T-V: Tappan through Van Vleet

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

TAPPAN, Arthur, 1786-1865, New York City, merchant, radical abolitionist leader, educator. Arthur Tappan and his brother, Lewis, were among the most important supporters of the abolitionist cause in America. Arthur was one of the founders of Oberlin College, in Ohio, and he endowed Lane Seminary, in Cincinnati. In 1828, the brothers established the anti-slavery newspaper, The Emancipator. Arthur endowed the newspaper and paid the salary of the editor and the cost of publication. Co-founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Manager, 1833-1837, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1833-1840 of the AASS. Arthur contributed $1,000 a month for several years for the maintenance of the Society. President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Member of the Executive Committee, 1840-1855. The Tappan brothers also were active in aiding fugitive slaves. This incurred the wrath of Southern slaveholders.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005; Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, pp. 84, 89; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 286; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 26, 40, 55, 58, 60-61, 63-64, 68, 84, 132, 262; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 4, 8, 9, 14-18, 21, 38-41, 44, 48, 51, 55, 71, 107, 129, 134, 151, 152, 153, 200, 234, 235, 242, 285, 293, 340; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 106, 161, 162, 163, 166, 320, 362; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 73, 75, 102, 114; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 33; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 298-300; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 311; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 320-321; Tappan, Lewis. Life of Arthur Tappan. New York, Hurd and Houghton: 1870).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 298-300:

TAPPAN, ARTHUR (May 22, 1786-July 23, 1865), philanthropist, abolitionist, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, the eighth of eleven children of Benjamin and Sarah (Homes) Tappan. Benjamin and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.] were his brothers. Reared in a serious, pious household, he attended the town school until the age of fifteen, when he was given a clerkship with Sewall & Salisbury, hardware and dry-goods dealers in Boston. Here for a time he sat under the preaching of William Ellery Channing. He entered business for himself as a dry-goods importer at the age of twenty-one, establishing the firm of Tappan & Sewall in Portland, Maine, with a nephew of one of his former employers. Some two years later he moved his business to Montreal, where he married Frances Antill, September 18, 1810. To them were born two sons, one of whom died in infancy, and six daughters.

Returning to the United States after the outbreak of the War of 1812, Tappan struggled against difficulties for several years before, in 1826, he started his most successful enterprise a silk jobbing firm in New York in which he was joined two years later by his brother Lewis. Although he met with various reverses, he came to be esteemed a wealthy man. He attributed his success to the fact that he charged a fixed uniform price for articles, a practice not then customary. "I had but one price," he said, "and sold for cash or short credit" (L. Tappan, Life, post, p. 70). Heavily overstocked in a period of falling prices, the firm of Arthur Tappan & Company was forced to close its doors during the panic of 1837, but in eighteen months its creditors had all been paid.

As soon as he began to accumulate wealth Tappan began "to reflect seriously upon his obligations as a STEWARD of the Lord" (Life, p. 62). He gave generously of his substance and of his time, strength, and executive ability, to a multitude of religious and humanitarian causes. He was a supporter of the American Sunday School Union, the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the American Education Society, and the American Home Missionary Society, and held office in most of these organizations. He was concerned in the movement for stricter Sabbath observance, the temperance crusade, and the fight against tobacco. In 1827 he founded the New York Journal of Commerce to provide the city with a daily newspaper free from "immoral advertisements" and regardful of the Sabbath, but it did not prove the moral force he had desired, and after a year he turned it over to his brother Lewis. He supported the effort made to suppress licentiousness and vice in New York and in 1831 was president of the New York Magdalen Society, which sponsored a sensational report exposing conditions in that city. Though for some years a member successively of the Presbyterian congregations of John Mitchell Mason and Samuel Hanson Cox [qq.v.], he was an active promoter of the free church movement in New York, and with his brother was instrumental in leasing the Chatham Street Theatre and subsequently building the Broadway Tabernacle for Charles Grandison Finney [q.v.]. He gave a scholarship to Andover Theological Seminary and paid the tuition of a large number of divinity students at Yale. He contributed toward the establishment of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, of Auburn Theological Seminary, of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati; and in 1835, after the withdrawal of most of the Lane students because of restrictions upon the discussion of slavery, gave $10,000 and made a private pledge of his entire income in order to secure the establishment of Oberlin College.

Moved by concern for the welfare of the negroes, he joined the American Colonization Society, but becoming convinced that its policy was wrong withdrew and united with those who were agitating for the abolition of slavery. He first became associated with William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] in 1830 by paying a fine to free Garrison from prison in Baltimore, and subsequently helped support the publication of the Liberator. About 1831 he promoted an unsuccessful project to establish a college for negroes in New Haven. In March 1833 he took an active part in launching the Emanciptor in New York; in October of the same year he helped form the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and in December, the American Anti-Slavery Society, being chosen the first president of each. In 1835 he volunteered assistance to Prudence Crandall [q.v.], arrested for opening a school for negro girls at Canterbury, Connecticut, and in this connection financed the establishment in Windham County of the anti-slavery Unionist, under the editorship of C. C. Burleigh [q.v.].

