Abolitionists by Profession American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists

Abolitionists by Profession

Authors

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ALCOTT, Amos Bronson, 1799-1888, abolitionist, educator, writer, philosopher, reformer. Opposed the Mexican American War and the extension of slavery into Texas. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. His second daughter was noted author Louisa May Alcott, who was also opposed to slavery. Friend of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.

ALCOTT, Louisa May, 1832-1888, writer, opponent of slavery, feminist. Author of Little Women: Or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (1868). Daughter of abolitionist Amos Bronson Alcott. Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad.

ALDEN, Joseph W., 1807-1885, educator, clergyman, writer.

ANDREWS, Stephan Pearl, 1812-1886, abolitionist, anarchist, philosopher, linguist, writer, labor advocate, lawyer, ardent opponent of slavery, lectured publicly on the evils of slavery.

BANCROFT, George, b. 1800, Hampshire County, historian. Member of the Hampshire County auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

BANGS, Nathan, Dr. Reverend, 1778-1862, New York, New York, clergyman, missionary, editor, author. Officer of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. President of Wesleyan University.

BARKER, Joseph, 1806-1875, English clergyman, author, controversialist, lecturer, abolitionist. Supporter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison. Vice President of the Anti-Slavery Party, 1852-1859. Moved permanently to the United States in 1857. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in the House.

BEECHER, Charles, 1815-1900, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, author. Son of abolitionist Lyman Beecher, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Edward Beecher, and Henry Ward Beecher.

BEECHER, Edward, 1803-1895, clergyman, abolitionist leader, writer, social reformer. President, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois. Pastor, Salem Street Church, Boston. Executive committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Friend of abolitionist leader Elijah J. Lovejoy. Co-founded Anti-Slavery Society in Illinois. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1842. Son of abolitionist Lyman Beecher, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Charles Beecher, and Henry Ward Beecher.

BENEZET, Anthony, 1713-1784, French-born American, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, author, reformer, educator, early and important abolitionist leader. Founded Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, in Philadelphia. Also founded one of the first girls’ public schools that was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Worked with abolitionist John Woolman. Wrote: A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions, 1766; Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants, with an Enquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave-Trade, Its Nature and Lamentable Effects, 1771; and Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing Negroes, 1748.

BIBB, Henry Walton, 1815-1854, African American, author, newspaper publisher, former slave, anti-slavery lecturer. Wrote Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, 1849. Published Voice of the Fugitive: An Anti-Slavery Journal, in 1851. Organized the North American League. Lectured for Michigan Liberty Party.

BIDWELL, Barnabas, 1763-1833, writer, lawyer, member of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in U.S. House of Representatives.

BLACKWELL, Antoinette Louisa, 1825-1921, abolitionist, reformer.

BROWN, Henry “Box,” c. 1815-1878, former slave, author, orator, abolitionist, wrote Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written from a Statement of Fact by Himself (1849), published by abolitionist Charles Stearns.

BROWN, William Wells, 1814-1884, African American, abolitionist leader, author, historian, former slave, anti-slave lecturer, temperance activist. Wrote Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, 1847, also The American Fugitive in Europe, 1855. Lecturer for Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote anti-slavery plays, “Experience; or How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone,” “The Escape; or A Leap for Freedom,” 1856.

CHANDLER, Elizabeth Margaret, 1807-1834, poet, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. Member of the Free Produce Society. Co-founded the first anti-slavery society in Michigan, the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society, in Lenawee County, Michigan Territory, October 8, 1832, with Laura Haviland. Writer for Benjamin Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation after 1829. In 1836, Chandler’s anti-slavery writings were published.

CHANNING, William Ellery, Reverend, 1780-1842, Unitarian clergyman, orator, writer, strong opponent of slavery. Active in the peace, temperance, and educational reform movements. Published anti-slavery works, The Slavery Question, in 1839, Emancipation in 1840, and The Duty of the Free States, in 1842.

CHAPMAN, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, educator, writer, newspaper editor, prominent abolitionist leader, reformer. Advocate of immediate, uncompensated emancipation. Editor of the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberty Bell. Also helped to edit William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, the Liberator. Co-founded and edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Leader and founder of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), which she founded and organized with twelve other women, including three of her sisters. The Society worked to educate Boston’s African American community and to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1840, Chapman was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She was Councillor of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1841-1865. Her husband was prominent abolitionist Henry Grafton Chapman.

CHEEVER, George Barrell, 1807-1890, Salem, MA, clergyman, author, abolitionist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1835-1837.

CLARKE, James Freeman, 1779-1839, jurist, lawyer, opponent of slavery. Governor of Kentucky. U.S. Congressman.

CLARKE, Lewis G., 1815-1897, African American, anti-slavery lecturer, author, escaped slave. Dictated his recollections of slavery to abolitionist Joseph C. Lovejoy in 1845. Published as Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke…

COFFIN, Joshua, 1792-1864, Tyngborough, PA, educator, author, ardent abolitionist, founder of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. He was its co-founder and first recording secretary. Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1834-1837.

COFFIN, Levi, 1798-1877, Newport, Indiana, philanthropist, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, conductor Underground Railroad, established Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends. Active in Free Labor Movement, which encouraged people not to trade in goods produced by slave labor. Helped start the Western Freedman’s Aid Commission. Wrote Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground Railroad, Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract Society. Helped three thousands slaves to freedom. Coffin was a manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).

COLWELL, Stephen, 1800-1872, Pennsylvania, philanthropist, author. Director of the American Colonization Society, 1839-1841.

CONWAY, Daniel Moncure, 1832-1907, abolitionist, clergyman, author, women’s rights advocate. Unitarian minister.

COOPER, David, New Jersey, farmer, abolitionist, Society of Friends, pamphleteer, wrote, A Mite Cast into the Treasury: or, Observations on Slave Keeping, published 1772, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Petitioned Congress three times to abolish slavery, even lobbied President George Washington. Also wrote, A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of their Conduct Respecting Slavery, Trenton, 1783.

CRAFT, Ellen, 1827-1900, African American, author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with William Craft. Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.

CRAFT, William, c. 1826-1890, African American author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with Ellen Craft. Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.

CUFFEE, Paul (Cuffe), 1759-1818, free Black, sea captain, author, A Brief Account of the Settlement and Present Situation of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1812, Society of Friends from Massachusetts, Quaker, abolitionist, among the first Americans to colonize free Blacks in Africa.

DOUGLASS, Frederick, 1817-1895, African American, escaped slave, author, diplomat, orator, newspaper publisher, radical abolitionist leader. Published The North Star abolitionist newspaper with Martin Delany. Wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave, in 1845. Also wrote My Bondage, My Freedom, 1855. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1848-1853.

DOUGLASS, Sarah Mapps, 1806-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, educator, writer, lecturer. Organizer, member and manager of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participant and organizer of the Anti-Slavery Conventions of American Women in 1838-1839.

DUPRE, Lewis, author, wrote anti-slavery book, An Admonitionary Picture and a Solemn Warning Principally Addressed to Professing Christians in the Southern States.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, lawyer, author, editor, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1796-1866, Connecticut, abolitionist, author, reformer, son of Theodore Dwight, 1764-1846.

DWIGHT, Timothy, 1752-1817, New Haven, Connecticut, anti-slavery writer, educator, clergyman. Pastor, Congregational Church at Greenfield Hill. President of Yale. Member of the American Colonization Society Committee in New Haven. Condemned slavery and its brutality in his writings.

EDWARDS, Jonathon, Dr. Reverend, 1745-1801, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, college president. Wrote The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, 1791. Son of noted theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

EQUIANO, Olaudah (Olauda Ikwuano), c. 1745-1797, African American, author, merchant, explorer, former slave, abolitionist. Wrote autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, 1789, England.

EVANS, Hugh Davey, 1792-1868, Baltimore, Maryland, author, lawyer. Prominent member of the Maryland Colonization Society.

EVERETT, Alexander Hill, 1792-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, newspaper editor of the North American Review, anti-slavery advocate. Defended the American Colonization Society, and colonization, as anti-slavery. Raised funds for the Society.

FERRIS, Benjamin, Wilmington, Delaware, abolitionist. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

FOLLEN, Charles Theodore, 1796-1840, Massachusetts, educator, professor, writer, clergyman, Unitarian minister, abolitionist. Fired from Harvard University for his anti-slavery oratory. Wrote Lectures on Moral Philosophy, which strongly opposed slavery. Influenced by abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier and abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, he became active in the New England Anti-Slavery Society. American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1834-1835, 1836-1837, Member Executive Committee, 1837-1838, 1860-1863. Counsellor of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1859-1960. Wrote anti-slavery Address to the People of the United States, which he delivered to the Society’s first convention in Boston. Supported political and legal equality for women.

FOLLEN, Eliza Lee Cabot, 1787-1860, co-founder, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) in 1833, writer, church organizer. American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee member, 1846-1860. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1846-1860. Wrote “Anti-Slavery Hymns and Songs” and “A Letter to Mothers in the States.”

FORTEN, Charlotte, 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin, 1706-1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statesman, inventor, diplomat, lawyer, publisher, author, philosopher, opponent of slavery. President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787-1790.

“Attention to emancipated blacks, it is therefore to be hoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, as far as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean to discharge to the best of our judgment and abilities.

“To instruct, to advise, to qualify those who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty; to promote in them habits of industry; to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances; and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life,--these are the great outlines of our annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow creatures.”

FULLER, Sarah Margaret, 1810-1850, author, reformer, women’s rights advocate, opponent of slavery. Daughter of anti-slavery Congressman Timothy Fuller.

GAGE, Francis Dana, 1808-1884, journalist, poet, reformer, temperance leader, women’s rights, anti-slavery leader. Lectured on abolition and was often threatened with physical violence. Her home was burned three times. During the Civil War, she taught newly freed slaves and was active as a volunteer with the Sanitary Commission. In 1863, she was appointed Superintendent of a refuge of more than 500 freed slaves at Paris Island, South Carolina. Gage was married to abolitionist James L. Gage, a lawyer from McConnelsville, Ohio.

GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, 1826-1898, abolitionist, reformer, woman’s suffrage advocate. Daughter of noted abolitionist Dr. H. Joslyn.

HALE, Edward Everett, 1822-1909, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, Unitarian minister, writer, abolitionist leader. Co-founder of the Freedman’s Aid Society in 1862, which aided African Americans.

HALE, Salma, 1787-1866, historian, congressman, abolitionist.

HARPER, Frances Ellen, 1825-1911, African American, poet, writer, abolitionist, political activist. Wrote antislavery poetry.

HAWES, Joel, Reverend, 1789-1867, Hartford, Connecticut, clergyman, author. Member of the Hartford Committee of the American Colonization Society.

HELPER, Hinton Rowan, 1829-1909, North Carolina, abolitionist leader, diplomat, writer. Wrote anti-slavery book, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, 1857. It argued that slavery was bad for the South and its economy. The book was banned from distribution in the South.

HENKLE, Moses Montgomery, 1798-1864, Springfield, Methodist clergyman, missionary. Agent for the American Colonization society in Ohio. He founded auxiliaries of the ACS in Bellbrook, Bainbridge, Eaton, Full Creek, Germantown, Lancaster and Oxford. Signed up prominent Ohio politicians to the cause of colonization.

HICKS, Elias, 1748-1830, clergyman, abolitionist leader. Long Island farmer. Society of Friends, Quaker minister. Founder of Hicksite sect of Quakerism, which believed in a radical form of abolitionism.

HIGGINSON, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911, author, editor, Unitarian clergyman, radical abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Served as a Colonel in the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers, the first African American regiment formed under the Federal Government.

HILDRETH, Richard, historian, author.

HINDE, Thomas Spottswood, 1785-1846, Illinois, opponent of slavery, newspaper editor, clergyman, author, historian, businessman. Early and outspoken opponent of slavery.

HOPKINS, Samuel, Reverend Dr., 1721-1803, Newport, Rhode Island, theologian, opponent of slavery. Pastor of the First Congregational Church of New port, Rhode Island. Wrote A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of Africans, 1776.

HUMPHREY, Heman, 1779-1861, Amherst, Massachusetts, clergyman, temperance and anti-slavery advocate. President of Amherst College. Supported American Colonization Society. Raised funds for the Society.

JANEWAY, Jacob Jones, Reverend, 1774-1858, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman. Official of the General Assembly, founding officer of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society in 1817.

JAY, William, 1789-1858, Bedford, NY, jurist, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery Liberty Party. Son of first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay. In 1819, he strongly opposed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed the extension of slavery into the new territories. Drafted the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Corresponding Secretary, 1835-1838, Executive Committee, 1836-1837, AASS. Vice President, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS). He was removed as a judge of Westchester County, in New York, due to his antislavery activities. Supported emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia and the exclusion of slavery from new territories, although he did not advocate interfering with slave laws in the Southern states.

KENNEDY, John Pendleton, 1795-1875, author, political leader. Opposed extension of slavery in the new U.S. territories.

KIMBALL, Joseph Horace, 1813-1836, author, anti-slavery agent, editor of the Herald of Freedom newspaper of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society.

LANE, Lunsford, 1803-1870, North Carolina, author, former slave, abolitionist. Published The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C., Embracing an Account of his Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and his Banishment from his Place of Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin. 1842.

LEE, Luther, 1800-1889, clergyman, Methodist congregation, Utica, New York, abolitionist leader. Began his abolitionist career in 1837. Helped create Wesleyan anti-slavery societies. In 1843, co-founded the anti-slavery Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, of which he became president. Lecturer for New York Anti-Slavery Society (NYASS) and agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Member, Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1846-1852. Luther was attacked on a number of occasions by pro-slavery advocates. In 1840, Lee helped to co-found the Liberty Party.

LOGUEN, Jermain Wesley, 1813-1872, New York, African American, clergyman, speaker, author, former slave, abolitionist leader. American Abolition Society. Bishop, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Supported the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Conductor, Underground Railroad, aiding hundreds of fugitive slaves, in Syracuse, New York. In 1851, he himself escaped to Canada when he was indicted for helping a fugitive slave. Wrote autobiography, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life. 1859.

LONG, John Dixon, 1817-1894, New Town, Maryland, writer, anti-slavery activist. Wrote Pictures of Slavery in Church and State, in 1857.

LOVEJOY, Elijah Parrish, 1802-1837, Albion, Maine, newspaper publisher, editor, writer, clergyman, abolitionist leader. Murdered by anti-abolitionists. In 1833, he became editor of the St. Louis newspaper the Observer. In the paper, he opposed slavery and supported graduate emancipation. Due to threats, he moved the paper to Alton, Illinois, in 1836. There, his life was threatened and his press was destroyed three times by pro-slave mobs. A fourth press was established on November 7, 1837, and was immediately destroyed and during the attack, Lovejoy was shot and killed by the mob.

LOWELL, James Russell, 1782-1861, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, opponent of slavery.

MATTISON, Hiram, 1811-1868, Norway, Herkimer County, New York, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist. Sought to exclude slaveholders from church membership in Methodist denomination.

MAXWELL, William, 1784-1857, Norfolk, Virginia, author, lawyer, editor, educator, college president. Vice-President, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1836-1841. Vice President, Richmond, Virginia, auxiliary of the ACS.

MCDOUGALL, Frances Harriet Whipple Green, 1805-1878, author, poet, reformer, abolitionist. Women’s rights advocate, labor rights activist.

MCLEOD, Alexander, 1774-1833, New York, anti-slavery activist, clergyman. Presbyterian minister. Wrote, “Negro Slavery Unjustifiable, A Discourse by Alexander McLeod,” A.M., Pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Congregation in the City of New York New York, 1802.

NEAL, John, 1793-1876, Portland, Maine, author, activist, women’s rights activist, anti-capital punishment activist. Secretary of the Portland, Maine, American Colonization Society.

NELL, William Cooper, 1816-1874, African American, abolitionist leader, author, civil rights activist, community leader. Wrote Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. First African American to be appointed a clerk in the U.S. Post Office. Active in equal rights for African American school children in Boston, Massachusetts.

NEWCOMB, Harvey, 1803-1863, clergyman, strong advocate for Black and Native American rights.

NORTHUP, Solomon, b. 1808, free African American man. Northup was kidnapped by slavers in Washington City in 1841 and illegally forced into slavery for 12 years. In 1853, he was rescued by Northern abolitionists and returned to his family in Washington. Northup wrote Twelve Years a Slave in that same year. He worked as a member of the Underground Railroad to help escaped slaves to flee to Canada. His book was published by Northern abolitionists, and was used prominently in the abolitionist cause. The date of his death is unknown. His book was made into a major motion picture by the same name in 2013. It was nominated and awarded the Best Pictur Oscar in 2014.

ORR, Isaac, Reverend, Bedford, New Hampshire, clergyman, educator, author. General agent and Secretary for the American Colonization Society in Albany, New York. Traveled Philadelphia to Portland, Maine.

OWEN, Robert Dale, 1801-1877, author, abolitionist, diplomat, reformer. Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission and the U.S. War Department, 1863. Democratic Congressman from Indiana. Anti-slavery and women’s rights activist. Strong advocate of wartime emancipation of slaves. Wrote “The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race” (Philadelphia, 1864), of which Secretary Salmon P. Chace wrote that it “had more effect in deciding the president to make the [Emancipation] Proclamation than all other communications combined.”

PAINE, Thomas, 1737-1809, founding father printer, author, statesman, abolitionist. Wrote Slavery in America (1775), Common Sense (1776) and The Rights of Man (1791). Member of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Drafted gradual abolition law in Pennsylvania. “But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practiced by pretended Christians… As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments, whenever they come, should in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery… Certainly one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness, and barbarity as for this practice.”

PALFREY, John Gorham, 1796-1881, author, theologian, educator, opponent of slavery. Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1847-1849 (Whig Party). Early anti-slavery activist. Palfrey was known as a “Conscience Whig” who adamantly opposed slavery. He freed 16 slaves whom he inherited from his father, who was a Louisiana plantation owner. While in Congress, Palfrey was a member of a small group of anti-slavery Congressmen, which included Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, Amos Tuck, of New Hampshire, Daniel Gott, of New York, David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, and Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois. In 1848, Palfrey failed to be reelected because of his anti-slavery views. In 1851, he was an unsuccessful Free Soil candidate for the office of Governor in Massachusetts.

PARKER, John P., 1827-1900, African American, former slave, abolitionist, businessman. Born a slave. Bought his freedom. Worked in aiding fugitive slaves from Kentucky in the Cincinnati area. May have helped more than 1,000 fugitive slaves. Recruited volunteers for the U.S. Colored Regiment. Wrote autobiography, His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad.

PARKER, Theodore, Reverend, 1810-1860, Boston, Massachusetts, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist leader, reformer. Secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Opposed Fugitive Slave Act. Organizer, Committee of Vigilance to help fugitive slaves escape capture in Boston, Massachusetts. Wrote anti-slavery book, To a Southern Slaveholder, in 1848. Also wrote Defense. Supported the New England Emigrant Aid Society and the Massachusetts Kansas Committee. Member of the Secret Six group that clandestinely aided radical abolitionist John Brown.

PATTON, William Weston, 1821-1889, South Boston, Massachusetts, theologian, educator, college president, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist. Massachusetts Abolition Society, Executive Committee, 1845-46. On September 3, 1862, petitioned Lincoln to issue a proclamation of emancipation. President of Howard University, 1877-1889.

PAUL, Susan, 1809-1841, African American, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist. Member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Paul authored the first autobiography of an African American published in the United States, entitled, Memoir of James Jackson, published in 1835.

PHILLIPS, Wendell, 1811-1884, lawyer, orator, reformer, abolitionist leader, Native American advocate. Member of the Executive Committee, 1842-1864, and Recording Secretary, 1845-1864, of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Called “abolition’s golden trumpet.” Counseller, 1840-1843, of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Advocate of Free Produce movement.

PORTER, James, 1808-1888, clergyman, abolitionist. Member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

PROUDFIT, Alexander Montcrief, 1770-1843, New York, clergyman, author. Director, American Colonization Society, 1839-1840. Secretary of the New York Colonization Society, 1835.

PURVIS, Robert, 1810-1898, Philadelphia, African American, benefactor, abolitionist leader, reformer, women’s rights activist, temperance activist. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Served as a Manager, 1833-1840, 1840-1842, and as a Vice President, 1842-1864, of the AASS. President, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1845-1850. Chairman of the General Vigilance Committee, 1852-1857. Associated with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Active in the Underground Railroad, 1831-1861. Aided thousands of escaped slaves. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Friend and supporter of Lucretia Mott and the women’s rights movement. Author, wrote Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens with Disenfranchisement to the People of Pennsylvania. Brother of Joseph Purvis. Husband of Harriet Davy Forten.

QUINCY, Edmund, 1808-1877, Dedham, Massachusetts, author, anti-slavery writer, abolitionist leader. Served as a Manager, 1838-1840, 1840-1842, member of the Executive Committee, 1843-1864, Vice President, 1848-1864, and Corresponding Secretary, 1853-1856, of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS). Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1849-1860.

QUINCY, Josiah, 1772-1864, statesman. U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. Opposed slavery as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

RANDOLPH, Peter, c. 1825-1897, African American, former slave, clergyman, author, anti-slavery activist.

RANKIN, John, 1793-1886, New York, clergyman, author, abolitionist leader. Executive Committee, vice president, 1833-1835, and Treasurer, 1836-1840, of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Anti-slavery agent. Kentucky Abolition Society. Wrote Letters on American Slavery in 1833. Son-in-law of abolitionist Samuel Doak (1749-1830). Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Ripley, Ohio. Had and protected fugitive slaves in his home. Rankin wrote: “I consider involuntary slavery a never-failing fountain of the grossest immorality, and one of the deepest sources of human misery; it hangs like the mantle of night over our republic, and shrouds its rising glories. I sincerely pity the man who tinges his hand in the unhallowed thing that is fraught with the tears, and sweat, and groans, and blood of hapless millions of innocent, unoffending people… It is considered a crime for him [the slave] to aspire above the rank of the groveling beast. He must content himself with being bought and sold, and driven in chains from State to State, as a capricious avarice may dictate.”

RAWLE, William, 1759-1836, lawyer, educator, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, 1826. President of the Pennsylvania Abolition society, founded 1775, 1787. Appointed U.S. District Attorney in Pennsylvania in 1791.

REDPATH, James, 1833-1891, author, editor, abolitionist leader. New York Tribune. Interviewed enslaved individuals in the South and reported on conditions of slavery in the South. Published his interviews with enslaved individuals in book, The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves. Redpath became a friend of militant abolitionist John Brown. He later wrote, The Public Life of John Brown (1859).

ROGERS, Nathaniel Peabody, 1794-1846, Concord, New Hampshire, newspaper publisher, editor, writer, abolitionist. Established early anti-slavery newspaper, Herald of Freedom, in Concord, New Hampshire. He edited the paper from 1838-1846. Participated in the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Served as a Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840, 1842-1844. Rogers attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Wrote anti-slavery articles. His articles were reprinted in the New York Tribune under the pen name Old Man of the Mountain. Supported the women’s rights movement.

SANDIFORD, Ralph, 1693-1733, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, reformer, called for immediate end to slavery, printed anti-slavery book, A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times, by Foregoing and the Present Dispensation, 1729. For this action, he was excommunicated by the Society of Friends.

SAUNDERS, Prince, d. 1839, African American, author, supporter of colonization movement, anti-slavery activist.

SESSIONS, Lucy Stanton Day, 1831-1910, African American, educator, author, abolitionist. Graduate of Oberlin College. Early African American woman writer.

SIGOURNEY, Lydia Huntley, 1791-1865, Hartford, Connecticut, author. Outspoken supporter of colonization and supporter of the American Colonization Society. Leader of Hartford Female African Society.

SPOONER, Lysander, 1808-1887, lawyer, author, radical abolitionist leader. Wrote, “Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” 1845, “A Defense for Fugitive Slaes,” 1850, and “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery (and) to tell Non-Slaveholders of the South” in 1858.

STEWARD, Austin, 1793-1865, African American, former slave, anti-slavery activist, reformer. Steward was born a slave in Prince William County, Virginia. Wrote autobiography, Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years Freeman; Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, published in Rochester, New York, in 1857.

STEWART, Maria W., 1803-1879, Hartford, Connecticut, free African American woman, author, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, civil rights advocate, orator. Published Religion and Pure Principles of Morality—The Sure Foundation on Which we Must Build, in 1831. Contributor to the abolitionist newspaper, Liberator. Also wrote, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1835).

STILL, William, 1821-1902, African American, abolitionist, writer. “Conductor” on the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia area, 1851-1861. Member of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote fugitive slave narratives.

STONE, William Leete, 1792-1844, New York, author, newspaper editor, American Colonization Society (ACS), Executive Committee, 1839-1840. Officer in the New York City auxiliary of the ACS. Advocated the abolition of slavery by Congress. Published anti-slavery articles in his newspapers. Drafted petition for emancipation of slaves at the Anti-Slavery Convention in Baltimore in 1825.

STOWE, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896, author, reformer, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.

STUART, Charles, 1783-1865, author, anti-slavery agent, abolitionist. Worked with abolitionist leader Gerrit Smith.

STURGE, Joseph, 1793-1859, English author, member of the Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. Visited USA to study slavery in 1841. Wrote, Visit to the United States in 1841.

SUNDERLAND, Le Roy, 1804-1885, Andover, Massachusetts, and New York, author, orator, abolitionist. Manager, 1833-1836, 1836-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Sunderland was a member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841. Co-founder of Wesleyan Methodist Church.

THOREAU, Henry David, 1817-1862, poet, author of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), reformer and anti-slavery activist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Gave lectures and wrote on slavery’s immorality. Wrote anti-slavery essay, “Reform and the Reformers” and “Herald of Freedom.” Advocate of passive resistance to civil government. Active participant in Underground Railroad. Supporter of radical abolitionist John Brown.

TROY, William, 1827-1905, Essex County, Virginia, enslaved African American, Baptist minister, author. Active in the Underground Railroad. Wrote Hair Breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom in 1861.

TRUE, Kittridge, 1809-1878, abolitionist, educator, Methodist clergyman, author, censured for abolitionist views.

