William Axton Stokes

William Axton Stokes (1814–1877) was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attorney who contributed notes and references to an American edition of Mathew Hale's (1609–1676) Historia placitorum coronae (History of the pleas of the crown) published by R. H. Small of Philadelphia in 1847.

Stokes later served as a major in the U.S. Infantry during the American Civil War, including a period in 1861 commanding at the 18th U.S. Infantry Headquarters, Camp Thomas, Franklin County, Ohio.

His stirring speech, at the Union Convention of Westmoreland County, PA in 1861, was delivered in support of the united American Republic and in favor of the war to crush rebellion. He denied the rebel cause by systematically positing that the rebel states have no right of secession, no grounds for revolution, and no justifiable argument against Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency.

In 1874, Stokes was part of a committee appointed to report upon the operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

The Special Collections at Villanova University contains some of Stokes’s personal papers as well as other donations of the Stokes family to the university. A small collection of Stokes documents can also be found in the Special Collections Department at the University of Delaware Library.

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