In 1840, believing that Garrison would weaken the cause of abolition by his action in associating with it other movements, such as that for women's rights, Tappan with others withdrew from the American Anti-Slavery Society, formed a new organization-the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was elected president-and founded a new journal, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter. Convinced that slavery could be destroyed under the Constitution by political action, he supported the Liberty Party and its presidential candidate, James G. Birney [q.v.], and was instrumental in establishing in Washington the anti-slavery weekly, the National Era. Meanwhile, in 1846, distressed by the refusal of several of the missionary organizations he had aided to espouse the cause of abolition, he took part in founding the American Missionary Association, and remained a member of its executive committee until his death. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 he declared his determination "in the fear of God" to disobey it, and continued to give all the aid within his power to escaping fugitives.

Tappan was never of strong constitution and throughout his mature years suffered from constant headache. He had no humor and was stern and severe, with himself as well as others. As a champion of unpopular movements, through most of his career he was subjected to violent criticism; his business was endangered; and he himself was threatened with kidnapping, assault, and assassination. Abuse and threats, however, for the most part he heard calmly and ignored. He had a certain rigidity in maintaining his principles, owing partly to his natural austerity of thought and partly to the position of eminence he attained as the financial backer of many reform movements Though his money gifts were somewhat curtailed-to his great distress-by his failure about 1842 through ill-advised speculation in real estate, he kept up his active interest in reform until his death. In 1849 he purchased an interest in "The Mercantile Agency" established by his brother, but retired from all business -some five or six years later and took up his residence in New Haven, where he died.

[D. L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); Lewis Tappan, The Life of Arthur Tappan (1870); C. W. Bowen, Arthur and Lewis Tappan (1883); J. A. Scoville ("Walter Barrett"), The Old Merchants of New York City, volume I (1863); G. H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery impulse (1933); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Annie H. Abel and F. J. Klingberg, A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations …Correspondence of Lewis Tappan (1927); D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (copyright 1898); Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the U.S. in 1841 (1842); New York Herald, July 25, 1865.]

F.J.K.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 33:

TAPPAN, Arthur, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 22 May, 1786; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 23 July, 1865, was locked up while an infant in a folding bedstead. When he was discovered life was almost extinct, and headaches, to which he was subject daily through life, were ascribed to this accident. He received a common-school education, and served a seven years' apprenticeship in the hardware business in Boston, after which he established himself in Portland, Maine, and subsequently in Montreal, Canada, where he remained until the beginning of the war of 1812. In 1814 he engaged with his brother Lewis in importing British dry-goods into New York city, and after the partnership was dissolved he successfully continued the business alone. Mr. Tappan was known for his public spirit and philanthropy. He was a founder of the American tract society, the largest donor for the erection of its first building, and was identified with many charitable and religious bodies. He was a founder of Oberlin college, also erecting Tappan hall there, and endowed Lane seminary in Cincinnati, and a professorship at Auburn theological seminary. With his brother Lewis he founded the New York “Journal of Commerce” in 1828, and established “The Emancipator” in 1833, paying the salary of the editor and all the expenses of its publication. He was an ardent Abolitionist, and as the interest in the anti-slavery cause deepened he formed, at his own rooms, the nucleus of the New York city anti-slavery society, which was publicly organized under his presidency at Clinton hall on 2 October, 1833. Mr. Tappan was also president of the American anti-slavery society, to which he contributed $1,000 a month for several years, but he withdrew in 1840 on account of the aggressive spirit that many members manifested toward the churches and the Union. During the crisis of 1837 he was forced to suspend payments, and he became bankrupt in 1842. During his late years he was connected with the mercantile agency that his brother Lewis established. He incurred the hatred of the southern slave-holders by his frequent aid to fugitives, and by his rescuing William Lloyd Garrison from imprisonment at Baltimore. See his “Life,” by Lewis Tappan (New York, 1871). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 33.



TAPPAN, Benjamin, (May 25, 1773-April 20, 1857), U.S. senator from Ohio, jurist, anti-slavery leader.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2. 300-301; Tappan MSS. are in the Library of Congress. Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). See also F. P. Weisenburger, "Ohio Politics during the Jacksonian Period" (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); E. A. Holt, "Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850,"

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2. 300-301:

TAPPAN, BENJAMIN (May 25, 1773-April 20, 1857), senator, jurist, anti-slavery leader, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, eldest of the seven sons of Benjamin and Sarah (Homes) Tappan. Among the other children of the family were the eldest sister, Sarah, who became the mother of David Tappan Stoddard [q.v.] and the much younger brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.]. Their father, a goldsmith, later a dry-goods merchant, was descended from Abraham Toppan, who came from Yarmouth, England, to settle in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1637; their mother, of Irish Presbyterian stock through the paternal line, was also a grandniece of Benjamin Franklin. A public-school education for the younger Benjamin was followed by an apprenticeship to a copperplate printer and engraver, a voyage to the West Indies, brief study of portrait painting under the famous Gilbert Stuart, and then a thorough legal education under Gideon Granger [q. v.].

