L-M: Lane through Mott

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

LANE, Lunsford, 1803-1870, North Carolina, author, fugitive slave, abolitionist. Lunsford Lane was born a slave near Raleigh, North Carolina. He purchased his freedom for $1,000 and later purchased the freedom of his family. He went to New York in 1835. He was active in giving speeches on slavery and abolition. He was arrested and nearly lynched when he travelled to Raleigh to purchase the freedom of enslaved members of his family. He was saved by local sympathetic White residents. He then settled in Philadelphia. Published The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C., Embracing an Account of his Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and his Banishment from his Place of Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin. 1842. His book was widely distributed and was used to promote the abolitionist cause.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 330; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 30; Sinha, 2016, p. 468; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



LANGSTON, Charles Henry, 1817-1892, African American (Black mother, White father), abolitionist leader. He and his brother, Gideon, were the first African Americans to attend Oberlin College. Active in Ohio Negro Convention Movement. Active in Liberty, Free Soil and Republican parties. Involved in slave rescue in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Helped to establish and organize the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Recruited Black troops for the Union Army.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 5-6, 13, 65-67, 66-78, 83-84, 86-88, 118, 120, 156, 266-267, Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



LANGSTON, John Mercer, 1829-1897, Ohio, free African American, lawyer, diplomat, educator, abolitionist, political leader. Brother of Charles Henry Langston. Graduate of Oberlin College. Langston aided fugitive slaves as a member of the Underground Railroad. Helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society with his brother Charles in 1858. Recruited soldiers for the U.S. Colored Troops for the Union Army, enlisting soldiers for the 54th and 55th Regiments from Boston, Massachusetts. After the war, he was appointed Inspector General for the Freedman’s Bureau. Also worked for African American suffrage. First African American elected to Congress from Virginia. U. S. Congressman, Virginia, 4th District, 1890-1891. First Dean of Howard University law school, Washington, DC.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, p. 597; Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 5-6, 65-66, 69, 72-76, 78, 79, 81, 85-88; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 164; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 7, p. 162; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York; Sinha, 2016, p. 467)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 597:

LANGSTON, JOHN MERCER (December 14, 1829-November 15, 1897), educator and diplomat, was born in Louisa County, Virginia. His father, Ralph Quarles, was the owner of the estate. His mother, Lucy Langston, of African and Indian blood, Quarles's favorite slave, was emancipated by him in 1806 and subsequently bore him three sons, who followed the condition of their mother and took her name. Ralph Quarles was a kind master, who believed that slavery should be abolished by the voluntary act of the owner. In 1834 both of Langston's parents died. By his father's will the principal slaves were emancipated and liberal provision was made for the three sons. Langston was sent by the executors to live with his father's friend, William D. Gooch of Chillicothe, Ohio, who became his guardian and who gave him the care and education of a son. When the boy was about ten, Gooch decided to move to Missouri, a slave state. Langston started with him, but the sheriff, at the instigation of his half-brother, William Langston, followed with a process requiring Gooch to answer to the charge of attempting to carry the boy beyond the jurisdiction of the court that had made him guardian. Allen G. Thurman, then a young lawyer, appeared for William Langston, and the court ruled that the boy could not leave Ohio. After spending two years in a. Cincinnati private school, he returned to Chillicothe and, in 1844, entered the preparatory department of Oberlin College. In 1849 he graduated from the collegiate department and in 1853 from the theological department. However, he had studied theology only in order to prepare himself for law, and, not being able to gain admission to a law school, he read law under Philemon Bliss, of Elyria. In September 1854, he was admitted to the bar and, the next month, married Caroline M. Wall, who was then a senior in the literary department of Oberlin College.

He began practising law in Brownhelm but, two years later, located in Oberlin. In March 1855 he was nominated by the Liberty Party for clerk of Brownhelm township and was elected, probably the first negro to be chosen to an elective office in the United States. During the Civil War he served as an agent for recruiting regiment, the 54th Massachusetts and, later, the 55th Massachusetts and the 5th Ohio regiments. From 1865 to 1867 he was a member of the Council of Oberlin and, in 1867 and 1868, of the city Board of Education.

In 1868 he was called to Washington and appointed inspector-general of the Freedmen's Bureau. In this capacity he visited many sections of the South, where his tactful educational addresses were received with enthusiasm by both the colored and white population. Upon the termination of these activities he accepted the professorship of law in Howard University. As dean (1869-1876) and vice-president and acting president (1872) he organized and established the law department of this institution. For seven years he was a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia and its attorney. In 1877 he became minister-resident to Haiti and charge d' affaires to Santo Domingo and, until 1885, was in the diplomatic and consular service, where his tact, easy manner, and diplomatic address made a favorable impression. In 1883 he published Freedom and Citizenship, a selection from the many addresses that had made his reputation as an orator of power and distinction. Upon his return to the United States he was elected president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg, Virginia. In 1888 he was the Republican nominee for Congress from his district, and, although his election was contested, he was seated by the House in 1890. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. He retired to his home in Washington, where he continued to interest himself in political affairs and wrote From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital (1894) in which he told with real charm the story of his dramatic and useful life.

[Autobiography mentioned above; introductory sketch by J. E. Rankin in Freedom and Citizenship (1883); Souvenir Journal of the 35th National, Celebration at Culpeper, Virginia ... under Auspices of the Langston National Monument Historical and Emancipation Assn. comp. by R. B. Robinson (1898); W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark, (1887); J. W. Cromwell, The Negro in American History (1914); B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (2 volumes, 1909); New York Tribune, November 16, 1897.]

R.C.M.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 612:

LANGSTON, John Mercer, educator, born in Louisa county, Virginia, 14 December, 1829; died 15 November, 1897. He was by birth a slave, but was emancipated at the age of six years. He was graduated at Oberlin, and at the theological department. After studying law he was admitted to the bar of Ohio in 1854, and practised his profession there until 1869, during which time he was clerk of several townships in Ohio, being the first colored man that was elected to an office of any sort by popular vote. He was also a member of the board of education of Oberlin. In 1869 he was called to a professorship of law in Howard university, Washington, D. C., and became dean of the faculty of the law department and active in its organization, remaining there seven years. He was appointed by President Grant a member of the board of health of the District of Columbia, and was elected its secretary in 1875. In 1877-'85 he was U. S. minister and consul-general in Hayti. On his return to this country in 1885 he was appointed president of the Virginia normal and collegiate institute in Petersburg, which office he continued to hold. In addition to various addresses and papers on political, biographical, literary, and scientific subjects, Mr. Langston was the author of a valuable volume of selected addresses entitled “Freedom and Citizenship” (Washington, 1883). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.



LARIMER, William, politician, born in Westmoreland County. Pennsylvania. 24 October, 1809; died near Leavenworth, Kansas, 16 May, 1875. He took an active part in the antislavery movement, assisted in the organization of the Liberty Party, and supported James G. Birney for president in 1840. After that he acted with the Whigs and was a political leader in Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Nebraska, was a zealous Republican.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 618:

LARIMER, William, politician, born in Westmoreland County. Pennsylvania. 24 October, 1809; died near Leavenworth, Kansas, 16 May, 1875. He moved to Pittsburg in 1834, and became a banker and merchant, treasurer of the Ohio and Pennsylvania, and afterward president of the Pittsburg and Connellsville, Railroad. He took an active part in the antislavery movement, assisted in the organization of the Liberty Party, and supported James G. Birney for president in 1840. After that he acted with the Whigs and was a political leader in Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Nebraska, was a zealous Republican, and served in the territorial legislature in 1856. He moved to Kansas in 1858, but in October of that year led a party of gold-seekers to the Pike's Peak Country. He built the first house in Denver, Colonel, and was U. S. commissioner and judge of probate. In the beginning of the Civil War he raised a regiment of volunteers in Colorado and was commissioned colonel, but resigned and returned to Kansas, where he re-entered the army as a captain of cavalry in 1863. He served in Kansas, Indian Territory, and Arkansas, and was mustered out in August. 1865. The remainder of his life was passed on a farm in the vicinity of Leavenworth. In 1872 he earnestly supported his friend Horace Greeley for the presidency. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 618.



