D-G: De Baptiste through Dyer

See below for annotated biographies of Liberty Party leaders and members. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

DE BAPTISTE, George, Michigan, abolitionist. (Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



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. Supporter of the Liberty Party.

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 331-333; Filler, 1960; Foner, 1964; Mabee, 1970; McFeely, 1991; Quarles, 1948; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 264-265; Wilson, 1872, 499-511; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 217; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 251-254; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 816; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 309-310; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 67; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; Volume 3 pt. 1 pp. 406-407:

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK (February 1817?--February 20, 1895), abolitionist, orator, journalist, was named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, but assumed the name of Douglass after his escape from slavery. He was born at Tuckahoe near Easton, Talbot County, Maryland, the son of an unknown white father and Harriet Bailey, a slave who had also some Indian blood. As a child he experienced neglect and cruelty, indulgence and hard work; but particularly the tyranny and circumscription of an ambitious human being who was legally classed as real estate. He turned at last upon his cruelest master, and by fighting back for the first time, realize d that resistance paid even in slavery. He was sent to Baltimore as a house servant and learned to read and write with the assistance of his mistress. Soon he conceived the possibility of freedom. The settlement of his dead master's estate sent him back to the country as a field hand. He conspired with a half dozen of his fellows to escape but their plan was betrayed and he was thrown into jail. His master's forbearance secured his return to Baltimore, where he learned the trade of a ship's calker and eventually was permitted to hire his own time. A second attempt to escape, September 3, 1838, was entirely successful. He went to New York City; married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore, and together they went to New Bedford, where he became a common laborer.

Suddenly a career opened. He had read Garrison's Liberator, and in 1841 he attended a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket. An abolitionist who had heard him speak to his colored friends asked him to address the convention. He did so with hesitation and stammering, but with extraordinary effect. Much to his own surprise, he was immediately employed as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He took part in the Rhode Island campaign against the new constitution which proposed the disfranchisement of the blacks; and he became the central figure in the famous "One Hundred Conventions" of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. It was a baptism of fire and brought out the full stature of the man. He was mobbed and mocked, beaten, compelled to ride in "Jim Crow" cars, and refused accommodations; but he carried the programme through to the bitter end.

Physically, Douglass was a commanding person, over six feet in height, with brown skin, frizzly hair, leonine head, strong constitution, and a fine voice. Persons who had heard him on the platform began to doubt his story. They questioned if this man who spoke good English and bore himself with independent self-assertion could ever have been a slave. Thereupon he wrote his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass which Wendell Phillips advised him to burn. It was a daring recital of facts and Phillips feared that it might lead to his reenslavement. Douglass published the little book in 1845, however, and then, to avoid possible consequences, visited Great Britain and Ireland. Here he remained two years, meeting nearly all of the English Liberals. For the first time in his life he was treated as a man and an equal. The resultant effect upon his character was tremendous. He began to conceive emancipation not simply as physical freedom; but as social equality and economic and spiritual opportunity. He returned to the United States in 1847 with money to buy his freedom and to establish a newspaper for his race. Differences immediately arose with his white' abolitionist friends. Garrison did not believe such a journal was needed and others, even more radical, thought that the very buying of his freedom was condoning slavery. Differences too arose as to political procedure in the abolition campaign. In all these matters, however, Douglass was eminently practical. With all his intense feeling and his reasons for greater depth of feeling than any white abolitionist, he had a clear head and a steady hand. He allowed his freedom to be bought from his former master; he established the North Star and issued it for seventeen years. He lectured, supported woman suffrage, took part in politics, endeavored to help Harriet Beecher Stowe establish an industrial school for colored youth, and counseled with John Brown. When Brown was arrested, the Governor of Virginia tried to apprehend Douglass as a conspirator. Douglass hastily fled to Canada and for six months again lectured in England and Scotland.

With the Civil War came his great opportunity. He thundered against slavery as its real cause; he offered black men as soldiers and pleaded with black men to give their services. He assisted in recruiting the celebrated 54th and 55th Massachusetts colored regiments, giving his own sons as first recruits. Lincoln called him into conference and during Reconstruction, Douglass agitated in support of suffrage and civil rights for the freedmen. His last years were spent in ease and honor. He was successively secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshal and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and finally United States minister to Haiti. His second marriage, in 1884, to Helen Pitts, a white woman, brought a flurry of criticism, but he laughingly remarked that he was quite impartial-his first wife "was the color of my mother, and the second, the color of my father." He was active to the very close of his career, having attended a woman-suffrage convention on the day of his death.

[The chief sources of information about Frederick Douglass are his autobiographies: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), republished in England and translated into French and German; My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); Life and Times of Frederi.ck Douglass (1881). The best biographies are: F. M. Holland, Frederick Douglass, the Colored Orator (1891); C. W. Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass (1899); Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass (1907). There are numerous references in W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (4 volumes, 1885-89), and throughout the literature of the abolition controversy. Many of Douglass's speeches have been published.]

W. E. B. D.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 217:

DOUGLASS, Frederick, orator, born in Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot county, Maryland, in February, 1817. His mother was a negro slave, and his father a white man. He was a slave on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, until at the age of ten he was sent to Baltimore to live with a relative of his master. He learned to read and write from one of his master's relatives, to whom he was lent when about nine years of age. His master allowed him later to hire his own time for three dollars a week, and he was employed in a ship-yard, and, in accordance with a resolution long entertained, fled from Baltimore and from slavery, 3 September, 1838. He made his way to New York, and thence to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married and lived for two or three years, supporting himself by day-labor on the wharves and in various workshops. While there he changed his name from Lloyd to Douglass. He was aided in his efforts for self-education by William Lloyd Garrison. In the summer of 1841 he attended an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, and made a speech, which was so well received that he was offered the agency of the Massachusetts anti-slavery society. In this capacity he travelled and lectured through the New England states for four years. Large audiences were attracted by his graphic descriptions of slavery and his eloquent appeals. In 1845 he went to Europe, and lectured on slavery to enthusiastic audiences in nearly all the large towns of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In 1846 his friends in England contributed $750 to have him manumitted in due form of law. He remained two years in Great Britain, and in 1847 began at Rochester, New York, the publication of '”Frederick Douglass's Paper,” whose title was changed to “The North Star,” a weekly journal, which he continued for some years. His supposed implication in the John Brown raid in 1859 led Governor Wise, of Virginia, to make a requisition for his arrest upon the governor of Michigan, where he then was, and in consequence of this Mr. Douglass went to England, and remained six or eight months. He then returned to Rochester, and continued the publication of his paper. When the civil war began in 1861 he urged upon President Lincoln the employment of colored troops and the proclamation of emancipation. In 1863, when permission was given to employ such troops, he assisted in enlisting men to fill colored regiments, especially the 54th and 55th Massachusetts. After the abolition of slavery he discontinued his paper and applied himself to the preparation and delivery of lectures before lyceums. In September, 1870, he became editor of the “New National Era” in Washington, which was continued by his sons, Lewis and Frederick. In 1871 he was appointed assistant secretary to the commission to Santo Domingo; and on his return President Grant appointed him one of the territorial council of the District of Columbia. In 1872 he was elected presidential elector at large for the state of New York, and was appointed to carry the electoral vote of the state to Washington. In 1876 he was appointed U. S. marshal for the District of Columbia, which office he retained till 1881, after which he became recorder of deeds in the District, from which office he was removed by President Cleveland in 1886. In the autumn of 1886 he revisited England, to inform the friends he had made as a fugitive slave of the progress of the African race in the United States, with the intention of spending the winter on the continent and the following summer in the United Kingdom. His published works are entitled “Narrative of my Experience in Slavery” (Boston, 1844); “My Bondage and my Freedom” (Rochester, 1855); and “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” (Hartford, 1881). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 217.

Chapter: “Position of the Colored People. - Frederick Douglass,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

While the free colored people instinctively distrusted the Colonization Society, and withheld their confidence from it, they at once and heartily accepted the abolition movement. This was especially true of the more intelligent and well-informed. Among the colored ministers there were several who, seeing its religious as well as humane bearings, rendered essential aid to the cause. A few others did something in the same direction, arousing public attention and quickening the zeal of the friends of freedom.