Admitted to the bar at Hartford, Connecticut, in his twenties, he became a first settler (1799) of what is now Portage County, Ohio. On March 20, 1801, he was married in Wethersfield, Connecticut, to Nancy Wright (d. 1822), sister of John Crafts Wright, later a congressman from Ohio. Accompanied by his bride he returned to Ravenna, Ohio, where he became an aggressive force in local politics. Having served as a member of the state Senate, 1803-05, he moved in 1809 to Steubenville, where he continued the practice of law. He served as an aide to Major-General Elijah Wadsworth during the War of 1812 and as president judge of the 5th circuit of the court of common pleas, 1816-23. His decisions for 1816-19, published as Cases Decided in the Courts of Common Pleas, in the Fifth Circuit of .... Ohio (1818-19), referred to as Tappan's Reports, were the first law reports in the state. Failing to be reelected (Tappan to E. A. Brown, Steubenville, January 29, 1823; MS. in Ohio State Library), he returned to private practice. He then served as an Ohio canal commissioner.

An ardent Jacksonian, he was a presidential elector in 1832, and served as a federal district judge until his appointment, together with those of other Democrats, was rejected by the Senate in May 1834. In 1838, Thomas Morris [q.v.] having assumed a position as "the first abolition senator" (Smith, post, p. 24) that made him unacceptable to the Ohio Democracy, Tappan was chosen as his successor. The latter had long been known as an opponent of slavery "in all shapes except that of abolitionism" (Cincinnati Gazette, December 27, 1838); hence his selection satisfied the anti-slavery Democrats. His law office was then intrusted to his partner, Edwin M. Stanton [q.v.].

In the Senate, Tappan refused to present abolition petitions from his constituents, asserting that Ohioans should not attempt to interfere with local institutions elsewhere and chiding women petitioners for leaving the home "to mix with the strife of ambition or the cares of Government" (Ohio Statesman, February 10, 1840). He was an anti-bank Democrat and "as uncompromising upon hard money as the Rock of Gibraltar" (Matthias Martin to William Allen, quoted by Holt, post, p. 576). His agency in the publication in the New York Evening Post (April 27, 1844) of Calhoun's proposed treaty for the annexation of Texas, which was being secretly considered, led to a severe censure by the Senate (Senate Journal, 28 Congress, l Session, pp. 439ff.). Like his colleague Allen, in 1845 he refused to follow the instructions of the Whig legislature in opposition to Texas annexation. Remaining an anti-slavery man, on July 12, 1849, he presided at a Northwest Ordinance (Free Soil) political celebration at Cleveland, and in 1856 he cast his last presidential vote for Fremont.

A lawyer of eminent talents and consistently a man of democratic principles, "of an intractable disposition" (American Union, April 22, 1857), and with a gift of sarcasm which he used on friend and foe, he held firmly to his independent convictions. His views on slavery and corporate privileges were deemed radical by many of his contemporaries and he was referred to as "the hoary-headed skeptic" (McLean MSS., Library of Congress) because of his blunt professions of religious heterodoxy. Exemplary in private life and scholarly in tastes, he devoted his last years to an interest in mineralogy and conchology. At his death in Steubenville he was survived by two sons, Benjamin and Eli Todd Tappan [q.v.], the latter born to his second wife, Betsy (Lord) Frazer (d. 1840), whom he had married in 1823.

[MSS., including an autobiography to 1823, are owned by J. K. Wright of New York; other Tappan MSS. are in the Library of Congress. Sketches are found in D L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); U. S. Magazine and Democratic Review, June-July 1840; J. B. Doyle, 20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio (1910); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). See also F. P. Weisenburger, "Ohio Politics during the Jacksonian Period" (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); E. A. Holt, "Party Politics m Ohio, 1840-1850," Ohio Arch. and Historical Society quarterly, July 1928, January-April 1929. The best obituary is in the Evening Post (New York), April 24, 1857. The Tappan family Bible, owned by Mr. Wright, and the American Union (Steubenville), April 22, 1857, give April 20, 1857, as the date of Tappan's death.]

F.P.W.



TAPPAN, Lewis Northey, 1788-1873, New York, NY, merchant, radical abolitionist leader. Lewis Tappan and his brother, Arthur, were among the most important activists in the cause of abolition in America. With his brother, Arthur, in 1828, Lewis began publishing anti-slavery newspaper, The Emancipator, paying for the editor and expenses for printing. Lewis Tappan’s house was destroyed by a pro-slavery mob in July 1834. He was a member of the Free-Soil Party from its beginning. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Treasurer, 1840-1842, Secretary, 1842-1844, Corresponding Secretary, 1845-1846, 1848-1855. Leader of the Philadelphia Free Produce Association. Wrote Life. Both Lewis and Arthur Tappan were despised by slaveholders in the South. Active in the Liberty Party.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005; Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 89; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 159, 218, 287; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 26, 31, 50, 55, 61, 63, 68, 72, 94, 102, 130, 136, 138, 144, 150, 152, 158, 164, 165, 168, 174, 177, 189, 194, 210, 247, 262; Harrold, 1995; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 8, 9, 13-19, 21, 24, 26, 38, 42-49, 51, 55, 58, 91, 93, 104, 105, 130, 190, 151-156, 190, 202, 219-221, 226-229, 233, 234, 251-253, 257, 334, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 106, 161, 162, 163, 166, 174, 290, 362; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 70, 93, 96, 102, 113, 114, 131; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 32-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 303; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 311; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 321; Tappan, Lewis. Life of Arthur Tappan. New York, Hurd and Houghton: 1870; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 673-675; Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery, 1969; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 76, 128-129, 219, 228, 230; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

