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Bible Encyclopedias
Joseph Reed
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or JOSEPH REED (1741-1785), American politician, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on the 27th. of August 1741. He graduated at Princeton in 1757, studied law under Richard Stockton and, in 1763-65, at the Middle Temple, London, and practised in Trenton from 1765 until his removal to Philadelphia in 1770. He was president of the second Provincial Congress of Pennsylvania in 1775, was aide-de-camp and military secretary to General Washington in 1775-76, and was adjutant-general with the rank of colonel in 1776-77. He resigned his commission in the autumn of 1777, and in 1 777-7 8 was a delegate to the Continental Congress. From December 1778 to October 1781 he was president of the state Executive Council. During his administration the proprietary rights of the Penn family were abrogated (1779), and provision was made for the gradual abolition of slavery (1780). During this time Reed led the attack on Benedict Arnold for the latter's administration of Philadelphia. Reed was elected to Congress in 1784, but died in Philadelphia on the 5th of March 1785.
The Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1874), by his grandson, William B. Reed, is based upon the family papers. It pictures Reed as an heroic patriot and statesman; George Bancroft, on the other hand, in the ninth volume (p. 229) of his History (1866) and in Joseph Reed: an Historical Essay (1867), pictures him as a trimmer of the most pronounced type. Bancroft's principal charge against Reed was based on a passage in Count Donop's diary referring to a Col. Reed protected by the British in 1776. In 1876, however, Mr W. S. Stryker discovered that the reference in the diary was really to Col. Charles Read (1715c. 1780). Bancroft withdrew this definite charge in the 1876 edition of his History, in which, however, his tone towards Joseph Reed was unchanged.
Joseph Reed's son, JOSEPH REED (1772-1846), published the Laws of Pennsylvania (5 vols., 1822-24), continuing the work of Charles Smith, published in 1810-12, which began with the laws of 1700. His grandson, WILLIAM BRADFORD
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Joseph Reed'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/j/joseph-reed.html. 1910.