But in 1841 a champion arose in the person of Frederick Douglass, who was destined to play an important part in the great drama then in progress. In him not only did the colored race but manhood itself find a worthy representative and advocate; one who was a signal illustration, not only of self-culture and success under the most adverse circumstances, but of the fact that talent and genius are " color-blind," and above the accidents of complexion and birth. He, too, furnished an example of the terrible necessities of slavery, and its purpose and power to crush out the human soul; as also of the benign energies of freedom to arouse, to develop, and enlarge its highest and noblest faculties, --the one aiming, and almost succeeding in the attempt, to make him a mere mindless and purposeless chattel; the other actually and indissolubly linking his name and labors with the antislavery cause, both in this country and in Europe. As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered and diversified a career, so it may be at least plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting ideas and interests. His life is in itself an epic which finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality.

Frederick Douglass was born on the Eastern Shore, Maryland, about the year 1817. According to the necessities of slavery and the usual practice of slave-masters, he was taken from his mother when an infant, consequently deprived of even the rude care which maternal instinct might have prompted, and placed under the guardianship of his grandmother, with whom he lived until he was seven years of age. At the age of ten he was sent to Baltimore, to be the companion and protector of the son of a young married couple, who, in consequence of general refinement of character and his proposed relation to their darling boy, treated him, at first, kindly. This change Mr. Douglass ever regarded as a providential interposition, as the turning-point where his pathway, leaving the descending grade of slave life, entered upon that which led him in that widely divergent and upward direction it has since pursued. Leaving the rude experience of the plantation, with the barren and desert-like surroundings of the Eastern Shore, for the bustle and necessary companionship of the city, an opportunity of learning to read was afforded him, which he most sedulously and successfully, though surreptitiously, improved. But the friendliness which his master and mistress had so generously extended to him as an ignorant slave, they felt obliged, by the necessities of the system, to withhold from him now that he could read, and had learned to question the rightfulness of slavery and to chafe under its chains.

Returned to the Eastern Shore, he encountered the rigors of plantation life, greatly increased by the drunken caprices of an intemperate master, and doubtless aggravated by his own impatient and contumacious rebellings under such slave-holding restraint. This, however, was but a prelude to an experience graver and still more tragic. Despairing of controlling young Douglass himself, his owner placed him - as men place their unbroken colts under the care of horse-trainers in the hands of a professed negro-breaker, known through the region as a cruel and merciless man, who had, not only gained that reputation, but found it necessary or for his interest to maintain it. Concerning this change Mr. Douglass remarks, after referring to the " comparative tenderness " with which he had been treated at Baltimore: " I was now about to sound profounder depths in slave life. The rigors of a field less tolerable than the field of battle were before me." That his apprehensions were not groundless these extracts, taken from his autobiography, abundantly show: “I had not been in his possession three whole days before he subjected me to a most brutal chastisement. Under his heavy blows blood flowed freely; the wales were left on my back as large as my little finger. The sores on my back from this whipping continued for weeks." "I remained with Mr. Corey one year, cannot say I lived with him, and during the first six months that I was there I was whipped either with sticks or cowskins every week. Aching bones and a sore back were my constant companions. Frequently as the lash was used, however, Mr. Corey thought less of it, as a means of breaking down my spirit, than of hard and long-continued labor. He worked me steadily up to the point of my powers of endurance. From the dawn of day in the morning till the darkness was complete in the evening, I was kept at hard work in the field or the woods."
He gave accounts of individual cases of brutal chastisement which were revolting almost beyond conception; while his concise description of himself" as a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness” seems but a natural result. "A few months of discipline," he says," tamed me. Mr. Corey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute."

Having completed his year with Corey, he was hired out to another and more humane master. But the iron of slavery rankled in his soul, and he could not endure its galling restraints, however softened by kindness. After long rumination upon the subject, and conferences with four or five of his companions in bondage, he proposed and planned an attempt to escape. Betrayed, however, by a confederate, they were prevented from carrying their attempt into execution, and were arrested and imprisoned. Instead of being “sold South"-- that dreaded alternative of success, which held back thousands from making the attempt --he was sent again to Baltimore. Being nearly murdered by the carpenters of a ship-yard, because of their jealousy of slave competition with white labor,--a crime for which no indictment could be found, though sought, because no white witnesses would testify against his brutal assailants, --he was sent to another yard to learn the trade of a calker. Becoming an expert workman, he was permitted to make his own contracts, returning his week's wages every Saturday night to his master. At the same time --which was of more importance to him, he was permitted to associate with some free colored men, who had formed a kind of lyceum for their mutual improvement, and by means of which he was enabled to increase materially his knowledge and mental culture. All of this, however, did but increase his sense of the essential injustice of slavery, and make him more restive under its galling chains. Accordingly he made his plans, now successful, and on the third day of September, 1838, he says, “I bade farewell to the city of Baltimore, and to that slavery which had been my abhorrence from childhood." For prudential reasons the particulars of his mode of escape were withheld from the public knowledge, as they were of little comparative importance; while, had they been known then, they might have compromised some and hedged up the way of escape of others. Landing in New York, a homeless, penniless, and friendless fugitive, he thus describes his feelings: " In the midst of thousands of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger! In the midst of human brothers, and yet more fearful of them than of hungry wolves! I was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and without any definite knowledge of which way to go or where to look for succor." In the midst of his perplexities he met a sailor, whose seeming frankness and honesty won, as they deserved, his confidence. He introduced him to David Ruggles, chairman of the Vigilance Committee, a colored gentleman of much intelligence, energy, and worth, who by his position and executive ability did much for his people. This gentleman advised him to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, assisted him in reaching that city, and introduced him to trustworthy friends there. Here he was employed, mostly as a day laborer on the wharves, encountering the same shameful and unmanly jealousy of colored competition that had nearly cost him his life at Baltimore, and which would not allow him to work at his trade as calker by the side of white men. Being a professing Christian, he was interested in religious meetings, where he was accustomed to pray and exhort, a practice which probably had something to do with his wonderful subsequent success as a public speaker.

The first demonstration of his eloquence which attracted public attention was at a meeting mainly of colored people, in which were specially considered the claims of the Colonization Society. Here began to be emitted specimens of that fiery eloquence from his capacious soul, burning with the indignant and unfading memories of the wrongs, outrages, and the deep injustice which slavery had inflicted on him, and which it was now inflicting upon his brethren in bonds. Of course, the few white Abolitionists of New Bedford were not long in finding out the young fugitive, appreciating his gifts and promise of usefulness, and in devising ways of extending his range of effort for their unpopular cause. Attending an antislavery convention at Nantucket, he was persuaded to address the meeting. His speech here seems to have been singularly eloquent and effective. Among those present was Mr. Garrison, who bore his testimony, both then and afterward, to "the extraordinary emotion it exerted on his own mind, and to the powerful impression it exerted upon a crowded auditory." He declared, too, that “Patrick Henry had never made a more eloquent speech in the cause of liberty than the one they had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive." Nathaniel P. Rogers, editor of the "Herald of Freedom," thus characterized a speech made by him the same year. After speaking of his “commanding figure and heroic port," his head, that “would strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter Hall," he adds: "As a speaker he has few equals. It is not declamation, but oratory, power of debate. . . He has wit, argument, sarcasm, pathos, all that first-rate men show in their master efforts."
This language, especially that of Mr. Garrison, seems extravagant, and the laudation excessive; nor could it be accepted as a general and critical estimate of Mr. Douglass as an orator, great as his powers confessedly were and are. His Nantucket speech was unquestionably one of those rare bursts of eloquence, little less than inspiration itself, which are sometimes vouchsafed to a man in his happiest moods; when the speaker seems to rise above himself and to take his audience with him. Besides, there was certainly much in the circumstances and surroundings of that meeting to impress the minds and stir the sensibilities of such an assembly. On that isle of the sea, at some distance from the mainland, one could easily imagine a picture of the nation overshadowed by the dark cloud of slavery, and prostrate beneath a despotism pressing alike on the slaves at the South and on their advocates at the North. Indeed, the latter had just passed through a baptism of fire and blood, during those fearful years of mobs and martyrdom, which had measurably ceased, but had been succeeded by what the earnest Abolitionist deprecated more than violence, and that was the general apathy which then reigned.
In the conflict for freedom of speech and the right of free discussion Abolitionists had achieved a victory. What they had contended for had, at length, been conceded; at least, the principle was no longer contested. They had conquered a peace; but their opponents were determined it should be the peace of the grave. For the wordy warfare of discussion and the brutal violence of lynch laws they would substitute the policy of neglect. To let them severely alone, to belittle their cause, to pass them by with a supercilious sneer, and to frown contemptuously upon their attempts to gain a hearing, became at that time the tactics of the enemies against the advocates of human rights. Of course, what were termed antislavery measures had lost much of their zest and potency; meetings became less numerously attended, and, consequently, less frequent; organizations, losing their interest and effectiveness, began to die out. Something was necessary to revive and reanimate the drooping spirits and the languid movements of the cause and its friends. It was then, at this opportune moment, while they were thus enveloped in the chill and shade of this most uncomfortable and unsatisfactory state of affairs, the young fugitive appeared upon the stage. He seemed like a messenger from the dark land of slavery itself; as if in his person his race had found a fitting advocate; as if through his lips their long pent up wrongs and wishes had found a voice. No wonder that Nantucket meeting was greatly moved. It would not be strange if the words of description and comment of those present and in full sympathy with the youthful orator should be somewhat extravagant.