TAPPAN, Lewis, merchant, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 23 May, 1788; died in Brooklyn, New York, 21 June, 1873, received a good education, and at the age of sixteen became clerk in a dry-goods house in Boston. His employers subsequently aided him in establishing himself in business, and he became interested m calico-print works and in the manufacture of cotton. In 1827 he moved to New York and became a member of the firm of Arthur Tappan and County, and his subsequent career was closely identified with that of his brother Arthur. With the latter he established in 1828 the “Journal of Commerce,” of which he became sole owner in 1829. In 1833 he entered with vigor into the anti-slavery movement, in consequence of which his house was sacked and his furniture was destroyed by a mob in July, 1834, and at other times he and his brother suffered personal violence. He was also involved in the crisis of 1837, and afterward withdrew from the firm and established the first mercantile agency in the country, which he conducted with success. He was chief founder of the American missionary association, of which he was treasurer and afterward president, and was an early member of Plymouth church, Brooklyn. He published the life of his brother mentioned above, but afterward joined in the Free-Soil movement at its inception. He was widely known for his drollery and wit and for his anti-slavery sentiments. Judge Tappan published “Cases decided in the Court of Common Pleas,” with an appendix (Steubenville, 1831). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 32-34.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 303:

TAPPAN, LEWIS (May 23, 1788-June 21, 1873), merchant, abolitionist, brother of Benjamin and Arthur Tappan [qq.v.], was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, and grew up in the devout household presided over by his father, Benjamin, and his mother, Sarah (Homes) Tappan. He was educated in the town school and at the age of sixteen became an apprenticed clerk to a drygoods importing firm in Boston. Here he sat for a time under the preaching of William Ellery Channing, and in 1825, to the distress of his Calvinistic family, served as treasurer of the American Unitarian Association. Soon, however, he returned to Orthodox views, and by 1828 was writing pamphlets upholding Evangelical convictions against Unitarianism. The family Calvinism also appears in his Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Tappan (1834). Meanwhile, assisted by his employers, he had endeavored to set up a business of his own, but in 1828 he entered into partnership with his brother Arthur as a silk jobber in New York. In the same year he took over from Arthur the New York Journal of Commerce, but in 1831 sold it to David Hale and Gerard Hallock [qq.v.]. As credit manager of Arthur Tappan & Company he was an important factor in the prosperity of the firm in the years preceding the panic of 1837. Shortly thereafter he withdrew from the partnership, and in 1841, under the firm name of Lewis Tappan & Company, established "The Mercantile Agency," the first commercial-credit rating agency in the country. He conducted this enterprise with great success until 1849, when he retired to devote himself to the humanitarian labors which had become his chief concern. In deliberately planning to draw upon his accumulated capital for his support for the rest of his life he was acting upon theories regarding the use of wealth which he later set forth in a pamphlet entitled Is It Right to Be Rich ? (1869).

Like his brother Arthur, Lewis Tappan from the time of his first business success was a supporter of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the American Bible Society. He was a promoter of the free church movement in New York, and with Arthur was instrumental in leasing the Chatham Street Theatre and building the Broadway Tabernacle for the revivalist Charles Grandison Finney [q.v.], and subsequently in sending Finney as professor of theology to Oberlin College. He was one of the founders of the New York Anti-slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and by his activities in behalf of abolition drew upon himself hate and obloquy; in July 1834 his house was wrecked by a mob, and his furniture burned. In 1839-41 he was the outstanding member of the committee which undertook to secure the freedom of the Amistad captives, successfully defended before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams [q.v.]. Although at first both Tappans worked with William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.], Lewis, like Arthur, repudiated Garrison when the latter proposed to attach other reforms to the cause of abolition, and with the resulting schism in the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, he took a leading part in forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was the first treasurer. He was especially conscious of the international aspect of the American struggle and for this reason maintained a wide and frequent correspondence with sympathetic interests in England, especially with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. At the suggestion of John Quincy Adams, he attended the international anti-slavery convention in London in 1843 (Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume XI, 1876, pp. 380, 405). Realizing that the attitude of Great Britain could have an almost decisive bearing on the outcome of the struggle in the United States, he discussed with his English friends such matters as the annexation of Texas, the position of the negro in the United. States, Canada, and Liberia, the coastwise slave trade, and the attitude of the churches. Believing that slavery could be abolished within the Union, he worked to win the cooperation of churches and missionary societies. When the older foundations which he had supported, notably the American Board, declined to enlist in the fight for abolition, he helped to found and became treasurer of the American Missionary Association (1846), explicitly committee! to the cause of the negro. After the passage of-the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, he became a supporter of the work of Alexander M. Ross, who traveled through the South helping slaves to escape by the Underground Railroad (W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 1898, p. 180; A. M. Ross, Recollections of an Abolitionist, 1867).

