Sparks, JARED

Sparks, JARED, American historian, was born at Willington, Connecticut, May 10, 1789, graduated at Harvard University in 1815, and became tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy there, and one of the conductors of the North American Review. In 1819 he was settled as a Unitarian minister at Baltimore, where he wrote Letters on the Ministry, Ritual, and Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1821-23 he edited the Unitarian Miscellany, in which he first published his Letters on the Comparative Moral Tendency of Trinitarian and Unitarian Doctrines. In 1821 he was chosen chaplain to congress, but two years later he abandoned preaching owing to ill-health, and for seven years was proprietor and editor of the North American Review. In 1828 he published a Life of John Ledyard, and from 1834 to 1837 edited at Boston 12 volumes of the Writings of George Washington. This important national work was followed by the Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution (12 vols. 1829-30), and the Life of Gouverneur Morris (3 vols. 1832). At this period he commenced the American Almanac, and began also his Library of American Biography, first issued in two series of 10 and 15 vols. In 1836-40 was published his collection of the Works of Benjamin Franklin (10 vols.), and in 1853 his Correspondence of the American Revolution (3 vols.). Besides these multifarious literary labours, combining laborious research with clear arrangement, a simple style, and accurate statement, he was from 1839 to 1849 McLean professor of History at Harvard, and from 1849 to 1853 president of the college. He died March 14, 1866. See memoirs by Brantz Mayer (1867), G. E. Ellis (1869), and H. B. Adams (1892).