Francis Miles Finch

Francis Miles Finch (June 9, 1827 – July 31, 1907) was an American judge, poet, and academic associated with the early years of Cornell University. One of his poems, "The Blue and the Gray", is frequently reprinted to this day.

Francis Miles Finch was born on June 9, 1827, in Ithaca, New York. He was educated at Yale University, where, according to a contemporary, he was a "thoughtful scholar in the class-room, a prizeman in the essay competitions, an influential editor of the Yale Lit an impressive speaker in the Linonian Society, hail-fellow-well-met on the campus, sedate, impulsive, big-hearted, wise, witty, everywhere he was the ideal collegian." Because of his achievements, he became a member of Skull and Bones. Having been graduated in 1849, he returned to Ithaca, became a lawyer, and speedily distinguished himself in his profession. He soon became as a speaker in the political campaigns which preceded and followed the Civil War.

He was a friend of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, and at the organization of Cornell University, he became warmly interested in the institution, was one of its trustees, and its counsel and friendly adviser through its early troubles. As Secretary of the Board of Trustees, Finch was left in charge when both Cornell and White were travelling out of town. He also lent the university his literary skills, as a contemporary relates: "His indignation at the attacks upon Mr. Cornell by the enemies of the university aroused him to fight strenuously and successfully in the courts, in the press, and in public meetings, while the music of the university chime, heard at dawn, noon, and nightfall above the ripple or roar of the adjacent waters, inspired him to write songs which have been sung by Cornell students from their first arrival forty years ago until the present hour."

Early in Ulysses S. Grant's first presidential term (circa 1870) he was appointed collector of internal revenue for the Twenty-sixth District, New York, which office he resigned after holding it for four years.

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