As the struggle in America reached its crisis, Tappan gradually adopted the view that slavery was illegal everywhere and could be abolished by the federal government in all the slave states under the terms of the Constitution. He thus came to favor a more radical method of action than that sponsored by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1855 resigned as corresponding secretary of that body to accept office in a new organization known as the Abolition Society. By now, however, age was beginning to limit his activity. As the need for anti-slavery agitation lessened, he gave more attention to the constructive work for negroes being undertaken by the American Missionary Association. In 1870 he published The Life of Arthur Tappan, and suffered a paralytic stroke just as the book went to press. Three years later he died, as. the result of another stroke, at the age of eighty-five. He was married twice: first, September 7, 1813, to Susanna Aspinwall, by whom he had six children, and second, in 1854, to Mrs. Sarah J. Davis. The youngest of his five daughters married Henry Chandler Bowen [q.v.]. From 1856 Tappan was a member of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and his funeral sermon was preached by his pastor, Henry Ward Beecher.

[D. L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); C. W. Bowen, Arthur and Lewis Tappan (1883); J. A. Scoville ("Walter Barrett"), The Old Merchants of New York, volume I (1863); E. N. Vose, Seventy-five Years of The Mercantile Agency, R. G. Dun & Co., 1841-1916 (1916); G. H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse (1933); G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (2 volumes, 1934); A. H. Abel and F. J. Klingberg, A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839-1858, Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1927); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the U. S. in 1841 (1842); American Missionary, August 1873; Harper's Weekly, July 12, 1873; New York Times, June 23, 1873.]

F.J.K.



THATCHER, Maine, officer in the Liberty party.

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



THOMPSON, Daniel Pierce (October 1, 1795-June 6, 1868), author, lawyer, political leader. Member of the Liberty Party. Editor, from 1849-1856, of the anti-slavery newspaper, Green Mountain Freeman.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 454)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 454:

THOMPSON, DANIEL PIERCE (October 1, 1795-June 6, 1868), author, lawyer, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel and Rebecca (Parker) Thompson. On his father's side he was descended from James Thompson, who settled in Massachusetts before 1632; on his mother's he was apparently descended from Ezekiel Cheever [q.v.], seventeenth-century educator (Flitcroft, post, p. 317). In 1800 his father, being unsuccessful in business, moved to a small farm at Berlin, Vermont. Thus Daniel grew up in a frontier settlement in which there was neither a library nor an adequate school. At sixteen, however, he chanced upon a volume of English poetry, and this book opened a new world to him. He worked hard on the farm, studied and later taught in the district schools, saved money, and finally, after a winter's residence at the Randolph- Danville Academy at Danville, Vermont, entered Middlebury College with advanced standing. While in college he contributed a number of poems and essays to periodicals. After his graduation in 1820, he went to Virginia (probably Culpeper County), where he remained for three or four years as a tutor in a wealthy family. During this period he studied law, obtained an interview with Thomas Jefferson ("A Talk with Jefferson," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1863), and was admitted to the bar.

Returning to Montpelier in 1823 or 1824, Thompson began the practice of law, and soon became prominent in the political and cultural life of Vermont. He served as judge of probate for Washington County (1837-40; 1841-42), clerk of the county court (1844-46), and secretary of state for Vermont (1853-55). He compiled The Laws of Vermont ... Including the Year 1834 (1835), was one of the founders of the Vermont Historical Society, and during 1840 served as secretary of the state education society. He took part in the anti-Masonic controversy to the extent of publishing, in the guise of "A Member of the Vermont Bar," The Adventures of Timothy Peacock, Esquire (1835), a satirical novel concerned with "the amusing adventures of a Masonic Quixot." In the same year he wrote for the New England Galaxy a story called "May Martin, or the Money Diggers," which won a prize of fifty dollars, and thus encouraged him to continue with the writing of fiction as an avocation. Originally a Jeffersonian Democrat, Thompson later became active in the Liberty party, editing from 1849 to 1856 the Green Mountain Freeman, a weekly paper identified with the anti-slavery movement. In 1856 he joined the Republicans because they were making opposition to the extension of slavery the chief issue in their presidential campaign. He was well known as a lyceum lecturer. On August 31, 1831, he was married to Eunice Knight Robinson, by whom he had six children.

Thompson's claim to recognition is based mainly on his achievement as a historical novelist in the school of Cooper. Through his fiction he probably did more than any other person to popularize the early history of Vermont. Local tradition represents him as wandering through the country with his fishing rod, stopping at intervals to chat with some old settler by the roadside. He would spend hours listening to stories about Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, and Colonel Stark; and he kept careful notes of all he heard. Influenced by Scott and Cooper, he blended history with romance in a half dozen novels of adventure, of which the best known is The Green Mountain Boys (1839). This book deals with the land-grant controversy between New York and New Hampshire, and with such incidents of the Revolution as Ethan Allen's capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the battle of Hubbardton. Its popularity is evidenced by the sale of fifty editions before 1860 and sixty editions by 1900. A sequel, The Rangers, appeared in 1851. Another novel, Locke Amsden (1847), deserves mention for its truthful record of frontier life, its autobiographical significance, and its interest to the student of American education. Among his other publications are Gaut Gurley (1857), The Doomed Chief (1860), History of the Town of Montpelier (1860), and Centeola (1864). An old-fashioned Yankee with a keen sense of humor, Thompson possessed genuine narrative ability, but fell far short of Cooper in imaginative power.