TRUTH, Sojourner, 1797-1883, African American, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist, women’s rights activist. Wrote The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, 1850. Recruited African American soldiers for the Union Army.

TUCKER, St. George, 1752-1827, Williamsburg, Virginia, jurist, professor of law at William and Mary University, opponent of slavery, slaveholder. Author of five-volume edition, Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803), and Dissertation on Slavery, with a Proposition for its Gradual Abolition in Virginia (1796). Advocate for gradual abolition of slavery.

VASHON, George Boyer, 1824-1876, African American, writer, lawyer, anti-slavery activist.

WALKER, David, 1796-1830, born Wilmington, North Carolina, free African American, author, abolitionist. Wrote Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Mother was free; father was a slave. Founder of the Massachusetts General Colored Association, which opposed colonization. Walker was a subscription agent for the newspaper, Freedom’s Journal.

WARD, Samuel Ringgold, 1817-1866, New York, American Missionary Association (AMA), African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor, author, orator, clergyman. Member of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party. Wrote Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England, 1855. Lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society. Member and contributor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada.

WELD, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895, Cincinnati, Ohio, New York, NY, reformer, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery lobbyist. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in December 1833. Manager, 1833-1835, and Corresponding Secretary, 1839-1840, of the Society. Published American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839). Also wrote The Bible Against Slavery (1839) and Slavery and the Internal Slave Trace in the United States (London, 1841). Married to abolitionist Angelina Grimké.

WHITMAN, Walt, 1819-1892, poet, essayist, journalist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Supported the Wilmot Proviso and was opposed to the inclusion of slavery in the new territories. His poetry presented his views on the equality of the races. Supported the abolition of slavery, but did not necessarily support the tactics of the abolitionist movement. In 1856, he wrote to the people of the South, in an unpublished work, “You are either to abolish slavery, or it will abolish you.”

WILLEY, Austin, 1806-1896, reformer, abolitionist, clergyman. Congregational minister. Editor of Advocate of Freedom.

WILSON, Joseph, 1818-1878, African American, abolitionist leader, educator, Black voting rights activist, labor leader. Correspondent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

WILSON, Henry, 1812-1875, abolitionist leader, statesman, U.S. Senator and Vice President of the U.S. Massachusetts state senator. Member, Free Soil Party. Founder of the Republican Party. Strong opponent of slavery. Became abolitionist in 1830s. Opposed annexation of Texas as a slave state. Bought and edited Boston Republican newspaper, which represented the anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1815. Introduced bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the granting of freedom to slaves who joined the Union Army. Supported full political and civil rights to emancipated slaves. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WOOLMAN, John, 1720-1772, Mount Holly, New Jersey, Society of Friends, Quaker leader, Free Labor Movement, radical abolitionist leader. Encouraged merchants and consumers not to purchase goods made by slave labor. Traveled extensively among Quakers, speaking out against slavery. He wrote and published Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the Professor of Christianity of Every Denominations, 1754. In a letter to his fellow Quaker, Woolman said, “Now dear Friends if we continually bear in mind the royal law of doing to others as we would be done by, we shall never think of bereaving our fellow creatures of that valuable blessing, liberty, nor to grow rich by their bondage.”

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Clergy and Theologians

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

AARON, Samuel, 1800-1865, Morristown, NJ, educator, clergyman, temperance activist, abolitionist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1842. Vice President, 1839-1840, Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

ALDEN, Joseph W., 1807-1885, educator, clergyman, writer.

ALLAN, William T., Alabama, clergyman, abolitionist leader, Oberlin College, Illinois, anti-slavery agent.

ALLEN, Reverend George, 1808-1876, Worcester, Massachusetts, educator, theologian, anti-slavery agent. Lectured extensively against slavery.

ALLEN, Richard, 1760-1831, clergyman, free Black, former slave, founder, Free African Society, in 1787. Founded Bethel African Methodist Church (AME) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1794.

ANDERSON, Isaac, 1780-1857, clergyman, educator. Founder of the Southern and Western Theological Seminary in 1819 in Maryville, Tennessee.

ANDRUS, Joseph R., clergyman, agent of the American Colonization Society. Went to Africa to establish a colony. He died on the expedition.

ALVORD, John Watson, 1807-1880, abolitionist, anti-slavery agent, clergyman. Congregational minister. Worked around Ohio area. Secretary, Boston Tract Society. Chaplain with General Sheridan’s Union Forces in Civil War. Worked with former slaves.

APPLETON, General James, 1786-1862, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, soldier, clergyman. Leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

BACON, Leonard, Reverend, 1802-1881, Detroit, Michigan, clergyman, newspaper editor, author, opponent of slavery. Supporter of the American Colonization Society in New England. Editor of the Christian Spectator, 1826-1838. In 1843, helped establish The New Englander, where he wrote many anti-slavery articles.

BACON, Samuel, 1782-1820, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, soldier, editor. Agent for the American Colonization society. He later became an employee of the U.S. government.

BAIRD, Robert, Reverend, 1798-1863, Princeton, New Jersey, clergyman. Officer, New Jersey auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

BALCH, Hezekia, 1741-1810, abolitionist, clergyman, educator. Co-founder, Tusculum College, originally Greenville College. Taught abolitionist Evangelicalism in Eastern Tennessee in the 1830s, which became part of the early abolitionist movement in the state.

BALDWIN, John Denison, 1809-1883, journalist, clergyman, Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Editor of the anti-slavery journal, Republican in Hartford, Connecticut. Owner, editor of Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford, Connecticut. In 1852 became editor of the Commonwealth in Boston. Supported negro causes.

BALLOU, Adin, 1803-1890, Universalist, clergyman, reformer, founder of Hopedale Community, opposed slavery.

BANGS, Nathan, Dr. Reverend, 1778-1862, New York, New York, clergyman, missionary, editor, author. Officer of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. President of Wesleyan University.

BARKER, Joseph, 1806-1875, English clergyman, author, controversialist, lecturer, abolitionist. Supporter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison. Vice President of the Anti-Slavery Party, 1852-1859. Moved permanently to the United States in 1857. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in the House.

BARROW, David, 1753-1819, Baptist clergyman, abolitionist, founded Portsmouth-Norfolk Church in 1795. Had Black pastor assistant. Had mixed race congregation. President of the Kentucky Abolition Society. Wrote: “Involuntary, Unlimited, Perpetual, Absolute, Hereditary Slavery Examined on the Principles of Nature, Reason, Justice, Policy, Scripture,” (1807), published Abolition Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine.

BASCOM, Bishop Henry Bidleman, 1796-1850, clergyman. Methodist pastor. Wrote Methodism and Slavery, 1847. Chaplain of Congress. President of Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Agent, Colonization Society, 1829-1831.

BEECHER, Charles, 1815-1900, clergyman, anti-slavery activist.

BEECHER, Edward, 1803-1895, clergyman, abolitionist leader. President, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois. Pastor, Salem Street Church, Boston. Executive committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

BEECHER, Reverend Henry Ward, 1813-1887, clergyman, abolitionist.

BELKNAP, Dr. Jeremy, 1744-1798, Boston, Massachusetts, prominent theologian.

BEMAN, Amos Geary, 1812-1874, African American clergyman, abolitionist, speaker, temperance advocate, community leader. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society 1833-1840. Later, founding member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Traveled extensively and lectured on abolition. Leader, Negro Convention Movement. Founder and first Secretary of Anti-Slavery Union Missionary Society. Later organized as American Missionary Association (AMA), 1846. Championed Black civil rights. Promoted anti-slavery causes and African American civil rights causes, worked with Frederick Douglass and wrote for his newspaper, The North Star.

BEMAN, Jehiel C., c. 1789-1858, African American, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance activist.

BEMAN, Nathaniel Sydney Smith, 1785-1871, Presbyterian college president, clergyman, abolitionist.

BETHUNE, George Washington, 1805-1862, Dutch Reform clergyman, abolitionist.

BLACKBURN, Gideon, 1772-1838, Virginia, clergyman, abolitionist. Went to Illinois in 1833. Assisted Elijah P. Lovejoy in organizing Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. Founded Blackburn College at Carlinville, Illinois.

BLACKWELL, Antoinette Louisa, 1825-1921, abolitionist, reformer.

BLANCHARD, Jonathan, 1811-1892, clergyman, educator, abolitionist, theologian, lecturer. Worked for more than thirty years for the abolition of slavery. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, 1845-1858. President, Illinois Institute. Vice president, World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, England, 1843.

BOURNE, George, 1780-1845, New York City. Author. Presbyterian and Dutch Reform clergyman. Pioneer abolitionist leader. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Wrote The Book of Slavery Irreconcilable (1816); An Address to the Presbyterian Church, Enforcing the Duty of Excluding all Slaveholders from the Communion of Saints; and Man Stealing and Slavery Denounced by the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches.

BOYD, George, Reverend, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman, lawyer, Rector of St. John’s, Philadelphia. Agent for the American Colonization Society. Successful in founding auxiliaries and recruiting members.

BOYNTON, Charles Brandon, 1806-1883, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, anti-slavery activist. Chaplain, U.S. House of Representatives, 39^th and 49^th Congress.

BRADBURN, George, 1806-1880, Nantucket, Massachusetts, politician, newspaper editor, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, lecturer. Member, American Anti-Slavery Society. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1845. Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in June 1840, where he protested the exclusion of women from the conference. Lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society with fellow abolitionists William A. White and Frederick Douglass in 1843. Editor, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom from 1846 to 1849 in Lynn, Massachusetts.

BRECKINRIDGE, John, Reverend, 1797-1841, Maryland, clergyman. Board of Managers, Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society.

BRECKINRIDGE, Robert Jefferson, 1800-1871, Kentucky, lawyer, clergyman, state legislator, anti-slavery activist. Supported gradual emancipation. Opponent of slavery and important advocate for colonization and the American Colonization Society (ACS). He argued emancipation was the goal of African colonization and it was justified. He worked with ACS agent Robert S. Finley to establish auxiliaries.

BRISBANE, William H., 1803-1878, South Carolina, abolitionist leader. Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Clergyman, Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin. Chief Clerk of the Wisconsin State Senate.

BROWN, John Mifflin, 1817-1893, educator, clergyman, African American, eleventh Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, abolitionist.

BROWN, Nathan, 1807-1886, New Ipswich, New Hampshire, American Baptist clergyman, Bible translator, abolitionist. Brother of abolitionist William Brown.

BROWN, Obadiah B., Washington, DC, Baptist clergyman. American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1834.

BURNS, Anthony, c. 1830-1862, fugitive slave, abolitionist, clergyman.

BUTLER, Pardee, 1816-1888, Kansas, farmer, clergyman, abolitionist. He was a victim of a pro-slavery mob in Kansas in August 1855, and a Republican Party organizer in Kansas in May-June 1856.

CARMAN, Joshua, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, founded anti-slavery church, Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1796, leader of Emancipating Baptists.

CARTWRIGHT, Peter, 1785-1872, born in Virginia, went to Kentucky in 1790, then to Illinois in 1824, state senator in Ohio.

CHAMBERLAIN, Jeremiah, 1794-1851, clergyman, educator, abolitionist. President of Centre College, Kentucky, 1822-1825. Founder and President of Oakland College in Mississippi, 1830-1851. Co-founded Mississippi Colonization Society. He was murdered for his anti-slavery stance on September 5, 1851, by a pro-slavery planter.

CHANNING, Reverend William Ellery, 1780-1842, Unitarian clergyman, orator, writer, strong opponent of slavery. Active in the peace, temperance, and educational reform movements. Published anti-slavery works, The Slavery Question, in 1839, Emancipation in 1840, and The Duty of the Free States, in 1842.

CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell, 1814-1880, Union Village, Washington County, New York, clergyman, opponent of slavery.

CHEEVER, George Barrell, 1807-1890, Salem, MA, clergyman, author, abolitionist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1835-1837.

CLARK, John, 1758-1833, b. Inverness, Scotland, clergyman, anti-slavery activist.

CLARKE, James Freeman, 1779-1839, jurist, lawyer, opponent of slavery. Governor of Kentucky. U.S. Congressman.

COBB, Sylvanus, 1798-1866, Norway, Maine, clergyman, newspaper editor, temperance and anti-slavery leader. Editor of the Christian Freeman for 20 years.

COLVER, Nathaniel, 1794-1870, clergyman, anti-slavery agent. Baptist minister. Lectured against slavery in New York State.

CONWAY, Daniel Moncure, b. 1832, abolitionist, clergyman. Unitarian minister.

CORNISH, Reverend Samuel Eli, 1795-1858, free African American, New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, clergyman, publisher, editor, journalist. Published The Colonization Scheme Considered and its Rejection by Colored People and A Remonstrance Against the Abuse of Blacks, 1826. Co-editor, Freedom’s Journal, first African American newspaper. Editor, The Colored American, 1837-1839. Leader and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840, joined the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

COX, Gershom A., Reverend, clergyman, abolitionist, Maine. Founder and first Vice President of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.

COWLES, Henry, 1803-1881, Austinburgh, Ohio, clergyman, educator, anti-slavery activist, reformer. Manager, 1834-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

COX, Samuel Hanson, 1793-1880 New York, radical abolitionist leader, Presbyterian clergyman.

CRAWFORD, James, 1810-1888, African American, escaped slave, Baptist clergyman, abolitionist leader.

CROOKS, Adam, 1824-1874, anti-slavery advocate, temperance activist, Wesleyan Methodist minister.

CROSS, John, clergyman, anti-slavery agent. Congregational Minister. Lectured on abolition and anti-slavery.

CROSWELL, Harry, Reverend, 1778-1858, New Haven, Connecticut, clergyman. Member, New Haven Committee of the American Colonization Society.

CROTHERS, Samuel, 1783-1856, Ohio, clergyman. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Organized Paint Valley Abolitionist Society. Worked in Chillicothe Presbytery of Ohio.

CRUMMELL, Alexander, 1819-1898, African American, clergyman, professor, African nationalist, anti-slavery activist and lecturer. Lectured in England against American slavery. Supported colonization of Blacks to Africa. Worked in New York office of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Correspondent for the Colored American.

DANFORTH, Joshua Nobel, 1798-1861, clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society in New York and New England, 1834-1838. He established a headquarters office in Boston. He organized numerous auxiliaries and recruited notable members, such as Herman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, and noted historian, George Bancroft. His assistants were Reverend Charles Walker and Reverend Cyril Pearl.

DENISON, Charles Wheeler, 1809-1881, New York City, abolitionist leader, author, clergyman, newspaper editor, The Emancipator. Founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

DEWEY, Loring Daniel, 1791-1867, New York, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist, Agent of the American Colonization Society. Toured New England and New York, raised funds and founded auxiliaries.

DICKEY, James H., b. 1780, Virginia, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, freed slaves he had inherited, worked in Salem, Ohio, after 1810.

DICKEY, William, b. South Carolina, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, Bloomington, Ohio, served for 40 years.

DICKSON, Reverend Moses, 1824-1901, free African American, anti-slavery leader, clergyman, activist, underground abolitionist. Minister, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Founded Knights of Liberty in St. Louis, Missouri, 1846.

DOAK, Samuel, 1749-1830, Virginia, educator, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, founder of Martin Academy, Little Limestone (near Jonesboro), North Carolina, founder and president of Washington College, 1795.

DOW, Lorenzo, 1777-1834, abolitionist.

DOWLING, John, 1807-1878, clergyman, educator, author.

DUNBAR, Reverend Duncan, 1791-1864, New York, clergyman, abolitionist.

DUNCAN, James, Vevay, Indiana (near Cincinnati), clergyman. Published influential anti-slavery tract, “A Treatise on Slavery, in which is Shown Forth the Evil of Slaveholding, Both from the Light of Nature and Divine Revelations,” 1824. Wrote Slaveholders Prayer, published by American Anti-Slavery Society in New York and Cincinnati in 1840.

DWIGHT, Timothy, 1752-1817, anti-slavery writer, educator, clergyman. Pastor, Congregational Church at Greenfield Hill. President of Yale. Condemned slavery and its brutality in his writings.

EASTON, Reverend Hosea, 1787-1837, African American, clergyman, author, abolitionist.

EDWARDS, Dr. Reverend Jonathon, 1745-1801, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, college president. Wrote The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, 1791. Son of noted theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

EINHORN, David, Rabbi, b. 1809, Bavaria, abolitionist.

ELIOT, William Greenleaf, 1811-1887, educator, clergyman, opponent of slavery. Active in Sanitary Commission in the Civil War.

ELLIS, John Millott, 1831-1894, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman, educator. Proponent of emancipation of enslaved individuals during the Civil War.

FAIRBANK, Calvin, 1816-1898, New York state, Methodist Minister, abolitionist. Convicted of aiding fugitive slaves in Kentucky. Active in Underground Railroad. He was arrested again in 1851. He served 17 years for helping slaves escape.

FARNSWORTH, Benjamin Franklin, 1793-1851, abolitionist, educator, Providence, Rhode Island. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-1836.

FEE, Reverend John Gregg, 1816-1901, American Missionary Association, clergyman, educator, abolitionist. Founder of Berea College, Madison County, Kentucky.

FESSENDEN, Samuel Clement, 1815-1881, Maine, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Congressman, Maine 37^th, Congress 1861-1863, abolitionist. Father was Samuel Fessenden (1784-1869).

FIELD, Dr. Nathaniel, 1805-1888, physician, legislative representative, clergyman, abolitionist.

FINLEY, Robert, Reverend, 1772-1817, clergyman, founding officer and Vice President, American Colonization Society, 1816.

FINNEY, Reverend Charles Grandison, 1792-1875, clergyman, advocate of social reforms, author, publisher, president of Oberlin College, Ohio, 1851-1866, abolitionist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841. American Presbyterian Minister and leader in the “Second Great Awakening” in the United States. Also considered one of the “fathers of modern revivalism,” 1825-1835, in upstate New York and Manhattan.

FISK, Wilbur, 1792-1839, Middletown, Connecticut, educator, President of Wesleyan University. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1836-1840.

FITCH, Eleazer Thompson, 1791-1871, Connecticut, educator, theologian. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

FOSTER, Theodore, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery activist. Co-editor of the Signal of Liberty with Guy Beckley, the newspaper of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society.

FOWLER, Orin, 1791-1852, Lebanon, Connecticut, clergyman. Free-Soil U.S. Congressman, temperance activist, strong opponent of slavery.

FROTHINGHAM, Octavius, 1822-1895, Boston, Massachusetts, author, clergyman, orator, anti-slavery leader and activist.

FURNESS, William Henry, 1802-1896, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, reformer. Supported rights for African Americans and Jews.

GADSEN, Christopher Edwards, 1785-1852, Charleston, South Carolina, clergyman. Rector of St. Philips, later Bishop of South Carolina. Agent of the American Colonization Society.

GALE, George Washington, 1789-1861, Galesburgh, Illinois, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman. Presbyterian minister. Founder of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, which was anti-slavery. Founder Oneida Manuel Labor Institute. American Anti-Slavery Society Manager, 1837-1840.

GALLAUDET, Thomas Hopkins, 1787-1851, Hartford, Connecticut, clergyman, educator. Principal of the Hartford Deaf and Dumb Asylum. Active in Boston auxiliary of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Raised considerable funds for colonization. Worked with ACS agent Leonard Bacon. Member and supporter of the Connecticut Colonization Society.

GALUSHA, Elon, 1790-1859, Perry, NY, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, Baptist clergyman, lawyer, reformer. First President of the Baptist Anti-Slavery Society. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840. Supported the Liberty Party.

GANNETT, Ezra Stiles, 1801-1871, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman. Co-founder of the Young Men’s Colonization Society in Boston. Co-founded monthly paper, The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom. Strong supporter of the American Colonization Society (ACS). He defended the ACS and its policies against criticism by William Lloyd Garrison. Gave sermons against slavery in his church.

GANO, Stephan, Reverend, 1762-1828, Providence, Rhode Island, clergyman. Committee member, American Colonization Society, Rhode Island.

GARDNER, Charles W., 1782-1863, African American, Episcopal clergyman, abolitionist.

GARNET, Henry Highland, 1815-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, clergyman, diplomat, publisher. Member Liberty Party. Former fugitive slave. Published The Past and Present Condition and Destiny of the Colored Race, 1848. Publisher with William G. Allen of The National Watchman, Troy, New York, founded 1842.

GARRARD, James, 1749-1822, Governor of Kentucky 1796-1804, soldier, clergyman. Tried unsuccessfully to exclude guarantees of the continuance of slavery from Kentucky State Constitution. Opposed slavery as horrid evil.

GIDDINGS, Salmon, Missouri, clergyman, pioneer missionary, member of the Colonization Society.

GILLILAND, James, b. 1761, South Carolina, Presbyterian clergyman, vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, anti-slavery activist, censured and silenced for speaking for slave emancipation in 1796. Moved to Brown County, Ohio, in 1805. Pastor, Red Oak Church, with mixed race congregation. Known as “Father Gilliland.”

GORDON, Reverend Dr. William, 1729-1807, clergyman. Pastor of the Third Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery.

GREEN, Beriah, 1795-1874, New York, reformer, clergyman. President and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Active supporter of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

GREENLEAF, Jonathan, 1785-1865, Wells, Maine, clergyman, author, editor. Agent for the Maine auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

GRIFFIN, Edwin Dorr, 1770-1837, New York, co-founder and officer in the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Secretary of the African Education Society.

GRIMES, Leonard A., 1815-1873, African American, clergyman, abolitionist.

GRIMES, William W., 1824-1891, African American, clergyman, abolitionist.

GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, 1821-1891, New Haven, Vermont, abolitionist. Republican Party co-founder. Theologian. Founded First Congregational Church, Washington, DC, in 1851. Founded town of Grinnell, Iowa. Iowa State Senator, 1856-1860. Congressman 1863-1867. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Advocated for use of colored troops in the Union Army. As Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

GROSVENOR, Cyrus P., 1792-1879, Salem, Massachusetts, clergyman, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery agent, anti-slavery Baptist minister, educator. Lectured on anti-slavery. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1839-1840, 1840-1841. Member of the Liberty Party. Leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

GRUBER, Reverend Jacob, clergyman. Preached against slavery; called it a sin. Gave sermon in Washington County, Maryland, on August 16, 1818. He was indicted on grounds of sedition. He was defended by attorney Rodger B. Tanney (later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). He was defended on the principle of free speech.

GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, 1797-1872, clergyman. Secretary, American Colonization Society. Co-founder of Liberia.

HALE, Edward Everett, 1822-1909, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, Unitarian minister, writer, abolitionist leader. Co-founder of the Freedman’s Aid Society in 1862, which aided African Americans.

HALL, Robert Bernard, 1812-1868, Episcopal clergyman, member of the Massachusetts State Senate, U.S. Congressman, 1855-1859, one of twelve founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1832 and the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1832.

HALSEY, Job Foster, 1800-1881, Allegheny Town, Pennsylvania, theologian. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

HALSEY, Luther, 1794-1880, Princeton, New Jersey, clergyman, professor, educator. Officer of the New Jersey auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

HAVEN, Gilbert, 1821-1880, clergyman, African American civil rights advocate, abolitionist.

HAWES, Joel, Reverend, 1789-1867, Hartford, Connecticut, clergyman, author. Member of the Hartford Committee of the American Colonization Society.

HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, 1826-1905, statesman, clergyman, lawyer, editor, opponent of slavery, Union officer. Member of the Free Soil Party. Co-founder of the Republican Party. Chairman of Connecticut Free Soil State Committee. He opposed pro-slavery Know-Nothing Party and aided in anti-slavery organizing. Helped organize and found the Republican Party in 1856. In 1857, became editor of the Republican newspaper, Evening Press in Hartford. Enlisted in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, commanding both a division and a brigade.

HAYNES, Reverend Lemuel, 1753-1833, former slave, Revolutionary War veteran, early abolitionist, clergyman. Wrote essay “Liberty Further Extended,” criticizing slavery in the United States, called slavery corrupt and sinful.

HENSON, Josiah, 1789-1883, born a slave in Maryland, led one hundred slaves to freedom, founded Community of Former Slaves in Ontario, Canada; said to be the basis for Uncle Tom in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Founded British American Manual Labor Institute in Canada.

HICKMAN, William, b. 1747 in Virginia, clergyman. Pastor in Baptist Church at Forks of the Elkhorn, Lexington, Kentucky, censured for anti-slavery views.

HIGGINSON, Thomas Wentworth Storrow, 1823-1911, author, editor, Unitarian clergyman, radical abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Served as a Colonel in the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers, the first African American regiment formed under the Federal Government.

HINDE, Thomas Spottswood, 1785-1846, Illinois, opponent of slavery, newspaper editor, clergyman, author, historian, businessman. Early and outspoken opponent of slavery.

HINCKLEY, Orramel S., Tennessee, clergyman. Agent of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in Tennessee. Brother-in-law of ACS agent Ralph Gurley.

HITCHCOCK, George Beckworth, clergyman, abolitioninst. Active in the Underground Railroad in Lewis, Iowa.

HODGE, Charles, 1797-1878, Princeton, New Jersey, professor, theologian. Officer, New Jersey auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

HOPKINS, Reverend Dr. Samuel, 1721-1803, Newport, Rhode Island, theologian, opponent of slavery. Pastor of the First Congregational Church of New port, Rhode Island. Wrote A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of Africans, 1776.

HUBBARD, Jeremiah, North Carolina, clergyman. Society of Friends, Quaker minister. Advocated colonization of Blacks to Africa, as a solution to slavery.

JAMES, Henry, 1811-1882, theologian, reformer, advocate of abolition.

JAMES, Thomas, 1804-1891, African American, former slave, clergyman, abolitionist. Wrote slave narrative, “Life of Rev. Thomas James, by Himself,” 1886.

JANEWAY, Jacob Jones, 1774-1858, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman. Official of the General Assembly, founding officer of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society in 1817.

JOCELYN, Simeon S., New Haven, Connecticut, New York, NY, abolitionist leader. Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855. Co-founded the Amistad Committee.

JOHNSON, Rowland, 1816-1886, New York, NY, reformer, abolitionist leader. Vice president, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1858-1864.

JOHNSON, Samuel, 1822-1882, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, reformer, writer.

JONES, Absolom, 1746-1818, free African American, slave, first African American Protestant priest. Founded Free African Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1787.

