George Gilman Fogg (1813 - 1881)
Born at Meredith Center (NH); died at Concord (NH).
Newspaper editor, state politician, diplomat.
Portrait by U. D. Tenney, 1883.
Presented to the State by a family member, 1885.

George Gilman Fogg graduated from Dartmouth College in 1839. He studied law at Harvard (but apparently did not earn a law degree) and was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in 1842. Moving to Concord, Fogg served as Secretary of State and as a member of the legislature, both in 1846. In 1846 Fogg became editor-in-chief of the Independent Democrat, an important New Hampshire newspaper, and he served in this position 1846-1861. [Fogg later worked again for this newspaper, but apparently not as editor-in-chief, 1865-1871.]

Fogg was one of the founders of the new Republican Party in New Hampshire during the 1850s, and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Fogg the United States’ minister to Switzerland in 1861. In Switzerland Fogg represented the United States as one of sixteen nations engaged in the drafting of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field.

This chapter of American history is little known, but the impact of the Geneva Convention of 1864 and its related treaties governing e.g. rights of prisoners of war and other revisions and additions has been considerable around the world from that day to this. The contributions of George G. Fogg to the 1861 - 1865 deliberations at Geneva, Switzerland deserve to be recognized as substantive and important to the global search for independence, peace, and prosperity.

The meetings in Geneva came about because in 1862 a Swiss writer, Jean Henry Dunant, published a Souvenir de Solferino, in which he described the suffering of the wounded on the battlefield. Dunant asked that nursing and medical service to the military sick and wounded be regarded as a neutral act, rather than as aiding the enemy. He also suggested that voluntary aid societies be formed to aid the sick and the wounded.

From Dunant's ideas came the International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1863. In honor of Dunant's Swiss nationality the insignia of the Red Cross is a red cross on a white background - a reversal of the colors of the Swiss Republic's national flag. The further deliberations of the sixteen nation group at Geneva produced the Geneva Convention, as indicated above.

Fogg's service to humanity was the high point of his career, and it is the reason Fogg is included in this grouping of New Hampshire war heroes. His efforts to ameliorate the conditions of war are still followed by most of the world's nations today. Fogg subsequently filled out an unexpired (Republican) term in the United States Senate (1866 - 1867), and he was a trustee and fellow of Bates College from 1875 until his death in 1881.

Location: First Floor, State House