[See Leander Thompson, Memorial of James Thompson (1887); E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American Lit. (2 volumes, 1855), which contains a brief autobiographical memoir; Biographical Encyclopedia of Vermont (1885), pp. 256-60; D. F. Wheaton, in Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume IV (1882), pp. 69-72; obituary in Burlington Times, June 9, 1868. The dates of Thompson's public offices are from J. M. Comstock, A List of the Principal Civil Officers of Vermont (1918). The only full biography is J. E. Flitcroft, The Novelist of Vermont (1929), which contains Thompson's unfinished novel, "The Honest Lawyer."]

J.E.F.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888:

THOMPSON, Daniel Pierce, author, born in Charlestown (now a part of Boston), Massachusetts, 1 October, 1793; died in Montpelier, Vermont, 6 June, 1868. He was the grandson of Daniel, who was a cousin of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, and was killed at the battle of Lexington. He was brought up on a farm, prepared himself for college under difficulties, taught for one winter, and then entered Middlebury college, where he was graduated in 1820. Going to Virginia as a family tutor, he studied law there, and was admitted to the bar in 1823, after which he returned to Vermont and settled in Montpelier. He was register of probate in 1824, and clerk of the legislature in 1830-'3, and was then appointed to compile the “Laws of Vermont from 1824 down to and including the Year 1834” (Montpelier, 1835). He was judge of probate from 1837 till 1840, from 1843 till 1845 clerk of the supreme and county courts, and from 1853 till 1855 secretary of state. From 1849 till 1856 he edited a weekly political paper called the “Green Mountain Free man.” He was a popular lecturer before lyceums and orator on public occasions. Mr. Thompson began to contribute poems and sketches to periodicals while he was in college, and continued to write frequently for the newspapers and magazines, besides publishing political pamphlets. He took part in the anti-Masonic controversy, and published a satirical novel on the subject, entitled “The Adventures of Timothy Peacock, Esq., or Freemasonry Practically Illustrated,” which appeared under the pen-name of “A Member of the Vermont Bar” (Middlebury, 1835). In 1835 he wrote for the “New England Galaxy,” of Boston, a prize tale called “May Martin, or the Money-Diggers,” which was issued in book-form (Montpelier, 1835), and reprinted in London. Next appeared “The Green Mountain Boys,” a romance, in which the principal men connected with the history of Vermont in the Revolutionary period are brought into the plot (Montpelier, 1840; republished in Boston and London); “Locke Amsden, or the Schoolmaster” (Boston, 1845); “Lucy Hosmer, or the Guardian and the Ghost” (1848); and “The Rangers, or the Tory's Daughter” (1851). His later romances are “Tales of the Green Mountains” (1852); “Gaut Gurley, or the Trappers of Lake Umbagog” (1857); “The Doomed Chief, or Two Hundred Years Ago,” based on the story of King Philip (Philadelphia, 1860); and “Centeola, and other Tales” (New York, 1864). He was also the author of a “History of Montpelier, 1781-1860, with Biographical Sketches” (Montpelier, 1860). In later life he published monographs on topics of American history and on biographical subjects in various magazines. A novel, with the title of “The Honest Lawyer, or the Fair Castaway,” was left unfinished. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.



TORREY, Charles Turner, Reverend, 1813-1846, Massachusetts, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist leader. Wrote Memoir of the Martyr. Co-founder of Boston Vigilance Committee, which aided and defended fugitive slaves. Leader, the National Convention of Friends of Immediate Emancipation, Albany, New York, 1840, which became the new Liberty Party. Arrested, tried and convicted of aiding in escape of slaves. He died in prison.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 285; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 266, 268; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1850; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 595; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 757).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 595-596:

TORREY, CHARLES TURNER (November 21, 1813-May 9, 1846), abolitionist, was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, where his ancestor, James Torrey, had settled soon after 1640. His parents, Charles Turner Torrey and Hannah Tolman (Turner), were first cousins, grandchildren of the Reverend Charles Turner; they both died of tuberculosis in their son's infancy, and he was brought up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Charles Turner, Jr., a substantial citizen and sometime member of Congress. Torrey was prepared for college at Phillips Academy, graduated at Yale (A.B., 1833), and after a few months of teaching entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1834. Here he became an abolitionist and organized a students' antislavery society, but because of failing health withdrew from the seminary and completed his theological training at West Medway under the Reverend Jacob Ide, whose daughter, Mary, he married on March 29, 1837. Two children were born of this union.

Torrey was licensed to preach by the Mendon Association; October 25, 1836, and on March 22 following was ordained and installed as pastor of the Richmond Street Congregational Church of Providence, Rhode Island, but was not successful as a minister either here or at the Harvard Street Congregational Church in Salem, where he served from January 1838 to July 1839. His interest in anti-slavery politics soon encroached upon his pastoral duties. Sharing in the rising irritation against William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and his heresies regarding Sabbath observance, civil government, and the rights of women, Torrey organized the conservative abolitionists of Massachusetts in a revolt against Garrison's leadership. In the fall of 1838, the conservatives founded the Massachusetts Abolitionist, with Torrey as editor, and a few months later they seceded from Garrison's society, organized the Massachusetts Abolition Society, and appointed Torrey as their agent. In this capacity he was not successful. "It was exceedingly difficult for him to labor with others, either as a pastor, a lecturer, or an editor," remarked a colleague (Lovejoy, post, p. 87). He shortly resigned, and in 1841 went to Washington as freelance correspondent.