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

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 20, 25, 34, 45, 50, 54, 94, 119, 122; Davis, 1990; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 159, 175, 179, 266, 286, 301; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 24, 63, 101, 132, 142, 150, 168, 172, 174, 177, 189, 194, 266-267; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 1, 7-8, 17, 20, 28-30, 36, 45-49, 167, 217; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 363-364; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 51, 68-71, 96, 131, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 649-650; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 84; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 518-519; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 339; papers in the Library of Congress; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 129-130, 214, 219).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 84:

LEAVITT, JOSHUA (September 8, 1794-January 16, 1873), clergyman, reformer, abolitionist, editor, was born at Heath, Massachusetts, the son of Roger Smith Leavitt, a leading citizen, and Chloe Maxwell, daughter of Colonel Hugh Maxwell, an Irish soldier in the American Revolution. His paternal grandfather was the Reverend Jonathan Leavitt, of Suffield, Connecticut. Early distinguished by good scholarship, young Leavitt entered Yale in 1810 and graduated in 1814. He then served as preceptor at Wethersfield Academy, whence he went to Northampton, Massachusetts, to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1819. The following year he was married to Sarah, daughter of the Rel Solomon Williams of Northampton, Massachusetts He practised a short time at Heath and at Putney, Vermont, but in 1823 returned to Yale and completed a two-year divinity course in a year. He was ordained and installed, February 1825, as Congregational minister at Stratford, Connecticut. Three years later he went to New York to be secretary of the Seamen's Friend Society and editor of the Sailor's Magazine. Known among New York friends as "the sturdy Puritan of New England," he entered upon strenuous literary and reformatory activities. He founded sailors' missions in several cities, and he was one of the first lecturers of the American Temperance Society. "Possessing," as he wrote, "no musical skill beyond that of ordinary. plain singers," he compiled an evangelical hymnal, The Christian Lyre, which went into many editions. As early as 1825 he wrote for the Christian Spectator in opposition to slavery. His name appears also in the Journal of Public Morals as an editor and chairman of the executive committee of the American Seventh Commandment Society.

Having a vigorous physique and, according to his Independent associate, Henry E. Bowen, "rare confidence in his own judgment," Leavitt undertook publication, in 1831, of the Evangelist, an organ of religious revivals, temperance, anti-slavery, and other causes. He was a member for a time of the Colonization Society, but he differed with William Lloyd Garrison as to its policies. When the New York Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833 Leavitt was a member of its executive committee and was instrumental in merging it into the National Anti-Slavery Society. He was among those who fled from physical violence when Dr. Lewis Tappan's house, an abolitionist rendezvous, was mobbed. The financial depression of 1837 forced Leavitt to sell the Evangelist, but he reappeared as editor of the Emancipator. Before the election of 1840 he also edited the Ballot Box, which supported the party headed by J. G. Birney. Soon after this he moved the Emancipator to Boston where he opposed the Mexican War and espoused, besides anti-slavery, many causes, such as temperance, cheap postage, and free trade. He wrote vigorously and sometimes abusively. In 1848, when the pioneer work of the abolitionists was complete, and the Emancipator was visibly struggling for existence, Leavitt had an offer to return to New York as assistant editor of the Independent, then about to appear. He hesitated, but his friend, J. G. Whittier, advised: "Not all that thee might wish, Joshua, but a good harbor for thy old age." Such it proved to be. As office editor of the Independent for nearly twenty-five years Leavitt disappointed the expectations of those who predicted that he would be fiery and troublesome. He wrote millions of words of lucid editorial comment, handled correspondence, and won the affection and respect of his younger associates. He was in honor in Great, Britain where, in 1869, the Cobden Club awarded him a gold medal for his work in behalf of free trade. His editorial labor continued until a few days before his death, which followed a stroke of paralysis.

[The journals edited by Leavitt contain much autobiographical material, not yet collated. See F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume VI (1912); obituary in Independent, January 23, 1873; Elizur Wright, "The Father of the Liberty Party," Ibid., January 30, 1873; C. G. Finney, "Dr. Leavitt's Death," Ibid., February 6, 1873; Leonard Bacon, "Reminiscences of Joshua Leavitt," Ibid., February 13, 1873; J . P. Thompson, "Personal Recollections of Dr. Leavitt," Ibid., March 6, 1873; J. P. Bretz, "The Economic Background of the Liberty Party," American Historical Review, January 1929; L. H. Everts, History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1879), volume II; New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1873; New York Times, January 17, 1873. In 1916 the Massachusetts Historical Society acquired a collection of free-soil papers assembled by Leavitt.]

F. W. C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 649-650:

LEAVITT, Joshua, reformer, born in Heath, Franklin county, Massachusetts, 8 September, 1794; died in Brooklyn, New York, 16 January, 1873. He was graduated at Yale in 1814, admitted to the bar in 1819, and began to practise in Putney, Vt., in 1821. In 1823 he abandoned his profession for the study of theology, and was graduated at Yale divinity-school in 1825. He settled the same year at Stratford, Connecticut, where he had charge of a Congregational church until 1828. In 1819, while a student of law in Heath, Mr. Leavitt organized one of the first Sabbath-schools in western Massachusetts, embracing not only the children, but the entire congregation, all of whom were arranged in classes for religious instruction. He also became interested in the improvement of the public schools. Before he entered the theological seminary he prepared a new reading-book, called “Easy Lessons in Reading” (1823), which met with an extensive sale. He subsequently issued a “Series of Readers” (1847), but these were not as popular. When the American temperance society was formed he became its first secretary, and was one of its travelling agents, in many places delivering the first temperance lecture the people had heard. In 1828 he removed to New York city as secretary of the American seamen's friend society and editor of the “Sailor's Magazine.” He established chapels in Canton, the Sandwich islands, Havre, New Orleans, and other domestic and foreign ports. He also aided in founding the first city temperance society, and became its secretary. He became in 1831 editor and proprietor of the newly established “Evangelist,” which under his management soon grew to be the organ of the more liberal religious movements, and was outspoken on the subjects of temperance and slavery. Mr. Leavitt bore a conspicuous part in the early anti-slavery conflict. His denunciation of slavery cost his paper its circulation in the south and a large proportion of it in the north, well-nigh compelling its suspension. To offset this loss he undertook the difficult feat of reporting in full the revival lectures of Charles G. Finney (q. v.), which, though not a short-hand reporter, he accomplished successfully. The financial crisis of 1837 compelled him, while erecting a new building, to sell out the “Evangelist.” In 1833 he aided in organizing the New York anti-slavery society, and was a member of its executive committee, as well as of that of the National anti-slavery society in which it was merged. He was one of the abolitionists who were obliged to fly for a time from the city to escape mob violence. In 1837 he became editor of the “Emancipator,” which he afterward moved to Boston, and he also published in that city “The Chronicle,” the earliest daily anti-slavery paper. In the convention that met at Albany in 1840 and organized the Liberal party, Mr. Leavitt took an active part, and he was also chairman of the national committee from 1844 till 1847. In 1848 Mr. Leavitt became office-editor of the New York “Independent,” and was connected editorially with it until his death. Mr. Leavitt was an earnest and powerful speaker. In 1855 Wabash college conferred on him the degree of D. D. Dr. Leavitt's correspondence with Richard Cobden, and his “Memoir on Wheat,” setting forth the unlimited capacity of our western territory for the growth and exportation of that cereal, were instrumental in procuring the repeal of the English corn laws. During a visit to Europe he also became much interested in Sir Rowland Hill's system of cheap postage. In 1847 he founded the Cheap postage society of Boston, and in 1848-'9 he labored in Washington in its behalf, for the establishment of a two-cent rate. In 1869 he received a gold medal from the Cobden club of England for an essay on our commercial relations with Great Britain, in which he took an advanced position in favor of free-trade. Besides the works already mentioned, he published a hymn-book for revivals, entitled the “Christian Lyre” (1831). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 649-650.