The Massachusetts Antislavery Society at once made overtures to Mr. Douglass, and he became one of its accredited agents. For this new field of labor, which he reluctantly and hesitatingly entered, and for which he modestly said he “had no preparation," the event proved that he was admirably fitted. In addition to that inborn genius and those natural gifts of oratory with which he was so generously endowed, he had the long and terrible lessons which slavery had burned into his soul. The knowledge, too, which he had stolen in the house of bondage, had enabled him to read the " Liberator " from week to week, as he was engaged in his hard and humble labors on the wharves of New Bedford, and thus to become acquainted with the new thoughts and reasonings of others. Doubtless many things which had long lain in his own mind formless and vague he found there more clearly defined and more logically expressed; while the fierceness and force of its utterances tallied only too well with the all-consuming zeal of his own soul. Thus fitted and commissioned he entered upon the great work of his life. Though distrustful of his abilities, no knight-errant ever sallied forth with higher resolve, or bore himself with more heroic courage. With whatever diffidence he undertook the proposed service, there was no lack of earnestness and devotion. Nor was his range a limited one. Fitted by his talents to move thousands on the platform, he was prepared by his early experience to be equally persuasive in a little meeting in a country school-house. In hall or church or grove he was alike effective. He could make himself at home in the parlors of the great or by the firesides of the humble: He could ride in the public conveyances from State to State, or tramp on foot from neighborhood to neighborhood. Fertile in expedients and patient in endeavor, he was not easily balked or driven from his purpose. In the midst of the prejudices of caste, hardly less strong and cruel in Massachusetts than in Maryland, he never permitted these, however painful, to divert him from his purpose. If he could not ride inside the stage, he would ride outside; if he could not ride in the first-class car, he rode in the second class; if he could not occupy the cabin of the steamer, he went into the steerage; but to these insults to his manhood he generally interposed his earnest protest, and often only yielded to superior force.

The character, culture, and eloquence displayed by his addresses provoked the insinuation that he was an impostor, and that he had never been a slave. To silence this imputation, he prepared and published, in the spring of 1845, an autobiography, which was widely circulated. As in it he gave the names of persons, places, and' dates, by which his claims and statements could be verified, it was soon known in Maryland, and he and his friends were given to understand that efforts would be made for his recapture. To place himself out of the reach of his pursuers, and, at the same time, help forward his great work, it was proposed that he should visit England. He was very kindly received there, and visited nearly all the large towns and cities of the kingdom. In a lecture in Finsbury's Chapel, in London, to an audience of three thousand, he thus answered the question why he did not confine his labors to the United States.
“My first answer is, because slavery is the common enemy of mankind, and that all mankind should be made acquainted with its abominable character. My second answer is, that the slave is a man, and as such is entitled to your sympathy as a man and a brother. He has been the prey, the common prey, of Christendom during the last three hundred years; and it is but right, just, and proper that his wrongs should be known throughout the world. I have another reason for bringing this matter before the British public, and it is this: slavery is a system of wrong so blinding to all around it, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of justice in its immediate vicinity, that the community thus connected with it lack the moral power necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is equal to its removal. It requires the humanity of Christianity, the morality of the civilized world, to remove it. Hence I call upon the people of Britain to look at this matter, and to exert the influence I am about to show they possess for the removal of slavery from America. I can appeal to them as strongly by their regard for the slaveholder as by 'their regard for the slave to labor in this cause. There is nothing said here against slavery that will not be recorded in the United States. I am here, also, because the slaveholders do not want me to be here. I have adopted the maxim laid down by Napoleon, never to occupy ground which the enemy would like me to occupy. The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce slavery, denounce it in the Northern States, where their friends and supporters are, who will stand by them and mob me for denouncing it…The power I exert here is something like the power that is exerted by the man at the end of the lever; my influence now is just in proportion to my distance from the United States."
In the same speech, referring to the barbarous laws of the slave code, denying that he was inveighing against the institutions of America, and asserting that his only purpose was to strip this anomalous system of all concealment, he said: " To tear off the mask from this abominable system; to expose it to the light of heaven, ay, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, --is my object in coming to this country. I want the slaveholder surrounded as by a wall of antislavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the voice of the civilized, ay, the savage world is against him. I would have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims and restore them to their long-lost rights." That, like other prominent Abolitionists of those days, he overrated the power of truth, and underestimated the power of slavery and its tenacity of life, appears in the same speech, and in this connection, when he says: “I expose slavery in this country because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to the root of a tree; it must die under it." Mr. Douglass had not to live long --his own career furnishing the most convincing evidence of the fact --to see that something more than “light " was necessary to destroy slavery. To expose it was not to kill it.

Of this, too, he received substantial evidence in England and Scotland, especially the latter; in England, by the refusal of the Evangelical Alliance, at the instance of the American delegation, to exclude the representatives of slaveholding churches from its platform in Scotland, where he found the Free Church not only receiving contributions for its church-building fund from such churches, but sturdily defending its propriety by the voice of its prince of scholars and clergymen, Dr. Chalmers, and by that of its hardly less honored leaders, Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Candlish. And this latter was done in spite of the earnest remonstrances of himself and others, among them that most eloquent Englishman, George Thompson, urging them not to receive that “price of blood," but to "send back the money."
Mr. Douglass remained in Great Britain nearly two years; in which time he visited England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, everywhere pressing upon the public mind the evils of slavery and the duty of laboring for its overthrow. He was cordially received, and treated with the utmost consideration. His friends, without solicitation from him, raised one hundred and fifty pounds for his manumission, and twenty-five hundred dollars with which to establish a press in this country, which he subsequently did, at Rochester, New York. His journal was first called the “North Star," and afterward "Frederick Douglass's Paper," and was ably conducted and well sustained till after the abolition of slavery. Thus by voice, pen, and personal influence has he contributed in no small measure to those manifold labors which the last thirty years have witnessed for the removal of slavery, and for the rehabilitation of his race with those rights of which it had so long been despoiled, and for the still higher purpose of preparing it for the new position it now occupies.

The main interest and importance, however, of Mr. Douglass's career, are public, rather than personal. Full of thrilling adventure, striking contrasts, brilliant passages, and undoubted usefulness, as his history was, his providential relations to some of the most marked facts and features of American history constitute the chief elements of that interest and importance which by common consent belong to it. Lifting the curtain, it revealed with startling vividness and effect the inner experience and the workings of slavery, not only upon its victims, but upon all connected with it. In it, as in a mirror, are seen how unnatural, how inhuman, and how wicked were its demands. Torn from his mother's arms in infancy, he was treated with the same disregard of his comfort and the promptings of nature as were the domestic animals of the farm-yard. As he was transferred from one master to another, everyone can see what the hazards of a “chattel personal” were, and how the kindness of one only aggravated the harshness of another. In the extreme solicitude manifested by his kind master and mistress at Baltimore that he should not learn to read, and their marked displeasure and change of treatment when he had thus learned, are seen not only the stern necessities of slavery, but how it quenched the kindlier feelings and turned to bitterness even affection itself. In the terrible struggle with Corey which he so graphically describes, when " the dark night of slavery shut in upon him," and he was "transformed to a brute," is disclosed something of the process by which manhood was dethroned, and an immortal being was transformed by something more than legal phrase into a chattel,--a thing. Had he, after his first unsuccessful attempt to escape, been " sold South," as he had reason to apprehend, and had not been sent north to Baltimore, that night would have remained unbroken, and that transformation would have been complete; and the world now knows what a light would have been extinguished and what a sacrifice would have been made. He escaped, indeed; but how many did not? Not all were so richly endowed, though none can tell how many " village Hampdens," how many " mute, inglorious Miltons" have thus been lost to letters and to man; while many have learned to sympathize with Dr. Campbell, at Finsbury's Chapel, when he exclaimed: " My blood boiled within me when I heard his address to-night, and thought that he had left behind him three millions of such men."

