilgrim, sailed around Cape Horn and along the California coas