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



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

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, p. 123; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 57-58, 59, 80-83, 299n8, 300n16; 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 III, 603; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 115; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 384; L. C. Matlack, The History, of American Slavery and Methodism, from 1780 to 1849; and History of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (1849)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 115:

LEE, LUTHER (November 30, 1800-December 13, 1889), clergyman, abolitionist, was a leading figure in the anti-slavery movement within the Methodist Episcopal Church. Born in Schoharie, New York, of humble, illiterate parents, Samuel and Hannah (Williams) Lee, he received no schooling, and from the age of thirteen was dependent on his own resources. He had a vigorous, disputatious mind, however, and as occasion offered he spoke and preached at the little Methodist churches in his community. An elder brother taught him to read, and on July 31, 1825, he married a school-teacher, Mary Miller, who gave him whatever other formal education he received. In 1827, when he was admitted to the Genesee Conference, he was too ignorant to satisfy the examining committee, but he was approved because of his power as a revivalist. After an apprenticeship on frontier circuits in New York, he transferred to the Black River Conference in 1836, where he rapidly advanced to a position-of leadership. He was a fighting reformer, a powerful debater by disposition and training, and the . increasing anti-slavery agitation in the Church early caught his interest. The assassination of Elijah Lovejoy [q.v.] at Alton, Illinois, late in 1837, moved him to declare himself an abolitionist.

Most Methodists of that day did not take kindly to the official abolition organizations. Believing them "important links in the great chain of operations of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches,'' Methodists organized societies of their own in order to "do their benevolent works. in the name of their own denomination and proper character." Accordingly, Wesleyan anti-slavery societies were formed, in the promotion of which Lee engaged with consuming zeal. His efforts were so successful that in 1838 the American Anti-Slavery Society made him their agent in western New York. Describing slavery in language "expressive of the shrieking terrors of death, the gloom of rayless despair, and the glowing fires of hell" (Autobiography, post, p. 210), he met with much violence, which he fronted dauntlessly. In the fall of 1839 he was employed by the Massachusetts abolitionists. He now used all his influence to further the rising agitation for political anti-slavery organization, and in 1840 he took a leading part in founding the Liberty Party.

During these critical years Lee's services were frequently required to defend Methodist clergymen in church trials for participating in abolition activity. Through the board of bishops the Church was making a determined effort to thwart such activity among its ministers; but the dual nature of Methodist polity, with authority exercised both from above through the bishops, and from below through the Conferences, made a peaceful adjustment impossible wherever the Conferences protected the abolitionists. After years of increasing friction, many abolitionists withdrew, and in 1843 they organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, without an episcopacy and on an anti-slavery basis. At the first General Conference of the new denomination, in 1844, Lee was elected president Delegates reported fifteen thousand communicants; . but the denomination never grew larger. That same year Northern Methodists precipitated a division in the church on the slavery issue, and there were no ignore secessions. Lee faithfully served his Church during the two following decades, as editor of its organ, the True Wesleyan., as pastor in New York state, Ohio, and Michigan, and as professor on the faculty of the Wesleyan Methodist school, Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan. In 1867 he returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church and after ten more years' ministry in southern Michigan, he was superannuated, dying at the age of eighty-nine at Flint, Michigan he wrote Universalism Examined and Refuted (1836); Ecclesiastical Manual, or Scriptural Church Government Stated and Defended (1850); Slavery Examined in the Light of the Bible (1855); Elements of Theology (1856); Natural Theology (1866). Their importance is inconsiderable. In 1882 he published Autobiography of the Reverend Luther Lee, D.D. In addition to the above, see Massachusetts Abolitionist, 1839-1840;
[L. C. Matlack, The History, of American Slavery and Methodism, from 1780 to 1849; and History of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (1849); Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church (1890).]

G.H.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, 603:

LEE, Luther, clergyman, born in Schoharie, New York, 30 November, 1800. He joined the Methodist Episcopal church in 1821, soon began to preach, and in 1827 entered the Genesee conference, becoming an itinerant missionary, preacher, and successful temperance lecturer. He began to preach against slavery in 1836, was mobbed several times, and in 1841 established and edited “The New England Christian Advocate,” an anti-slavery journal, at Lowell, Massachusetts. He subsequently edited “The Sword of Truth,” and in 1842 seceded from the Methodist church, began a weekly journal, “The True Wesleyan,” and when the Wesleyan Methodist connection was organized, became pastor of that church in Syracuse, New York. He was the first president of the first general conference of the new church, was editor of the organ of that body, “The True Wesleyan,” till 1852, and after that date was successively pastor of churches in Syracuse and Fulton, New York. In 1854-'5 he edited a periodical entitled “The Evangelical Pulpit.” He became president and professor of theology in the Michigan union college at Leoni in 1856, resigning the next year to officiate in churches in Ohio. From 1864 till 1867 he was connected with Adrian college, Mich., and at the latter date returned to the Methodist Episcopal church, slavery, which was the cause of the organization of the Wesleyan connection, having ceased to exist. Since 1867 he has been a member of the Michigan conference, and is now (1887) superannuated. His publications include “Universalism Examined and Refuted” (New York, 1836); “The Immortality of the Soul” (1846); “Revival Manual” (1850); “Church Polity” (1850); “Slavery Examined in the Light of the Bible” (1855); and “Elements of Theology” (1856). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 603.



LEMOYNE, Francis Julius, 1798-1879, Washington, Pennsylvania, physician, abolitionist leader. Le Moyne became active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s. Was against the colonization movement. Le Moyne was a manager in the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840, 1840-1841. Vice President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1851. In 1840, ran as the vice presidential candidate of the Liberty Party. Also unsuccessfully ran on Pennsylvania abolitionist tickets, 1841, 1844, 1847. Was active in helping fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad. Founded Le Moyne College in 1870 in Memphis, Tennessee.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, p. 25; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 266, 301; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 46; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 109, 111; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 687; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 163)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 163:

LEMOYNE, FRANCIS JULIAN (September 4, 1798-October 14, 1879), physician, abolitionist, advocate of cremation, was the son and grandson of Parisian physicians. His father, John Julius LeMoyne de Villiers, came to Ameri ca with French colonists, among whom he practise d his profession for four years at Gallipolis, Ohio. In 1797 he married Nancy McCully, lately arrived from Ireland, and they removed to Washington, Pennsylvania, where Francis Julius was born. After graduating at Washington College in 1815, he studied medicine first with his father and later at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Returning homeward across the Alleghanies in 1822, he encountered a great snowstorm. The party in the stagecoach were unable to find accommodation at the crowded taverns along the way and so all night pushed forward through intense cold. Reaching Pittsburgh, Francis procured a horse and rode on to Washington. Although he was of robust constitution, after this experience he suffered from chronic rheumatism that did not allow him a night's repose in bed through twenty-nine years.