And sadder still when it is seen that all this was done, if not in the name of the Christian religion, in spite of it, by those professing its holy faith, -- his owner, and tormentor, Corey, both being members of the church; the latter punctilious and pretentious in his church-going, praying, and psalm singing, adding the latter generally to his daily family worship, -- and saddest of all, that, when Mr. Douglass, rescued as from the lion's den, bore a testimony which could not be gainsaid, the multitudes, though fascinated by his thrilling story and matchless eloquence, withheld from him what he earnestly sought, while only the few were willing to receive the unpopular doctrines of his Abolitionism. For twenty years he labored as few others could, addressing thousands upon thousands in the New England, Middle, and Western States; and yet till the beginning of the Rebellion he belonged to a despised minority, while the system that had so outraged him and his people still dominated the State, and was sanctioned, if not sanctified, by the church. In the light of such a history this mountain of national guilt assumes more towering proportions, and its base is seen to rest not upon the South alone, but upon the whole land. The crime was gigantic; and, though its expiation has already been terrible, who shall say that it has been commensurate with the crime itself?
Few have forgotten the closing utterances of Mr. Lincoln's second Inaugural concerning the war still raging, sounding as if they fell from the judgment-seat and were the words of doom itself: " Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so it still must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" The solemn significance .of this language is still worthy of thought, though the war has ceased and the great armies then in the field have been recalled.

Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 499-511.



DYER, Charles Volney, Dr., 1808-1878, abolitionist, jurist. Co-founded Chicago chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838 with Philo Carpenter. Station master on the Underground Railroad. Gubernatorial candidate with Liberty Party in 1848.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 285; Campbell, 2009)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 285:

DYER, Charles Volney, Abolitionist, born in Clarendon, Vt., 12 June, 1808; died at Lake View, near Chicago, 24 April, 1878. He was graduated at the medical department of Middlebury college in 1830, and began practice in Newark, New Jersey, in 1831, but removed in 1835 to Chicago, and soon became acting surgeon in Fort Dearborn. He was successful in his practice and business adventures, retiring from the former in 1854, and becoming agent for the “underground railroad” in Chicago. One instance illustrates the courage of Dr. Dyer: In 1846 a fugitive from Kentucky was caught in Chicago by his master and an armed posse, bound tightly with ropes, and guarded while a man went for a blacksmith to rivet the manacles that were to be put upon him. Dr. Dyer, hearing of the arrest, went hurriedly to the Mansion house and to the room where the victim was confined, burst open the door, cut the cords, and told the fugitive to go, which he did before his captors recovered from their surprise and bewilderment at such unexpected and summary proceedings. A bully, with brandishing Bowie-knife, rushed toward the doctor, who stood his ground and knocked down his assailant with his cane. Sympathizing friends subsequently presented the doctor a gold-headed hickory cane of gigantic proportions, appropriately inscribed, which is now in the library of the Chicago historical society. At an anti-slavery convention in 1846 at Chicago, Dr. Dyer was chairman of the committee for establishing the “National Era” at Washington, an organ of the Abolition party, established 7 January, 1847. Dr. Dyer had a genial nature, which manifested itself in ready witticisms and pleasant conversation, except when he chanced to come in contact with shams, impostors, or hypocrites, for which he had a most profound contempt and abundant words to express his detestation. In recognition of Dr. Dyer's sterling integrity and the great service he had rendered the cause of anti-slavery. President Lincoln, who knew him well, appointed him in 1863 judge of the mixed court at Sierra Leone, for the suppression of the slave-trade, after which appointment he passed two years travelling in Europe. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.



EARLE, Thomas, 1796-1849, Worcester, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader, journalist, lawyer, political leader, member Liberty Party, Philadelphia, PA. Edited Pennsylvania Freeman. Petitioned Congress to amend U.S. Constitution to compensate slaveholders in the South who freed their slaves. Earle joined the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1820, and in 1821 was a Delegate to the American Convention of Abolition Societies. As a lawyer, he represented the Society in defense of African Americans. Vice presidential candidate for abolitionist Liberty Party. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1839-1840. He actively supported Black suffrage.

(Bonner, 1948; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 149; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 297; Goodell, 1852, p. 471; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1840; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 597; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 7, p. 231)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 597:

EARLE, THOMAS (April 21, 1796--July 14, 1849), lawyer, was the son of Pliny Earle [q.v.], a manufacturer of wool-carding machinery, and Patience (Buffum) Earle, who resided at Leicester, Massachusetts. After attending the common schools and Leicester Academy, he passed several years in his father's employ, but as business was not prosperous he went to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1816, where he became a clerk in a store. In 1817 he remove d to Philadelphia, and engaged in the commission business there for six years. He had no liking or capacity for a mercantile career, however, and in 1824 commenced the study of law. Meantime, in July 1820, he had married Mary Hussey of Nantucket, Massachusetts. On his being admitted as an attorney, April 2, 1825, he opened a law office in Philadelphia, at the same time engaging in literary and political work. His journalistic abilities were quickly recognized and he became editor successively of the Columbian Observer and The Standard. In the course of his legal studies he discovered that the Constitution of Pennsylvania was extremely defective and needed amendment. This he urged in the local newspapers, but it was not until he had acquired a proprietary interest in The Mechanics' Free Press and Reform Advocate and devoted its columns to the subject, that the public became aroused. His continued agitation at length procured the calling of the constitutional convention of 1837, to which he was a delegate. He took a leading part in its deliberations and many of the amendments which he advocated were accepted and embodied in the new constitution. Two reforms, however, which he ardently advocated, the democratization of the judiciary, and the extension of the suffrage to colored people, were rejected after long and acrimonious debate. His views on the franchise procured for him the lasting displeasure of a large section of the Democratic party, thereby destroying all chances of future political preferment. In 1840 at a convention of "Friends of Immediate Emancipation" held at Albany, New York, he was selected as candidate of the Liberty party for vice-president of the United States with James G. Birney [q.v.] for president, but he was repudiated by the abolitionists in whose name the Liberty party had made the nomination, and his name did not appear upon the ticket. He had been all his life an avowed opponent of slavery, and for a time was editor of The Pennsylvanian, the anti-slavery newspaper in the state. Henceforth, he took no active part in public affairs, but devoted himself to literary pursuits. He had in his earlier days published an Essay on Penal Law in Pennsylvania (1827) and a pamphlet, The Right of States to Alter or Annul Charters (1823). These were followed by his Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications (1830), the first book written in the United States on this subject. His last completed work was The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (1847). He was an excellent linguist, well acquainted with French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and during his later years was engaged on the compilation of a "Grammatical Dictionary of the French and the English Languages" and a translation of Sismondi's Italian Republics, both of which were unfinished at his death.

[Pliny Earle, The Earle Family (1888); J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia 1609-1884 (1884); North American and U. S. Gazette (Philadelphia), July 16, 1849; American Courier (Philadelphia), July 21, 1849.]

H. W. H. K.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289:

EARLE, Thomas, lawyer, born in Leicester, Massachusetts, 21 April, 1796; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 14 July, 1849, was educated at Leicester academy. In 1817 he removed to Philadelphia, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits for a few years, but subsequently studied law and practised his profession. He became distinguished also as a journalist, editing in succession the “Columbian Observer,” “Standard,” “Pennsylvanian,” and “Mechanics’ Free Press and Reform Advocate.” In 1837 he took an active part in calling the Constitutional convention of Pennsylvania, of which he was a prominent member, and it is supposed that he made the original draft of the new constitution. He lost his popularity with the Democratic party by advocating the extension of the right of suffrage to negroes. He was the candidate of the liberty party for vice-president in 1840, but the nomination was repudiated by the abolitionists, whom that party was supposed to represent. Mr. Earle subsequently took little part in political affairs. He devoted his time principally to literary work, and published an “Essay on Penal Law”; an “Essay on the Rights of States to Alter and to Annul their Charters”; “Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications” (1830); and a “Life of Benjamin Lundy.” At the time of his death he was engaged in a translation of Sismondi's “Italian Republics,” and in the compilation of a “Grammatical Dictionary of the French and the English Languages.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289.