While reporting the notorious "Convention of Slaveholders" at Annapolis, Maryland, in January 1842, Torrey was identified as an abolitionist and on January 14 arrested. The case immediately attracted national interest. The anti-slavery congressmen employed a Boston lawyer to be his counsel, and two Maryland lawyers, T. S. Alexander and Joseph M. Palmer, acted for him without compensation. After four days of widely publicized proceedings, Torrey was freed (January 19). Made momentarily famous by this episode, he was appointed editor of the Tocsin of Liberty, later the Albany Patriot, but was unsuccessful in this position and after a few months relinquished its editorial care.

"An exceedingly vain, trifling man, with no wisdom or stability," as a fellow abolitionist characterized him (T. D. Weld to his wife, January 18, 1842; Letters, post, II, 896), Torrey was unable to sustain these recurrent stresses of notoriety and failure. Moving to Baltimore, he made grandiose plans to engage in business, and at the same time he helped escaping slaves from Virginia and Maryland across the border. Inevitably he was arrested, and once more figured in a notorious trial (November 29-December 1, 1844). This time; however, although defended by the distinguished Reverdy Johnson [q.v.], he was convicted and sentenced to six years at hard labor in the Maryland state penitentiary. Once in the jail, his mind gave way, and tuberculosis, long latent in his constitution, caused his death little more than a year after his imprisonment. His body was removed to Boston, and at a great public funeral he was honored as a martyr to the anti-slavery cause.

[J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of Reverend Charles T. Torrey (1847), by a brother of Elijah P. Lovejoy [q.v.], the first anti-slavery martyr; New York Evangelist, January, February 1842; Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (2 volumes, 1934), ed. by G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Massachusetts Abolitionist, volume I; Biographical Notices Graduates Yale College (1913); F. C. Torrey, The Torrey Families, volume I (1924); Jacob Turner, Genealogy of the Descendants of Humphrey Turner (1852); The Sun (Baltimore), May 11, 1846.]

G. H. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138:

TORREY, Charles Turner, reformer, born in Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1813; died in Baltimore, Md., 9 May, 1846. His ancestor, James, was an early settler of Scituate. (See TORREY, WILLIAM.) Charles was graduated at Yale in 1830, studied theology, and occupied Congregational pastorates in Princeton, N.J., and Salem, Massachusetts, but soon relinquished his professional duties to devote himself to anti-slavery labors in Maryland. In 1843 he attended a slaveholders’ convention in Baltimore, reported its proceedings, and was arrested and put in jail. In 1844, having been detected in his attempt to aid in the escape of several slaves, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a long imprisonment in the state penitentiary, where he died of consumption that was brought on by ill usage. His body was taken to Boston, and his funeral attended from Tremont temple by an immense concourse of people. The story of his sufferings and death excited eager interest both in this country and in Europe, and “Torrey's blood crieth out” became a watch-word of the Abolition party, giving new impetus to the anti-slavery cause. He published a “Memoir of William R. Saxton” (Boston, 1838), and “Home, or the Pilgrim's Faith Revived,” a volume of sketches of life in Massachusetts, which he prepared in prison (1846). See “Memoir of the Martyr Torrey” (1847). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138.

Chapter: “Underground Railroad. - Operations at the East and in the Middle States,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

The arrests, imprisonments, trials, and death of Charles T. Torrey in the Maryland penitentiary are among the more memorable examples and incidents connected with the working of the Underground Railroad. The wide notoriety of his acts, his position as a young clergyman, the great respectability of his connections, the high standing of those who sought his reprieve or some mitigation of his sentence, with the persistent .refusal of the authorities to grant it, challenged scrutiny, demanded investigation, and compelled thoughtful men to ask and show cause why such acts of neighborly kindness should be so severely punished.

Mr. Torrey was born near the spot where the Pilgrims landed, and of an ancestry distinguished for their piety and political standing. His parents dying in his early childhood, he was placed under the care of his grandparents. Quick and impulsive, he did not receive that thorough and careful restraint from these indulgent guardians which one of his mercurial temperament required. When, therefore, he went forth into the world, he had not gained all that caution, that calm and calculating self-control, which one differently constituted and differently trained might have exhibited in the peculiarly trying circumstances in which he was afterward placed. When he was brought into close contact with slavery, and became acquainted with the sad story of the slave's wrongs and wants, he was not so well prepared to listen to the, cool counsels of prudence, as he was prompt to reduce to practice, without much refining and weighing of consequences, that '' disinterested benevolence'' which was the great idea of his religious creed.