In 1823 he married Madeleine Romaine Bureau, whom he met at his father's house, whither she had brought a sister from Gallipolis for medical treatment. They had three sons and five daughters. About the time of his marriage, Le Moyne's father in helping others became bankrupt, so that to the physical handicap of the young doctor was added a burden of debt. From friends he was able to borrow money and recover the fine homestead built by his father in 1813, which with its old garden is still a point of interest in Washington. By hard work and frugal living he succeeded in restoring the family fortune after several years. In the decade of the thirties he was an intrepid supporter of the anti-slavery movement, and an able debater in its cause, showing much physical courage in opposing the American Colonization Society, which he believed to be founded in the interests of slavery. He was the candidate of the Liberty Party for the vice-presidency of the United States in 1840, and the candidate of the Abolitionists for the governorship of Pennsylvania in 1841, 1844, and 1847. Later his house became one of the stations of the "Underground Railway," enabling slaves to reach freedom in the North.

When he was about fifty-five, the condition of his health made the active practice of medicine no longer possible for him, and he turned to scientific farming, introducing improved strains of sheep, cattle, and horses into the county. He donated $10,000 to the founding of a public library in his town, and for many years catalogued the books as they were acquired. Deeply concerned in the cause of education, he became in 1830 a trustee of Washington College (after 1865 Washington and Jefferson College) and in 1836, of the Washington Female Seminary at its founding. He gave the American Missionary Association $20,000 for the endowment and erection, on a bluff near Memphis, Tennessee, of the LeMoyne Normal Institute for colored. people, still a successful enterprise. Later he added $5,000 for its equipment. He established two professorships of $20,000 each at Washington and Jefferson College, one in agriculture and correlative branches (1872), the other in applied mathematics (1879). These donations were prompted by the conviction that for students not entering the learned professions more profit was to be derived from the physical sciences than from Latin and Greek.

About 1874, in France and Italy, there was a sudden rise of interest in favor of cremation as a means of disposing of the dead, and LeMoyne became its first prominent advocate in America. in 1876 he erected the first crematory in the United States, situated on his own property on a hill overlooking Washington, where it stands today. The first public cremation took place there on December 6, 1876. It was that of a Bavarian nobleman, Baron Joseph Henry Louis de Palm who had come to America in 1852 and had died in New York. The event aroused much, comment at the time. The body of LeMoyne himself was the third to be cremated, and up to the year 1900 there had been forty-one cremations in that place: since then none have occurred.

[Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1893); Alfred Creigh. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (2nd ed.. 1871); Boyd Crumrine, History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1882); E. R. Forrest. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1926): Philadelphia Record, October 1, 1879; information from LeMoyne's daughter, Mrs. George W. Reed of Washington, Pennsylvania]

E. M. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 687:

LE MOYNE, Francis Julius, abolitionist, born in Washington, Pennsylvania, 4 September, 1798; died there, 14 October, 1879. His father was a royalist refugee from France, who practised medicine in Washington. The son was graduated at the college there in 1815, studied medicine with his father and at the Medical college in Philadelphia, and began practice in his native town in 1822. In 1835 he assisted in organizing an anti-slavery society in Washington, and from that time entered earnestly into the abolition movement. He was the first candidate of the Liberty party for vice-president, his nomination having been proposed in a meeting at Warsaw, New York, 13 November, 1839, and confirmed by a national convention at Albany, 1 April, 1840. Though he and James G. Birney, the nominee for president, declined the nomination, they received 7,059 votes in the election of 1840. In 1841, 1843, and 1847 Le Moyne was the candidate of the same party for governor of Pennsylvania. At a later period he became widely known as an advocate of cremation. He erected in 1876, near Washington, Pennsylvania, the first crematory in the United States. Dr. Le Moyne founded the public library in Washington, gave $25,000 for a colored normal school near Memphis, Tennessee, and endowed professorships of agriculture and applied mathematics in Washington college. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 687.



LEWIS, Samuel, Ohio, Officer Liberty party

(Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847. Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



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

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 334; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 294, 307; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 677-678; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 368; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 848; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 7, p. 358; Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 368:

LOGUEN, JERMAIN WESLEY (c. 1813- September 30, 1872), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, was born near Manscoe's Creek in Davidson County, Tennessee, the natural son of a white resident, David Logue, and a slave mother, Cherry, who had been kidnapped in Ohio. The story of the experiences of Cherry and h er family forms one of the blackest pictures of the slavery system. Growing up without schooling, with many hardships and few glimpses of the sunnier aspects of life, Jermain long planned to break away from slavery, but determined never to buy his freedom. Although his first attempt at escape failed, the sale of his sister aroused anew his resolution. The account of this flight through Kentucky and southern Indiana (c. 1834-35), antecedent to the organization of the Underground Railroad, shows that the preliminary surveys for that system had been made and that a few lines already ran through the homes of Quakers as unerringly as railroads run through the large towns and cities. Jermain crossed from Detroit to Canada, making his way to Hamilton, Ont., in search of work. Writing to Frederick Douglass in May 1856 (see The Reverend J. W. Loguen, p. 339), he refers to this episode as "twenty-one years ago-the very winter I left my chains in Tennessee" and to himself as "a boy twenty-one years of age (as near as I know my age)." This statement furnishes the best available guide to the chronology of his early life.

In Canada, he learned to read, while by hard farm labor and thrift, in the face of great discouragement, he made a start towards competency. After two years as porter in a hotel at Rochester, New York, he was able to study at Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, where he received the only schooling he had. He then opened a school for colored children in Utica, and later one in Syracuse. At Busti, New York, in November 1840 he married Caroline Storum, a woman with some negro blood. Settling in Syracuse shortly afterward, he became one of the local managers of the Underground Railroad. He subsequently became an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, with successive pastorates (1843-50) in Bath, Ithaca, Syracuse, and Troy. He was presiding elder of the last-named district. He had begun to call himself Loguen, and through the persuasion of his Methodist friends he adopted Wesley as his middle name.

As a speaker against slavery he aroused much interest. Citizens of Cortland, New York, raised a fund to purchase his mother, but her master, Manasseth Logue, a brother of David, refused to sell her unless Jermain would buy his freedom also. His liberty imperiled by the Fugitive-slave Act of 1850, he left Troy and returned to the comparative safety of Syracuse, where his home again became an important station of the Underground Railroad. During the decade before the Civil War, he was a central figure in the activities of that organization, especially such as centered around his Peterboro neighbor, Gerrit Smith [q.v.]. In various ways he assisted some fifteen hundred fugitives. Indicted for participation in the "Jerry rescue" case (1851), he sought temporary refuge in Canada. Just before John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Loguen went again into Ontario with John Brown, Jr., in behalf of the League of Liberty and possibly also to further plans of the elder Brown. In 1864, Loguen declined election as a bishop of his denomination, but accepted in 1868, and was assigned to the Fifth District (Alleghany and Kentucky conferences). After two years he was transferred to the Second District (Genesee, Philadelphia, and Baltimore conferences). In 1872 he was reelected bishop and appointed to take charge of mission work on the Pacific Coast, but he died at Saratoga Springs, New York, before he could go to his field.