EASTMAN, Zebina, published Liberty Party newspaper, Western Citizen, in Chicago.

(Sinha, 2016, p. 466; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



ELDER, Dr., Pennsylvania, officer in the Liberty party.

(Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847).



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. Nominee for Governor of Maine. Father of Treasury Secretary William Pitt Fessenden and Congressman Samuel Clement Fessenden.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 301; Sinha, 2016, pp. 377, 405, 465-466, 561; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 443; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 346).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 346:

FESSENDEN, SAMUEL (July 16, 1784-March 19, 1869), lawyer, Abolitionist, was born at Fryeburg, Maine, the son of William and Sarah (Clement) Fessenden. He attended Fryeburg Academy, graduated at Dartmouth in 1806, taught school for a short time, studied law, was admitted to the Maine bar in 1809, and began practise at New Gloucester, where he resided until he moved to Portland in 1822. On December 16, 1813, he married Deborah Chandler who took into their household William Pitt Fessenden [q.v.], his illegitimate son. He secured a considerable practise from the start and is reported to have greatly increased his local prestige by thrashing the town bully in front of the court-house. He was well over six feet in height, strikingly handsome, an effective speaker, and usually referred to as "General." He actually held that rank in the militia. While at New Gloucester he was active in politics, as what Democrats loved to denounce-"a high-toned Federalist." From 1813 to 1815 he represented the town in the General Court at Boston, and in 1818-19 served in the Senate. While in the lower house in 1814 he made two notable speeches, one denouncing the national administration for the depressed conditions in Maine and the other, at a later session, supporting the call for the Hartford Convention. These have been frequently quoted by subsequent historians as illustrating the lengths to which prominent Federalists were willing to go in the direction of disunion. Following the separation of Maine from Massachusetts he represented Portland in the legislature, 1825-26.

While he had shown ability as a legislator and politician and for a time seemed destined for active political life, he failed to follow up his early success. This was due, apparently, to two reasons. On moving to Portland he formed a partnership with Thomas A. Deblois which lasted more than thirty years and became increasingly absorbed in professional work. Fessenden was especially interested in the law of real property and handled most of the business in that field while his partner handled commercial cases. Between them, they had probably the largest practise in the state prior to the Civil War, and the senior member was generally accepted as belonging to a select group of two or three outstanding leaders at the bar. Many successful lawyers received their training in this office. A second reason for his withdrawal from politics was his growing interest in the slavery question and dislike of the attitude maintained by both major parties. He became a member of the Anti-Slavery Society, held office, took an active part in its propaganda, and incurred the odium attached to membership in such a radical organization. He was a candidate for Congress and also for the governorship on Liberty party tickets, apparently for the purpose of demonstrating the growing strength of anti-slavery sentiment. He was not, however, as extreme in his doctrines as some of his associates, and believed in the necessity of preserving the union of the states.

In 1861 he retired from active practise and spent his latter years in the home of one of his sons. He was blind for some years before his death. His personal qualities were such as to gain him the affection and respect of associates and the public at large. He was equally considerate and generous to younger members of the bar, poor clients, and negro refugees.

[Wm. Willis, A History of the Law, the Courts, and the Lawyers of Maine (1863); C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899); New-England History and Genealogy Register, April 1871. See also Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden (2 volumes, 1907), which contains much valuable material on various members of the family and gives a special sketch of Samuel Fessenden: I, 34-39.]

W. A. R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 443:

FESSENDEN, Samuel, lawyer, born in Fryeburg, Maine, 16 July, 1784; died near Portland, Maine, 13 March, 1869. His father, the Reverend William Fessenden, graduated at Harvard in 1768, was the first minister of Fryeburg, and frequently a member of the Massachusetts legislature. He also served as judge of probate. Samuel received his early education at the Fryeburg academy, and was graduated at Dartmouth in 1806. He studied law with Judge Dana, of Fryeburg, was admitted to the bar in 1809, and began practice at New Gloucester, where he rose to distinction in his profession. In 1815-'16 he was in the general court of Massachusetts, of which state Maine was then a district, and in 1818-'19 represented his district in the Massachusetts senate. For fourteen years he was major-general of the 12th division of Massachusetts militia, to which office he was elected on leaving the senate, and to which he gave much attention. He removed to Portland in 1822, and about 1828 declined the presidency of Dartmouth. He was an ardent Federalist, and one of the early members of the anti-slavery party in Maine. In 1847 he was nominated for governor and for congress by the Liberty party, receiving large votes. For forty years he stood at the head of the bar in Maine. He was an active philanthropist. He published two orations and a treatise on the institution, duties, and importance of juries. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Bowdoin in 1846. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 443.



FOOTE, Charles C., Michigan, Liberty Party candidate for U.S. Vice President (lost) American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1856-59.

(Sernett, 2002, p. 123; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).


FOSTER, Abby Kelley, 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. As a pioneer Abigail Kelley performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 158; Sterling, 1991; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 281; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 42, 77, 199, 213, 224, 266, 300, 323, 328, 329, 336; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 162, 169, 290-291, 465; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 42, 49, 63, 73, 149, 189-191, 210-211, 214, 216; Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 19, 26, 27, 31, 43, 148-149, 154, 170, 173, 175, 176, 223, 231-248, 267-268, 280-281, 286, 288, 289, 292, 294, 296, 332; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 515; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 542; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 308-310; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 289; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 323-324; Sterling, Dorothy. Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 542:

FOSTER, ABIGAIL KELLEY (January 15, 1810-January 14, 1887), Abolitionist and woman's rights advocate, was the daughter of Wing and Diana (Daniels) Kelley of Pelham, Mass; She was of Irish-Quaker descent, and James Russell Lowell in the well-known "Letter from Boston" (Pennsylvania Freeman, January 1847), in which he describes the Abolitionist leaders, refers to her as "A Judith, there, turned Quakeress." Abby Kelley, as she was usually called by contemporaries and subsequent writers, became a teacher at Worcester, Millbury, and Lynn. While teaching in the Friends School in the last-named town she was impressed by Garrison's attack on slavery and in 1837 abandoned teaching for the lecture platform, giving her services gratuitously to the anti-slavery cause. She conducted a campaign in Massachusetts in company with Angelina Grimke and is reported to be the first Massachusetts woman to have regularly addressed mixed audiences. The latter innovation was the source of much scandal to her contemporaries. She was denounced by the clergy as a menace to public morals, and her meetings were occasionally broken up by mobs. For some years she endured an incredible amount of insult and abuse. (For a typical instance occurring in Connecticut, see L A. Coolidge, Orville H. Platt, 1910, pp. 5-7.) In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society indorsed the right of women to speak on its platform, but a year later her appointment to its executive committee caused a serious split in the organization. Her presence as a delegate at the world anti-slavery convention at London in 1840, and its refusal to recognize women delegates, caused an equally serious disturbance.

As a pioneer Abigail Kelley performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women. After 1850 she was more prominent as an advocate of woman's rights than as an anti-slavery leader; and she took a prominent part, with her husband, Stephen Symonds Foster [q.v.], whom she married December 31, 1845, in most of the woman's rights conventions for the next twenty years. Her appearance at the anniversary convention of 1880, together with Lucy Stone, as the only surviving leaders of the famous gathering of thirty years before, attracted great attention. The woman's rights movement had become fairly respectable by 1880, and had attracted many who would have shrunk from the hardships of pioneering. Her remark in the convention of 1851, in reply to some disparagement of the Abolitionists, that "bloody feet have worn smooth the paths by which you came up hither," is both poignant and significant. She was fearless in denouncing the conservatism of the church and clergy, and repeatedly declared that they must shoulder much of the responsibility for the wrongs of women. She was probably somewhat less extreme than her husband in both her religious and political views but was nevertheless a decided radical in both. In addition to her work in the woman's rights cause she was active in support of prohibition and minor humanitarian interests. She is described by those who knew her as an attractive, kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper. On the platform she was an effective speaker for many years but her voice finally gave out from overuse. She was an invalid in her last years.

[Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (1881); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-79: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89); Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others, History of Woman Suffrage (3 volumes, 1881-87); Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," in New England Magazine, January 1903; obituary articles in the Nation (New York), January 20, 1887, and Boston Daily Advertiser, January 15, 1887.]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 515:

FOSTER, Abby Kelley, reformer, born in Pelham, Massachusetts, 15 January, 1811; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 14 January, 1887. Her parents, who were descendants of Irish Quakers, removed to Worcester while she was an infant. Her education was finished at the Friends' school in Providence, Rhode Island, after which she taught for several years in Worcester and Millbury, and in a Friends' school in Lynn, Massachusetts. She resigned her post about 1837, and began lecturing as an anti-slavery advocate, being the first woman to address mixed audiences in favor of abolition. Though sincere in her convictions and womanly in her delivery, she suffered many indignities in Connecticut during her lectures, While speaking in Pennsylvania, she met Stephen S. Foster, whom she married in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 21 December, 1845. The two continued their public addresses, and on one tour in Ohio Mrs. Foster spoke every day for six weeks. They settled on a farm near Worcester, which was their home up to the time of Mr. Foster's death. About 1850 Mrs. Foster began to be actively interested in the cause of woman suffrage, making many speeches in its advocacy, and that of prohibition. She took an extreme view of these questions, and in argument was pronounced and aggressive. Alike in their belief regarding woman suffrage and their protests against taxation without representation, both Mr. and Mrs. Foster refused to pay taxes on their home estate because the wife was not permitted to vote, and this resolution was followed by the sale of the home for two consecutive years, but it was bought in by friends, and finally redeemed by Mr. Foster. Mrs. Foster's last public work was an effort made to raise funds to defray the expenses of securing the adoption of the 15th amendment in the doubtful states. In June, 1886, she attended an anti-slavery reception in Boston. The day preceding her fatal illness she finished a sketch of her husband for this work. Personally Mrs. Foster was amiable and unassuming, but never lacked the courage to proclaim and defend her advanced opinions. James Russell Lowell pays this tribute to Mrs. Foster:
“A Judith there, turned Quakeress,
Sits Abby in her modest dress.
No nobler gift of heart or brain.
No life more white from spot or stain,
Was e'er on freedom's altar lain
Than hers—the simple Quaker maid.”

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 515.




FOSTER, Theodore, Michigan, Methodist clergyman, abolitionist. Co-editor and publisher of the Signal of Liberty with Guy Beckley, the newspaper of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, representing the Liberty Party.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 187; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



GALUSHA, Elon, 1790-1859, Perry, NY, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, Baptist clergyman, lawyer, reformer. Co-founder and first President of the Baptist Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founder in 1843 of the American Baptist Free Mission Society, which admitted no slaveowners. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840. Supported the Liberty Party.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 349; Goodell, 1852, pp. 496, 499; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 584)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 584:

GALUSHA, Elon, clergyman, born in Shaftsbury, Vt.; died in Lockport, New York, 13 June, 1859, was ordained to the Baptist ministry in early life, and served as pastor of churches in Whitesborough, Utica, Rochester, and Lockport, New York. At one time he was president of the Baptist missionary convention of New York. He was an attractive preacher, and one of the most widely known and esteemed among the Baptist ministers of his generation. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 584.



GARNET, Henry Highland, 1815-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, clergyman, diplomat, publisher. Member and officer of the 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.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 329-333; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 152, 255, 273, 294, 296, 325, 337, 338; Pasternak, 1995; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 33, 164, 192, 305-306, 329; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 22, 67, 70-71, 116-117, 206, 209, 240; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 89-92, 97, 113; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 606; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 154; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 332-333; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 735; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 4, p. 608)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 154:

GARNET, HENRY HIGHLAND (1815- February 13, 1882), educator, clergyman, was the son of George and Henny or Henrietta Garnet, who later changed her name to Elizabeth. He was born a slave, at New Market, Kent County, Maryland, escaped from bondage in 1824, and subsequently made his way to New York, where he entered school in 1826. He was one of the persons of African blood on account of whose matriculation a mob broke up the academy at Canaan, New Hampshire, in 1835. His education was continued, however, under Beriah Green [q.v.] at Oneida Institute, Whitestown, New York. The intelligent and versatile Presbyterian minister, Reverend Theodore S. Wright of New York, with whom Garnet established an acquaintance, probably became the dominant influence in directing him to the gospel ministry. After finishing his education, he divided his time between preaching and abolition agitation in the employ of the American Anti-Slavery Society. While he did not neglect the ministry, he viewed the anti-slavery platform as his important post of duty. He easily took rank among the foremost negro Abolitionists, and his fame spread throughout the country. He held this position until 1843, when he delivered before a national convention of the free people of color at Buffalo, New York, a radical address calling upon the slaves to rise and slay their masters. This utterance caused consternation in that body, and the frightened majority of the representatives voted not to endorse the sentiments expressed therein. The chief opposition to Garnet's appeal in the convention came from Frederick Douglass [q.v.], who was then rapidly coming to be the most influential leader of his race. He also opposed the establishment of a press to promote emancipation when it was urged by Garnet, although Douglass himself resorted to it later and became one of the most popular of anti-slavery editors. This convention marked the highest point reached in the leadership of Garnet and the beginning of his comparative decline as a result of the increasing fame of Douglass.

Garnet thereafter found more time to devote to Christian work. From 1843 to 1848 he served as pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, and in 1852 he was sent as a missionary to Jamaica by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. A few years later, however, he returned to New York to assume the pastorate of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church made vacant by the death of the Reverend Theodore S. Wright. In 1844 he went to Washington as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, where he did much for the relief of the distressed during the Civil War and later assisted Federal functionaries in working out their policy with respect to the freedmen. On February 12, 1865, he preached a sermon in the House of Representatives commemorating the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (A Memorial Discourse, 1865). Although he had strongly opposed colonization at the beginning of his career, near the close of his life he began to manifest much interest in Africa. In 1881 he was appointed minister to Liberia. He reached there on December 28, but died on February 13, of the following year. His wife was Julia Williams, whom he married in
1841.

[W. M. Brewer, "Henry Highland Garnet," in the Journal of Negro History, January 1928; S. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America, Volume II (1883); C. G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (1922); H. H. Garnet, A Memorial Discourse (1865), with introduction by J. M. Smith, "Sketch of the Life and Labors of Reverend Henry Highland Garnet"; W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887); Nat. Convention of Colored People; Proceedings (1847); New York Tribune, March 11, 1882.].

C.G.W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 606:

GARNET, Henry Highland, clergyman, born in New Market, Maryland, 23 December, 1815; died in Monrovia, Liberia, 13 February, 1882. He was a pure-blooded negro of the Mendigo tribe, of the Slave Coast, and born in slavery. His parents escaped with him to Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where they remained a year, and in 1826 settled in New York city. He was educated in Canaan academy, New Hampshire, and the Oneida institute, near Utica, New York, where he was graduated with honor in 1840. He taught in Troy, New York, studied theology under Dr. Nathaniel S. S. Beman, was licensed to preach in 1842, and was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Troy for nearly ten years. For a short time he also published “The Clarion,” a newspaper. In 1846 he was employed by Gerrit Smith to distribute a gift of land among colored people. He went to Europe in 1850 in the interest of the free-labor movement, and lectured in Great Britain on slavery for three years. In 1851 he was a delegate to the peace congress at Frankfort. He went to Jamaica as a missionary for the United Presbyterian church of Scotland in 1853, but returned to the United States on account of failing health, and in 1855 entered on the pastorate of Shiloh Presbyterian church in New York city. In 1865 he accepted a call to a church in Washington, D. C. After a successful pastorate of four years he resigned to become president of Avery college, but gave up that post soon afterward, and returned to Shiloh church. President Garfield offered him the appointment of minister and consul-general to Liberia, and after the accession of President Arthur the nomination was made and confirmed by the senate. He arrived at Monrovia on 23 December, 1881, and entered auspiciously upon his diplomatic duties, but soon succumbed to the climate. A memorial school, organized by his daughter, Mrs. M. H. Garnet Barboza, was endowed in honor of him at Brewersville, Liberia. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 606.


GILBERT, Elias S., officer Liberty party.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).