KEMP, James, Bishop, 1764-1827, Baltimore, Maryland, clergyman. Vice President of the Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society.

KING, Reverend William, clergyman. Scotch Presbyterian minister. Founded Colony of Former Slaves in Kent County under the Elgin Association. Took slaves to Canada.

KNOWLTON, Ebenezer, 1815-174, Pittsville, New Hampshire, abolitionist, clergyman. Member of the Maine House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives, 1855-1857. Early member of the Republican Party. Lifelong opponent of slavery and temperance activist. Founder of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Coordinator of Free Will Baptist newspaper, Morning Star.

LANSING, Dirk Cornelius, 1758-1857, New York, clergyman, abolitionist. Vice president, 1833-1835, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1851-1855.

LAURIE, James, Reverend, 1778-1853, Washington, DC, clergyman. American Colonization Society founding officer and Board of Managers, 1816, Manager, 1833-1839, Vice-President, 1838-1841.

LEAVITT, Joshua, 1794-1873, New York, reformer, temperance activist, editor, lawyer, clergyman, abolitionist leader. Active supporter of the American Colonization Society. Helped in raising funds for the Society. Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), New York, 1833. Manager, AASS, 1833-1837. Executive Committee, AASS, 1834-1840. Recording Secretary, AASS, 1838-1840. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS). Advocated political action to end slavery, which led him to help found the Liberty Party. Edited the newspaper, The Evangelist, which was founded by abolitionists Arthur and Lewis Tappan. He later became editor of The Emancipator, which was founded by Arthur Tappan in 1833. Leavitt toured extensively, lecturing against slavery. His speeches were edited into a pamphlet entitled, “The Financial Power of Slavery.” It was one of the most widely circulated documents against slavery.

LEE, Luther, 1800-1889, clergyman, Methodist congregation, Utica, New York, abolitionist leader. Began his abolitionist career in 1837. Helped create Wesleyan anti-slavery societies. In 1843, co-founded the anti-slavery Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, of which he became president. Lecturer for New York Anti-Slavery Society (NYASS) and agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Luther was attacked on a number of occasions by pro-slavery advocates. In 1840, Lee helped to co-found the Liberty Party.

LEMEN, James, New Design, Virginia, organized Baptist Churches on abolitionist principles. Worked against pro-slavery petitions. Sent to U.S. Congress.

LIGHT, George C., Kentucky, clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society in Kentucky. Worked with Robert S. Finley.

LINDSLEY, Philip, 1786-1855, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, clergyman, educator, abolitionist.

LOGUEN, Jermain Wesley, 1813-1872, New York, American Abolition Society, African American, clergyman, speaker, author, former slave, abolitionist leader. Bishop, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Supported the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Conductor, Underground Railroad, aiding hundreds of fugitive slaves, in Syracuse, New York. In 1851, he himself escaped to Canada when he was indicted for helping a fugitive slave. Wrote autobiography, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life. 1859.

LOVEJOY, Elijah Parrish, 1802-1837, newspaper publisher, editor, writer, clergyman, abolitionist leader. Murdered by anti-abolitionists. In 1833, he became editor of the St. Louis newspaper the Observer. In the paper, he opposed slavery and supported graduate emancipation. Due to threats, he moved the paper to Alton, Illinois, in 1836. There, his life was threatened and his press was destroyed three times by pro-slave mobs. A fourth press was established on November 7, 1837, and was immediately destroyed and during the attack, Lovejoy was shot and killed by the mob.

LOVEJOY, Owen, 1811-1864, clergyman, abolitionist, U.S. Congressman. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. Active in Underground Railroad. Member, Illinois State Legislature. Brother of anti-slavery newspaper publisher, Elijah Parrish Lovejoy. Like his brother, Owen Lovejoy was a strong supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. He was elected to Congress in 1856 and actively supported the abolition of slavery in Congress until his death in 1864.

LOWELL, Charles, 1782-1861, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, opponent of slavery.

MAHAN, Asa, 1799-1889, clergyman, abolitionist, president of Oberlin College 1835-1850.

MARTIN, John Sella, 1832-1876, African American, former slave, clergyman, abolitionist, orator and lecturer against slavery. Agent for newspaper, Provincial Freeman. Wrote articles in the Liberator. Endorsed African Civilization Society colonization plans.

MATTISON, Hiram, 1811-1868, clergyman.

MAY, Reverend Samuel Joseph, 1797-1871, Connecticut, reformer, temperance advocate, clergyman, early advocate of women’s rights. Unitarian minister. Was an advocate for immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, an officer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. May was opposed to both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. He adamantly opposed both the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and actively advocated resistance to it. Active in Underground Railroad in Syracuse, New York. In 1851, he helped rescue a fugitive slave, Jerry McHenry, from the federal government. Early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1856, he joined the anti-slavery Republican Party, supporting John Frémont for the presidency of the United States.

MCKEEN, Silas, Reverend, clergyman. Member and strong advocate of the American Colonization Society.

MCKENNEY, William, Reverend, clergyman. Successful and effective agent of the American Colonization Society (ACS). In 1824, set up local societies of the ACS in Deleware, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. Set up societies in Norfolk, Petersburg, Portsmouth, Lynchburg and Hampton.

MCKIM, James Miller, 1810-1874, reformer, abolitionist. Founding member and anti-slavery agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Manager, AASS, 1843-1853. Lectured on anti-slavery in Pennsylvania. Publishing agent, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Editor, Pennsylvania Freeman.

MCLAIN, William, Reverend, clergyman. Agent, officer and leader of the American Colonization Society.

MEACHUM, Alfred Benjamin, 1826-1882, clergyman, reformer, author, historian, Native American rights advocate, abolitionist.

MEADE, William, 1789-1862, Virginia, clergyman, soldier. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1834-1841. Influential member of the Colonization Society. Freed his slaves.

MERRITT, Timothy, 1775-1845, clergyman.

MILLS, Samuel John, 1783-1818, Torrington, Connecticut, clergyman. Founded schools for African American children. Member of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Went to Africa on behalf of the ACS to found colony.

MILNOR, James, 1773-1844, Pennsylvania, New York, opponent of slavery, lawyer, clergyman. Member of U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, 1811-1813. Milnor was an officer in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1798. Member of New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

MINES, John, Leesburg, Frederick County, Virginia, clergyman. Pastor, Leesburg Presbyterian Church. Member, Frederick auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

MITCHELL, James, Reverend, clergyman. Traveling agent for the American Colonization Society in the 1840s. He represented Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Organized new state auxiliaries.

MORRIL, David Lawrence, 1772-1849, theologian, physician, statesman. U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. U.S. Senator from December 1817-March 1823. Opposed extending slavery into the new territories stated in debate in Congress in 1819: “The states now existing which have thought proper to admit slavery, may retain their slaves as long as they please; but, after the commencement of 1808, Congress may by law prohibit the importation of any more, and restrain those who are then in servitude to the territory or States where they may be found.”

MORSE, Reverend Jedidiah, 1761-1826, geographer, Congregational clergyman, opposed and wrote of moral evil of slavery.

NELSON, David, 1793-1844, Tennessee, abolitionist leader, Army surgeon, clergyman. Pastor in the Presbyterian Church, Danville, Kentucky, in 1828. President of Marion College, Palmyra, Missouri. Advocate of compensated emancipation.

NEWCOMB, Harvey, 1803-1863, clergyman, strong advocate for Black and Native American rights.

NEWTON, Alexander Herritage, 1837-1921, African American, abolitionist, soldier, clergyman. Minister, African American Episcopal (AME) Church. Worked aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

NILES, Nathaniel, 1741-1828, lawyer, jurist, theologian. U.S. Congressman from Vermont, October 1791-March 1795. Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

NILES, William Watson, West Fairles, Vermont, clergyman. Agent of the American Colonization Society in New England. Traveled in Maine and Eastern Massachusetts.

NOURSE, James, Reverend, clergyman. Agent of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in North Carolina. Founded auxiliaries of the ACS in Cumberland, Randolph and Rowan Counties in North Carolina. Grandson of Benjamin Rittenhouse.

O’KELLY, James, 1735-1826, Virginia, North Carolina, Methodist clergyman, opponent of slavery. Wrote anti-slavery work, Essay on Negro Slavery.

OTEY, James Hervey, Bishop, 1800-1863, Tennessee, clergyman. Vice-President of the American Colonization Society, 1840-1841.

PALFREY, John Gorham, 1796-1881, author, theologian, educator. Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1847-1849 (Whig Party). Early anti-slavery activist.

PARKER, Reverend Theodore, 1810-1860, Boston, Massachusetts, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist leader, reformer. Secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Opposed Fugitive Slave Act. Organizer, Committee of Vigilance to help fugitive slaves escape capture in Boston, Massachusetts. Wrote anti-slavery book, To a Southern Slaveholder, in 1848. Also wrote Defense. Supported the New England Emigrant Aid Society and the Massachusetts Kansas Committee. Member of the Secret Six group that clandestinely aided radical abolitionist John Brown.

PARRISH, John, 1729-1807, preacher, Society of Friends, Quaker, anti-slavery activist. Wrote Remarks on the Slavery of Black People (1806), in which he said: “I am no politician, but it is clear that the fundamentals of all good governments, being equal liberty and impartial justice, the constitution and laws ought to be expressed in such unequivocal terms as not to be misunderstood, or admit of double meaning… A house divided against itself cannot stand; neither can a government or constitution.”

PATTON, William, 1798-1879, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman, opponent of slavery, father of abolitionist William Weston Patton.

PAUL, Nathaniel, 1793-1839, New Hampshire, clergyman, abolitionist. Founder of the First African Baptist Church in Albany, New York. Advocated for immediate emancipation. Against American Colonization Society. Co-founded Freedom’s Journal, 1827-1829. Worked with Albany Anti-Slavery Society.

PEARL, Cyril, Reverend, Bolton, Connecticut, clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society (ACS), representing Vermont and Maine. He was assistant to ACS agent Reverend Joshua Danforth.

PEERS, Benjamin Orrs, 1800-1842, clergyman, university president, successful agent of the American Colonization Society. Traveled in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio, founding numerous auxiliaries and raising funds. Organized auxiliaries in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Canfield, Canton, and Columbus.

PEMBERTON, John, 1727-1795, Delaware, abolitionist leader, Society of Friends, Quaker, leader and delegate of the Delaware Abolition Society, founded 1788, vice president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting Abolition of Slavery, 1787.

PENNINGTON, James William Charles, 1807-1870, African American, American Missionary Association, fugitive slave, abolitionist, orator, clergyman. Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Published The Fugitive Blacksmith in London in 1844. One of the first African American students to attend Yale University. Served as a delegate to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London. Active in the Amistad slave case. Recruited African American troops for the Union Army.

PHELPS, Reverend Amos Augustus, 1805-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Editor, Emancipation. Husband of abolitionist Charlotte Phelps.

PIERCE, Cyrus, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1849-1860.

PIERPONT, John, 1785-1866, poet, lawyer, theologian, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

PINNEY, John B., Reverend, Presbyterian clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society in Africa. Appointed in 1833.

PORTER, James, 1808-1888, clergyman, abolitionist. Member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

POTTER, Alonzo, 1800-1865, Beekman, New York, clergyman, college president, temperance advocate, opponent of slavery.

POTTER, Ray, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, clergyman. Manager, founding member and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

PROUDFIT, Alexander Montcrief, 1770-1843, clergyman.

QUINN, William Paul, 1788-1873, African American, leader of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, clergyman. Actively supported abolition and anti-slavery movements. Also associated with Black emigrationist movements.

RAND, Asa, 1783-1871, Massachusetts, clergyman, editor. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

RANDOLPH, Peter, c. 1825-1897, African American, former slave, clergyman, author, anti-slavery activist.

RAY, Charles Bennett, 1807-1886, New York, African American, journalist, educator, clergyman, abolitionist leader. American Missionary Association (AMA). Newspaper owner and editor, The Colored American. African American. Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. One of the first African Americans to participate in abolitionist party on a national level. Member and activist with the Underground Railroad. Co-founder and director, New York Vigilance Committee, which aided and protected fugitive slaves. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

RICE, Reverend David, 1733-1816, educator, clergyman, Virginia. Presbyterian Church of Danville, Kentucky. Co-founder of Hampden-Sydney College and Transylvania University. Member of the Kentucky Abolition Society. Opponent of slavery. Wrote speech, “Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy.” Rice wrote: “A slave is a human creature made by law the property of another human creature, and reduced by mere power to an absolute, unconditional subjection to his will… A slave claims his freedom; he pleads that he is a man, that he was by nature free, that he has not forfeited his freedom, nor relinquished it… His being long deprived of this right, by force or fraud, does not annihilate it; it remains; it is still his right… If my definition of a slave is true, he is a rational creature reduced by the power of legislation to the state of a brute, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity… that he may minister to the ease, luxury, lust, pride, or avarice of another, no better than himself… a free moral agent, legally deprived of free agency, and obliged to act according to the will of another free agent of the same species; and yet he is accountable to his Creator for the use he makes of his own free agency.”

ROGERS, Elymas Payson, 1815-1861, African American, clergyman, poet, missionary, educator, prominent abolitionist. Wrote anti-slavery satires, “A Poem on the Fugitive Slave Law,” and “The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise Considered,” 1856.

ROGERS, William, 1751-1824, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, clergyman, educator, College of Philadelphia, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Education, Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

ROMEYN, John Brodhead, Reverend, b. 1777, New York, clergyman. Member of the auxiliary of the New York American Colonization Society.

ROOT, David, 1790-1873, clergyman.

SANDERSON, Jeremiah Burke, 1821-1875, African American, clergyman, abolitionist, anti-slavery leader. Minister, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Agent and lecturer for Garrison’s Liberator. Member of abolition groups in New Bedford area.

SANDS, David, 1745-1818, abolitionist, Quaker preacher.

SAWYER, Leicester Ambrose, 1807-1898, clergyman.

SCHMUCKER, Simon Samuel, 1799-1873.

SCOTT, Orange, 1800-1847, Springfield, Massachusetts, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery agent. Member of Congress from Pennsylvania. Entered anti-slavery cause in 1834. Lectured in New England. In 1839, founded and published the American Wesleyan Observer, an anti-slavery publication. Withdrew from Methodist Church to co-found the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1843 with Jotham Horton.

SERGEANT, John, 1779-1852, lawyer. U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. Opposed extension of slavery into the territories. Stated in Congressional debate of 1819: “It is to no purpose, to say that the question of slavery is a question of state concern. It affects the Union, in its interests, its resources, and character, permanently; perhaps forever. One single State, to gratify the desire of a moment, may do what all the Union cannot undo; may produce an everlasting evil, shame and reproach. And why? Because it is a State right… Sir, you may turn this matter as you will; Missouri, when she becomes a State, grows out of the Constitution; she is formed under the care of Congress, and admitted by Congress; and if she has a right to establish slavery, it is a right derived directly from the Constitution, and conferred upon her through the instrumentality of Congress.” Further, Sergeant said, “If Missouri be permitted to establish slavery, we shall bring upon ourselves the charges of hypocrisy and insincerity, and upon the Constitution a deep stain, which must impair its lustre, and weaken its title to the public esteem.”

SESSIONS, Horace, Pomfret, Connecticut, clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

SIMMONS, George Frederick, 1814-1855, Unitarian clergyman, active opponent of slavery.

SLOANE, James Renwick Wilson, 1833-1886, clergyman, educator. President of Richmond College, Ohio, and Geneva College, Ohio.

SMITH, George, 1747-1820, born in Virginia, clergyman, anti-slavery activist in Kentucky. Baptist minister.

SMITH, Stephen, 1795-1873, African American, former slave, businessman, clergyman, abolitionist, conductor on the Underground Railroad, temperance activist.

SNOWDON, Samuel, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, Boston, Massachusetts.

SPRING, Gardiner, 1785-1873, Newburyport, Massachusetts, New York, clergyman, lawyer, author. American Colonization Society, Director, 1839-1840.

STANTON, Daniel, 1708-1770, Friends Society (Quaker), preacher.

STAUGHTON, William, Reverend, 1770-1829, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman, Baptist educator. Founding officer of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

STILES, Ezra, 1727-1795, clergyman, educator, anti-slavery activist. President of Yale College and President of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom.

STONE, Thomas Treadwell, b. 1801, Waterford, Maine, clergyman, abolitionist.

STORRS, George, New Hampshire, Montpelier, Vermont, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery agent, abolitionist. Member of the New Hampshire Conference, which founded an anti-slavery group in 1835. Storrs was a Manager, 1835-1836, and a Vice President 1835-1837, of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841. He was censured by the Methodist Church for his anti-slavery activities in 1836. He was also arrested by authorities for “disturbing the peace.

STOW, Baron, 1801-1869, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, abolitionist, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Stow was a Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1834-1836.

STOWE, Calvin Ellis, 1802-1866, clergyman, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

SUTTON, John, Kentucky, clergyman, co-leader of Emancipating Baptists, Kentucky, founder of Abolition Church.

TARRANT, Carter, Virginia, Baptist clergyman, co-leader of the Emancipating Baptists, anti-slavery activist, Woodford County, Kentucky. Chaplain, U.S. Army, founded anti-slavery church in Kentucky.

THOME, James A., 1809-1873, August, Kentucky, anti-slavery activist, educator, clergyman. Father was a slaveholder. Thome was a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) and professor at Oberlin College.

THOMPSON, Edwin, 1809-1888, Lynn, Massachusetts, reformer, orator, clergyman, temperance reformer, abolitionist, Society of Friends, Quaker, traveling anti-slavery lecturer.

THOMPSON, Joseph Pascal, 1818-1894, African American, former slave, clergyman, medical doctor, abolitionist.

TODD, John, 1750-1782, soldier. Member of the Virginia legislature. Introduced bill for African American emancipation.

TORREY, Charles Turner, 1813-1846, Massachusetts, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist leader. Wrote Memoir of the Martyr. Leader, the National Convention of Friends of Immediate Emancipation, Albany, New York, 1840.

TOWNSEND, Joseph, 1739-1816, Methodist clergyman, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others, Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1789.

TRACY, Myron, Hartford, Vermont, clergyman. Agent in New England for the American Colonization Society. Traveled in Massachusetts and Vermont.

TRASK, George, 1798-1875, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Warren, Massachusetts, clergyman. Massachusetts Abolition Society, President, 1846, Vice-President, 1846-, 1850-. Also active in the temperance movement and anti-tobacco use.

TRUE, Charles Kittridge, 1809-1878, abolitionist, educator, Methodist clergyman, author, censured for abolitionist views.

WALKER, Charles, Reverend, Rutland, Vermont, clergyman. Agent of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in New England. Assistant to ACS agent Reverend Joshua N. Danforth of Boston.

WARD, Samuel Ringgold, 1817-1866, New York, American Missionary Association (AMA), African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor, author, orator, clergyman. Member of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party. Wrote Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England, 1855. Lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society. Member and contributor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada.

WARE, John Fathergill Waterhouse, 1818-1881, Boston, Massachusetts, Unitarian clergyman, helped African Aemricans and opposed slavery.

WEEKS, William Raymond, Newark, New Jersey, clergyman, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-39.

WEISS, John, 1818-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, author, clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.

WELD, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895, Cincinnati, Ohio, New York, NY, reformer, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery lobbyist. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in December 1833. Manager, 1833-1835, and Corresponding Secretary, 1839-1840, of the Society. Published American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839). Also wrote The Bible Against Slavery (1839) and Slavery and the Internal Slave Trace in the United States (London, 1841). Married to abolitionist Angelina Grimké.

WHEATON, Josephus, clergyman, Holliston, Massachusetts, anti-slavery advocate. Gave memorable anti-slavery sermon.

WHIPPLE, George, clergyman, educator. Secretary of the anti-slavery American Missionary Association (AMA). American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-1840. American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1844-1855, Treasurer, 1846-1855. Teacher at Lane University. Professor and principal, Oberlin College. Worked in Freeman’s Bureau after the Civil War. Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).

WILLEY, Austin, b. 1806, reformer, abolitionist, clergyman. Congregational minister. Editor of Advocate of Freedom.

WILLIAMS, Peter, Jr., 1780-1840, New York City, African American, clergyman, author, abolitionist, political leader. Early in his career, he favored Black colonization. Co-founder of first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal in 1827. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Manager, 1833-1836, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1834-1835, of the AASS.

WILLIAMS, Thomas, 1779-1876, Providence, Rhode Island, clergyman. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

WILSON, Hiram V., abolitionist, cleric, agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Ohio. Helped set up schools and aid Blacks who escaped to Canada. Founded British-American Manual Labor Institute of the Colored Settlements of Upper Canada.

WILSON, John Leighton, 1809-1886, Sumter County, South Carolina clergyman, missionary, anti-slavery activist. Wrote influential pamphlet that caused the British government to keep its naval squadron off the African coast in order to suppress the illegal African slave trade.

WINANS, William, 1788-1857, Mississippi, clergyman. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1838-1841. Influential Episcopal churchman.

WING, Conway Phelps, 1809-1828, Marietta, Ohio, clergyman, anti-slavery activist.

WISE, Daniel, b. 1813, clergyman.

WRIGHT, Chester, Reverend, clergyman. Agent, American Colonization Society (ACS). Secretary of the Vermont auxiliary of the ACS.

WRIGHT, Theodore Sedwick, 1797-1847, African American, New York, clergyman, abolitionist leader, orator. American Missionary Association (AMA). Manager, 1834-1840, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1834-1840, of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1847.

YALE, Calvin, Reverend, Vermont, clergyman. Member and advocate for the American Colonization Society. Stated that colonization “may ultimately lead to the extinction of slavery…”

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Educators

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ALCOTT, Amos Bronson, 1799-1888, abolitionist, educator, writer, philosopher, reformer. Opposed the Mexican American War and the extension of slavery into Texas. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. His second daughter was noted author Louisa May Alcott, who was also opposed to slavery. Friend of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.

ALDEN, Joseph W., 1807-1885, educator, pastor, writer.

ALLEN, Reverend George, 1808-1876, Worcester, Massachusetts, educator, theologian, anti-slavery agent. Lectured extensively against slavery.

ANDERSON, Isaac, 1780-1857, clergyman, educator. Founder of the Southern and Western Theological Seminary in 1819 in Maryville, Tennessee.

ASHMUN, Jehudi, 1794-1828, Washington, DC, educator, editor, missionary. Published The African Intelligencer, a paper for the American Colonization Society.

BALCH, Hezekiah, 1741-1810, abolitionist, clergyman, educator. Co-founder, Tusculum College, originally Greenville College. Taught abolitionist Evangelicalism in Eastern Tennessee in the 1830s, which became part of the early abolitionist movement in the state.

BASCOM, Henry Bidleman, 1796-1850, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, clergyman. Methodist pastor educator, former President of Madison College in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Successful Agent for the American Colonization Society in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kentucky and Tennessee. Wrote Methodism and Slavery, 1847. Chaplain of Congress. President of Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Agent, Colonization Society, 1829-1831.

BEECHER, Edward, 1803-1895, clergyman, abolitionist leader, writer, social reformer. President, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois. Pastor, Salem Street Church, Boston. Executive committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Friend of abolitionist leader Elijah J. Lovejoy. Co-founded Anti-Slavery Society in Illinois. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1842. Son of abolitionist Lyman Beecher, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Charles Beecher, and Henry Ward Beecher.

BEMAN, Nathaniel Sydney Smith, 1785-1871, Presbyterian college president, clergyman, abolitionist.

BENEZET, Anthony, 1713-1784, French-born American, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, author, reformer, educator, early and important abolitionist leader. Founded Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, in Philadelphia. Also founded one of the first girls’ public schools that was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Worked with abolitionist John Woolman. Wrote: A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions, 1766; Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants, with an Enquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave-Trade, Its Nature and Lamentable Effects, 1771; and Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing Negroes, 1748.

BLACKBURN, Gideon, 1772-1838, Kentucky, Virginia, clergyman, abolitionist, strong supporter of the American colonization Society. Went to Illinois in 1833. Assisted Elijah P. Lovejoy in organizing Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. Founded Blackburn College at Carlinville, Illinois. Established school for Cherokee Indians.

BLANCHARD, Jonathan, 1811-1892, pastor, educator, abolitionist, theologian, lecturer. Worked for more than thirty years for the abolition of slavery. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, 1845-1858. President, Illinois Institute. Vice president, World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, England, 1843.

BROWN, John Mifflin, 1817-1893, educator, clergyman, African American, eleventh Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, abolitionist.

BURGESS, Ebenezer, Berlington, Vermont, educator. Agent of the American Colonization Society. Went to Africa to found colony.

BUSH, Newcomb Obadiah, 1797-1851, New York, educator. Vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Member of the Underground Railroad.

BUTLER, Ovid, 1801-1881, Augusta, New York, lawyer, newspaper publisher, university founder, abolitionist. Founded abolitionist newspaper, Free Soil Banner, in 1849. Helped found Northwestern Christian University in 1855. It was later renamed Butler University.

CALDWELL, Joseph, Dr. Reverend, 1773-1835, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, university president. Chief officer of the Chapel Hill auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

CATTO, Octavius Valentine, 1839-1871, African American educator, activist, soldier. Opposed slavery. Recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army. Established Union League Association. Served as a Major in the Army.

COWLES, Betsy Mix, 1810-1876, educator, reformer, abolitionist. Organized the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society. Worked closely with abolitionist leader Abby Kelley in the Western Anti-Slavery Society (WASS). African American and women’s civil rights advocate.

COWLES, Henry, 1803-1881, Austinburgh, Ohio, clergyman, educator, anti-slavery activist, reformer. Manager, 1834-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

CRANDALL, Prudence, 1803-1889, Canterbury, Connecticut, Society of Friends, Quaker, educator, abolitionist.

DAY, Jeremiah, 1773-1867, New Haven, Connecticut, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-1841. President of Yale College.

DOAK, Samuel, 1749-1830, Virginia, educator, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, founder of Martin Academy, Little Limestone (near Jonesboro), North Carolina, founder and president of Washington College, 1795.

DOUGLASS, Sarah Mapps, 1806-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, educator, writer, lecturer. Organizer, member and manager of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participant and organizer of the Anti-Slavery Conventions of American Women in 1838-1839.