[The main source of information is The Reverend J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life (t.p. 1859, but the book contains letters dated 1860); although it is written in the third person, its detailed information indicates autobiography. A manuscript note by a Syracuse genealogist in a copy at the Syracuse Public Library states that Loguen died in his sixty-third year, which would place his birth c. 1810. See also W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1898); J. W. Hood, One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1895); death notice in New York Tribune, October 1, 1872.]

W. H. A.



LORD, Nathan, 1792-1870, Hanover, New Hampshire, abolitionist, clergyman. Founding member American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1833-1834. Supporter of the Liberty Party. Later supported slavery as sanctioned in the bible.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 409:

LORD, NATHAN (November 28, 1792-September 9, 1870), Congregational clergyman and college president, was born at South Berwick, Maine, the son of John and Mehitabel (Perkins) Lord and a descendant of Nathan Lord of Kent, England, who settled in Kittery, Maine, about 1652. He was educated at the local academy and at Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1809. After two years as a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, he began the study of theology, completing his work in the seminary at Andover in 1815. In May 1816 he was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Amherst, New Hampshire, and on July 24 of the same year he married Elizabeth King Leland of Saco, Maine. His pastorate lasted twelve years and he was considered one of the ablest and most successful ministers in the state. Certain liberals, however, withdrew from membership in his church and formed a separate congregation.

In 1821 he was elected a trustee of Dartmouth College and in 1828, president. At this time conditions there were far from satisfactory, since the institution was still feeling the effects of its contest with the state in respect to its charter (1816-19). The new president assumed the task of rehabilitation with notable success and great improvements were soon in evidence; but his administration as a whole can hardly be considered noteworthy for financial or other material progress. He was not a pioneer in educational policy, although one innovation, the abolition of honors and prizes, introduced in 1830, attracted some attention-mostly unfavorable. He was an able executive and disciplinarian, however, and like his contemporary Mark Hopkins [q.v.] at Williams, a great teacher, whose character exercised a deep influence on students and associates. For many years he conducted courses in theology and ethics.

Intellectually, he represented a school which was rapidly passing, and his views on the great question of the day-slavery-eventually cost him his position. He had at first supported the Liberty Party, but soon after the Mexican War, an event which drove many other New Englanders into the anti-slavery movement, he became a decided supporter of slavery as an institution. His thesis was simple and logical. Slavery was sanctioned by the Bible, it was therefore divinely ordained and not to be questioned on political, humanitarian, or economic grounds. He had no sympathy with "a philosophy which makes happiness the end of living," or with "the sentiment and romance which had infected the descendants of the Puritans." His views on the question are well stated in Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of all, Denominations on Slavery (1854), A Northern Presbyter's Second Letter ... (1855), and in A Letter to I. M. Conrad, Esq., on Slavery (1859). The last-named first appeared in the Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond, Virginia, and denounced the recent raid at Harpers Ferry. A True Picture of Abolition (1863) subjected him to widespread censure, and in July 1863, the trustees, while refusing to remove him from office, expressed such disapproval that he felt obliged to resign. In a dignified statement he defended his views and denied the right of the board to impose any religious, political, or ethical test not authorized by the charter. In spite of the intensity of his views, however, he had what many men of his type have lacked, a genuine sense of humor and a large measure of tolerance and kindliness. Furthermore, he was fond of outdoor life, had athletic tastes and good health, and whatever he may have thought of ultimate human destiny, he enjoyed association with his fellows.

After retirement he spent his last years in Hanover, his friends having provided an annuity in recognition of his long and scantily remunerated services. His last publication, a letter to the alumni on the occasion of the college centennial in 1869, continues to emphasize his opposition to the current philosophy which stressed "the ability, not the weakness of man; his dignity, and not his sinfulness and shame; his rights, and not his duties; and the reorganization of society upon the basis of universal freedom, equality and fraternity."

[Many of his addresses, sermons, and papers were published in pamphlet form and the library of Dartmouth College has, it is believed, a complete collection of manuscript material dealing with his administration. See also C. C. Lord, A History of the Descendants of Nathan Lord of Ancient Kittery, Maine. (1912); J. K. Lord, History of Dartmouth College (1913); Proceedings New Hampshire Historical Society, volume IV (1906); D. F. Secomb, History of the Town of Amherst, New Hampshire (1883).]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888:

LORD, Nathan, clergyman, born in Berwick, Maine, 28 November, 1793; died in Hanover, N.H., 9 September, 1870. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1809, and at Andover theological seminary in 1815. He was pastor of the Congregational church in Amherst, New Hampshire, from 1816 till 1828, and at the latter date, on the resignation of Reverend Bennett Tyler, became president of Dartmouth. Under his administration the professorships of Greek literature and language, of astronomy and meteorology, of modern languages, of intellectual philosophy, and of natural history were established, three new halls and a chapel were built, the observatory was added, the “Chandler scientific department” was founded by the gift of $50,000 from Abiel Chandler, and 1,824 students were graduated. He retired in 1863. Dr. Lord upheld the institution of slavery, and thus incurred the censure of most northern people; but while he advocated his views in letters and sermons. Dartmouth was the only college in the United States for many years where colored students were admitted, and while under his care they were treated with uniform kindness and courtesy. He inclined to the old-school system of theology, and to a literal interpretation of the prophesies. Dartmouth gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1864, and Bowdoin that of D. D. in 1828. He occasionally contributed to theological reviews, edited with an introductory notice, the selected sermons of his son, Reverend John King Lord (Boston, 1850), and published numerous sermons, essays, and letters. Among the latter are “Letter to Reverend Daniel Dana, D. D., on Park's ‘Theology of New England’” (1852); “An Essay on the Millennium,” read to the General convention of New Hampshire (1854); and “Two Letters to Ministers of all Denominations on Slavery” (1854-'5), in which he endeavored, by biblical arguments, to prove the lawfulness of that institution. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV.



LOVEJOY, Joseph C., Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Corresponding Secretary, 1846, Executive Committee, 1846,1850, member of the Liberty Party.

(Sinha, 2016, p. 465; Minutes, Convention of the Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)



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

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 6, 11, 13, 90-116, 265-270; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 186; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4, 48, 91, 131, 188; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 141, 196; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 34-35; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 435; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 14, p. 6; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 435-436:

LOVEJOY, OWEN. Elijah Lovejoy had just begun active abolition propaganda and Owen speedily enlisted in the anti-slavery cause. In the growing excitement in Alton he stood steadfastly by his brother, and on the final tragic night after Elijah had been killed, Owen knelt beside his body and vowed "never to forsake the cause that had been sprinkled with his brother's blood." After completing his theological studies, he served as minister of the Congregational church at Princeton, Illinois, for seventeen years. In January 1843 he married a widow, Eunice (Storrs) Dunham, who bore him seven children. He was a popular and devoted minister, but persistently kept his vow, never losing an opportunity to testify to the wrong of slavery. During the decade from 1840 to 1850 he spoke fearlessly for the cause wherever he could find a hearing, despite the Illinois state law prohibiting abolition meetings. Frequently he encountered violence, but his unflinching boldness and the memorable name he bore saved him from injury. His colleague in the Illinois agitation, Ichabod Codding, was an abler orator, but Lovejoy, more than any other man, advanced abolition sentiment in the state.

