ds which had been stationed at Camp
Jackson in the suburbs of St Louis with the intention of seizing the
arsenal. This action gave the Federal cause a decisive initial advantage
in Missouri. Blair was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers in
August 1862 and a major-general in November 1862. In Congress as
chairman of the important military affairs committee his services were
of the greatest value. He commanded a division in the Vicksburg campaign
and in the fighting about Chattanooga, and was one of Sherman's corps
commanders in the final campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. In 1866
like his father and brother he opposed the Congressional reconstruction
policy, and on that issue left the Republican party. In 1868 he was the
Democratic candidate for vice-president on the ticket with Horatio
Seymour. In 1871-1873 he was a United States senator from Missouri. He
died in St Louis, on the 8th of July 1875.

BLAIR, HUGH (1718-1800), Scottish Presbyterian divine, was born on the
7th of April 1718, at Edinburgh, where his father was a merchant.
Entering the university in 1730 he graduated M.A. in 1739; his thesis,
_De Fundamentis et Obligations Legis Naturae_, contains an outline of
the moral principles afterwards unfolded in his sermons. He was licensed
to preach in 1741, and a few months later the earl of Leven, hearing of
his eloquence, presented him to the parish of Collessie in Fife. In 1743
he was elected to the second charge of the Canongate church, Edinburgh,
where he ministered until removed to Lady Yester's, one of the city
churches, in 1754. In 1757 the university of St Andrews conferred on him
the degree of D.D., and in the following year he was promoted to the
High Church, Edinburgh, the most important charge in Scotland. In 1759
he began, under the patronage of Lord Kames, to deliver a course of
lectures on composition, the success of which led to the foundation of a
chair of rhetoric and _belles lettres_ in the Edinburgh University. To
this chair he was appointed in 1762, with a salary of L70 a year. Having
long taken interest in the Celtic poetry of the Highlands, he published
in 1763 a laudatory _Dissertation_ on Macpherson's _Ossian_, the
authenticity of which he maintained. In 1777 the first volume of his
_Sermons_ appeared. It was succeeded by four other volumes, all of which
met with the greatest success. Samuel Johnson praised them warmly, and
they were translated into almost every language of E