DOWLING, John, 1807-1878, clergyman, educator, author.

DRESSLER, Amos, anti-slavery agent, educator, Lane University alumnus. Worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Was beaten, tarred and feathered by mob.

DUER, William Alexander, 1780-1858, New York City, New York, jurist, educator. President of Columbia College. Officer of the New York City auxiliary of the American colonization Society.

DWIGHT, Timothy, 1752-1817, anti-slavery writer, educator. Pastor, Congregational Church at Greenfield Hill. President of Yale. Condemned slavery and its brutality in his writings.

EDWARDS, Cyrus, 1893-1877, Illinois, lawyer. Actively supported the American Colonization Society in Illinois.

EDWARDS, Jonathon, Dr. Reverend, 1745-1801, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, college president. Wrote The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, 1791. Son of noted theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

ELIOT, William Greenleaf, 1811-1887, educator, clergyman, opponent of slavery. Active in Sanitary Commission in the Civil War.

ELLIS, John Millott, 1831-1894, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman, educator. Proponent of emancipation of enslaved individuals during the Civil War.

FARNSWORTH, Benjamin Franklin, 1793-1851, educator.

FEE, Reverend John Gregg, 1816-1901, American Missionary Association, clergyman, educator, abolitionist. Founder of Berea College, Madison County, Kentucky.

FINNEY, Charles Grandison, Reverend, 1792-1875, clergyman, advocate of social reforms, author, publisher, president of Oberlin College, Ohio, 1851-1866, abolitionist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841. American Presbyterian Minister and leader in the “Second Great Awakening” in the United States. Also considered one of the “fathers of modern revivalism,” 1825-1835, in upstate New York and Manhattan.

FISK, Wilbur, 1792-1839, Middletown, Connecticut, educator, President of Wesleyan University. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1836-1840.

FITCH, Eleazer Thompson, 1791-1871, Connecticut, educator, theologian. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

FOLLEN, Charles Theodore, 1796-1840, Massachusetts, educator, professor, writer, clergyman, Unitarian minister, abolitionist. Fired from Harvard University for his anti-slavery oratory. Wrote Lectures on Moral Philosophy, which strongly opposed slavery. Influenced by abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier and abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, he became active in the New England Anti-Slavery Society. American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1834-1835, 1836-1837, Member Executive Committee, 1837-1838, 1860-1863. Counsellor of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1859-1960. Wrote anti-slavery Address to the People of the United States, which he delivered to the Society’s first convention in Boston. Supported political and legal equality for women.

FRELINGHUYSEN, Theodore, 1787-1862, Franklin, Somerset Co., Newark, New Jersey, attorney, jurist, statesman, opposed slavery. U.S. Senator, 1829-1836. Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Chancellor of the University of New York. Whig Vice Presidential candidate. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-1841. Member of the board of the African Education Society.

GRISCOM, John, Dr., 1774-1852, New York, educator, reformer, activist. Member of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

GRISWOLD, Alexander Viets, 1766-1843, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1840-41.

HARLAN, James, 1820-1899, statesman. Whig U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Elected Senator in 1855 representing Iowa. Re-elected, served until 1865, when appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln. Re-elected to Senate in 1866, served until 1873.

HOWE, Samuel Gridley, Dr., 1801-1876, abolitionist leader, philanthropist, physician, reformer. Actively participated in the anti-slavery movement. Free Soil candidate for Congress from Boston in 1846. From 1851-1853 he edited the anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth. Active with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, 1863. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Husband of Julia Ward Howe.

HOWELL, David, 1747-1826, educator, professor of law, acting president of Brown University, abolitionist leader, Providence Society. Petitioned Congress for implementation of House Resolution of March, 1790, against slavery.

HOWLAND, Emily, 1827-1929, Sherwood, Cayuga County, New York, opponent of slavery, philanthropist, educator. Society of Friends, Quaker. Worked with freed slaves and on Underground Railroad. Teacher at the Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, DC, 1857-1859.

JAMES, Thomas Chalkley, Dr., 1766-1835, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, physician. Vice-President, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-1836. Founder and officer of the Pennsylvania Society of the ACS.

KEEP, John, Oberlin, Ohio, educator, college trustee. Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-38. Opposed slavery, women’s and African American rights advocate. Trustee of Oberlin College from 1834-1870. Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840.

LANGSTON, John Mercer, 1829-1897, free African American, lawyer, diplomat, educator, abolitionist, brother of Charles Henry Langston, graduate of Oberlin College.

LEWIS, Enoch, 1776-1856, mathematician, educator, publisher, African Observer, Society of Friends, Quaker, Wilmington, Delaware, moderate abolitionist, editor, anti-slavery monthly, the African Observer. Organized Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania.

LINDSLEY, Philip, 1786-1855, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, clergyman, educator, abolitionist.

LOWRIE, Walter, 1794-1868, educator, merchant, religious leader, statesman. U.S. Senator, western Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Senate, 1825-1836. Member of the Executive Committee, American Colonization Society (ACS).

“The Government of the Union flows as directly from the people as does the government of any of the States. The circumstance that the delegates who formed the present Constitution, were appointed by the State Legislatures does not detract from this idea; because the instrument was afterward submitted to the people, and had it not been approved by them, it would have had no more authority than the sweeping of you floor. The Government of the United States, through limited in its powers, is supreme within the proper sphere of its action. The respective Governments of the United States and of the several States are sovereign within their proper spheres, and no farther. Hence it follows that the States are limited sovereignties. It follows, also, that the right to admit new States, being within the sphere of the General Government is a right which, to that Government, is perfect… the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations for the territories, and the power to admit new States into the Union, have been given, by the people of the United States, to Congress. They are powers f the General Government, within the proper sphere of its action, and of course sovereign and supreme.”

MANN, Horace, 1796-1859, educator, political leader, social reformer. U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, from Massachusetts. Opposed extension of slavery in territories annexed in the Mexican War of 1846. Said, “I consider no evil as great as slavery...” Argued against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Reelected to Congress and served from April 1848 until March 1853.

MAY, Samuel Joseph, Reverend, 1797-1871, Brooklyn, Connecticut, reformer, abolitionist leader, temperance advocate, clergyman, early advocate of women’s rights. Unitarian minister. Organized local auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. May was an advocate for immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves. Vice president, 1848-1861, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, an officer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. May was opposed to both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. He adamantly opposed both the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and actively advocated resistance to it. Active in Underground Railroad in Syracuse, New York. In 1851, he helped rescue a fugitive slave, Jerry McHenry, from the federal government. Early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1856, he joined the anti-slavery Republican Party, supporting John Frémont for the presidency of the United States.

MERCER, Margaret, 1791-1846, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist, reformer, educator. Slave holder who freed her slaves in 1846 and paid their way to Liberia.

MINER, Myrtilla, 1815-1864, New York, educator, philanthropist, abolitionist. Opened Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, DC, in 1851. Minor was opposed to slavery.

MOORE, Lindley Murray, 1788-1871, New York, educator, abolitionist leader, temperance activist, Society of Friends, Quaker. Married to abolitionist, reformer, Abigail Lydia Mott. Co-founded and was first president and recording secretary of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote abolitionist book, Autographs of Freedom, 1853.

MOREL, Junius C., c. 1806, African American, former slave, educator, reformer, civil rights activist, editor. Wrote numerous articles for African American papers. Served as an agent for Frederick Douglass’s Northern Star. Member of Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society.

PALFREY, John Gorham, 1796-1881, author, theologian, educator. Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1847-1849 (Whig Party). Early anti-slavery activist.

PATTERSON, James Willis, 1823-1893, educator. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire. Congressman 1863-1867. Elected U.S. Senator 1866-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

PATTERSON, Robert, 1743-1824, Pennsylvania, mathematician, educator, soldier, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded 1775.

PEIRCE, Cyrus, 1790-1860, Nantucket, Massachusetts, educator, Unitarian minister, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.

POTTER, Alonzo, 1800-1865, Beekman, New York, clergyman, college president, temperance advocate, opponent of slavery.

QUINCY, Josiah, 1772-1864, statesman. U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. Opposed slavery as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

RAWLE, William, 1759-1836(?), lawyer, educator, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, 1826. Member of the Pennsylvania Abolition society, founded 1775, 1787.

RAY, Charles Bennett, 1807-1886, New York, African American, journalist, educator, clergyman, abolitionist leader. American Missionary Association (AMA). Newspaper owner and editor, The Colored American. African American. Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. One of the first African Americans to participate in abolitionist party on a national level. Member and activist with the Underground Railroad. Co-founder and director, New York Vigilance Committee, which aided and protected fugitive slaves. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

RICE, Reverend David, 1733-1816, educator, clergyman, Virginia. Presbyterian Church of Danville, Kentucky. Co-founder of Hampden-Sydney College and Transylvania University. Member of the Kentucky Abolition Society. Opponent of slavery. Wrote speech, “Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy.” Rice wrote: “A slave is a human creature made by law the property of another human creature, and reduced by mere power to an absolute, unconditional subjection to his will… A slave claims his freedom; he pleads that he is a man, that he was by nature free, that he has not forfeited his freedom, nor relinquished it… His being long deprived of this right, by force or fraud, does not annihilate it; it remains; it is still his right… If my definition of a slave is true, he is a rational creature reduced by the power of legislation to the state of a brute, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity… that he may minister to the ease, luxury, lust, pride, or avarice of another, no better than himself… a free moral agent, legally deprived of free agency, and obliged to act according to the will of another free agent of the same species; and yet he is accountable to his Creator for the use he makes of his own free agency.”

ROBINSON, Marius R., 1806-1876, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, abolitionist. Alumnus of Lane University. Editor of The Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1849-18??. The newspaper was the official organ of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Worked with Augustus Wattles to set up schools for free Blacks. Worked with abolitionist James G. Birney in editing Philanthropist. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1843. Antislavery agent.

ROGERS, Elymas Payson, 1815-1861, African American, clergyman, poet, missionary, educator, prominent abolitionist. Wrote anti-slavery satires, “A Poem on the Fugitive Slave Law,” and “The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise Considered,” 1856.

ROGERS, William, 1751-1824, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, clergyman, educator, College of Philadelphia, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Education, Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

RUSH, Dr. Benjamin, 1746-1813, Pennsylvania, founding father of the United States, physician, author, humanitarian, educator, opponent of slavery. Wrote “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave Keeping,” an anti-slavery pamphlet published in 1773. Secretary and member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787. Rush wrote: “Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it. All of the vices which are charged upon the negroes in the southern colonies and West Indies… are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove they [African Americans] were not intended by Providence for it.”

SESSIONS, Lucy Stanton Day, 1831-1910, African American, educator, author, abolitionist. Graduate of Oberlin College. Early African American woman writer.

SMITH, Samuel Stanhope, 1750-1819, President of Princeton College, New Jersey. Declared slavery was “a moral wrong and a political evil.” Called for voluntary manumission.

SLOANE, James Renwick Wilson, 1833-1886, clergyman, educator. President of Richmond College, Ohio, and Geneva College, Ohio.

SOULE, Joshua, 1781-1867, Maine.

STEWART, Alvan, 1790-1849, New York, reformer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist leader, temperance activist. Member, American Anti-Slavery Society. Founder, leader, Liberty Party. Founder, New York State Anti-Slavery Society (NYSASS), 1835.

STILES, Ezra, 1727-1795, clergyman, educator, anti-slavery activist. President of Yale College and President of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom.

SUMNER, Charles, 1811-1874, statesman, lawyer, writer, editor, educator, reformer, abolitionist leader. U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

TAPPAN, Arthur, 1786-1865, New York City, merchant, radical abolitionist leader, educator. Co-founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Manager, 1833-1837, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1833-1840 of the AASS. President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Member of the Executive Committee, 1840-1855.

THAYER, Eli, 1819-1899, Worcester, Massachusetts, abolitionist, educator, Congressman, established Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, 1854, which changed to New England Aid Company in 1855.

THOME, James A., 1809-1873, August, Kentucky, anti-slavery activist, educator, pastor, educator. Father was a slaveholder. Thome was a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) and professor at Oberlin College.

THROOP, Amos Gager, 1811-1894, businessman, politician, abolitionist, philanthropist. In 1891, he founded the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), earlier knonw as Throop University. Mayor of Pasadena, California, elected in 1888.

TRUE, Charles Kittridge, 1809-1878, abolitionist, educator, Methodist clergyman, author, censured for abolitionist views.

VASHON, Susan Paul Smith, 1838-1912, African American, educator, writer. Wrote articles for abolitionist papers.

WASHINGTON, Augustus, 1820-1875, African American, abolitionist, newspaper publisher, Liberian statesman, Black civil rights activist, educator. Rejected, then later supported African colonization. Emigrated to Liberia. Elected to Liberian House of Representatives in 1863 and later became Speaker. In 1871, elected to Liberian Senate.

WAYLAND, Francis, 1796-1865, New York, New York, educator, physician, anti-slavery activist.

WHITE, Jacob C., Jr., 1837-1902, African American, educator, reformer, abolitionist, Free Produce advocate.

WILSON, William Joseph, 1818?-1878, African American, abolitionist leader, educator, Black voting rights activist, labor leader. Correspondent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

WISTAR, Dr. Caspar, 1761-1818, physician, educator, president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

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Feminists and Women’s Rights Activists

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ANTHONY, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906, American Anti-Slavery Society, reformer, abolitionist, orator, leader of the female suffrage movement, radical egalitarian, temperance movement leader, founded Women’s National Loyal League with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1863 to fight for cause of abolition, co-founded American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866 to fight for universal suffrage.

CHACE, Elizabeth Buffum, 1806-1899, Society of Friends, Quaker, women’s suffrage leader, penal reform leader, abolitionist leader. Co-founder of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1836. Member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, founded by her father, Arnold Buffum, in 1832. Contributed articles for abolitionist newspaper, Liberator. Her home was a station on the Underground Railroad. She resigned from the Society of Friends in 1843 as a result of its continuing pro-slavery position. At the end of the Civil War, she was elected Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She published her memoirs in 1891, Anti-Slavery Reminiscences. Her grandfather, parents, husband, two sisters, and two brothers-in-law were all abolitionists.

CONWAY, Daniel Moncure, 1832-1907, abolitionist, clergyman, author, women’s rights advocate. Unitarian minister.

CONWAY, Ellen Davis Dana, abolitionist, feminist wife of Daniel M. Conway.

CUTLER, Hannah Maria Tracy, 1815-1896, Becket, Massachusetts, abolitionist, physician. Leader of the Temperance and women’s suffrage-rights movements, lecturer, educator, physician. Helped found Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Free Soil Party, organizer of the Woman’s Kansas Aid Convention in 1856. Served as President of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago, 1862-1864.

DAVIS, Paulina Kellogg Wright, 1813-1876, abolitionist, feminist, women’s rights activist, reformer. Davis was married to abolitionist Francis Wright. They served on the executive committee of the Central New York Anti-Slavery Society. Their house was attacked by an angry mob for their anti-slavery activities. After the death of her husband, she re-married, to anti-slavery Democrat Thomas Davis, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852. In May 1850, in Boston, Davis and other women’s rights activists planned and organized the first national women’s rights convention.

EARLE, Sarah H., 1799-1858, society of Frinds (Quaker), abolitionist, women’s rights activist. Co-founded and organized Worcester Anti-Slavery Society and Worcester County Anti-Slavery Society, South Division, 1841-1859.

FITZHUGH, Carroll Ann, 1805-1875, abolitionist, women’s rights activist. Active in aiding fugitive slaves in her home, along with her abolitionist husband, Gerrit Smith. Prominent supporter of the abolitionist movement.

FORTEN, Charlotte, 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual.

FOSTER, Abby Kelly, 1810-1887, Worcester, Massachusetts, reformer, orator, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, temperance reformer, member Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Societies, co-founded abolitionist paper, Anti-Slavery Bugle in Ohio. Activist in the Underground Railroad.

GAGE, Frances Dana, 1808-1884, journalist, poet, reformer, temperance leader, women’s rights, anti-slavery leader. Lectured on abolition and was often threatened with physical violence. Her home was burned three times. During the Civil War, she taught newly freed slaves and was active as a volunteer with the Sanitary Commission. In 1863, she was appointed Superintendent of a refuge of more than 500 freed slaves at Paris Island, South Carolina. Gage was married to abolitionist James L. Gage, a lawyer from McConnelsville, Ohio.

GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, 1826-1898, abolitionist, reformer, woman’s suffrage advocate. Daughter of noted abolitionist Dr. H. Joslyn.

GREW, Mary, 1813-1896, abolitionist leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Grew was an officer of the state branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Co-editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman. Was active in the Free Produce Association. In 1840, Grew and other women were elected as delegates at the World Anti-Slavery Convention. They were, however, excluded from the floor. After 1840, she was involved in women’s rights and other reform activities. Daughter of abolitionist Henry Grew. She was a stronger supporter and friend of prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

GRIFFING, Josephine Sophia White, 1814-1872, Connecticut, abolitionist leader, women’s rights leader, active in Underground Railroad in Ohio, wife of Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, also a strong abolitionist, member and agent for the Western Anti-Slavery Society, major writer for abolitionist paper The Anti-Slavery Bugle. The Griffing home was a station on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. Active in Women’s National Loyal League, which tried to outlaw slavery. Agent for the National Freedman’s Relief Association of the District of Columbia.

GRIMKÉ, Angelina Emily, (Mrs. Theodore Weld), Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist leader, feminist, author, orator; wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, member Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Sister of abolitionist leader Sarah Moore Grimké. Married to noted abolitionist Theodore Weld.

GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873, Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist, feminist, orator, author, women’s rights advocate, political activist. Wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836. Member of the Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Sister of abolitionist leader Angelina Emily Grimké.

HALLOWELL, Mary Post, 1823-1913, suffragist, reformer, abolitionist.

HALLOWELL, Richard Price, 1835-1904, merchant, reformer, ardent abolitionist. Follower of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.

HEYWOOD, Ezra Hervey, 1829-1893, abolitionist, temperance activist, women’s rights advocate. Member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Follower of William Lloyd Garrison.

HOLLEY, Sallie, abolitionist, women’s rights leader, orator, lecturer, graduate of Oberlin College.

HOWE, Julia Ward, 1819-1910, abolitionist, women’s suffrage advocate, social activist, poet, essayist. Author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Wife of abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she aided in the publishing and editing of the Boston Anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth before the Civil War.

HUNT, Harriot Kezia, MD, 1805-1875, physician, medical reformer, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.

HUSSEY, Sarah, 1799-1858, Massachusetts, abolitionist, women’s rights activist. Founder and organizer of Worcester Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle and Worcester County Anti-Slavery Society, South Division. Wife of abolitionist John Milton Earle. Organized anti-slavery fairs. Cousin of Lucretia Mott.

KELLEY, Abby (Foster), 1811-1887, Pelham, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, radical social reformer, orator, lecturer. Active supporter of the American Anti-Slavery Society, doing lectures, fundraising, and participating in anti-slavery conferences and distributing petitions. Married abolitionist Stephan S. Foster. Member of the Underground Railroad, Worcester, Massachusetts.

LEWIS, Graceanna, 1821-1912, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, educator, naturalist, illustrator, social reformer. Society of Friends, Quaker, wrote “An Appeal to Those Members of the Society of Friends who Knowing the Principles of the Abolitionist, Stand Aloof from the Anti-Slavery Enterprise,” 1846. Lewis was active in anti-slavery, temperance and women’s suffrage movements. Hid and protected fugitive slaves in her home in the Underground Railroad.

LOWELL, Maria White, 1821-1853, Watertown, Massachusetts, poet, abolitionist, temperance advocate, women’s rights activist, wife of poet and anti-slavery activist James Russell Lowell. Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

LOZIER, Clemence Sophia, 1813-1888, Plainfield, New Jersey, physician, abolitionist, feminist activist. President of New York Suffrage League.

MAY, Samuel Joseph, Reverend, 1751-1836, Virginia, founding father, fourth President of the United States. American Colonization Society, President, 1833-1837. Madison stated that it was his “earnest prayer, that every success may reward the labors of an institution… so noble in its object of removing a great evil from its own country.”

MAY, Abby, 1800-1877, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, temperance activist and women’s suffrage advocate. Wife of abolitionist and transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott. Mother of novelist Louisa May Alcott.

MCDOUGALL, Frances Harriet, 1805-1878, author, poet, reformer, abolitionist. Women’s rights advocate, labor rights activist.

MILLER, Elizabeth Smith, 1822-1911, feminist dress reformer, abolitionist. Active in women’s suffrage and rights. Originated bloomer costume for women.

MOTT, James, 1778-1868, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, philanthropist, merchant, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, husband of Lucretia Mott. Manager and Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founder, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Soceity. Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania. Association for Advocating the Cause of the Slave.

MOTT, Lucretia Coffin, (Mrs. James Mott), 1793-1880, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, reformer, suffragist, co-founder and first president of the Philadelphia Female American Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, member of the Hicksite Anti-Slavery Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wrote memoir, Life, 1884.

NEAL, John, 1793-1876, Portland, Maine, author, activist, women’s rights activist, anti-capital punishment activist. Secretary of the Portland, Maine, American Colonization Society.

NICHOLAS, Clarina I. Howard, 1810-1885, Vermont, journalist, educator, reformer, active in abolition, temperance and women’s rights movements. Active in Kansas Free State movement, and in the Underground Railroad, aiding fugitive slaves.

PECK, Sheldon, 1797-1869, radical abolitionist, social reformer, advocate for women’s rights, temperance, racial equality, education, pacifism. Called for immediate end to slavery. Agent for abolitionist newspaper, Western Citizen. Delegate for the Liberty Party.

POST, Amy Kirby, 1802-1889, Rochester, New York, reformer, American Society of Friends, Radical Hicksite, Quaker, abolitionist leader. Active participant in the Underground Railroad. Women’s rights activist. Co-founder of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society (WNYASS). Helped form the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends (YMCF).

POST, Isaac, 1798-1872, Rochester, New York, philanthropist, abolitionist leader, reformer, American Society of Friends, Radical Hicksite, Quaker, women’s rights activist. Co-founder of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society (WNYASS). Served on the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1842-1843. Helped form the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends (YMCF), which opposed slavery. Helped establish African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York.

REDMOND, Sarah Parker, 1826-1894, African American, abolitionist, orator, women’s rights activist, physician, friend of abolitionist Abby Kelley. Sister to Charles Lenox Remond.

ROSE, Ernestine Louise, 1810-1892, born in Russia Poland as Ernestine Louise Polowsky. Feminist and women’s rights activist, abolitionist. Lectured on abolition, women’s rights/suffrage/human rights/equality. Married to Robert Owen.

SEVERENCE, Caroline M. Seymour, 1820-1914, Canandaigua, New York, abolitionist, suffragist, women’s rights activist. Member of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society. Married to abolitionist Theodore C. Severence.

STANTON, Elizabeth Cady, 1815-1902, reformer, suffragist, abolitionist leader, co-founder of the Women’s National Loyal League in 1863, co-founded American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866.

STONE, Lucy, 1818-1893, women’s rights activist, abolitionist, friend of abolitionist Abby Kelley. Agent, American Anti-Slavery Society. Gave lectures on slavery. Wife of abolitionist Henry Blackwell.

SWISSHELM, Jane Grey Cannon, 1815-1884, abolitionist leader, women’s rights advocate, journalist, reformer. Free Soil Party. Liberty Party. Republican Party activist. Established Saturday Visitor, an abolition and women’s rights newspaper.

TILTON, Theodore, 1835-1907, New York, editor, abolitionist leader. Originally supported gradual emancipation and African colonization. Later supported militant abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy and called for immediate abolition. Worked as tireless anti-slavery leader through mid-1840s. Encouraged Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the American Equal Rights Association, 1866.

WEISS, John, 1818-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, author, clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.

ZAKRZEWSKA, Marie Elizabeth, 1829-1902, physician, radical abolitionist. Associated with Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.

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Industrial Entrepreneurs

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

AMES, Oakes, 1804-1873, manufacturer, businessman, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 2^nd Massachusetts District 1862-1873, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

ARCHER, Samuel, 1771-1839, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, merchant, importer. Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

ATKINSON, Edward, 1827-1905, industrial entrepreneur, abolitionist, activist. Opposed slavery as a supporter of the Free Soil Party. Also a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which aided fugitive slaves. Atkinson also supported John Brown’s efforts by supplying him rifles and ammunition for his raid on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Opposed Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt’s imperialist ambitions in the Philippines and in Cuba. After 1898, became a full-time supporter of the American Anti-imperialist League.

BALDWIN, Mathias William, 1795-1866, abolitionist, American inventor, machinery manufacturer, industrialist. Founder, Baldwin Locomotive Works. Founder, Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Strong supporter of the abolition movement in the United States.

BETHUNE, Divie, New York, merchant, philanthropist, President of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

BLOW, Henry Taylor, 1817-1875, statesman, diplomat. Active in pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

BOORMAN, James, 1783-1866, New York, merchant, philanthropist. Vice President, 1838-1841, of the American Colonization Society.

BROWN, Moses, 1738-1836, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, industrialist, educator, Quaker. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Co-founder of Brown University. Co-founded Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade in 1789.

BUSH, Henry, manufacturer, abolitionist, brother of Obadiah Newcomb Bush, married to abolitionist Abigail Norton Bush.

BUSH, Obadiah Newcomb, 1797-1851, New York, educator, businessman, abolitionist. Vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Member of the Underground Railroad. Brother of Henry Bush.

COOPER, Peter, 1791-1883, New York anti-slavery activist, Native American rights advocate, industrialist, inventor, philanthropist.

DODGE, William Earle, Sr., 1805-1883, Hartford, Connecticut, merchant, abolitionist.

EARLE, John Milton, 1794-1874, Leicester, Massachusetts, businessman, abolitionist, statesman, political leader, newspaper publisher, pioneer and leader in the anti-slavery/abolitionist movement. Member of Whig and Free Soil parties. Husband of abolitionist Sarah H. Earle.

ELDER, Peter Percival, 1823-1914, political leader, businessman, newspaperman, abolitionist. Went to Kansas in 1857 to support the Free State Movement. Elected state senator in 1859.

ELLERY, William, 1727-1820, founding father, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Supported Rufus King in trying to abolish slavery in the country.