During the next decade, Lovejoy became increasingly influential; and in 1854, when the Republican organization began, he was elected to the state legislature to lead the forces of freedom. In Illinois the new party embraced antiforeign "Know-Nothings" and Germans representing the hundred thousand foreign-born in Illinois, disgruntled Democrats and their enemies- old-line Whigs, and, feared by all, the Abolitionists. Lovejoy believed that only one man in Illinois could discipline this "rag-tag and bob-tail gang" into party organization, and that man was Abraham Lincoln. He urged Lincoln to lead the new movement, but Lincoln replied that the time was not yet ripe. He even tried to force Lincoln's hand by placing his name at the head of the state central committee for the Republican party. However, when Lincoln came to the Bloomington convention in 1856, it was Lovejoy who compelled the radicals to relinquish their abolition program and to accept Lincoln's conservative leadership. The same year Lovejoy was elected to Congress. There and in the Republican conventions at Pittsburgh and Philadelphia he was a radical leader; but in Illinois he was still Lincoln's henchman. When Lincoln stood for the Senate, Lovejoy put all his influence at his disposal. It was a dangerous gift. If Lincoln's opponents could "make Lincoln hang on Lovejoy's coat tails for Republican strength," the semblance of a bargain with Lovejoy would "choke Lincoln to death." Only Lovejoy's self-effacement prevented this catastrophe. Though he stumped the state in Lincoln's interest, he suffered Lincoln's repudiation of abolitionism gladly. While his contest with Douglas was lost, Lincoln thereby captured radical support, without losing his name for conservatism, for the presidential contest two years later.

In Congress Lovejoy assailed slavery and the South with a violence equaled only by Thaddeus Stevens and Sumner; but when Lincoln came to Washington, Lovejoy once more became his loyal supporter. To William Lloyd Garrison's attacks on Lincoln in 1862 he made fierce rejoinder, and to Thaddeus Stevens' proposals to treat the defeated South as a conquered province, he replied in the spirit of Lincoln's magnanimous reconstruction program. To him fell the honor of proposing the bill by which slavery in all the territories of the United States was abolished forever. He heard at last the Emancipation Proclamation, and died the next year. Lincoln wrote (J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, 1894, II, p. 527): "My personal acquaintance with him ... has been one of increasing respect and esteem, ending, with his life, in no less than affection on my part. ... To the day of his death, it would scarcely wrong any other to say he was my most generous friend."

[See the Liberator, 1862-63; the National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1840-58; the Philanthropist, 1836-42; Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln (1928); J.C. and Owen Lovejoy, Memoir of the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy (1838); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); C. E. Lovejoy, The Lovejoy Genealogy (1930); Addresses on the Death of Hon. Owen Lovejoy, Delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, on Monday, March 28, I864 (1864); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 752-54, 36 Congress, 1 Session, App., pp. 202-07, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 194; New York Tribune, Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), March 28, 1864.]

G. H.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 34-35:

LOVEJOY, Owen, abolitionist, born in Albion, Maine, 6 January, 1811; died in Brooklyn, New York, 25 March, 1864, worked on his father's farm till he was eighteen years old, and then entered Bowdoin, but left before graduation, emigrated to Alton, Illinois, and studied theology. He was present when his brother was murdered, and was moved by that event to devote himself to the overthrow of slavery. He became pastor of a Congregational church at Princeton, Illinois, in 1838. Although anti-slavery meetings were forbidden by the laws of Illinois, he openly held them in all parts of the state, announcing at each one the time and place for the next meeting. This course subjected him to frequent fines and to violence and intimidation; but by his eloquence and persistency he won many adherents, and eventually the repressive laws were repealed. He resigned his pastoral charge in 1854 on being elected a member of the legislature. In 1856 he was sent to congress, and was continued there by re-election until his death. At the beginning of the civil war he delivered in the house of representatives a remarkable speech against slavery, in which he recounted the circumstances of his brother's death. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 34-35.



MAHAN, Asa, 1799-1889, Ohio, clergyman, abolitionist, president of Oberlin College 1835-1850. Vice President, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1834-1835.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 165; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 218, 403n25; Sinha, 2016, p. 466; Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume IV, p. 176; Dictionary of American Biography; Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 208; Abolitionist; Minutes General Liberty Convention Buffalo, New York, October 20, 1847: 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 6, Pt. 2, p. 208:

MAHAN, ASA (November 9, 1799-April 4, 1889), Congregational clergyman, college president, was born at Vernon, New York, the son of Captain Samuel Mahan and his second wife, Anna Dana, of Worcester, Massachusetts. From his twelfth to his seventeenth year the family lived in western New York, then a pioneer region. Home missionaries from Connecticut were frequently entertained by the Mahans. The mother, who was intensely interested in religious subjects, would propound theological questions to the visitors, and the boy's "heart would leap," he tells us, at the prospect of the discussion. From his eighth year he was much given to religious thought, and as a youth accepted unhesitatingly the high Calvinistic system in which he was trained. When seventeen years old he was appointed to teach a winter school in a district near his home. It was arranged that his father should have the son's wages that winter, after which the latter should be free to apply his earnings to obtaining an education, which it was his consuming desire to secure. During this winter he passed through a period of agony over the question as to whether he was "one of the elect," from which condition he emerged into a free Christian experience, resulting in a radical modification of his Calvinism by the adoption of a doctrine of full moral freedom. Teaching school year after year during the winter months, he pursued his studies at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, graduating in 1824. Entering Andover Theological Seminary, he completed his course there in 1827. He was an active participant in the great revivals from 1824 to 1832. At New Brunswick, New Jersey, May 9, 1828, he married Mary H. Dix.

He was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Pittsford, New York, November 10, 1829. Having a naturally weak voice, he subjected it to a self-devised training until it became adequate to the most exacting requirements of public speaking. In 1831 he was called to the pastorate of th~ Sixth Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. As trustee of the recently established Lane Theological Seminary, he dissented vigorously from the action of the trustees interdicting discussion of the question of slavery. In 1835 he was elected first president of Oberlin College, founded in 1833. Eighty of the Lane students followed him to Oberlin, which led to the establishment of a theological department in the college. For some months the president and his family lived in a log house, the first which had been built in the Oberlin colony.

Mahan threw himself with ardor into the work of the young college, did much speaking and preaching, and taught philosophy with enthusiasm, giving an enduring impetus to this study at Oberlin. In philosophy he was intuitionist of the Scottish "common sense" school. He shared student manual labor, including work on the highway (Autobiography, p. 275). His acceptance of the presidency of Oberlin he had made conditional upon its reception of students without discrimination as to color. He was, moreover, always proud of having been the first college president to give degrees to women on the same conditions as to men. A believer in fullest freedom of discussion, he was sometimes suspected of "a greater facility in conviction than in conciliation" (J. H. Fairchild, post, p. 278). He was an impressive figure, with solid frame and full-bearded face. His administration in the main was successful; but in 1850 he accepted a call to take the direction of Cleveland University, which friends of his were projecting. Since this enterprise did not succeed, in 1855 he resumed pastoral work, serving Congregational churches, at Jackson, Michigan (1855-57), and at Adrian, Michigan (1857-60). He was connected with Adrian College as professor and from 1860 to 1871 as president. His wife died in 1863 and in 1866 he married Mrs. Mary E. Chase. The later years of his long life he pas sed in England, preaching to large congregations, advocating Christian perfection, editing a monthly magazine, The Divine Life, and issuing volume after volume on philosophy and religion. He died at Eastbourne, England. His published works include Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection (1839), A System of Intellectual Philosophy (copyright 1845), Doctrine of the Will (1845), The True Believer; His Character, Duty and Privileges (1847), The Science of Moral Philosophy (1848), Election and Influence of the Holy Spirit (1851), Modern Mysteries Explained and Exposed (1855), The Science of Logic (1857), Science of Natural Theology (1867), Theism and Anti-Theism in Their Relations to Science (1872), The Phenomena of Spiritualism Scientifically Explained and Exposed (1875), A Critical History of the Late American War (1877), The System of Mental Philosophy (1882), A Critical History of Philosophy (1883), Autobiography, Intellectual, Moral and Spiritual (London, 1882).

