Biography
Born in Willington, Connecticut, Sparks studied in the common schools, worked for a time at the carpenter's trade, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1809-1811 he attended Phillips Exeter Academy where he met John G. Palfrey, a lifelong friend. He graduated from Harvard University (A.B., 1815 and A.M., 1818); in 1812 served as a tutor to the children of a family in Havre de Grace, Maryland, taught in a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1815–1817; and studied theology and was college tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard in 1817–1819. In 1817–1818 he was acting editor of the North American Review.
He was pastor of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) of Baltimore, Maryland, from 1819 to 1823, Dr William Ellery Channing delivering at his ordination his famous discourse on Unitarian Christianity. During this period Sparks founded the Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor (1821), a monthly, and edited its first three volumes; he was chaplain of the United States House of Representatives from 1821 to 1823; and he contributed to the National Intelligencer and other periodicals.
In 1823, his health failed and he withdrew from the ministry. Removing to Boston, he bought and edited in 1824-1830 the North American Review, contributing to it about fifty articles. He founded and edited, in 1830 the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, which was continued by others and long remained a popular annual.
After extensive researches at home and (1828–1829) in London and Paris, he published the Life and Writings of George Washington (12 vols., 1834–1837; redated 1842), his most important work; and in 1839 he published separately the Life of George Washington (abridged, 2 vols., 1842). The work was for the most part favorably received, but Sparks was severely criticized by Lord Mahon (in the sixth volume of his History of England) and others for altering the text of some of Washington's writings. Sparks defended his methods in A Reply to the Strictures of Lord Mahon and Others (1852). The charges were not wholly justifiable, and later Lord Mahon (Stanhope) modified them. While continuing his studies abroad, in 1840–1841. In the history of the American War of Independence, Sparks discovered in the French archives the red-line map, which, in 1842, came into international prominence in connection with the dispute over the north-eastern boundary of the United States.
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