ENGLISH, James Edward, 1812-1890, statesman, businessman. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut 1861-1865 as War Democrat. Governor of Connecticut, 1867-1870. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

ETTING, Solomon, Maryland, merchant, banker. Manager of the Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society. Co-founder of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road.

FORBES, John Murray, 1813-1898, industrial entrepreneur, abolitionist, philanthropist, American railroad magnate. President of the Michigan Central Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Opposed the introduction of slavery into Kansas and supplied money and weapons to the cause. Forbes was an elector for Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

HOFFMAN, George, Maryland, railroad organizer. First president of the Maryland State Colonization society, 1831

HOPKINS, Johns, 1795-1873, abolitionist, entrepreneur, philanthropist. His family were Quakers and freed their slaves in 1807. Worked with prominent abolitionists Myrtilla Miner and Henry Ward Beecher. Strong supporter of Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War. Supported African American institutions. After the war, founder of Johns Hopkins Institutes in Baltimore, Maryland.

LEAVITT, Roger Hooker, 1805-1885, Claremont, Massachusetts, abolitionist leader, landowner, industrialist, temperance activist, soldier. President, Franklin County Anti-Slavery Society. Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1838-1840, 1840-1841. Gubernatorial candidate for Massachusetts on the Liberty Party ticket. Brother of abolitionist leader Joshua Leavitt. Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad.

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Journalists

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

BELL, Philip Alexander, 1808-1889, African American abolitionist, editor, journalist, civic leader. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Subscription Agent for abolitionist newspaper, Liberator. Active in Underground Railroad. Editor, “Weekly Advocate” and later assisted with “Colored American” early Black newspapers. Founded “National Council of Colored People,” one of the first African American civil rights organizations.

BILBO, William, circa 1815-1867, lawyer, journalist, entrepreneur. Participated in lobbying effort in Congress for the passage of the Constitutional amendment banning slavery in the United States. Worked with Secretary of State William H. Seward.

CARTER, Robert, 1819-1879, Albany, New York, newspaper editor. Member and active in the Free Soil Party. Edited the Boston Commonwealth, a paper of the Free Soilers. Early member of the Republican party.

CHILD, David Lee, 1794-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, author, journalist. Leader, manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Published The Despotism of Freedom—or The Tyranny and Cruelty of American Republican Slaveholders. Co-editor with his wife, Lydia, of The Anti-Slavery Standard.

CHILD, Lydia Maria, 1802-1880, author, reformer, abolitionist, member Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote for the Liberty Bell. Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society. Prolific writer and ardent abolitionist. In 1840’s, edited National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper. Child published: Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Romance of the Republic (1867), Authentic Accounts of American Slavery (1835), The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery (1836), Anti-Slavery Catechism (1836), The Right Way, the Safe Way, Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies and Elsewhere (1860), Freedmen’s Book (1865), and articles “The Patriarchal Institution” and “The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law,” (1860), and edited Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).

DANA, Charles Anderson, 1819-1897, New Hampshire, newspaper editor, author, government official, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader. Proprietor and managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. As editor, he had the Tribune actively advocate for the anti-slavery cause. The Tribune became one of the leading newspapers promoting anti-slavery.

DOUGLASS, Frederick, 1817-1895, African American, escaped slave, author, diplomat, orator, newspaper publisher, radical abolitionist leader. Published The North Star abolitionist newspaper with Martin Delany. Wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave, in 1845. Also wrote My Bondage, My Freedom, 1855. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1848-1853.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, lawyer, author, editor, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1799-1866, Connecticut, abolitionist, author, reformer, son of Theodore Dwight, 1764-1846.

EARLE, Thomas, 1796-1849, Worcester, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader, journalist, lawyer, political leader, Philadelphia, PA. Edited Pennsylvania Freeman. Petitioned Congress to amend U.S. Constitution to compensate slaveholders in the South who freed their slaves. Vice presidential candidate for abolitionist Liberty Party. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1839-1840.

GALES, Joseph, Jr., 1786-1860, Washington, DC, journalist, newspaper editor. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1833-41.

GARRISON, William Lloyd, 1805-1879, journalist, printer, preeminent American abolitionist leader. Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. President and Member of the Executive Committee, AASS, 1843-1864. Founder, editor, Liberator, weekly newspaper founded in 1831, published through December 1865. Corresponding Secretary, 1840-1844, Counsellor, 844-1860, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

HALE, David, 1791-1849, Boston, Massachusetts, journalist, philanthropist. Member of the American Colonization Society Committee in Boston. Nephew of soldier and patriot Nathan Hale.

HERRICK, Anson, 1812-1868, journalist. Democratic Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Served in Congress December 1863-March 1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

JOHNSON, William Henry, 1833-1918, African American, abolitionist, journalist, lecturer, soldier.

PIKE, James Shepard, 1811-1882, journalist, diplomat, anti-slavery activist. Washington correspondent and associate editor of the New York Tribune.

ROBERTS, Benjamin Franklin, 1814-1881, African American, abolitionist, printer, journalist, newspaper publisher, opposed colonization. Published the Anti-Slavery Herald in Boston, Massachusetts.

RUBY, George Thompson, 1841-1882, African American, politician, journalist, editor, abolitionist. Writer, editor, Kansas Anti-Slavery publication, Crusader of Freedom. Correspondent for William Lloyd Garrison’s Anti-Slavery Standard. Wrote biography of militant abolitionist John Brown.

RUGGLES, David, 1810-1849, New York, free African American, journalist, publisher, editor, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader. Agent for Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Founded Mirror of Liberty, first Black magazine. Active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad, which aided fugitive slaves. Advocate of Free Produce movement. Wrote pamphlet, “The Extinguisher.” Contributed articles to abolitionist newspapers, The Emancipator and The Liberator.

SANBORN, Franklin Benjamin, 1831-1917, abolitionist leader, journalist, prison and social reformer, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee. Secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Brother of Charles Sanborn.

SEATON, William Winston, 1785-1866, Washington, DC, journalist, newspaper editor, Mayor of Washington, DC. American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1839, Executive Committee, 1839-1841. Editor of the National Intelligencer in Washington, DC. Elected Mayor of Washington, DC, in 1840, serving 12 years in office. Co-published Annals of Congress.

STANTON, Henry Brewster, 1805-1887, New York, New York, Cincinnati, Ohio, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery agent, journalist, author. Worked with William T. Allan and Birney. Financial Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Manager, 1834-1838, Corresponding Secretary, 1838-1840, and Executive Committee of the Society, 1838. Secretary, 1840-1841, and Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1844. Leader of the Liberty Party. Wrote for abolitionist newspapers. Worked against pro-slavery legislation at state level. Later edited the New York Sun.

STEPHENS, George E., 1832-1888, African American, journalist, soldier, abolitionist. Wrote for the New York Weekly Anglo-African newspaper. Enlisted and fought in 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Supported equal pay for colored troops in the Union Army.

TAPPAN, Samuel Foster, 1831-1913, Manchester, Massachuetts, journalist, Union Army officer, abolitionist, Native American rights activist. Co-founded Lawrence, Kansas, as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Active in the Free Soil movement to keep slavery out of the territory of Kansas. Served as a correspondint for the New York Tribune, reporting on the anti-slavery activities there. Related to the abolitionist Tappan family.

TOWNSEND, Jonas Holland, 1820-1872, African American, journalist, abolitionist leader, community activist.

WAGONER, Henry O., 1816-1901, African American, abolitionist, journalist, political leader. Active in abolitionist newspaper, Western Citizen, and Frederick Douglass’s Frederick Douglass’ Paper, a weekly publication. Active in Underground Railroad in Chicago area. Helped enlist soldiers for the Black Union Army regiments.

WEED, Thurlow, 1797-1882, journalist, opponent of slavery.

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Jurists

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

BALDWIN, Roger Sherman, 1793-1863, New Haven, Connecticut, lawyer, jurist, statesman, U.S. Senator. Lead counsel, with John Quincy Adams, for the slaves of the Amistad ship.

BASSETT, Richard, 1745-1815, founding father, political leader, lawyer, jurist, Revolutionary War soldier. Delegate to the Continental Convention of 1787. Governor of Delaware and senior U.S. Senator from Delaware during First Congress. Strong advocate of anti-slavery cause. Freed his slaves.

BAYARD, Samuel, 1767-1840, Princeton, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, jurist, Member of the New Jersey state legislature. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1833-1841.

BLAIR, Montgomery, 1813-1883, statesman, attorney, jurist, abolitionist, Postmaster General of the United States.

BLISS, Philemon, 1813-1889, lawyer, U.S. congressman, 1854, Chief Justice, Dakota Territory in 1861, elected Supreme Court of Missouri, 1868. Helped found anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).

BOWEN, Ozias, anti-slavery judge, Ohio, freed slaves in court case in 1856.

BRADLEY, Stephan Row, 1754-1830, jurist, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator, New Jersey, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress.

BRANDEGEE, Augustus, 1828-1904, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Elected to Connecticut State House of Representatives in 1854. There, he was appointed Chairman of the Select Committee to pass a “Bill for the Defense of Liberty,” which was to prevent the Fugitive Slave Law from being enforced in the state.

BRODESS, Henry Bishop, 1830-1881, Ashland, Kentucky, abolitionist, mayor, jurist, newspaper publisher. Published anti-slavery newspaper, the American Union. Served as an officer in the Fourteenth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.

BRYAN, George, 1731-1791, Dublin, Ireland, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, legislator, businessman, statesman, jurist. Introduced abolition bills. Elected the first Vice President of Pennsylvania (Lieutenant Governor), 1777-1779, Second President (Governor), 1778.

BURNET, Jacob, 1770-1853, born in Newark, New Jersey, Cincinnati, Ohio, jurist, lawyer, college president. Ohio Supreme Court Justice. Vice-President, 1836-1841, American Colonization Society (ACS). Member and first President of the Cincinnati auxiliary of the ACS.

BUSTEED, Richard, lawyer, jurist, Union general, anti-slavery advocate.

CHASE, Salmon Portland, 1808-1873, statesman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1864-1873, abolitionist, member, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Anti-Slavery Republican Party. “A slave is a person held, as property, by legalized force, against natural right.” – Chase.

“The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution… Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you?...Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.”

“Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability… It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.”

CHASE, Samuel, 1741-1811, Maryland, founding father, jurist.

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Packham, b. 1812, Johnstown, New York.

CLARK, Daniel, 1809-1891, lawyer, jurist, organizer and founder of the Republican Party, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, ardent supporter of the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CLARKE, James Freeman, 1779-1839, jurist, lawyer, opponent of slavery. Governor of Kentucky. U.S. Congressman.

COLLAMER, Jacob, 1791-1865, lawyer, jurist. U.S. Senator from Vermont. U.S. Senator, 1854-1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CRANCH, William Judge, 1769-1855, jurist. Manager of the American Colonization Society.

CRAWFORD, William Harris, 1772-1834, Georgia, statesman, U.S. Congressman from Georgia. Vice-President, 1833-35, of the American Colonization Society. Member, Milledgeville auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

CURTIS, Benjamin Robbins, 1809-1874, Watertwon, Massachusetts, jurist, lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1851-1857. Dissented from majority court decision on the Dred Scott case. Argued that U.S. Congress had the legal right to prohibit slavery, and disagreed with the decision that held that “a person of African descent could not be a citizen of the United States.”

CUSHING, William, 1732-1810, lawyer, jurist, opponent of slavery, member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, First Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by George Washington, Acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1794. Wrote in the case Commonwealth v. Jennings, 1783, which abolished slavery in the state of Massachusetts. Cushing wrote: “As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that… has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws… a different idea has taken place with the people of America more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven… has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property—in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves… the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.”

DAGGETT, David, 1764-1851, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. Senator, jurist, Mayor of New Haven. Supporter of the American Colonization Society.

DANE, Nathan, 1752-1835, jurist, anti-slavery activist, delegate to the Continental Congress, 1785-1788, Massachusetts, framed Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

DANIEL, Peter Vivian, 1784-1860, Virginia, lawyer, jurist, political leader. Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Supported colonization and the American Colonization Society.

DARGAN, Edmund Strother, 1805-1879, legislator, jurist.

DAWES, Henry Laurens, 1816-1903, Massachusetts, judge, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. Served in Congress 1857-1873. U.S. Senator 1875-1893. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DEXTER, Samuel, 1761-1816, lawyer, jurist. Member of U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts. U.S. House of Representatives, 1793-1795. U.S. Senator, December 1799-June 1800. Opposed slavery as member of U.S. House of Representatives. Secretary of War and Treasury.

DUER, William Alexander, 1780-1858, New York City, New York, jurist, educator. President of Columbia College. Officer of the New York City auxiliary of the American colonization Society.

ELLERY, William, 1727-1820, founding father, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Supported Rufus King in trying to abolish slavery in the country.

ELLSWORTH, Oliver, 1745-1807, founding father, lawyer, political leader, opponent of slavery. Was a drafter of the United States Constitution. United States Senator from Connecticut, 1789-1796. Third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1796-1800. Ellsworth argued before the Continental Convention against the foreign slave trade. In order to gain Southern support for the passage of the Constitution, he endorsed the Three-Fifths Compromise on the Enumeration of Slaves.

FESSENDEN, Samuel, 1784-1869, Portland, Maine, lawyer, jurist, soldier, abolitionist. Vice president, 1833-1839, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Leader, active member of the Liberty Party. Early member of the Republican Party. Father of Treasury Secretary William Pitt Fessenden and Congressman Samuel Clement Fessenden.

FESSENDEN, Samuel Clement, 1815-1881, Maine, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Congressman, Maine 37^th, Congress 1861-1863, abolitionist. Father was Samuel Fessenden (1784-1869).

HALL, Willard, 1780-1875, Delaware, lawyer, jurist. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1840-41.

HARRIS, Ira, 1802-1875, jurist. Republican U.S. Senator from New York. Served as U.S. Senator from 1861-1867. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HAWLEY, William Merrill, 1802-1869, lawyer, jurist, State Senator. Member, Free Soil Radical Delegation in August 1848.

HEMPHILL, Joseph, 1770-1842, jurist, Congressman from Pennsylvania. Opposed extension of slavery into the new territories. Speaking on the concept of citizenship in relation to slavery, he state in the debate of 1820: “If being a native, and free born, and of parents belonging to no other nation or tribe, does not constitute a citizen in this country, I am at a loss to know in what manner citizenship is acquired by birth… when a foreigner is naturalized, he is only put in the place of a native freeman. This is the genuine idea of naturalization… But citizenship is rather in the nature of a compact, expressly or tacitly made; it is a political tie, and the mutual obligations are contribution and protection.”

HENDERSON, Leonard, 1772-1833, Raleigh, North Carolina, jurist, former U.S. Congressman. Officer in the Raleigh auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Brother of Archibald Henderson.

HOWE, Timothy Otis, 1816-1883, lawyer, jurist. Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Elected 1861, served until 1879. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HUBBARD, Samuel, 1785-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer, jurist. Member of the American Colonization Society Committee in Boston.

INGERSOLL, Jared, 1749-1822, lawyer, argued legal case against slavery.

JAY, John, 1745-1829, New York, lawyer, statesman, founding father, diplomat, anti-slavery leader. President of the Continental Congress. First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Governor of the State of New York, 1795-1801. New York State’s leading opponent of slavery. Founder and president of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as Have Been Liberated, founded 1785. Attempted to end slavery in 1777 and 1785. In 1799, he signed into law the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, which eventually freed all the slaves in New York. This act was arguably the most comprehensive and largest emancipation in North America before the Civil War.

JAY, William, 1789-1858, Bedford, NY, jurist, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery Liberty Party. Son of first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay. In 1819, he strongly opposed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed the extension of slavery into the new territories. Drafted the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Corresponding Secretary, 1835-1838, Executive Committee, 1836-1837, AASS. Vice President, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS). He was removed as a judge of Westchester County, in New York, due to his antislavery activities. Supported emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia and the exclusion of slavery from new territories, although he did not advocate interfering with slave laws in the Southern states.

JESSUP, William, 1797-1868, Pennsylvania, jurist, abolitionist, temperance activist. Leader of the Republican Party. Wrote party platform for election of 1860.

JOHNSON, Reverdy, 1796-1876, lawyer, diplomat, statesman, U.S. Senator, opposed annexing territories acquired in the war with Mexico. Strongly opposed the extension of slavery into the new territories. Ardent supporter of the Union. Believed that African Americans should be recruited into the Union Army and as a result should gain their emancipation.

KELLEY, William Darrah, 1814-1890, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Elected in 1860. Called the “Father of the House.” Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

KILTY, William, 1757-1821, Annapolis, Maryland, Army surgeon, lawyer, jurist, Chancellor (governor) of Maryland. Member of the Annapolis auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

KING, Leicester, 1789-1856, Warren, Ohio, abolitionist leader, political leader, businessman, jurist, leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Manager, 1837-1839, and Vice President, 1839-1840, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Ohio State Senator, 1835-1839. Member, Whig Party. U.S. Vice Presidential candidate, Liberty Party, in 1848.

LANSING, John, Jr., 1754-1829, Albany, New York, jurist. Officer and founding member of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Son of Chancellor John Lansing.

LIVERMORE, Samuel, 1732-1803, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman. Member of Congress, U.S. Senator 1785-1805, Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire. Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

MATTHEWS, Stanley, 1824-1889, lawyer, jurist, newspaper editor, anti-slavery activist, soldier and U.S. Senator. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1881-1889. Assistant editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, the Cincinnati Morning Herald, the first abolitionist paper there. Served in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Colonel, commanding both a regiment and a brigade.

MCLEAN, John, 1785-1861, Morris County, New Jersey, jurist, attorney. U.S. Supreme Court Justice, January 1830-. Dissented against the majority of Justices on the Dred Scott case, stating that slavery was sanctioned only by local laws. Free Soil and later Republican Party candidate for President of the U.S.

MELLEN, Prentiss, 1764-1840, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Maine, 1818-1820. Chief Justice, Maine Supreme Court, 1820-1834. First President of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.

MONTGOMERY, J. H., Augusta, Georgia, jurist, Supreme Courts of Georgia. Member, Augusta auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

MORRIS, Thomas, 1776-1844, Cincinnati, Ohio, Virginia, first abolitionist Senator, 1833, vice president of the Liberty Party, abolitionist, Ohio lawmaker 1806-1830, Chief Justice of the State of Ohio 1830-1833, U.S. Senator 1833-183?. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS), 1840-1844. Vice President of the American Colonization Society (ACS), 1839-1841. Fought for right to petition Congress against slavery.

MORTON, Oliver Perry, 1823-1877, statesman, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist. Member of the Republican Party. U.S. Senator and Governor of Indiana, 1861.

MUNRO, Peter Jay, 1767-1833, jurist, abolitionist, member of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded 1785.

NICHOLAS, John, 1756-1819, jurist. Democratic Member of U.S. Congress from Virginia, 1793-1801. Opposed slavery as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

NILES, Nathaniel, 1741-1828, lawyer, jurist, theologian. U.S. Congressman from Vermont, October 1791-March 1795.

PLATT, Zephaniah, 1796-1871, Jackson County, Michigan, jurist, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1850.

PRENTISS, Samuel, 1782-1857, Vermont, jurist, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1837-1840.

RANDALL, Alexander, 1819-1872, Ames, New York, jurist, lawyer, abolitionist. Sixth Governor of Wisconsin, 1858-1861. Advocate for Black voting rights. Raised troops for Union Army. Postmaster General, 1866-1869.

SELDEN, Henry Rogers, 1805-1885, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist. Republican Lieutenant Governor for New York State. Opposed to the extension of slavery to the territories.

SEWELL, Samuel

SHAW, William Smith, 1778-1826, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Wrote in his historic decision, Commonwealth v. Aves (1836) regarding slavery in Massachusetts: “How, or by what act particularly, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, whether by the adoption of the opinion in Sommersett’s case, as a declaration and modification of the common law, or by the Declaration of Independence, or by the Constitution of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine, and it is rather a matter of curiosity than utility; being agreed on all hands, that if not abolished before, it was so by the declaration of rights.”

SWAN, Joseph Rockwell, 1802-1884, jurist, legal writer, judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, ardent abolitionist. Overrode court judgment in U.S. District Court of a negro prisoner convicted of violation of the Fugitive Slave Law.

SWIFT, Zephaniah, 1759-1823, jurist, U.S. Congressman 1793-1797, anti-slavery activist.

UNDERWOOD, John Curtiss, 1808-1873, Litchfield, New York, jurist, opponent of slavery.

WASHINGTON, Bushrod, 1762-1829, Washington, DC, founding officer and life member and supporter of the American Colonization Society.

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Large Landowners

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Republican Party. Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.

SMITH, Gerrit, 1797-1874, New York, large landowner, reformer, philanthropist, radical abolitionist, supporter of the American Colonization Society, Anti-Slavery Society, active in the Underground Railroad, member Liberty Party, Pennsylvania Free Produce Association, secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown

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Lawyers

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ADAMS, John Quincy, 1767-1848, Massachusetts, sixth U.S. President (1825-1829), U.S. Congressman (1831-1848), U.S. Secretary of State, lawyer, anti-slavery leader, activist, abolitionist, son of second U.S. President John Adams. Opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1819, which allowed the expansion of slavery in southern states. Fought against the “Gag Rule” in Congress, which prevented discussion of the issue of slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Gag Rule was revoked in 1844.

ANDREWS, Stephan, 1812-1886, abolitionist, philosopher, lawyer, ardent opponent of slavery, lectured publicly on the evils of slavery.

ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, 1815-1884, lawyer, historian, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1860-1864, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Republican. Introduced anti-slavery bill in Congress. Served as an officer in the Union Army. Active in Free Soil movement of 1848. Protested Fugitive Slave Law, October 1850. Outspoken opponent of slavery.

ASHMUN, George, 1870-1823, Massachusetts, statesman, lawyer, Congressman.

BACON, Samuel, 1782-1820, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, soldier, editor. Agent for the American Colonization society. He later became an employee of the U.S. government.

BALDWIN, Roger Sherman, 1793-1863, New Haven, Connecticut, lawyer, jurist, statesman, U.S. Senator. Lead counsel, with John Quincy Adams, for the slaves of the Amistad ship.

BATES, Edward, 1793-1869, Virginia, statesman, lawyer, Society of Friends, Quaker. Congressman. U.S. Attorney General, Lincoln’s cabinet. Member, Free Labor Party, Missouri. Anti-slavery activist.

BIDWELL, Barnabas, 1763-1833, writer, lawyer, member of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in U.S. House of Representatives.

BINNEY, Horace, 1780-1875, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, constitutional lawyer, member of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

BIRNEY, James Gillespie, 1792-1857, statesman, orator, writer, lawyer, newspaper publisher and editor, the Philanthropist, founded 1836. On two occasions, mobs in Cincinnati attacked and wrecked his newspaper office. Founder and president of the Liberty Party in 1848. Third party presidential candidate, 1840, 1844. Founder University of Alabama. Native American rights advocate. Member of the American Colonization Society. Executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His writings include: “Ten Letters on Slavery and Colonization,” (1832-1833), “Addresses and Speeches,” (1835), “Vindication of the Abolitionists,” (1835), “The Philanthropist,” a weekly newspaper (1836-1837), “Address of Slaveholders,” (1836), “Argument on Fugitive Slave Case,” (1837), “Political Obligations of Abolitionists,” (1839), “American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,” (1840), and “Speeches in England,” (1840).

BIRNEY, William, 1819-1907, lawyer, Union soldier, abolitionist leader, strong opponent of slavery, commander of U.S. Colored Troops.

BLAIR, Montgomery, 1813-1883, statesman, attorney, jurist, abolitionist, Postmaster General of the United States.

BLEEKER, Harmanus, 1779-1849, Albany, New York, attorney, U.S. congressman. Founder and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

BLISS, Philemon, 1813-1889, lawyer, U.S. congressman, 1854, Chief Justice, Dakota Territory in 1861, elected Supreme Court of Missouri, 1868. Helped found anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).

BLOOMFIELD, Dr. Joseph, 1753-1823, New Jersey, abolitionist lawyer, soldier, political leader, member and delegate, New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

BOUDINOT, Elias, 1740-1821, New Jersey, philanthropist, lawyer, Revolutionary statesman, U.S. Congressman, opponent of slavery. Trustee of Princeton. Former president of the Congress of Confederation. Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Supported right to petition Congress against slavery.

BOUTWELL, George Sewall, 1818-1905, statesman, lawyer. Helped organize the Republican Party. Member of Congress, 1862-1868. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senator. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

BOWDITCH, Henry Ingersoll, 1819-1909, Boston, lawyer, abolitionist, physician. Influenced by William Lloyd Garrison to join the anti-slavery cause. Aided fugitive slaves, and promoted anti-slavery actions in the North.

BOYD, Sempronius Hamilton, b. 1828, lawyer, soldier. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Colonel, 24^th Missouri Volunteers.

BOYLE, Jeremiah Tilford, 1818-1871, lawyer, anti-slavery advocate, Union Army Brigadier General. Called for gradual emancipation of slaves as a delegate to the Kentucky State Constitutional Convention in 1849.

BOYNTON, Charles Brandon, 1806-1883, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, anti-slavery activist. Chaplain, U.S. House of Representatives, 39^th and 49^th Congress.

BRADLEY, Stephan Row, 1754-1830, jurist, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator, New Jersey, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress.

BRECKINRIDGE, James, 1763-1833, lawyer, founding officer and charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in 1816.

BROWN, Benjamin Gratz, 1826-1885, lawyer, soldier. Anti-slavery activist in Missouri legislature from 1852-1859. Opposed pro-slavery party. Commanded a regiment and later a brigade of Missouri State Militia. U.S. Senator 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

BURLEIGH, Charles Calistus, 1810-1878, Connecticut, radical abolitionist. Leader of the Pennsylvania Free Produce Association. Lectured extensively on evils of slavery. Edited Pennsylvania Freeman paper of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements.

BURLINGAME, Anson, 1820-1870, New Berlin. New York, diplomat, lawyer, orator, Republican United States Congressman. Anti-slavery activist in the House of Representatives.

BUSTEED, Richard, lawyer, jurist, Union general, anti-slavery advocate.

BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, General, 1818-1893, New York, attorney, political leader, opponent of slavery, Civil War Union General, Republican member of the U.S. Congress. Founding member and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. As Union General, he refused to return runaway slaves to Southerners at Fort Monroe. This led to a federal policy of calling enslaved individuals who fled to Union lines contraband of war.

CHANDLER, William Eaton, b. 1835, Concord, New Hampshire.

CHILD, David Lee, 1794-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, author, journalist. Leader, manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Published The Despotism of Freedom—or The Tyranny and Cruelty of American Republican Slaveholders. Co-editor with his wife, Lydia, of The Anti-Slavery Standard.

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, b. 1812, Johnstown, New York.

CLARK, Daniel, 1809-1891, lawyer, jurist, organizer and founder of the Republican Party, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, ardent supporter of the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CLARKE, Augustine, 1771-1841, Danville, Vermont, attorney, banker, politician, abolitionist. Manager, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Republican Party. Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.

COLDEN, Cadwallader David, 1769-1834, New York, lawyer, soldier, opponent of slavery, 54^th Mayor of New York City, U.S. Congressman. President of the New York Manumission Society (established 1785).

COLE, Cornelius, b. 1822, lawyer. Member of the National Republican Committee, 1856-1860. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator, 1867-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

COLLAMER, Jacob, 1791-1865, lawyer, jurist. U.S. Senator from Vermont. U.S. Senator, 1854-1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

COLWELL, Stephen, 1800-1872, Pennsylvania, philanthropist, author. Director of the American Colonization Society, 1839-1841.

CORWIN, Thomas, 1794-1865, Lebanon, Ohio, attorney, statesman, diplomat, opposed slavery, U.S. Congressman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Treasury. Director of the American Colonization Society, 1833-1834.

COWAN, Edgar, 1815-1885, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania 1861-1867. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator 1865-. Supported the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CUSHING, Caleb, 1800-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, statesman, soldier, lawyer, politician, U.S. Attorney General. Argued against slavery and defended the principles of the American Colonization Society and colonization.

CUSHING, William, 1732-1810, lawyer, jurist, opponent of slavery, member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, First Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by George Washington, Acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1794. Wrote in the case Commonwealth v. Jennings, 1783, which abolished slavery in the state of Massachusetts. Cushing wrote: “As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that… has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws… a different idea has taken place with the people of America more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven… has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property—in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves… the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.”

DANIEL, Peter Vivian, 1784-1860, Virginia, lawyer, jurist, political leader. Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Supported colonization and the American Colonization Society.

DAVIS, Henry Winter, 1817-1865, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3^rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865. Anti-slavery activist in Congress. Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DAVIS, Thomas T., 1810-1872, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1862 and 1864 from Syracuse, New York. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DAYTON, William Lewis, 1807-1864, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Senator. Member of the Free Soil Whig Party. Opposed slavery and its expansion into the new territories. Opposed the Fugitive Slave bill of 1850. Supported the admission of California as a free state and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. First vice presidential nominee of Republican Party in 1856, on the ticket with John C. Frémont. Lost the election to James Buchanan.

DEMING, Henry Chapion, 1815-1872, lawyer, soldier. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut, 1863, 1865. Colonel, commanding 12^th Connecticut Regiment. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DENNISON, William, 1815-1882, Civil War governor of Ohio, lawyer, founding member of Republican Party, state Senator, opposed admission of Texas and the extension of slavery into the new territories. Anti-slavery man, supporter of Abraham Lincoln.

DEXTER, Samuel, 1761-1816, lawyer, jurist. Member of U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts. U.S. House of Representatives, 1793-1795. U.S. Senator, December 1799-June 1800. Opposed slavery as member of U.S. House of Representatives. Secretary of War and Treasury.

DIXON, James, 1814-1873, lawyer. Republican U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator representing Connecticut. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DIXON, Nathan Fellows, b. 1833, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island. Member of 38^th, 39^th, 40^th and 41^st Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DOOLITTLE, James Rood, 1815-1897, lawyer, jurist. Democratic and Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, 1857-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

DRESSLER, Horace, d. 1877, lawyer, defended fugitive slaves in New York courts.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, lawyer, author, editor, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794.

EARLE, Thomas, 1796-1849, Worcester, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader, lawyer. Edited Pennsylvania Freeman. Petitioned Congress to amend U.S. Constitution to compensate slaveholders in the South who freed their slaves. Vice presidential candidate for abolitionist Liberty Party.

EDWARDS, Cyrus, 1893-1877, Illinois, lawyer. Actively supported the American Colonization Society in Illinois.

ELIOT, Thomas Dawes, 1808-1870, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, 1854-1855, 1859-1869. Founder of the Republican Party from Massachusetts. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

ELLSWORTH, Oliver, 1745-1807, founding father, lawyer, political leader, opponent of slavery. Was a drafter of the United States Constitution. United States Senator from Connecticut, 1789-1796. Third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1796-1800. Ellsworth argued before the Continental Convention against the foreign slave trade. In order to gain Southern support for the passage of the Constitution, he endorsed the Three-Fifths Compromise on the Enumeration of Slaves.

EVANS, Hugh Davey, 1792-1868, Baltimore, Maryland, author, lawyer. Prominent member of the Maryland Colonization Society.

EWING, Thomas, 1789-1871, West Liberty, Ohio, statesman, attorney, Whig U.S. Senator, 1831-1837, from Oho, opposed slavery as a Senator. Secretary of the Treasury, 1841-1847. Secretary of the Interior. Opposed Fugitive Slave Law, Henry Clay’s Compromise Bill, and called for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Adopted Civil War General William T. Sherman as a boy.

FARNSWORTH, John Franklin, 1820-1897, Chicago, Illinois, Union soldier. Colonel, 8^th Illinois Cavalry, later commissioned Brigadier General, 1861-1862. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, 1857-1861, 1863-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

FENDALL, Philip Richard, 1794-1868, Alexandria, Virginia, Recording Secretary, American Colonization Society, 1834-41, Executive Committee, 1839-40.

FENTON, Reuben Eaton, 1819-1885, Carroll Chatauqua County, New York, statesman, lawyer, U.S. Congressman. Voted against extension of slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Elected Governor in 1864.

FESSENDEN, Samuel, 1784-1869, Maine, lawyer, jurist, soldier. Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Leader, active member of the Liberty Party.

FESSENDEN, Samuel Clement, 1815-1881, Maine, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Congressman, Maine 37^th, Congress 1861-1863, abolitionist.

FESSENDEN, William Pitt, 1806-1869, lawyer, statesman, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Elected to Congress in 1840 as a member of the Whig Party opposing slavery. Moved to repeal rule that excluded anti-slavery petitions before Congress. Strong leader in Congress opposing slavery. Elected to the Senate in 1854. He opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill as well as the Dred Scott Supreme Court Case. Co-founder of the Republican Party. Prominent leader of the anti-slavery faction of the Republican Party in the U.S. Senate. As U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

FISHER, Miers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lawyer, abolitionist, Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), founded 1775. Represented PAS in legal cases opposing slavery. Founding member, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787.

FISK, Wilbur, 1792-1839, Middletown, Connecticut, educator, President of Wesleyan University. American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1836-1840.

FOOT, Solomon, 1802-1866, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator. Opposed war with Mexico. Opposed slavery and its extension into new territories. Founding member of the Republican Party. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

FOSTER, Henry Allen, b. 1800, Cazenovia, New York, U.S. Congressman and Senator. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1838-41.

FOULKE, William Parker, 1816-1865, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lawyer, prison reformer, pamphleteer, philanthropist, abolitionist. Foulke was a member and vice president of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin, 1706-1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statesman, inventor, diplomat, lawyer, publisher, author, philosopher, opponent of slavery. President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787-1790.

Franklin wrote: “The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains that bind his body do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affectations of his heart. Accustomed to move like a mere machine, by the will of a master, reflection is suspended; he has not the power of choice; and reason and conscience have but little influence over his conduct, because he is chiefly governed by the passion of fear. He is poor and friendless; perhaps worn out by extreme labor, age, and disease.
“Attention to emancipated blacks, it is therefore to be hoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, as far as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean to discharge to the best of our judgment and abilities.
“To instruct, to advise, to qualify those who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty; to promote in them habits of industry; to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances; and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life,--these are the great outlines of our annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow creatures.”

FULLER, Timothy, 1778-1835, U.S. Congressman, Massachusetts, voted against extension of slavery in 1819. In the Congressional debates, Congressman Fuller said: “All Europe, the whole civilized world, are spectators of the scene. Our Declaration of Independence, our Revolution, our State institutions, and, above all, the great principles of our Federal Constitution, are arrayed on one side, and our legislative acts and national measures, the practical specification of our real principles and character, on the other.”

GAGE, James L., 1800-1863, McConnelsville, Ohio, lawyer, abolitionist. Husband of Francis Dana Gage.

GALLOWAY, Samuel, 1811-1872, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, Ohio, opponent of slavery.

GAMBLE, Hamilton Rowan, 1798-1864, lawyer, political leader. Member of the American Colonization Society. Governor and Secretary of State of Missouri. Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice (Whig Party). Dissented in Missouri Supreme Court decision of “Dred Scott v. Emerson” case, 16^th Governor of Missouri, 1861-1864.

GARFIELD, James Abram, 1831-1881, lawyer, Union general. Lt. Colonel, 42^nd Regiment Ohio Volunteers. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Twentieth President of the United States.

GATES, Seth Merrill, 1800-1877, abolitionist leader, lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, Western New York. Anti-slavery political leader in House of Representatives.

GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, 1795-1865, lawyer, statesman, U.S. Congressman, Whig from Ohio, elected in 1838. First abolitionist elected to House of Representatives. Worked to eliminate “gag rule,” which prohibited anti-slavery petitions. Served until 1859. Leader and founder of the Republican Party. Argued that slavery in territories and District of Columbia was unlawful. Active in Underground Railroad. Was censured by the House of Representatives for his opposition to slavery. Opposed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and against further expansion of slavery into the new territories acquired during the Mexican War of 1846.

GRIMES, James Wilson, 1816-1872, statesman, lawyer. U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Governor of Iowa, 1854-1858. Supported by Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. Elected as Republican Senator in 1859. Re-elected 1865.

HALE, John Parker, 1806-1873, New Hampshire, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator. Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. President of the Free Soil Party, 1852. Elected to Congress in 1842, he opposed the 21^st Rule suppressing anti-slavery petition to Congress. Refused to support the annexation of Texas in 1845. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, he was the first distinctively anti-slavery Senator. Adamantly opposed slavery for his 16 years in office. U.S. Senator, 1847-1853, 1855-1865. In 1851, served as Counsel in the trial of rescued slave Shadrach. In 1852, he was nominated for President of the United States, representing the Free Soil Party. As U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HALE, Salma, 1787-1866, historian, congressman, abolitionist.

HALL, Willard, 1780-1875, Delaware, lawyer, jurist. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1840-41.

HARRIS, Ira, 1802-1875, jurist. Republican U.S. Senator from New York. Served as U.S. Senator from 1861-1867. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HARRISON, Jesse Burton, Lynchburg, Virginia, orator, lawyer, politician. Agent for the American Colonization Society (ACS) in Lynchburg, Virginia. Wrote articles advocating for the ACS and colonization.

HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, 1826-1905, statesman, clergyman, lawyer, editor, opponent of slavery, Union officer. Member of the Free Soil Party. Co-founder of the Republican Party. Chairman of Connecticut Free Soil State Committee. He opposed pro-slavery Know-Nothing Party and aided in anti-slavery organizing. Helped organize and found the Republican Party in 1856. In 1857, became editor of the Republican newspaper, Evening Press in Hartford. Enlisted in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, commanding both a division and a brigade.

HAWLEY, William Merrill, 1802-1869, lawyer, jurist, State Senator. Member, Free Soil Radical Delegation in August 1848.

HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, 1822-1893, Delaware, Ohio,, 19^th President of the United States, 1877-1881. Governor of Ohio, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1865-1867, abolitionist, lawyer, soldier. Defended fugitive slaves in pre-Civil War court cases. His wife, Lucy, Webb, was also an abolitionist. Early member of the Republican Party. Served with distinction as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

HENDERSON, Archibald, 1768-1822, Raleigh, North Carolina, lawyer, former U.S. Congressman. Officer in the Raleigh auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Brother of Leonard Henderson.

HENDERSON, John Brooks, 1826-1913, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Missouri. Appointed Senator in 1863. Member of the Republican Party. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HOWARD, Benjamin Chew, 1791-1872, Maryland, statesman, U.S. Congressman. Manager of the Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society.

HOWARD, Jacob Merritt, 1805-1871, lawyer. Republican U.S. Senator from Michigan. U.S. Congressman 1841-1843. Founding member of Republican Party in 1854. Elected in 1862. Served until March 1871. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HOWE, Timothy Otis, 1816-1883, lawyer, jurist. Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Elected 1861, served until 1879. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

HOWELL, David, 1747-1826, educator, professor of law, acting president of Brown University, abolitionist leader, Providence Society. Petitioned Congress for implementation of House Resolution of March, 1790, against slavery.

HUBBARD, Samuel, 1785-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer, jurist. Member of the American Colonization Society Committee in Boston.

INGERSOLL, Jared, 1749-1822, lawyer, argued legal case against slavery.

IREDELL, James, 1788-1853, North Carolina, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, Governor of North Carolina. President of Edenton auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Son of Governor (Justice) Iredell.

JAY, John, 1817-1894, New York, diplomat, lawyer. Grandson of Chief Justice John Jay. President of the New York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society in 184. Active and leader in the Free soil Party and founding member of the Republican Party.

JAY, Peter Augustus, 1776-1843, anti-slavery activist. Son of first Chief Justice of the United States and diplomat John Jay. President of the New York Manumission Society in 1816, and President of the Anti-Slavery New York Public School Society. Advocated for suffrage for free African Americans.

JENCKES, Thomas Allen, 1818-1875, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island. Served as Congressman from 1863-1871. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

JESSUP, William, 1797-1868, Pennsylvania, jurist, abolitionist, temperance activist. Leader of the Republican Party. Wrote party platform for election of 1860.

JOHNSON, Reverdy, 1796-1876, lawyer, diplomat, statesman, U.S. Senator, opposed annexing territories acquired in the war with Mexico. Strongly opposed the extension of slavery into the new territories. Ardent supporter of the Union. Believed that African Americans should be recruited into the Union Army and as a result should gain their emancipation.

JONES, Walter, 1776-1861, Washington, DC, general, soldier, noted constitutional lawyer. American Colonization Society founding officer and Board of Managers, 1816, Vice-President, 1833-1841, Manager, 1834-1839, Director, 1839-1840. Worked with Henry Clay and other notables.

JULIAN, George Washington, 1817-1899, Society of Friends, Quaker, statesman, lawyer, radical abolitionist leader from Indiana, vice president of the Free Soil Party, 1852. Member of U.S. Congress from Indiana, 1850-1851. Was against the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Fought in court to prevent fugitive slaves from being returned to their owners. Joined and supported early Republican Party. Re-elected to Congress, 1861-1871. Supported emancipation of slaves. Husband of Ann Elizabeth Finch, who was likewise opposed to slavery. After her death in 1860, he married Laura Giddings, daughter of radical abolitionist Joshua Giddings.

KASSON, John Adams, 1822-1910, lawyer, diplomat. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa. Served as a Congressman from 1863-1867, 1873-1877, 1881-1884. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

KELLEY, William Darrah, 1814-1890, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Elected in 1860. Called the “Father of the House.” Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

KILTY, William, 1757-1821, Annapolis, Maryland, Army surgeon, lawyer, jurist, Chancellor (governor) of Maryland. Member of the Annapolis auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

KING, Austin Augustus, 1802-1870, statesman, lawyer, jurist. Democratic Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. Served as Congressman December 1863-March 1865, and as Governor of Missouri. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

KING, John Alsop, 1788-1867, statesman, lawyer, soldier, political leader, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, Governor of New York. He opposed compromises on issues of slavery, especially the Fugitive Slave Law. Supported admission of California as a free state. Active in the Whig Party and later founding member of the Republican Party in 1856. Elected Governor of New York in 1856, serving one term.

KING, Rufus, 1775-1827, Massachusetts, statesman, founding father, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, early opponent of slavery. Member of the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. U.S. Congressional Representative and U.S. Senator. Wrote clause in Northwest Ordinance excluding slavery from Northwest Territories. It stated, in part, “that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the states,” and that this should “remain a fundamental principle of the Constitution…” As a Senator in 1819, he opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state. King entered proposals in the Senate to abolish slavery. His son was anti-slavery activist John Alsop King.

LANE, James Henry, 1814-1866, lawyer, soldier. U.S. Senator from Kansas. Elected Senator in 1861 and in 1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

LANGSTON, John Mercer, 1829-1897, free African American, lawyer, diplomat, educator, abolitionist, brother of Charles Henry Langston, graduate of Oberlin College.

LATROBE, John Hazelhurst Boneval, 1803-1891, Baltimore, Maryland, lawyer. Manager, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-1834. President of the ACS, appointed in 1853. Manager, Maryland State Colonization Society. Son of U.S. Capitol architect Benjamin Latrobe.

LEVINGTON, William, 1793-1836, African American, political and community leader, lawyer, abolitionist, organized and led new African American Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society.

LEWIS, William, abolitionist leader, lawyer, founding member, counselor, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787.

LINCOLN, Abraham, 1809-1865, 16^th President of the United States (1861-1865), opponent of slavery. Issued Emancipation Proclamation January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in southern states. By the end of the Civil War, more than four million slaves were liberated from bondage.

LIVERMORE, Samuel, 1732-1803, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman. Member of Congress, U.S. Senator 1785-1805, Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire. Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. “In the present slaveholding states let slavery continue, for our boasted constit8tion connives at it; but do not, for the sake of cotton and tobacco, let it be told to future ages, that while pretending to love liberty, we have purchased an extensive country to disgrace it with the foulest reproach of nations.”

LLOYD, John I., Maryland, lawyer. Manager, Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society.

LONGYEAR, John Westley, 1820-1875, jurist, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan. Served in Congress 1863-1867. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

LORING, Ellis Gray, 1803-1858, Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer, abolitionist leader. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Husband to abolitionist Louisa Loring of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). Co-founded and wrote the constitution of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Financially aided the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator. Was the attorney for the defense of a slave child in Massachusetts Supreme Court. This resulted in a landmark ruling that every slave brought to the state by the owner was legally free.

MARTIN, Luther, c. 1748-1826, Maryland, founding father, lawyer, opponent of slavery. First Attorney General in the State of Maryland, Member of the Continental Congress, and Member of the Federal Convention. Said of slavery that it is “inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American character.”

MATTHEWS, Stanley, 1824-1889, lawyer, jurist, newspaper editor, anti-slavery activist, soldier and U.S. Senator. Assistant editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, the Cincinnati Herald, the first abolitionist paper there. Served in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Colonel, commanding both a regiment and a brigade.

MAXCY, Virgil, 1785-1844, Baltimore, Maryland, lawyer, state lawmaker, diplomat. Original founding member of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Protégé of ACS leader Robert G. Harper.

MCCLURG, Joseph Washington, 1818-1900, lawyer, legislator, soldier. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. Served in Congress December 1863-1868. Elected Governor of Missouri in 1868. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

MELLEN, Prentiss, 1764-1840, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Maine, 1818-1820. Chief Justice, Maine Supreme Court, 1820-1834. First President of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.

MILLER, Samuel Freeman, 1816-1890, lawyer, jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Supported emancipation. Leader of the Republican Party. Appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

MITCHELL, Robert Byington, 1823-1882, lawyer, political leader, Union soldier. Member of the Kansas Territorial Legislature, 1857-1858. Active in Free State anti-slavery movement in Kansas in 1856. Colonel, 2^nd Kansas Volunteers. Commander 13^th U.S. Army Division. Fought in Battle of Perryville. 1865-1867 Governor of New Mexico.

MORRILL, Lot Myrick, 1813-1883, lawyer, temperance advocate, opposed slavery, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, 1876, two-term Republican Governor of Maine, U.S. Senator, 1861-1869. Joined the Republican Party due to his position against slavery and its expansion into the new territories. Supported the bill in Congress that emancipated slaves in Washington, DC. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. After the war, he supported higher education for African Americans. In 1866, he supported voting rights for African Americans in Washington, DC.

MORTON, Oliver Perry, 1823-1877, statesman, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist. Member of the Republican Party. U.S. Senator and Governor of Indiana, 1861.

MUNRO, Peter Jay, 1767-1833, jurist, abolitionist, member of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded 1785.

NESMITH, James Willis, 1820-1885, jurist, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Oregon. U.S. Senator 1861-1867. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

NILES, Nathaniel, 1741-1828, lawyer, jurist, theologian. U.S. Congressman from Vermont, October 1791-March 1795. Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

ORTH, Godlove Stein, 1817-1882, lawyer, diplomat. Member of the anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana. U.S. Congressman December 1863-March 1871, December 1873-March 1875. Voted for Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, establishing citizenship, due process and equal protections, and establishing voting rights for African Americans.

PHILLIPS, Wendell, 1811-1884, lawyer, orator, reformer, abolitionist leader, Native American advocate. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Called “abolition’s golden trumpet.” Member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Advocate of Free Produce movement.

PIERPONT, John, 1785-1866, poet, lawyer, theologian, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

PIKE, Frederick Augustus, 1817-1886, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine. Member of Congress 1861-1869. Active in emancipation of slaves. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

PINKNEY, William, 1764-1822, Maryland, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, anti-slavery activist. Attorney General of the United States.

POMEROY, Theodore Medad, b. 1824, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York. Re-elected Congressman from March 1861-March 1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

RANDOLPH, Edmund Jennings, 1753-1813, founding father, lawyer. Governor of Virginia. Second United States Secretary of State. First United States Attorney General. As a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Convention, Randolph wrote and introduced the Virginia Plan, which strongly opposed the importation of slaves.

RANTOUL, Robert, Jr., 1805-1852, statesman, reformer, lawyer, writer, publisher, industrialist, U.S. Congressman. Democratic and Free Soil Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Served one term, December 1851-1852. Strong opponent of slavery and the Fugitive Slave laws. Opposed extension of slavery into the new territories. Served as defense counsel for escaped slave Thomas Simms in Massachusetts State Court.

RAWLE, William, 1759-1836, lawyer, educator, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, 1826. Member of the Pennsylvania Abolition society, founded 1775, 1787.

ROCK, John Stewart, 1826-1866, African American, activist, lawyer, physician, dentist, supporter of abolition movement. Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Opposed colonization. Recruited soldiers for US colored regiments.

RODNEY, Caesar Augustus, 1772-1824, Delaware, statesman, lawyer, diplomat. U.S. Congressman, 1803-1805. Later, Attorney General of the United States under Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Rodney wrote: “When we shall proclaim to every stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot on American earth, the ground on which he stands is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of America, the altar and the god shall sink together in the dust; his soul shall walk abroad in her own majesty; his body shall swell beyond the measure of his chains, which burst from around him, and he shall stand redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the great genius of universal emancipation.”

ROLLINS, James Sidney, 1812-1888, lawyer, soldier. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. After Mexican War (1846), opposed extension of slavery into the new territories. Served as Congressman July 1861-March 1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

ROSS, James, 1762-1847, U.S. Senator, lawyer, helped escaped slaves whom he represented in Philadelphia.

RUSH, Richard, 1780-1859, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statesman, diplomat. Founding member, 1816, and Vice-President, 1833-1840, of the American Colonization Society. Son of abolitionist Benjamin Rush.

SCHURZ, Carl, 1829-1906, abolitionist leader, political leader, journalist, lawyer, Union general, Secretary of the Interior.

SCOFIELD, Glenni William, b. 1817, lawyer, jurist. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Congressman December 1863-March 1875. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

SEDGWICK, Theodore, 1780-1839, lawyer. Member of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in Congress. Advocated Free Trade and temperance reform.

SELDEN, Henry Rogers, 1805-1885, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist. Republican Lieutenant Governor for New York State. Opposed to the extension of slavery to the territories.

SERGEANT, John, 1779-1852, lawyer. U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. Opposed extension of slavery into the territories. Stated in Congressional debate of 1819: “It is to no purpose, to say that the question of slavery is a question of state concern. It affects the Union, in its interests, its resources, and character, permanently; perhaps forever. One single State, to gratify the desire of a moment, may do what all the Union cannot undo; may produce an everlasting evil, shame and reproach. And why? Because it is a State right… Sir, you may turn this matter as you will; Missouri, when she becomes a State, grows out of the Constitution; she is formed under the care of Congress, and admitted by Congress; and if she has a right to establish slavery, it is a right derived directly from the Constitution, and conferred upon her through the instrumentality of Congress.” Further, Sergeant said, “If Missouri be permitted to establish slavery, we shall bring upon ourselves the charges of hypocrisy and insincerity, and upon the Constitution a deep stain, which must impair its lustre, and weaken its title to the public esteem.”

SEWARD, William Henry, 1801-1872, statesman, U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, U.S. Senator from New York, abolitionist, member Anti-Slavery Republican Party.

SLOANE, Richard Rush, b. 1828, lawyer, jurist, opponent of slavery. Helped in escape of slaves.

SPEED, James, 1812-1887, Kentucky, lawyer, soldier, statesman, U.S. Attorney General. Ardent opponent of slavery. Early friend of Abraham Lincoln. Emancipation candidate for Kentucky State Constitutional Convention. Unionist State Senator. U.S. Attorney General appointed by President Lincoln in 1864, he served until 1866.

SPOONER, Lysander, 1808-1887, lawyer, author, abolitionist leader. Wrote, “Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” 1845.

STANTON, Edwin McMasters, 1814-1869, statesman, lawyer, anti-slavery activist. U. S. Secretary of War, 1862-1867. Favored Wilmot Proviso to exclude slavery from the new territories acquired by the U.S. after the War with Mexico in 1846. Member of the Free Soil movement.

STEVENS, Thaddeus, 1792-1868, statesman, lawyer, abolitionist leader. Anti-slavery leader in U.S. House of Representatives. As member of Whig Party and leader of the radical Republican Party, urged Lincoln to issue Emancipation Proclamation. Led fight to pass Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery and establishing citizenship, due process and equal protections for African Americans.