[In addition to Mahan's Autobiography, see E. H. Fairchild, Historical Sketch of Oberlin College (1868); J. H. Fairchild, Oberlin, the Colony and the College (1883); D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (1898), Oberlin Review, April 30, 1889; The Times (London), April 10, 1889.]

E.D.E.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 176:

MAHAN, Asa, clergyman, born in Vernon, New York, 9 November, 1800. He was graduated at Hamilton college in 1824, and at Andover theological seminary in 1827. On 10 November, 1829, he was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Pittsford, New York, and in 1831 he was called to the pastorate of a Presbyterian church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He accepted the presidency of Oberlin in 1835, with the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy, and the assistant professorship of theology, but after fifteen years was chosen president of Cleveland university, Cleveland, Ohio, and professor of mental and moral philosophy there. In 1855 he resumed pastoral work, and had charge of Congregational parishes at Jackson in 1855-'7 and at Adrian in 1857-'60. He was president of Adrian college, Mich., in 1860-'71, and since then has resided in England. President Mahan has received the degree of D. D. from Hillsdale in 1858, and that of LL. D. from Adrian in 1877. He has been an active advocate of the religious views that are known as Perfectionist, and has published “Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection” (Boston, 1839). His other works include “System of Intellectual Philosophy” (New York, 1845); “The Doctrine of the Will” (Oberlin, 1846); “The True Believer: his Character, Duties, and Privileges” (New York, 1847); “The Science of Moral Philosophy” (Oberlin, 1848); “Election and the Influence of the Holy Spirit” (New York, 1851); “Modern Mysteries Explained and Exposed” (Boston, 1855); “The Science of Logic” (New York, 1857); “Science of Natural Theology” (Boston, 1867); “Theism and Anti-Theism in their Relations to Science” (Cleveland, 1872); “The Phenomena of Spiritualism scientifically Explained and Exposed” (New York, 1876); “Critical History of the late American War” (1877); “A System of Mental Philosophy” (Chicago, 1882); and “Critical History of Philosophy” (New York 1883). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 176.



MASTS, C. D. B., Brownhelm.

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



MATHEWS, S. Ohio, officer in the Liberty party.

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



MERRICK, M., Liberty party officer

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



MORRIS, Thomas, 1776-1844, Virginia, first abolitionist Senator, vice president of the Liberty Party, abolitionist, Ohio lawmaker 1806-1830, Chief Justice of the State of Ohio 1830-1833, U.S. Senator 1833-183?. Vice President of the American Colonization Society (ACS), 1839-1841. Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS), 1840-1844. As an abolitionist he actively opposed the extension of slavery. He believed slavery was a moral evil, a national calamity, the greatest national sin. He also fought for right to petition Congress against slavery.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 92, 135, 243, 244, 286, 300; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 11, 18, 23-24, 27; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 48; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 15, p. 916; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 226-227)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 226-227:

MORRIS, THOMAS (January 3, 1776-December 7, 1844), senator from Ohio, was the fifth child in the family of twelve children of a Baptist preacher of Welsh descent, Isaac Morris, and of Ruth (Henton) Morris and his wife. He was the descendant of Thomas Morris who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. Soon after his birth in Berks County, Pennsylvania, his parents settled near Clarksburg, now in West Virginia. With the exception of three months in a common-school he was educated by himself and by his abolitionist mother and father who had a library composed of three Bibles, four New Testaments, a work on elocution, and a few other books. In 1795 he moved to Columbia, now part of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied and worked as clerk in a s tore for the Reverend John Smith, one of the first two United States senators from Ohio. He married Rachael Davis of Welsh descent on November 19, 1797, and moved to Bethel, Ohio, in 1804, where he established his permanent home. He became the father of three daughters and eight sons, one of whom preached at his funeral in the Bethel cemetery and two of whom were elected later to Congress as Democrats. While leading the hard life of a frontier brick-maker he read Blackstone at night by the light of his log-cabin fireplace.

He entered politics after his admission to the bar in 1804 and was elected to the state legislature, where in 1806 he began fifteen terms of service as a state legislator, in the House of Representatives for the fifth, seventh, ninth, tenth, and nineteenth sessions from 1806 to 1821, and in the Senate for the twelfth, thirteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-fourth to twenty-seventh, thirtieth, and thirty-first sessions from 1813 to 1833. He was chosen judge of the state supreme court in 1809, but later legislation prevented his qualifying. In 1828, with Samuel Medary [q.v.], he established the Ohio Sun to support Andrew Jackson for president. After his defeat for Congress in 1832 the Ohio legislature elected him United States senator to serve a full term, 1833-39. He was an able speaker in spite of his diffidence. He wielded great power over juries with speeches fill ed with Biblical quotations. He was a stanch partisan but not of the pro-slavery wing of the Democracy. True Democracy meant to him the supremacy of the Bible in a society wherein men harmonized their lives with the laws of nature. His political doctrine s were determined by his legalistic and moralistic temperament. He opposed lotteries, chartered monopolies, and imprisonment for debt, and he advocated temperance, the prohibition of alcohol, freedom of conscience in religion, education at state expense, and the recall of judges. As a Unionist he denounced nullification and secession as revolutionary and destructive of American liberty; as an expansionist and abolitionist he boldly opposed the extension of slavery. He believed slavery was a moral evil, a national calamity, the greatest national sin. At a time when it was political suicide in Ohio to be an aggressive radical he incurred the condemnation of the South and lost the support of tactful politicians in his own state by his introduction of petitions in the United States Senate to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Probably his greatest speech was a defense of the abolitionists that he made in the Senate on February 9, 1839, in answer to a severe condemnation of their principles and tactics by Henry Clay (Congressional Globe, 25 Congress, 3 Session, 180-88, app., 167-75). In 1840 he went home ostracized, contemned, and martyred to his cause. The threats of mobs and riotous disturbances did not deter him in his anti-slavery crusade from 1841 to 1844. He was active in the campaign and election of 1844 as the nominee for the vice-presidency of the Liberty party and died of apoplexy soon afterward. His greatest contributions were made as chairman of judiciary committees on which he served for many years and as the abolitionist example and preceptor of the Ohio trio, Salmon P. Chase, Joshua R. Giddings, and Benjamin Wade.

[B. F. Morris, The Life of Thomas Morris (1856); C. B. Galbreath, History of Ohio (1925), volume II; The Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery … of the State of Ohio, volume I (1883); Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio; centennial ed., volume I (1889); J. B. Swing, "Thomas Morris," Ohio Arch. and Historical Society Quarterly, January, 1902; Ibid., July 1922.]

W. E. S-h.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 418:

MORRIS, Thomas, senator, born in Augusta county, Virginia, 3 January, 1776; died in Bethel, Ohio, 7 December, 1844. His father was a Baptist clergyman of Welsh descent. The son removed to Columbia, Ohio, in 1795, entered the service, as a farm-hand, of Reverend John Smith, first U. S. senator from Ohio, and in 1800 settled in Clermont county. While engaged in farming be studied law, and in 1804 was admitted to the bar. He was elected to the legislature in 1806, was continuously a member for twenty-four years, became eminent in his profession, was a judge of the supreme court, and was chosen U. S. senator in 1832. He was an ardent opponent of slavery, engaged in important debates with John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay in defence of the right of petition and the duty of the government to favor abolition, and was active in support of the freedom of the press. His anti-slavery sentiments being distasteful to the Democratic party, by whom he was elected, he was not returned for a second term, and in March, 1839, he retired. He was nominated for vice-president by the Liberal party at the Buffalo convention in August, 1844. His death occurred a month after the election. Mr. Morris was an energetic politician, and a fearless champion of liberty and the right of individual opinion. See his “Life and Letters,” edited by his son, Benjamin F. Morris (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1855). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 418.