GILLETTE, Francis, 1807-1879, Windsor, Connecticut, anti-slavery political leader, activist. U.S. Senator, Free Soil Party, co-founder of the Republican Party. Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate in 1854.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 652; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 290).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

GILLETTE, Francis, senator, born in Windsor, now Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, 14 December, 1807: died in Hartford, Connecticut, 30 September, 1879. He was graduated at Yale in 1829 with the valedictory, and then studied law with Governor William W. Ellsworth. Failing health compelled him to relinquish this pursuit, and he settled in Bloomfield as a farmer. In 1832 and again in 1836 he was sent to the legislature, where he gained notice in 1838 by his anti-slavery speech advocating the striking out of the word "white" from the state constitution. In 1841 he was nominated against his own will for the office of governor by the Liberty Party, and during the twelve following years frequently received a similar nomination from the Liberty and Free-Soil parties. He was elected by a coalition between the Whigs, temperance men, and Free-Soilers, in 1854, to fill the vacancy in the U. S. Senate caused by the resignation of Truman Smith, and served from 25 May, 1854, till 3 March, 1855. Mr. Gillette was active in the formation of the Republican Party, and was for several years a silent partner in the "Evening Press," the first distinctive organ of that party. He was active in the cause of education throughout his life, was a coadjutor of Dr. Henry Barnard from 1838 till 1842, one of the first trustees of the State Normal School, and for many years its president. Mr. Gillette took interest in agricultural matters, was an advocate of total abstinence, and delivered lectures and addresses on both subjects. He moved to Hartford in 1852, and passed the latter part of his life in that city. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 652.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 290:

GILLETTE, FRANCIS (December 14, 1807-September 30, 1879), statesman, was a descendant of Jonathan Gillett, who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, about 1636. Francis Gillet (or Gillette as he signed himself) was born in Bloomfield, then a part of Windsor, the son of Ashbel and Achsah (Francis) Gillet. When he was six years old his father died. Between the boy and his stepfather there was no sympathy, a situation which embittered his formative years. Gillette received his preparatory education at Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his mother was then living, and was graduated from Yale College in 1829. He was an excellent student, the unanimous choice of his classmates for valedictorian, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1834 he married Eliza Daggett Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker. He had begun the study of law, but because of ill health, was obliged to abandon it and take up the life of a farmer on the family estate in Windsor. There he remained until 1852 when he purchased a farm in Hartford. Twice he was sent to the Connecticut House of Representatives, in 1832 from Windsor and in 1838 from Bloomfield. As a member of the Assembly, he identified himself with the anti-slavery group. In 1838, supporting an amendment to erase the word "white" from the state constitution, he professed to find "the length of the nose" as valid a qualification as color for political rights (Columbian Register, New Haven, May 26, 1838).

In 1841 he became the first candidate of the Liberty party for governor. Repeatedly, during the twelve years following, he received the Abolitionist or Free-Soil nominations and was as often defeated. In 1854, however, his long association with minority parties bore fruit, when a coalition of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and temperance men elected him United States senator to complete the unexpired term of Truman Smith. He reached Washington barely in time to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. During his brief stay in the Senate (May 24, 1854-March 3, 1855), he delivered one formal speech on the slavery issue (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, l Session, pp. 1616-18). In Connecticut he was actively interested in the formation of the Republican party, whose first organ, the Hartford Evening Press, knew him as a silent partner. To the temperance movement, as well as the anti-slavery crusade, he lent his vigorous support. He was an incorporator of the American Temperance Life Insurance Company, now the Phoenix Mutual. He devoted his efforts, also, to the cause of education, and gave sympathy and cooperation to Henry Barnard [q.v.], who was laboring to reform the Connecticut schools. When the State Normal School was established in 1849, Gillette became chairman of the Board of Trustees and held that office until 1865. He embodied qualities common to many New Englanders of his day, a reforming spirit and a passion for minority causes. His interest in abolition, temperance, and education, though sometimes a bit combative, was sincere and unselfish (Hartford Courant, October l, 1879), and he was the antithesis of the professional politician and office-seeker.

[H. R. Stiles, The History and Geneals. of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, volume II (1892), contains the Gillet genealogy and a long biographical footnote on Francis Gillette (p. 293). See also J . H. Trumbull. Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), I, 516, 611, II, ch. iii; Obituary Record Graduates Yale College, 2 series (1880); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); obituary in Hartford Courant, October 1, 1879.]

D. E. O.



GLEN, E. M. K.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



GLOUCESTER, Joshua


(Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



GOODELL, Reverend William, 1792-1878, New York City, reformer, temperance activist, radical abolitionist. Manager, 1833-1839, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Published anti-slavery newspaper, The Investigator, founded 1829 in Providence, Rhode Island; merged with the National Philanthropist the same year. Wrote Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1852. Co-founder of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, 1833. Editor of The Emancipator, and The Friend of Man, in Utica, New York, the paper of the New York Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founded the Anti-Slavery Liberty Party in 1840. Was its nominee for President in 1852 and 1860. In 1850, edited American Jubilee, later called The Radical Abolitionist.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 19, 20, 23, 25, 32, 34, 50, 53, 54, 101; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 177; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 167, 182, 264-265, 295; Goodell, 1852; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 48, 107, 187, 228, 246, 249, 252, 300, 333, 341, 387n11, 388n27; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 1, 7, 22, 29, 31, 35, 46, 63, 64, 71, 72, 162-163, 199, 225, 257n; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 411-417; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 411-417; Van Broekhoven, 2001, pp. 30-31, 35-36, 87; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 384; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 236).



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. He was a friend of Horace Greeley and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Goodloe wrote Inquiry into the Causes Which Have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States: In Which the Question of Slavery is Considered in a Politico-Economical Point of View. By a Carolinian. [1846].

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 265; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 63, 116, 122, 152, 156, 240, 261, 263-264; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 39, 162)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 390:

GOODLOE, DANIEL REAVES (May 28, 1814-January 18, 1902), Abolitionist, author, was born in Louisburg, North Carolina, the son of Dr. Kemp Strother and Mary Reaves (Jones) Goodloe. He attended a local academy for some years and was then apprenticed to a printer in Oxford, North Carolina. True to the adage, he never thereafter got far away from printer's ink, beginning his journalistic career as soon as he reached his majority by publishing the Examiner in Oxford. It soon failed and he went to Tennessee and attended a school in Mount Pleasant. In 1836 he volunteered for service against the Creek Indians in Alabama. They soon made peace and his company then volunteered for the Seminole War and served in Florida. The pension Goodloe later received for this service supported him in his old age. Returning to North Carolina, he studied law under Robert B. Gilliam and was admitted to the bar but was unsuccessful in practise. He was offered a nomination to the legislature but declined because he was out of harmony with the people of the state on the subject of slavery, and finally in 1844 drifted to Washington where Senator Willie P. Mangum secured for him a position with the Whig
Standard, of which he shortly became editor. That soon failed, and he edited the Georgetown Advocate and later the Christian Statesman until 1852 when he was made assistant editor of the National Era, an anti-slavery paper established in 1847 to advocate the principles of the Liberty party. When Gamaliel Bailey, the founder and editor, died, Goodloe succeeded him and held the position until the outbreak of the war caused the collapse of the paper. Into its columns he brought writers of distinction, such as Grace Greenwood, Mary Mapes Dodge, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Southworth.

While he was still an apprentice, his reading in the Richmond Whig and Richmond Examiner, both advocates of emancipation in Virginia, of the debates on the subject, had converted him to anti-slavery views; and he quickly became a full-fledged Abolitionist. In 1844 he published in the New-York American an anti-slavery article, the first of a considerable number which came from his pen. After the suspension of the National Era he was Washington correspondent for the New York Times until 1862, when President Lincoln appointed him chairman of the commission to carry out the compensation provision of the act emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia. From the close of 1863 he did editorial work on the Washington Chronicle, and later in 1865 President Johnson appointed him United States marshal for North Carolina. He supported Johnson's policy of restoration until 1866 when he became convinced that it was not sufficiently drastic. He accordingly signed the call for the Southern Loyalist convention, and, advocating congressional reconstruction, joined in the organization of the Republican party in the state in 1867. He was violently opposed, however, to the proscriptive tendencies or the Carpet-baggers and of certain native leaders, such as Holden, whom he disliked and distrusted, and he soon parted company with them. In 1868 he bitterly opposed the ratification of the "Carpet-bag" constitution and was an independent candidate for governor against Holden. Later he went again to Washington where he was a free-lance writer, but finally returned to Louisburg, North Carolina. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy in 1900 but survived it two years. He died in Warrenton, North Carolina, and is buried there.