STURGES, Jonathan, 1740-1819, lawyer. U.S. Congressman from Connecticut. Member of the 1^st and 2^nd Congress. Served March 1789-March 1793. Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

SUMNER, Charles, 1811-1874, statesman, lawyer, writer, editor, educator, reformer, abolitionist leader. U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

SWAYNE, Noah Haynes, 1804-1884, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist. Represented former slaves in fugitive slave cases. Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as a justice to the U. S. Supreme Court.

Tallmadge declared: “The interest, honor, and faith of the nation required it scrupulously to guard against slavery’s passing into a territory where they [Congress] have power to prevent its entrance.” (16 Con., 1 Sess., 1819-1820, II, p. 1201)

Tallmadge further said: “If the western country cannot be settled without slaves, gladly would I prevent its settlement till time shall be no more.”

TAPPAN, Mason Weare, 1817-1886, lawyer, soldier. U.S. Congressman, Free Soil Party, 1855-1861.

TEN EYCK, John Conover, 1814-1879, lawyer. Republican U.S. Senator from New Jersey. Was a Whig until 1856. Joined Republican Party in 1856. Chosen Senator in 1859. Served until March 1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

THARIN, Robert Seymour Symmes, b. 1830, Charleston, South Carolina, lawyer.

THOMAS, Francis, 1799-1876, lawyer, statesman. Opposed slavery in Maryland State Constitutional Convention of 1850. Governor of Maryland, 1841-1844. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland. In Congress December 1831-March 1841 and 1861-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

THORNTON, Jessy Quinn, 1810-1888, jurist, lawyer. Chief Justice of the Oregon Provisional Government, 1847. Supporter of “Wilmot Proviso” to prohibit extension of slavery in the new territories acquired after war with Mexico.

THURSTON, Ariel, lawyer, jurist.

TRACY, Uriah, 1755-1807, abolitionist, lawyer, political leader, general. U.S. House of Representatives, Connecticut. U.S. Senator. Member of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, founded c. 1790.

TRUMBULL, Lyman, 1813-1896, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

VAN VALKENBURGH, Robert Bruce, 1821-1888, lawyer, Union colonel. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York. Member of Congress 1861-1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

VASHON, George Boyer, 1824-1876, African American, writer, lawyer, anti-slavery activist.

WADE, Benjamin Franklin, 1800-1878, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, strong and active opponent of slavery. In 1839, opposed enactment of stronger fugitive slave law, later calling for its repeal. U.S. Senator, March 1851-1869. Opposed Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. Reported bill to abolish slavery in U.S. Territories in 1862. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WALKER, Edwin G., 1831-1901, African American, lawyer, politician, abolitionist. Participated in Boston’s abolition groups.

WALKER, Isaac P., 1813-1872, lawyer, U.S. Senator, anti-slavery Democrat from Wisconsin.

WASHBURNE, Elihu Benjamin, 1816-1887, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman from December 1853 through march 1869. Called “Father of the House.” Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WEBSTER, Noah, 1758-1843, lexicographer, lawyer, wrote against slavery.

WENTWORTH, John, 1815-1888, lawyer, editor, newspaper publisher, U.S. congressman. Co-founder of an anti-slavery political party that became the Republican Party.

WHITTLESAY, Elisha, 1783-1863, Canfield, Ohio, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1836-41.

WILKINSON, Morton Smith, b. 1819, lawyer. Republican U.S. Senator from Minnesota. U.S. Senator from 1859-1865. U.S. Congressman from March 1869-March 1871. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WILLEY, Waitman Thomas, 1811-1900, lawyer. U.S. Senator from Virginia (1861), later West Virginia (1863). Served in Senate until March 1871. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WILLIAMS, Thomas, 1806-1872, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Served as Congressman from December 1863 through 1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WILMOT, David, 1814-1868, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist, U.S. Congressman, Pennsylvania, introduced Wilmot Proviso into Congress to exclude slavery in territories acquired from Mexico in 1846-1849.

WILSON, James F., b. 1838, lawyer. Ohio State Senator. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio. Elected to Congress in 1861. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

WINDOM, William, 1827-1891, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Served in U.S. Congress 1859-1869, U.S. Senate, 1870-1877.

WOODBRIDGE, Frederick Enoch, 1819-1888, lawyer. Vermont State Senator. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Served in U.S. Congress December 1863 to March 1869.

YEAMAN, George Helm, b. 1829, lawyer, jurist, diplomat, writer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Elected to Congress 1862, served until March 1865.

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Merchants

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ADAMS, John Huy, 1822-1881, politician, businessman, abolitionist, Illinois State Senator, 1854-1870. Helped in founding of the Republican party. Friend of Abraham Lincoln. Father of famous social reformer and activist, Jane Adams.

CLAFLIN, Horace Brigham, 1811-1885, Milford, Massachusetts, merchant, philanthropist, opponent of slavery.

COATES, Samuel, 1748-1830, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, merchant, director of the First Bank of the United States, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society (PAS), Committee of Twenty-Four

COFFIN, Levi, 1798-1877, Newport, Indiana, philanthropist, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, conductor Underground Railroad, established Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends. Active in Free Labor Movement, which encouraged people not to trade in goods produced by slave labor. Helped start the Western Freedman’s Aid Commission. Wrote Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground Railroad, Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract Society. Helped three thousands slaves to freedom. Coffin was a manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).

COLGATE, William, 1783-1857, New York, merchant, prominent philanthropist. Officer in the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

COLWELL, Stephan, 1800-1872, Pennsylvania, philanthropist, author. Director of the American Colonization Society, 1839-1841.

CRANE, William, 1790-1866, Richmond, Virginia, merchant, philanthropist. Active supporter of the American Colonization Society in the Richmond auxiliary. Created the Richmond African Baptist Ministry Society as a part of the Richmond Baptist Foreign Ministry Society.

CRESSON, Elliot, 1796-1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, supported American Colonization Society.

CROSBY, William Bedlow, 1786-1865, New York, philanthropist. Officer in the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society

CUFFEE, Paul, 1759-1818, free Black, sea captain, author, A Brief Account of the Settlement and Present Situation of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1812, Society of Friends from Massachusetts, Quaker, abolitionist, among the first Americans to colonize free Blacks in Africa.

DINOSWAY, Gabriel Poillon, 1799-1868, New York, merchant, philanthropist. Member and supporter of the American Colonization Society. Co-founder of Randolph Macon College at Ashland, Virginia.

ELLSWORTH, Henry Leavitt, 1791-1858, Hartford, Connecticut, American Colonization Society, Executive Committee, 1840-1841. Son of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth. President of the Aetna Life Insurance Company.

EQUIANO, Olaudah, (Olauda Ikwuano), c. 1745-1797, African American, author, merchant, explorer, former slave, abolitionist. Wrote autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, 1789, England.

FITZHUGH, William Henry, 1792-1830, Ravenswood, Virginia, philanthropist. Vice-President of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Wrote articles promoting the ACS

GIBBONS, James Sloan, 1810-1892, Society of Friends, Quaker, merchant, poet, abolitionist, philanthropist. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Married to abolitionist Abigale Hooper.

GOODHUE, Jonathan, 1783-1848, New York, merchant-trader, officer of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

HALLOWELL, Richard Price, 1835-1904, merchant, reformer, ardent abolitionist. Follower of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.

HOVEY, Charles Fox, Boston, Massachusetts, 1807-1859, businessman, philanthropist, abolitionist, reformer. American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1848-59, Vice President 1848-1855, Counsellor, 1855-1860. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Hovey was an active supporter of the Women’s Rights Movement. He helped support the abolitionist movement with significant funding.

JACKSON, Francis, 1789-1861, Boston, Massachusetts, merchant, social reformer, abolitionist. President of the Anti-Slavery Society. Supported the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). Generously supported abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp and their anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Member, Executive Committee, 1840-1861, Vice President, 1840-1861, Treasurer, 1844-1861. President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1860.

JACKSON, William, 1783-1855, Massachusetts, newspaper publisher, abolitionist, temperance activist. U.S. Congressman, Whig Party. Vice president, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Founding member, Liberty Party. President of the American Missionary Society from 1846-1854.

LADD, William, 1788-1841, Minot, Maine, peace advocate, philanthropist, opponent of slavery. Organized an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in Maine. Defended colonization to those who opposed it. Ladd stated that the ACS “deserves the patronage of all who are, from principle, opposed to slavery.”

LAURENS, Henry, 1724-1792, statesman, merchant, South Carolina, opponent of slavery.

LAWRENCE, Amos Adams, 1814-1886, merchant, philanthropist, anti-slavery activist. Principal manager and treasurer of the Kansas Emigrant Aid Society. Worked to keep Kansas a free state. Lawrence, Kansas, was named in his honor.

LAY, Benjamin, 1682-1759, Colchester, England, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker leader, anti-slavery activist, temperance activist, and opponent of the death penalty. Lay promoted colonization projects. He published “Apostates!” and “All Slave Keepers, That Keep the Innocent in Bondage…” At a Society of Friends meeting in Philadelphia in 1758, he encouraged Quakers who were slaveholders to “set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them.” He was excommunicated by the Quakers twice for his anti-slavery activities. He lobbied governors of neighboring provinces against the evils of slavery. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier said of Lay that he was an “irrepressible prophet who troubled the Israel of slaveholding Quakerism, clinging like a rough chestnut to the skirts of its respectability and settling like a pertinacious gadfly on the sore places of its conscience.” He was lifelong friends with Benjamin Franklin.

MCKIM, Isaac, Baltimore, Maryland, wealthy shipper, merchant. American Colonization Society Vice-President, 1817, 1833-39. Member of the Annapolis auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

MORGAN, Edwin Dennison, 1811-1883, merchant, soldier, statesman. Member of the Whig Party, Anti-Slavery Faction. Republican U.S. Senator from New York. Chairman of the Republican National Committee, 1856-1864. Governor of New York, 1858-1862. Commissioned Major General of Volunteers, he raised 223,000 troops for the Union Army. U.S. Senator, 1863-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

MORRILL, Anson Peaslee, 1803-1887, anti-slavery governor of Maine, U.S. Congressman, 1861-1863. Brother of abolitionist Lot Myrick Morrill. Early founding member of the Republican Party in 1856.

MOTT, James, 1778-1868, philanthropist, merchant, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, Association for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, husband of Lucretia Mott.

MOTT, Richard, 1804-1888, Mamaroneck, New York, abolitionist. Mayor of Toledo, Ohio. Anti-slavery Republican U.S. Congressman, 1855-1859. Brother of James Mott and brother-in-law of Lucretia Mott.

PEMBERTON, James, 1723-1808, merchant, Society of Friends, Quaker. President of the Abolition Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1790-1803. Aided numerous slaves.

PHELPS, Anson Green, 1781-1853, merchant, philanthropist. President of the Colonization Society of the State of Connecticut. Director, American Colonization Society, 1839-1840.

RUTGERS, Henry, 1745-1830, New York, real estate magnate, philanthropist, colonel. Founding officer, Vice President, 1816, officer, New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

SHEPARD, Moses, 1771-1857, Baltimore, Maryland, businessman, philanthropist. American Friends (Quaker). Member of the Protective Society of Maryland to protect free African Americans. The American Anti-Slavery Society. Society of Friends Indian Affairs Committee. Lobbied Maryland General Assembly to block legislation to keep free Blacks out of the state. Sheppard was a Manager of the American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-1834.

STEARNS, George Luther, 1809-1867, Medford, Massachusetts, merchant, industrialist, Free Soil supporter, abolitionist. Chief supporter of the Emigrant Aid Company which financed anti-slavery settlers in the Kansas Territory. Founded the Nation, Commonwealth, and Right of Way newspapers. Member of the “Secret Six” who secretly financially supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Recruited African Americans for the all-Black 54^th and 55^th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments, U.S. Army.

STEEL, William, 1809-1881, reformer, abolitionist leader, southeastern Ohio, active in Underground Railroad.

TAPPAN, Lewis, 1788-1873, New York, NY, merchant, radical abolitionist leader. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Treasurer, 1840-1842, Secretary, 1842-1844, Corresponding Secretary, 1845-1846, 1848-1855. Leader of the Philadelphia Free Produce Association. Wrote Life.

TAPPAN, Lewis Northey, 1788-1873, New York, NY, merchant, radical abolitionist leader. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Treasurer, 1840-1842, Secretary, 1842-1844, Corresponding Secretary, 1845-1846, 1848-1855. Leader of the Philadelphia Free Produce Association. Wrote Life.

VAUX, Roberts, 1786-1836, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, jurist, philanthropist, education reformer, supported American Colonization Society.

WILKESON, Samuel, 1781-1848, Buffalo, New York, manufacturer, businessman, real estate, political leader, jurist, president, American Colonization Society (ACS). Director of the ACS, 1839-1841, Member of the Executive Committee, 1839-1841.

WILLIAMSON, Passmore, 1822-1895, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, businessman and abolitionist. Secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and Vigilance Committee. Aided escaped slaves Jane Johnson and her two sons in 1855. He was subsequently jailed for his actions.

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Military and Naval Officers

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

APPLETON, General James, 1786-1862, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, soldier, minister. Leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

BIRNEY, William, 1819-1907, lawyer, Union soldier, abolitionist leader, strong opponent of slavery, commander of U.S. Colored Troops.

BOYLE, Jeremiah, 1818-1871, lawyer, anti-slavery advocate, Union Army Brigadier General. Called for gradual emancipation of slaves as a delegate to the Kentucky State Constitutional Convention in 1849.

BROEDESS, Henry Bishop, 1830-1881, Ashland, Kentucky, abolitionist, mayor, jurist, newspaper publisher. Published anti-slavery newspaper, the American Union. Served as an officer in the Fourteenth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.

BROOKS, Joseph, 1812-1877, abolitionist, clergyman, newspaper editor, Union Army chaplain, political leader. In 1856, moved to St. Louis and was editor of the Central Christian Advocate, a Methodist anti-slavery newspaper. He was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women’s suffrage. In 1863, Brooks recruited and organized African American regiments. He was appointed Chaplain of Fifty-Sixth U. S. Colored Infantry.

BUSTEED, Richard, lawyer, jurist, Union general, anti-slavery advocate.

CHEANEY, Person Colby, 1828-1901, Manchester, New Hampshire, statesman, soldier, abolitionist, businessman, paper manufacturer, Republican politician, abolitionist. U.S. Senator, 35^th Governor of New Hampshire. His father was abolitionist Moses Cheney.

DANIELS, Edward, 1828-1916, Boston, Massachusetts, geologist, educator, abolitionist, Union officer in the Civil War.

DAVENPORT, Franklin, 1755-1832, abolitionist, soldier, New Jersey legislature, U.S. Senator 1789-1799, U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey 1799-1801, member and delegate of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded 1793, nephew of Benjamin Franklin.

DELANY, Martin Robinson, 1812-1885, free African American, publisher, editor, journalist, writer, physician, soldier. Publisher of abolitionist newspaper, North Star in Rochester, New York, with Fredrick Douglass. Published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, 1852. Published The Ram’s Horn in New York. Supported colonization of African Americans in 1854. Led National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1854. Recruited thousands of African Americans for service in the Civil War. First African American major in the U.S. Army.

DOUGLAS, H. Ford, 1831-1865, African American, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist, military officer, newspaper publisher, born a slave. Active in anti-slavery movement in Ohio. Garrisonian abolitionist. Advocated for African American emigration. Published Provincial Freeman. Published in Canada. Served as African American officer in artillery unit.

FARNSWORTH, John Franklin, 1820-1897, Chicago, Illinois, Union soldier. Colonel, 8^th Illinois Cavalry, later commissioned Brigadier General, 1861-1862. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, 1857-1861, 1863-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

FRÉMONT, John Charles, 1813-1890, California, Army officer, explorer. In 1856, was first candidate for President from the anti-slavery Republican Party. Lost to James Buchanan. Early in his career, he was opposed to slavery and its expansion into new territories and states. Third military governor of California, 1847. First U.S. Senator from the State of California, 1850-1851. He was elected as a Free Soil Democrat, and was defeated for reelection principally because of his adamant opposition to slavery. Frémont supported a free Kansas and was against the provisions of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. On August 30, 1861, Frémont issued an unauthorized proclamation to free slaves owned by secessionists in his Department in Missouri. Lincoln revoked the proclamation and relieved Frémont of command. In March 1862, Frémont was given commands in Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

GEARY, John White, general, statesman, soldier. Became territorial governor of Kansas on August 18, 1856. Opposed slavery. Defended state against pro-slavery “border ruffians” from Missouri. As Governor, in 1857, he vetoed pro-slavery laws of legislature.

HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, 1822-1893, Delaware, Ohio,, 19^th President of the United States, 1877-1881. Governor of Ohio, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1865-1867, abolitionist, lawyer, soldier. Defended fugitive slaves in pre-Civil War court cases. His wife, Lucy, Webb, was also an abolitionist. Early member of the Republican Party. Served with distinction as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

HEATH, William, 1737-1814, Massachusetts, soldier, statesman. Member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Ratifying Convention.

HIGGINSON, Thomas Wentworth Storrow, 1823-1911, author, editor, Unitarian clergyman, radical abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859. Served as a Colonel in the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers, the first African American regiment formed under the Federal Government.

HOWARD, Oliver Otis, abolitionist, Union Major General, commander of the 11^th Corps of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Tennessee, the Right Wing of General Sherman’s March to the Sea, and the Carolinas Campaign, November 1864-April 1865. Recipient of the Medal of Honor. Founder and director of the Freeman’s Bureau, 1830. Founder of Howard University, Washington, DC.

HUNTER, David Dard (“Black David”), 1802-1886, General, U.S. Army. In 1862, he organized and formed all-Black U.S. Army regiments without authorization from the Union War Department. Established the African American First South Carolina Volunteer Regiment in May 1862. Without authorization, he issued a proclamation that emancipated slaves in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. President Lincoln ordered the Black troops disbanded and countermanded the emancipation order.

KANE, Thomas L., Brevet Brigadier General, Pennsylvania, lawyer, abolitionist, principal in the Underground Railroad, Union General.

KANE, Thomas Leiper, Brevet Brigadier General, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lawyer, abolitionist, principal in the Underground Railroad, Union General. Served under General Henry W. Slocum in the Twelfth Corps.

MERCER, Charles Fenton, 1778-1858, soldier, political leader, opponent of slavery.

MERCER, John Francis, 1759-1821, soldier, statesman, planter. Delegate to the Continental Congress. Congressman from Maryland. Voted against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

MORGAN, Edwin Dennison, 1811-1883, merchant, soldier, statesman. Member of the Whig Party, Anti-Slavery Faction. Republican U.S. Senator from New York. Chairman of the Republican National Committee, 1856-1864. Governor of New York, 1858-1862. Commissioned Major General of Volunteers, he raised 223,000 troops for the Union Army. U.S. Senator, 1863-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

PAGE, John, 1743-1808, statesman, soldier. Member of Congress from Virginia. Served in Congress March 1789-March 1797. Governor of Virginia, 1802. Opposed slavery as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

PARKER, Josiah, 1751-1810, Virginia, Revolutionary War soldier, politician, Member of the first Congress. Supported citizens’ right to petition Congress against slavery. Called slavery “a practice so nefarious.” Voted against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

PATTERSON, Daniel Todd, 1786-1839, Naval Commander, USS Constitution.

PATTERSON, Robert, 1743-1824, Pennsylvania, mathematician, educator, soldier, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded 1775.

RILEY, Bennet, 1787-1853, soldier, territorial governor of California.

ROSS, George T., Colonel, US Army.

SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, 1809-1890, diplomat, Union general. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Three-term Whig Representative to Congress, December 1843-March 1851. Re-elected December 1863, 1864, 1866, 1868. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

SHAW, Robert Gould, 1837-1863, abolitionist, Colonel, 54^th Massachusetts Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, killed in action.

SLOCUM, Henry Warner, 1827-1894, New York, lawyer, entrepreneur, Major General, United States Army, Commander, Twelfth, Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps, Sherman’s Army of Georgia, 1864-1865. Slocum was an abolitionist before the Civil War.

SMILIE, John, 1741-1812, soldier. Democratic Member of U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress.

SPRAGUE, William, 1830-1930, Union officer. Governor of Rhode Island, 1860-1863. Republican U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

TALLMADGE, James, Jr., 1778-1853, lawyer, soldier. U.S. Congressman, New York. Introduced legislation in House of Representatives to prohibit slavery in new state of Missouri in 1819. Challenged Illinois right to statehood with state constitution permitting existence of slavery in the new state. Tallmadge declared: “The interest, honor, and faith of the nation required it scrupulously to guard against slavery’s passing into a territory where they [Congress] have power to prevent its entrance.” (16 Con., 1 Sess., 1819-1820, II, p. 1201). Tallmadge further said: “If the western country cannot be settled without slaves, gladly would I prevent its settlement till time shall be no more.”

TAPPAN, Mason Weare, 1817-1886, lawyer, soldier. U.S. Congressman, Free Soil Party, 1855-1861.

THOMAS, Lorenzo, 1804-1875, Major General, U.S. Army.

TODD, John, 1750-1782, soldier. Member of the Virginia legislature. Introduced bill for African American emancipation.

VAN VALKENBURGH, Robert Bruce, 1821-1888, lawyer, Union Colonel. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York. Member of Congress 1861-1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

VARNUM, Joseph Bradley, 1750-1821, soldier, Member of Congress from Massachusetts 1780-1795. Opposed slavery as Member of U.S. House of Representatives. U.S. Senator 1811-1817. Two-term Speaker of House of Representatives 1807-1811.

WHITMAN, Edmund, U.S. Army, abolitionist.

WOOD, Samuel Newitt, 1825-1891, New York, newspaper publisher, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Active in the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Served as an officer in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Brigadier General in 1864.

WRIGHT, Silas, 1795-1849, statesman, Congressman, U.S. Senator, soldier, favored restriction and abolition of slavery. Congressman from December 1827 through March 1829, U.S. Senator from 1833 to December 1844, Governor of New York State, 1844-1847. Opposed expansion of slavery into the new territories acquired from Mexico.

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Newspaper Publishers and Editors

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

ADAMS, Charles Francis, 1807-1886, Vice President, Anti-Slavery Free Soil Party, newspaper publisher and editor. Son of former President John Quincy Adams. Grandson of President John Adams. Opposed annexation of Texas, on opposition to expansion of slavery in new territories. Formed “Texas Group” within Massachusetts Whig Party. Formed and edited newspaper, Boston Whig, in 1846.

ALLEN, William G., free Black abolitionist, publisher and editor. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833. Publisher with Henry Highland Garnet of The National Watchman, Troy, New York, founded 1842.

ANTHONY, Daniel Read, 1824-1904, newspaper publisher, abolitionist, member Hicksite Quakers, opposed slavery, active in temperance and women’s rights movements, brother of Susan B. Anthony, Lieutenant Colonel, 7^th Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, 1861-1862. Mayor, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1863.

ANTHONY, Henry Bowen, 1815-1884, Republican, statesman, newspaper editor, Governor of Rhode Island, U.S. Senator 1859-1884, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

ASHMUN, Jehudi, 1794-1828, Washington, DC, educator, editor, missionary. Published The African Intelligencer, a paper for the American Colonization Society.

BACON, Samuel, 1782-1820, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, soldier, editor. Agent for the American Colonization society. He later became an employee of the U.S. government.

BAILEY, Gamaliel, 1807-1859, Maryland, abolitionist leader, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor. Publisher and editor of National Era (founded 1847), of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founded Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Corresponding Secretary, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Assistant and Co-Editor, The Abolitionist newspaper. Liberty Party. Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852.

BAILEY, William S., newspaper editor of the Newport News in Newport, Kentucky. In the 1850s, his newspaper office was wrecked and his home burned down by angry mobs. Opposed slavery and said, “The system of slavery enslaves all who labor for an honest living.”

BATES, Elisha, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, newspaper publisher, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, aided fugitive slaves in Ohio.

BECKLEY, Guy, Northfield, Vermont. Anti-slavery agent. Lectured in New Hampshire and Michigan. Co-edited antislavery newspaper, Signal of Liberty, with Theodore Foster, the newspaper of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society.

BELL, Philip Alexander, 1808-1889, African American abolitionist, editor, journalist, civic leader. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). Subscription Agent for abolitionist newspaper, Liberator. Active in Underground Railroad. Editor, “Weekly Advocate” and later assisted with “Colored American” early Black newspapers. Founded “National Council of Colored People,” one of the first African American civil rights organizations.

BIBB, Henry Walton, 1815-1854, African American, author, newspaper publisher, former slave, anti-slavery lecturer. Wrote Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, 1849. Published Voice of the Fugitive: An Anti-Slavery Journal, in 1851. Organized the North American League. Lectured for Michigan Liberty Party.

BINTLIFF, James, 1824-1901, abolitionist, newspaper editor, publisher, proprietor, businessman, Union Army colonel, helped found Republican Party.

BIRNEY, James Gillespie, 1792-1857, statesman, orator, writer, attorney, newspaper publisher and editor, the Philanthropist, founded 1836. On two occasions, mobs in Cincinnati attacked and wrecked his newspaper office. Founder and president of the Liberty Party in 1848. Third party presidential candidate, 1840, 1844. Founder University of Alabama. Native American rights advocate. Member of the American Colonization Society. Executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His writings include: “Ten Letters on Slavery and Colonization,” (1832-1833), “Addresses and Speeches,” (1835), “Vindication of the Abolitionists,” (1835), “The Philanthropist,” a weekly newspaper (1836-1837), “Address of Slaveholders,” (1836), “Argument on Fugitive Slave Case,” (1837), “Political Obligations of Abolitionists,” (1839), “American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,” (1840), and “Speeches in England,” (1840).

BLACKBURN, William Jasper, b. 1820, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, printer, opponent of slavery. Published Blackburn’s Homer’s Iliad, in Homer, Louisiana. Published pro-Union paper in the South during the Civil War. Published editorials against the assault in the Senate against Charles Sumner, who was opposed to slavery.

BLACKFORD, William Maxwell, Fredericksburg, Virginia, newspaper publisher. Owner of the newspaper, Arena, which endorsed and sponsored the American Colonization Society.