MORSE, Edward, Brownhelm.

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



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

(Bacon, 1999; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 140, 149, 154, 156, 157, 172, 176; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 3, 13, 31, 68, 77, 94, 186, 188, 189, 201, 204, 224, 225, 226, 241, 289, 314, 326, 350, 374, 378; Palmer, 2001; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 47, 157, 387-388, 416, 464, 519; 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. 18, 26, 43, 74, 159-162, 175-176, 286-287, 301-302, 327-328; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 441; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 288-290; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 595-597; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 16, p. 21; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 310-311; Cromwell, Otelia. Lucretia Mott. 1958; 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 7, Pt. 1, pp. 288-290:

MOTT, LUCRETIA COFFIN (January 3, 1793- November 11, 1880), reformer and preacher of the Society of Friends, was born on the island of Nantucket, the descendant of Tristram Coffin who emigrated from Devonshire, England, and became one of the original purchasers of the island. She was the second cousin of Isaac and John Coffin [qq.v.]. Her parents were Quakers, as were most of her forebears for some generations. Her mother, Anna Folger, a descendant of Peter Folger [q.v.], was an energetic, capable, conservative woman whose family had stood firmly on the British side during the Revolution. Thomas Coffin, her father, appears to have been of a milder, more democratic bent. During her early childhood he was a ship's captain who voyaged to China, but about 1803 he gave up the sea and took his wife and six children to Boston, where he engaged in business. This journey, when Lucretia was eleven years old, was her first trip to the "continent," as the islanders called the mainland. In Boston she was sent to the public school for a time because her father thought his children ought to acquire democratic sympathies, but at the age of thirteen she entered the Friends' boarding school at Nine Partners near Poughkeepsie, New York. There she spent almost two years in study and two more as assistant and teacher in the girls' section before she returned to her father's home, now removed to Philadelphia. Shortly afterward a fellow pupil and teacher at Nine Partners, James Mott [q.v.], joined her father in business and on April 10, 1811, she was married to him. They had six children, of whom five lived to adult life.

The death of an infant son in 1817 gave her thoughts a decidedly religious turn. The next year she began to speak in meeting and soon showed such marked gifts that she was made an "acknowledged minister" of the Society. But her views were so liberal as, before long, to excite some criticism. She sympathized with Elias Hicks, whose teachings brought about a controversy in the Society of Friends early in the 1820's, and after the separation and reorganization in the Society she, like her husband, aligned herself with the liberal or Hicksite group and remained thereafter a member of it. She became known as one of the most eloquent preachers in Philadelphia and traveled extensively to speak at Quaker meetings in different parts of the country. With William Penn she felt that "men are to be judged by their likeness to Christ, rather than by their notions of Christ" (Hallowell, post, p. 92) and consequently in her religious discourses she emphasized righteousness and ignored technical theology. Many of her sermons and addresses were concerned directly with reform subjects, especially temperance, peace, woman's rights, and antislavery.

Her most notable work was connected with, the question of woman's rights and antislavery. Her interest in woman's wrongs and woman's rights began at Nine Partners school, where, merely because of her sex, she was paid but half as much salary as were the men doing the same work. In the years that followed she occasionally spoke in public on the unjust status of women. Her interest in the subject was further roused by the refusal of the world anti-slavery convention held in London in 1840 officially to recognize herself and a number of other women who were delegates from the United States. One result of this rebuff was the first woman's rights convention, held on July 19 and 20, 1848, in the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Seneca Falls, New York, at which was formally launched the woman's rights movement in the United States. The chief promoters of the gathering were herself and Elizabeth Cady Stanton [q.v.]. Her greatest interest, however, was the abolition of slavery, to the importance of which Elias Hicks first roused her. When she first began to speak against it, slavery was defended by many Friends, and, consequently, her activities led to persistent but futile efforts to depose her from the ministry and to drop her from the Society. She attended the convention that met in Philadelphia in 1833 and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Immediately afterward she helped form the Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, of which she was president during most of its existence. At the anti-slavery gathering of 1840 in London she made her influence felt, in spite of her failure to be recognized as a delegate, and she was referred to as the lioness of the convention. Following the passage of the new fugitive-slave law, she and her husband gave much attention to the protection of runaway bondmen, to whom the Mott home was an asylum.

In 1857 the family moved from Philadelphia to a quiet farm place called "Roadside" near the city, but she kept up her interest in preaching and in various reform movements, especially in activities for improving the condition of the negro. Her last public address was made in May 1880 at the Philadelphia yearly meeting of the Society of Friends. She was sprightly, impulsive, cheerful, and energetic, and, though very fond of approbation, showed firmness and courage in what she believed to be right. In h er busy life she found time to be a good cook, was a careful housekeeper equal to the many emergencies incident to a growing family, and was able to manage a large and hospitable household with a grace to be envied by many women of lesser attainment in the world of affairs.

[James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters, ed. by A. D. Hallowell (1884); History of Woman Suffrage, ed. by E. C. Stanton (6 volumes, 1881-1922), esp. sketch in volume I; T. C. Cornell, Adam and Anne Mott (1890); New York Tribune, November 12, 1880.)

M. W. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 441:

MOTT, Lucretia, reformer, born on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, 3 January, 1793; died near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 11 November, 1880, was descended through her father, Captain Thomas Coffin, from one of the original purchasers of the island. When she was eleven years old her parents removed to Boston, Massachusetts. She was educated in the school where Mr. Mott was teaching, and became a teacher there at the age of fifteen. In 1809 she joined her parents, who had removed to Philadelphia, where she married in 1811. In 1817 she took charge of a small school in Philadelphia, and in 1818 appeared in the ministry of the Friends, and soon became noted for the clearness, refinement, and eloquence of her discourses. In the division of the society, in 1827, she adhered to the Hicksite branch. She early became interested in the movement against slavery, and remained one of its most prominent and persistent advocates until the emancipation. In 1833 she assisted in the formation at Philadelphia of the American anti-slavery society, though, owing to the ideas then accepted as to the activities of women, she did not sign the declaration that was adopted. Later, for a time, she was active in the formation of female anti-slavery organizations. In 1840 she went to London as a delegate from the American anti-slavery society to the World's anti-slavery convention, but it was there decided to admit no women. She was received, however, with cordiality, formed acquaintance with those most active in the movement in Great Britain, and made various addresses. The action of the convention in excluding women excited indignation, and led to the establishment of woman's rights journals in England and France, and to the movement in the United States, in which Mrs. Mott took an active part. She was one of the four women that called the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and subsequently devoted part of her efforts to the agitation for improving the legal and political status of women. She held frequent meetings with the colored people, in whose welfare and advancement she felt deep interest, and was for several years president of the Pennsylvania peace society. In the exercise of her “gift” as a minister, she made journeys through New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and into Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, where she did not refrain from denouncing slavery. She was actively interested in the Free religious associations formed in Boston about 1868, and in the Woman's medical college in Philadelphia. See her “Life,” with that of her husband, edited by her granddaughter, Anna Davis Hallowell (Boston, 1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 441.

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.