Goodloe's most important writings include the New-York American article of 1844, later published as a pamphlet entitled, Inquiry into the Causes which have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth . . . in the Southern States (1846); The South and the North: Being a Reply to a Lecture ... by Ellwood Fisher (1849); Is it Expedient to Introduce Slavery into Kansas? (1855); The Southern Platform (1858); Federalism Unmasked (1860); Emancipation and the War (1861); "Resources and Industrial Condition of the Southern States" in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1865 (1866); Letter of Daniel R. Goodloe to Hon. Charles Sumner on the Situation of A ff airs in North Carolina (1868); The Marshalship in North Carolina (1869); The Birth of the Republic (1889); and A History of the Demonetization of Silver (1890). He wrote (Bassett, post, p. 56) the history of Reconstruction in North Carolina which appeared without credit in Samuel S. ("Sunset") Cox's Three Decades of Federal Legislation (1885). During 1894-95 he wrote a series of articles on the same subject for the Raleigh News and Observer. A close friend of Greeley and Raymond, he wrote constantly for the New York Tribune and the New York Times. Goodloe was attractive and genial, generous to a fault, unswervingly courageous, charitable, and tender-hearted. He had a genius for friendship and held the affection and confidence even of political enemies.

[J. S. Bassett, "Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in History and Pol. Sci., series XVI, no. 6 (1898); S. B. Weeks in Southern Historical Assn. Pubs., Volume II (1898); News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), January 26, 1902.]

J. G. de R. H.



GOVE, William Hazeltine, politician, born in Weare, New Hampshire, 10 July, 1817: died there, 11 March, 1876. He early became an active worker in the anti-slavery cause, a supporter of the Liberty Party, and later a prominent Free-Soiler. While connected with the latter party he became well known as a stump speaker, and gained the title of the " silver-tongued orator of New Hampshire."

Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 697-698:

GOVE, William Hazeltine, politician, born in Weare, New Hampshire, 10 July, 1817: died there, 11 March, 1876. He received a common-school education, taught in Lynn, Massachusetts, one Year, and an equal length of time in Rochester, New York. He also studied law a short time in Boston. He early became an active worker in the anti-slavery cause, a supporter of the Liberty Party, and later a prominent Free-Soiler. While connected with the latter party he became well known as a stump speaker, and gained the title of the " silver-tongued orator of New Hampshire." He was a member of the first Free-Soil Convention, held in Buffalo, New York, in 1848, was a candidate of his party for the legislature year after year, and in 1851, by a combination of Free-Soilers and Whigs, he was elected. He was re-elected in 1852 and 1855. After the Free-Soil organization was merged in the Republican Party, Mr. Gove was for many years an active Republican. During the administrations of Lincoln and Johnston he held the office of postmaster. In 1871, having become dissatisfied with his party, he engaged in forming a labor reform party, whose voters, combining with the Democrats, elected him to the lower branch of the legislature, of which body he was chosen speaker. In 1872 he was a delegate to the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati, and acted thence forth with the Democratic Party, which elected him to the state senate in 187&-'4." In the latter year he was made its president. As a young man Mr. Gove was engaged in the Washingtonian temperance movement, and spoke and wrote eloquently in aid of the cause. He edited for a short time the "Temperance Banner." published at Concord. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 697-698.



GREEN, Beriah, 1795-1874, Whitesboro, New York, reformer, clergyman, abolitionist. President, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Active supporter of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Corresponding Secretary, Executive Committee member and founding officer of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, Utica, New York, October 1836.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 17, 34-35; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 159, 295; Goodell, 1852, pp. 395-396, 556; Green, 1836; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 20, 21, 24, 25, 40, 45, 46, 109, 151, 152, 227, 252, 257, 363, 366, 369; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 182-191; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, 36-39, 46, 55, 72, 78, 93-94, 99, 105-106, 108, 113, 116, 122, 125; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 25, 60, 90, 96, 97, 130; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 742 American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 529; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 480; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 326).

American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 529:

GREEN, BERIAH (March 24, 1795-May 4, 1874), reformer, was born at Preston, Connecticut, the eldest of six children of Beriah and Elizabeth (Smith) Green, who removed to Pawlet, Vermont, about 1810. He graduated from Middlebury College with the class of 1819, receiving valedictory honors, and went to Andover Seminary to prepare himself for the missionary service of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. To eke out his slender resources, he undertook to teach at Phillips (Andover) Academy. Within the year, however, his eyes and health began to fail, and he left the seminary. His health gradually returning, he married, January 21, 1821, Marcia Deming of Middlebury, Vermont, and for a short time afterward was in the service of the American Board on Long Island and at Lyme, Connecticut. Ordained on April 16, 1823, he became pastor of the Congregational church at Brandon, Vermont. Three years later, March 31, 1826, his wife died, leaving two children, and on August 30 of that year he married again, his second wife being Daraxa Foote, also of Middlebury, who with her seven children survived him. In 1829 he accepted a call to the distinctly "orthodox" church of Kennebunk, Maine, but the next year left to take the chair of sacred literature in the theological department of Western Reserve College. In Cleveland, Green's hostility to American slavery, first specifically awakened in 1822 and growing with his belief that the Christian doctrines should be more practically applied to everyday life, came to a crisis, and on four consecutive Sundays he preached in the college chapel sermons in which he "haled American slavery to the bar of the Christian religion." These powerful sermons attracted wide attention, and in December 1833 he was made president of the convention in Philadelphia at which the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. The same year he accepted the presidency of the Oneida Institute at Whitesboro, New York. Here he attempted to maintain a school of high character where manual should be combined with mental labor, where Hebrew and the Greek scriptures should be substituted for the regular Greek and Latin classics, and where students of every color and nationality should mingle as equals. This position he held until 1843, shortly before inadequacy of support forced the Institute to close. His interpretation of Calvinism proved to be so radically different from that of surrounding clergy that one after another of the orthodox pulpits were closed to him. For a time also his prominence as an Abolitionist told on his position and popularity. In 1837 the Presbyterian church in Whitesboro divided on the question of slavery, and the Abolitionist faction established a Congregational church, of which Green was pastor from 1843 to 1867. He published two volumes, The Miscellaneous Writings of Beriah Green (n.d., circa 1841) and Sermons and Other Discourses with Brief Biographical Hints (1860), as well as some thirty-five pamphlets, mostly on theological and abolitionist subjects, including The Martyr: A Discourse in Commemoration of the Murder of the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy (1838) and Sketches of the Life and Writings of James Gillespie Birney (1844). Intellectually Green was a man of considerable originality. He had strong convictions, but an intensely practical character which probably was responsible in no small measure for the modification of his early theological views. His activities as an Abolitionist attest his moral courage. For the last twenty-five years of his life he lived in virtual retirement. He died suddenly in his eightieth year while speaking against the local liquor traffic in the Town Hall at Whitesboro.

[Autobiographical material in Green's Sermons and other Discourses (1860); pamphlet, Beriah Green (1874), by his son, S. W. Green; P. H. Fowler, History Sketch of Presbyterianism within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York (1877); Fiftieth Anniversary of Whitestown Seminary, h1ne 20, 1878 (1878); reminiscences of Green in J. B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Years (1891).]

W.R.W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 742:

GREEN, Beriah, reformer, born in New York state in 1794; died in Whitestown, New York, 4 May, 1874. He was graduated at Middlebury college in 1819, and studied theology with the intention of becoming a Presbyterian minister, but formed a creed of his own, which did not admit of his joining any denomination. He removed to Kennebunk, Maine, in 1820, and the following year to Ohio, and was professor of sacred literature in the Western Reserve college. His determined opposition to slavery shortened his stay in this community, and three years later he became president of the Oneida institute, Ohio. Throughout his life he was the earnest friend of Gerrit Smith and other abolitionists, and in 1834, having taken an active part in the formation of the American anti-slavery society, was chosen its president. Mr. Green was also a temperance advocate and promoter of public education. In 1845 he founded the Manual labor school in Whitestown, New York. He had just addressed the board of excise in the town-hall of Whitestown, urging the prohibition of intoxicating liquors, and was waiting at the head of a line of citizens to place his vote in the ballot-box, when he fell dead. He published “History of the Quakers” (Albany, 1823) and “Sermons and Discourses, with a Few Essays and Addresses” (Utica, New York, 1833). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 742.




GREW, Samuel W., New York, Secretary, Liberty Party, June 1848.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



GROSVENOR, Cyrus Pitt, 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. Founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS), 1832. Member of the Liberty Party. Leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Co-founded the abolitionist Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America and the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 188, 285, 393n24; Putnam, 1893, p. 14, “Friend of Man,” October 6, 1836, May 10, 1837; First Annual Report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832).

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.