BLOSS, William Clough, 1795-1863, abolitionist leader, reformer, temperance advocate. Early abolitionist leader in Rochester, New York, area. Founded abolitionist newspaper, Rights of Man, in 1834. Petitioned U.S. Congress to end slavery in Washington, DC. Early supporter of women’s rights and African American civil rights. Activist in aiding fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad, manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1845.

BOOTH, Sherman M., 1812-1904, abolitionist, orator, politician, temperance activist. Editor of anti-slavery newspaper, the Wisconsin Freeman, in Racine, Wisconsin. Member, Free Soil Party, and helped found the Liberty Party. Assisted runaway slave Joshua Glover. Was arrested, tried and convicted for violation of Fugitive Slave Law. Booth was acquitted under Wisconsin State law.

BROOKS, Joseph, 1821-1877, abolitionist, clergyman, newspaper editor, Union Army chaplain, political leader. In 1856, moved to St. Louis and was editor of the Central Christian Advocate, a Methodist anti-slavery newspaper. He was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women’s suffrage. In 1863, Brooks recruited and organized African American regiments. He was appointed Chaplain of Fifty-Sixth U. S. Colored Infantry.

BURLEIGH, William Henry, 1812-1871, Connecticut, journalist. Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements. Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society. Editor of the anti-slavery newspapers Christian Freeman, newspaper of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, and the Charter Oak. Leader of the Liberty Party. In 1836, he was appointed a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). In 1840-1841, Burleigh was a Manager of the AASS. As a result of his protesting the war against Mexico, which he felt was being fought for the “slave power,” Burleigh was attacked by mobs and barely escaped being hurt.

CAREY, Mathew, 1760-1839, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, publisher, philanthropist. Strong advocate for colonization and the American Colonization Society. Printed pamphlets for the Society, “Letters on the Colonization Society.”

CHENEY, Moses, 1793-1875, New Hampshire, printer, state legislator, abolitionist, conductor on the Underground Railroad in Peterborough. He was printer for abolitionist, free will Baptist newspaper, The Morning Star.

CHILD, David Lee, 1794-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, author, journalist. Leader, manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Child served as a manager and a member of the Executive Committee of the AASS, 1840-1843, Vice-President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-1836. Published The Despotism of Freedom—or The Tyranny and Cruelty of American Republican Slaveholders. Co-editor with his wife, Lydia, of The Anti-Slavery Standard. (Dumond, 1961, p. 269; Mabee, 1970, pp. 193, 327; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 398, 399; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 65; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 165-166; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 804; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 324)

CHILD, Lydia Maria Francis, 1802-1880, author, reformer, abolitionist, member Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote for the Liberty Bell. Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society. Prolific writer and ardent abolitionist. In 1840’s, edited National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper. Child published: Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Romance of the Republic (1867), Authentic Accounts of American Slavery (1835), The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery (1836), Anti-Slavery Catechism (1836), The Right Way, the Safe Way, Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies and Elsewhere (1860), Freedmen’s Book (1865), and articles “The Patriarchal Institution” and “The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law,” (1860), and edited Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). (Drake, 1950, pp. 117, 176; Dumond, 1961, pp. 273, 281; Karcher, 1994; Mabee, 1970, pp. 37, 70, 108, 193, 320, 325, 359, 360; Meltzer, 1992; Meltzer & Holland, 1982; Nathan, 1991, p. 131; Pease, 1965, pp. 86-91; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 199, 221-222, 398, 399, 519; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 97-98, 113-114, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 67; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 167-170; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 806; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 324-325)

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, b. 1812, Johnstown, New York.

COBB, Sylvanus, 1798-1866, Norway, Maine, clergyman, newspaper editor, temperance and anti-slavery leader. Editor of the Christian Freeman for 20 years.

COCHRANE, Clark B., 1817-1867, New Boston, New Hampshire.

CODDING, Ichabod, 1811-1866, born in Bristol, New York, clergyman, anti-slavery agent, commissioned in 1836. Lectured against slavery.

COLFAX, Schuyler, 1823-1885, Vice President of the United States, statesman, newspaper editor. Member of Congress, 1854-1869. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana. Secretary of State. Opposed slavery as a Republican Member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

CORNISH, Reverend Samuel E., 1795-1858, free African American, New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, clergyman, publisher, editor, journalist. Published The Colonization Scheme Considered and its Rejection by Colored People and A Remonstrance Against the Abuse of Blacks, 1826. Co-editor, Freedom’s Journal, first African American newspaper. Editor, The Colored American, 1837-1839. Leader and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840, joined the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

CROWE, John Finley, abolitionist, newspaper publisher, The Abolitionist Intelligencer, founded 1822, Shelby, Kentucky, and editor of the Missionary Magazine of the Kentucky Abolition Society. Crowe and his associates were constantly under threat.

DOUGLASS, Frederick, 1817-1895, escaped slave, author, diplomat, orator, newspaper publisher, radical abolitionist leader. Published The North Star abolitionist newspaper with Martin Delany. Wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave, in 1845. Also wrote My Bondage, My Freedom, 1855.

DOUAI, Adolph Karl Daniel, 1819-1888, Germany, socialist, abolitionist, newspaper editor and publisher, educator. Published newspaper, San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung [German News], which strongly editorialized against slavery. Opposed slavery in the territory of Texas in articles, a very unpopular editorial position, which caused him to lose the publication.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, lawyer, author, editor, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1796-1866, Connecticut, abolitionist, author, reformer, son of Theodore Dwight, 1764-1846

EMBREE, Elihu, 1782-1820, Quaker, abolitionist (former slaveholder). Published anti-slavery newspaper, Manumission Intelligencer, in 1819 in Jonesboro, then The Emancipator, founded 1820. These may have been the first American periodicals solely devoted to the anti-slavery cause. Member of the Manumission Society of Tennessee. Embree also supported racial equality. Opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state.

FOSTER, Theodore, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery activist. Co-editor of the Signal of Liberty with Guy Beckley, the newspaper of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society.

FRENEAU, Philip, 1752-1832, poet, ship’s captain, newspaper editor, writer, abolitionist.

GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, 1826-1898, abolitionist, reformer, woman’s suffrage advocate. Daughter of noted abolitionist Dr. H. Joslyn.

GALES, Joseph, Jr., 1786-1860, Washington, DC, journalist, newspaper editor. Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1833-41.

GALES, Joseph, Sr., 1760-1841, Raleigh, North Carolina, Washington, DC, newspaper editor. Editor of the Raleigh Register. Treasurer, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1834-39, Executive Committee, 1839-40, officer of the Raleigh auxiliary of the ACS.

GARNET, Henry Highland, 1815-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, clergyman, diplomat, publisher. Member Liberty Party. Former fugitive slave. Published The Past and Present Condition and Destiny of the Colored Race, 1848. Publisher with William G. Allen of The National Watchman, Troy, New York, founded 1842.

GARRISON, William Lloyd, 1805-1879, journalist, printer, abolitionist leader. Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Founder, editor, Liberator, weekly newspaper founded in 1831, published through December 1865.

GATES, Seth Merrill, 1800-1877, abolitionist leader, lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, Western New York. Anti-slavery political leader in House of Representatives.

GAY, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888, New York, NY, author, newspaper editor, abolitionist. Member of the Garrisonian abolitionists. Became traveling lecturing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in 1842. Gay was a member of the Executive Committee from 1844-1864 and Corresponding Secretary, 1846-1849. Appointed editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard in 1844, published in New York. Served until 1858, when he became an editor with the Tribune. He was the wartime managing editor of the Tribune. Ardent supporter of Lincoln and the Union.

GOODLOE, Daniel Reaves, 1814-1902, associate editor and editor of anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, in Washington, DC, the newspaper of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Worked, with abolitionist leader Gamaliel Bailey. Goodloe also wrote for the New York Tribune.

GREELEY, Horace, 1811-1872, journalist, newspaper publisher, The New York Tribune. American Anti-Slavery Society. Major opponent of slavery. Co-founder, Liberal Republican Party in 1854. Supporter of the Union.

HINDE, Thomas Spottswood, 1785-1846, Illinois, opponent of slavery, newspaper editor, clergyman, author, historian, businessman. Early and outspoken opponent of slavery.

HOLLEY, Myron, 1779-1841, Rochester, New York, abolitionist leader, political leader, reformer. Founder of the Liberty Party. Published the anti-slavery newspaper, Rochester Freeman.

HOWE, Eber Dudley, 1798-1885, abolitionist. Publisher of the newspaper, Painesville Telegraph, in Painsville, Ohio, which had an anti-slavery editorial policy. Howe was active in the Underground Railroad.

HOWE, Julia Ward, 1819-1910, abolitionist, women’s suffrage advocate, social activist, poet, essayist. Author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Wife of abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she aided in the publishing and editing of the Boston Anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth before the Civil War.

HOWE, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 1801-1876, abolitionist leader, philanthropist, physician, reformer. Actively participated in the anti-slavery movement. Free Soil candidate for Congress from Boston in 1846. From 1851-1853 he edited the anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth. Active with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, 1863. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Husband of Julia Ward Howe.

INGALS, John James, 1833-1900, political leader, abolitionist. Activist in the Kansas Free State anti-slavery forces. Editor of Atchison newspaper, Freedom’s Champion. U. S. Senator from Kansas, 1873-1891.

JENKINS, David, 1811-1877, free African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor and publisher, writer, lecturer, community activist. Publisher of anti-slavery newspaper, Palladium of Liberty, in Columbus, Ohio.

JOHNSON, Oliver, 1809-1889, anti-slavery leader, newspaper editor, printer, reformer. An early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Member Executive Committee, 1841-1843, Manager, 1852-1853. Occasionally helped Garrison in the editing of The Liberator. In 1832, co-founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Lectured extensively against slavery. Johnson edited various anti-slavery newspapers, including the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the Pennsylvania Freeman, and the Anti-Slavery Bugle.

JONES, Benjamin S., co-founder and editor, with Elizabeth H. Jones, of the abolitionist newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, in New Lisbon, Ohio, in 1845. They edited the paper until 1849. It was the official newspaper of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.

JONES, Elizabeth Hitchcock, co-founder and editor, with B. S. Jones, of the abolitionist newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, in New Lisbon, Ohio, in 1845. They edited the paper until 1849. It was the official newspaper of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.

KIMBALL, Joseph Horace, 1813-1836, author, anti-slavery agent, editor of the Herald of Freedom newspaper of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society.

KNAPP, Isaac, Boston, Massachusetts, printer, newspaper editor and publisher, abolitionist. Helped William Lloyd Garrison found abolitionist newspaper, Liberator, in 1831. Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. He was indicted in Raleigh, North Carolina, for circulating the paper there. Co-founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Served as editor and publisher of the Liberator until 1842. Published and distributed numerous anti-slavery pamphlets.

LEAVITT, Joshua, 1794-1873, New York, reformer, temperance activist, editor, abolitionist leader. Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), New York, 1833. Advocated political action to end slavery, which led him to help found the Liberty Party. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS). Edited the newspaper, The Evangelist, which was founded by abolitionists Arthur and Lewis Tappan. He later became editor of The Emancipator, which was founded by Arthur Tappan in 1833. Leavitt toured extensively, lecturing against slavery. His speeches were edited into a pamphlet entitled, “The Financial Power of Slavery.” It was one of the most widely circulated documents against slavery.

LEWIS, Enoch, 1776-1856, mathematician, educator, publisher, African Observer, Society of Friends, Quaker, Wilmington, Delaware, moderate abolitionist, editor, anti-slavery monthly, the African Observer. Organized Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania.

LOVEJOY, Elijah Parrish, 1802-1837, newspaper publisher, editor, writer, clergyman, abolitionist leader. Murdered by anti-abolitionists. In 1833, he became editor of the St. Louis newspaper the Observer. In the paper, he opposed slavery and supported graduate emancipation. Due to threats, he moved the paper to Alton, Illinois, in 1836. There, his life was threatened and his press was destroyed three times by pro-slave mobs. A fourth press was established on November 7, 1837, and was immediately destroyed and during the attack, Lovejoy was shot and killed by the mob.

LUNDY, Benjamin, 1789-1839, philanthropist, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist leader, anti-slavery author and editor. American Anti-Slavery Society. Organized the anti-slavery Union Humane Society, St. Clairsville, Ohio, in 1816. In 1821, he founded and published the newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation, in Greenville, Tennessee. It was circulated in more than 21 states and territories, including slave states. He was a member of the Tennessee Manumission Society. In August 1825, he founded the Maryland Anti-Slavery Society, which advocated for direct political action to end slavery. He lectu4red extensively and helped organize numerous anti-slavery groups in the Northeast. Supported establishing colonies of freed slaves in Mexico. In 1836, published The National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty, a weekly paper. In 1837, co-founded the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

MYERS, Stephen, 1800-?, African American, newspaper editor and publisher, abolitionist freed from slavery in his youth. Chairman of the Vigilance Committee of Albany, New York, which aided fugitive slaves. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Worked with leading African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. Community leader in Albany, New York. Publisher of the newspaper, The Elevator. Also published The Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate.

NEAL, John, 1793-1876, Portland, Maine, author, activist, women’s rights activist, anti-capital punishment activist. Secretary of the Portland, Maine, American Colonization Society.

OSBORN, Charles, 1775-1850, Kentucky and Mt. Pleasant, Ripley, Ohio, farmer, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, opponent of colonization. Publisher of The Philanthropist, founded 1817. With John Rankin, organized the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1815. Founder of anti-slavery newspaper, Manumission Intelligencer, in 1819.

PENNOCK, Abraham, Philadelphia, Society of Friends, Quaker, Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, abolitionist, editor Non Slaveholder.

PHELPS, Reverend Amos Augustus, 1805-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, editor. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Editor, Emancipation and The National Era. Husband of abolitionist Charlotte Phelps.

PIKE, James Shepard, 1811-1882, journalist, diplomat, anti-slavery activist. Washington correspondent and associate editor of the New York Tribune.

PILLSBURY, Parker, 1809-1898, Concord, New Hampshire, reformer, newspaper editor. Garrisonian abolitionist. Wrote and published: Act of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, Rochester, NY, 1883. Wrote: The Church as it is; or The Forlorn Hope of Slavery, Boston, 1847. Agent for the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and American Anti-Slavery Societies. Served as a Manager in the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1853.

POULSON, Zachariah, 1761-1844, abolitionist, publisher, “American Daily Advertise, Reformer,” Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.

RAND, Asa, 1783-1871, Lowell, Massachusetts, abolitionist, clergyman, editor. Vice president, 1833-1835, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833.

RAPP, Willhelm, 1828-1907, Germany, newspaper editor, anti-slavery activist.

RAY, Charles Bennett, 1807-1886, New York, New York, African American, journalist, educator, clergyman, abolitionist leader. American Missionary Association (AMA). Newspaper owner and editor, The Colored American. African American. Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFAAS), 1847-1851, 1853-1855, Recording Secretary, 1849-1855. One of the first African Americans to participate in abolitionist party on a national level. Member and activist with the Underground Railroad. Co-founder and director, New York Vigilance Committee, which aided and protected fugitive slaves. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

ROBERTS, Anthony Ellmaker, 1803-1885, Pennsylvania, abolitionist. U.S. Marshal. Two-term Member of Congress from the Ninth District of Pennsylvania, 1855-1859. Republican leader in Republican Party in Pennsylvania. Opposed slavery. Roberts was supported by Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens.

ROSS, Edmund Gibson, 1826-1907, U.S. Senator. Editor, Kansas Tribune, Free State Newspaper.

RUGGLES, David, 1810-1849, New York, journalist, publisher, editor, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader, free African American. Founded Mirror of Liberty, first Black magazine. Active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad, which aided fugitive slaves. Advocate of Free Produce movement. Wrote pamphlet, “The Extinguisher.” Contributed articles to abolitionist newspapers, The Emancipator and The Liberator.

RUSSWURM, John Brown, 1799-1851, anti-slavery newspaper editor. Editor of Freedom’s Journal and, later, Rights of All.

STANTON, Benjamin, Indiana, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, editor of the Free Labor Advocate newspaper of the Friends Anti-Slavery Society. Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840.

STEWART, John E., African American, abolitionist, publisher of The African Sentinel and Journal of Liberty, founded 1831, Albany, New York.

TAPPAN, Arthur, 1786-1865, New York City, merchant, radical abolitionist leader, educator. Co-founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Manager, 1833-1837, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1833-1840 of the AASS. President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Member of the Executive Committee, 1840-1855.

TAYLOR, George W., Society of Friends, Quaker. Editor of the Non-Slave Holder. Free Produce Association.

THOMPSON, Daniel Pierce, 1795-1868, Vermont, abolitionist, noted author, novelist, lawyer, political leader. Member of the Liberty Party. Editor, from 1849-1856, of the anti-slavery newspaper, Green Mountain Freeman.

TREADWELL, Seymour Boughton, 1795-1867, political leader, temperance and anti-slavery activist. Wrote, “American Liberties and American Slavery Morally and Politically Illustrated,” 1838. Editor of anti-slavery newspaper, Michigan Freeman.

VAN RENSSELAER, Thomas, 1800-1850, New York, NY, African American abolitionist, editor. Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1842. Co-founded newspaper, The Ram’s Horn.

WAY, Henry H., Indiana, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, editor of the Free Labor Advocate newspaper of the Friends Anti-Slavery Society

WEED, Thurlow, 1797-1882, journalist, opponent of slavery.

WENTWORTH, John, 1815-1888, New Hampshire, lawyer, editor, newspaper publisher. U.S. congressman, 1843-1851, 1853-1855, 1865-1867. Mayor of Chicago, Illinois, elected in 1857 and 1860. Anti-slavery advocate. Early co-founder of an anti-slavery political party that became the Republican Party.

WHITTIER, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892, Haverhill, Massachusetts, poet, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Publisher and editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman. Founding member, Manager, and Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Leader and active with the Liberty Party. Member, Free Soil Party. Called for immediate abolition of slavery in the United States.

WILLEY, Austin, 1806-1896, reformer, abolitionist, clergyman. Congregational minister. Editor of Advocate of Freedom.

WILLIAMS, Peter, Jr., 1780-1840, New York City, African American, clergyman, author, abolitionist, political leader. Early in his career, he favored Black colonization. Co-founder of first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal in 1827. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Manager, 1833-1836, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1834-1835, of the AASS.

WISE, Daniel, 1813-1898, clergyman, educator, abolitionist, newspaper editor. Lectured in the cause of abolition of slavery. Appointed editor of Zion’s Herald, he advocated anti-slavery.

WRIGHT, Elizur, Jr., 1804-1885, New York City, reformer, editor, abolitionist leader. Vice president, 1833-1835, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Leader, Liberty Party. Editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, founded 1839.

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Physicians

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

HUDSON, Erasmus Darwin, 1805-1880, Torrington, Connecticut, abolitionist, temperance advocate, physician. Lecturing agent for the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, 1837-1849. General Agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Wrote article on abolition.

HUNT, Harriot Kezia, MD, 1805-1875, physician, medical reformer, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.

LEMOYNE, Francis Julius, 1798-1879, Washington, Pennsylvania, physician, abolitionist leader. Le Moyne became active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s. Was against the colonization movement. Le Moyne was a manager in the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840, 1840-1841. Vice President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1851. In 1840, ran as the vice presidential candidate of the Liberty Party. Also unsuccessfully ran on Pennsylvania abolitionist tickets, 1841, 1844, 1847. Was active in helping fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad. Founded Le Moyne College in 1870 in Memphis, Tennessee.

LOZIER, Clemence Sophia Harned, 1813-1888, Plainfield, New Jersey, physician, abolitionist, feminist activist. President of New York Suffrage League.

MARTYN, Sarah Town Smith, 1805-1879, author, reformer, temperance activist, abolitionist.

PARRISH, Isaac, Dr., 1811-1852, Philadelphia, physician, Pennsylvania, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1837.

PARRISH, Joseph, Dr., 1779-1840, abolitionist, Society of Friends, Hicksite Quaker, Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, leader and president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

PARRISH, Joseph, Jr., Dr., b. 1818, Burlington, New Jersey, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1841-1846.

PHILLIPS, John, 1823-1903, Richmond, Vermont, physician, politician, abolitionist.

POSEY, John Wesley, 1801-184? abolitionist, physician (surgeon in the Union Army). Active in Underground Railroad in Indiana. Helped found Anti-Slavery League in Indiana.

PRESTON, Jonas, 1764-1836, Pennsylvania, philanthropist, abolitionist. Vice president, 1833-1834, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833.

RANDALL, Richard, Dr., Washington, DC, physician. Member of the Board of Directors of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Randall replaced Jehudi Ashmun as Colonial Agent in Africa for the ACS. Died in Africa in April 1829.

ROCK, John Stewart, 1826-1866, African American, activist, lawyer, physician, dentist, supporter of abolition movement. Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Opposed colonization. Recruited soldiers for US colored regiments.

ROOT, Joseph Pomeroy, 1826-1885, physician, politician, abolitionist. Leader of the Kansas Free State movement. Elected to Territorial State Senate under the Topeka Convention. Later elected Lieutenant Governor of Kansas.

ROSS, Alexander Milton, b. 1832, anti-slavery activist.

SANBORN, Charles Henry, b. 1822, Hampton Fall, New Hampshire, physician, lawmaker, anti-slavery activist, brother of Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.

THORNTON, William, 1761-1828, from West Indian island of Tortola, physician, architect, inventor, public official, humanitarian, reformer, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. Founding member and Board of Managers, American Colonization Society. Early advocate of Black colonization, active in colonization activities; a former slave holder, he returned his slaves to Africa.

WISTAR, John, 1759-1815, New Jersey, abolitionist, Society of Friends, member and delegate of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded New Jersey, 1793.

ZAKRZEWSKA, Marie Elizabeth, 1829-1902, physician, radical abolitionist. Associated with Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.

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Poets

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

BELL, James Madison, 1826-1902, African American abolitionist, poet, lecturer. Member of African American community in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. Supported John Brown on his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Supported African American civil rights before and after the Civil War.

BRYANT, William Cullen, 1794-1874, author, poet, editor. Wrote antislavery poetry.

CROSBY, Fanny, 1820-1915, poet, lyricist, composer, abolitionist. Supported anti-slavery Whig Party, later Lincoln and the Union. Wrote patriotic poems and songs.

DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, lawyer, author, editor, Massachusetts. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882, author, poet, abolitionist. Wrote antislavery poetry.

FAUGÈRES, Margaretta Bleeker, 1771-1801, New York, playwright, poet, abolitionist. Wrote and published extensively on the anti-slavery movement.

FRENEAU, Philip, 1752-1832, poet, ship’s captain, newspaper editor, writer, abolitionist.

HARPER, Frances Ellen Watkins, 1825-1911, African American, poet, writer, abolitionist, political activist. Wrote antislavery poetry.

HORTON, George Moses, North Carolina slave, published book of poetry, The Hope of Liberty, 1824.

LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882, poet. Wrote antislavery poetry.

LOWELL, James Russell, 1819-1891, poet, essayist, journalist, anti-slavery activist. Wrote antislavery poetry.

LOWELL, Maria White, 1821-1853, poet, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

MCDOUGALL, Francis Harriet Whipple Green, 1805-1878, author, poet, reformer, abolitionist. Women’s rights advocate, labor rights activist.

PIERPONT, John, 1785-1866, poet, lawyer, theologian, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party

PURVIS, Sarah Louisa Forten, 1814-1883, African American, poet, abolitionist leader.

SANSOM, Joseph, 1767-1826, poet, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist. Wrote anti-slavery poem, “A Poetical Epistle to the Enslaved Africans, in the Character of an Ancient Negro, Born a Slave in Pennsylvania,” published in 1790.

THOREAU, Henry David, 1817-1862, poet, author of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), reformer and anti-slavery activist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Gave lectures and wrote on slavery’s immorality. Wrote anti-slavery essay, “Reform and the Reformers” and “Herald of Freedom.” Advocate of passive resistance to civil government. Active participant in Underground Railroad. Supporter of radical abolitionist John Brown.

WEEKS, Refine, poet, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist.

WHITFIELD, James Monroe, 1822-1871, African American, abolitionist, orator, poet, supported African American emigration, Black nationalism.

WHITMAN, Walt, 1819-1892, poet, essayist, journalist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Supported the Wilmot Proviso and was opposed to the inclusion of slavery in the new territories. His poetry presented his views on the equality of the races. Supported the abolition of slavery, but did not necessarily support the tactics of the abolitionist movement. In 1856, he wrote to the people of the South, in an unpublished work, “You are either to abolish slavery, or it will abolish you.”

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Printers

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

JOHNSON, Oliver, 1809-1889, anti-slavery leader, newspaper editor, printer, reformer. An early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Member Executive Committee, 1841-1843, Manager, 1852-1853. Occasionally helped Garrison in the editing of The Liberator. In 1832, co-founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Lectured extensively against slavery. Johnson edited various anti-slavery newspapers, including the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the Pennsylvania Freeman, and the Anti-Slavery Bugle.

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Supreme Court Justices

See entries in alphabetical list (Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists) for biographies.

JAY, John, 1745-1829, 1745-1829, New York, lawyer, statesman, founding father, diplomat, anti-slavery leader. President of the Continental Congress. First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Governor of the State of New York, 1795-1801. New York State’s leading opponent of slavery. Founder and president of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as Have Been Liberated, founded 1785. Attempted to end slavery in 1777 and 1785. In 1799, he signed into law the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, which eventually freed all the slaves in New York. This act was arguably the most comprehensive and largest emancipation in North America before the Civil War.

MARSHALL, John, 1755-1835, Virginia, jurist, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. American Colonization Society (ACS), Vice-President, 1833-1836. Life member of the ACS. President of county auxiliaries in Virginia. Donated funds to ACS. Supported colonization movement. Marshall believed that colonization would help the country and prevent “a danger [slavery] whose extent can scarcely be estimated.” He counseled freedmen to go to Liberia.

MILLER, Samuel Freeman, 1816-1890, lawyer, jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Supported emancipation. Leader of the Republican Party. Appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

SWAYNE, Noah Haynes, 1804-1884, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist. Represented former slaves in fugitive slave cases. Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as a justice to the U. S. Supreme Court.

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