Graduating from Yale College in the year 1830, he was settled in 1837 as pastor of the Richmond Street Congregational Church in Providence. In the mean time he had married the second daughter of Dr. Ide of West Medway, Massachusetts, his theological teacher, and granddaughter of the late Dr. Emmons of Franklin, of the same State, a distinguished theologian of his day. By this marriage he became allied to prominent leaders in a school of theology whose distinguishing feature had ever been an inflexible adherence to the logical conclusions of the doctrines of its Creed, in their practical as well as their theoretical results, thus extorting the admission of a veteran antislavery writer that he had “never known a Hopkinsian clergyman who was not an Abolitionist.” The great reforms, especially the antislavery, then at their spring-tide, and stirring the public mind deeply, would not permit him to enjoy the quietude of a pastor's life. Accordingly he relinquished his pastorate in the autumn of 1838, and engaged in delivering antislavery lectures.
In 1842, there was a slave-holders convention at Annapolis, Maryland, .at which, as if the laws of that State were not inhuman and-unchristian enough, it was proposed, even at that late date, to make them still more oppressive and wicked. Among other propositions, hardly less degrading and cruel, they proposed to the legislature to prevent the emancipation of slave by will or deed; to prevent free negroes from coming into the State; to sell free persons of color, convicted-of crime, into slavery out of the State; to repeal the act allowing manumitted negroes to remain in the State without a certificate; to require free negroes to give security for their good behavior; to forbid free negroes from holding real estate; and also to prohibit them from holding meetings after sundown. Mr. Torrey went to the convention in the capacity of a Washington correspondent of several Northern papers. Whether or not the members of the convention were made suspicious by the nefarious purposes of their meeting, it soon transpired that they suspected Mr. Torrey of being an Abolitionist, and a question arose whether he should be allowed to remain, either on the floor or in the galleries. While this was discussed in the convention, a great excitement was pervading Annapolis, and the mob was debating the question whether he should be taken out of town to be tarred and feathered, or hung. The conclusion, however, was to commit him to jail,--a building he pronounced to be “old and ruinous, without bed, or even straw, for a prisoner." He was allowed, however, such necessities, by furnishing them at private expense. He was gratuitously defended by two able lawyers of the State, Alexander, and Palmer. Several of the Massachusetts delegation in Congress and others proffered their kind sympathy and good offices. After several days incarceration, the judge decided that there was no cause for detention, though he put him under five hundred dollars bonds to keep the peace, his lawyers kindly becoming his sureties. This false imprisonment, these “bonds," and an expenditure which, as a poor man heavily in debt, he was ill able to bear, were the price he was obliged to pay for being an Abolitionist, --nothing else being laid to his charge.

In this jail he became acquainted with thirteen persons who had been manumitted by their owner, who afterward died insolvent. Being seized by the creditors of the estate, these unoffending men and women were twice tried before the courts, where it was proved that their late owner was not insolvent when he manumitted them. But these decisions having been reversed by the chancellor, they were in jail awaiting a new trial, with small probability of a favorable result. Mr. Torrey, very naturally, became deeply interested in their case, and resolved to help them, if he could. In a letter to the" New York Evangelist," written a few days after his release, there occurs this sentence:” I feel with more force than ever the injunction to ' remember them that are in bonds as bound with them '; and, after listening to the history of their career, I sat down and wrote and signed and prayed over a solemn reconsecration of myself to the work of freeing the slaves, until no slaves shall be found in the land. May God help me to be faithful to that pledge in Annapolis jail! In that cell, God helping me, if it stands, I will celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in Maryland before ten years roll away."

There is a touching pathos in this incident in Mr. Torrey's life, which, had real chivalry, and not slavery, been the ruling spirit of the American people, would have rather endeared him to his countrymen than have consigned him to prison. Well born, with superior talents, education, and professional prospects, a charming home, cheered by the presence of a lovely wife and little ones, he sacrificed them, disregarded the popular sentiment of, the North, and braved the vengeance of the South, to aid the lowly and downtrodden. As the young reformer sits in the dreary and repulsive prison, surrounded by and listening to the story of the dusky victims of the same cruel power that had laid its ruthless hands on him, little aid from the imagination is required to suggest a picture worthy of the painter's art. It is easy now, as it was then, to criticize and charge him with imprudence, unfounded enthusiasm, and an improper estimate of 'the relative claims of his family and the slave. Doubtless he was imprudent. That he was too enthusiastic may be admitted, when his purpose is borne in mind to “celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in Maryland in ten years." That a cooler and more calculating judgment would have led him to hesitate before subjecting his family to the contingencies resulting from his decision is probable. But these were errors of judgment, "leaning to virtue's side." In the light of eternity, above the interests, the friendships, and 'conventionalisms of earth, at Heaven's chancery, when this act shall be tested by the standards of the great law of love, another estimate will be made. That solemn promise, then written down, will be deemed a worthier record than that of many a prudent man, who, at a safe distance, left the slave to suffer and perish, while he satisfied his conscience and sense of justice by discountenancing such rashness, such unlawful interference with the claims of the slave-master. The obloquy often cast, by those who heard the 'appeals 'of the fleeing fugitive only to disregard them, upon the few who, like Mr. Torrey, heard to heed, should be relieved by a recognition of the fact that seldom, if ever, were braver, more unselfish, and more chivalric deeds recorded on the page of history than were theirs. When, by reason of the unparalleled difficulties of the situation, all made mistakes, let not theirs alone be held up for public reprobation, which were made in the interests of humanity' and with such -sublime disregard of personal sacrifice and danger.

After his release, he went to Albany and became editor or a paper. While in that city, a slave, who had escaped to Canada, entreated him to go to Virginia and aid in the escape of his wife and little ones. To one with his feelings and convictions, with that vow on record, such an appeal could not come in vain. With the husband and father he started on 'his ill-fated errand of humanity' which proved not 'only unsuccessful 'in the immediate object for which it was undertaken, -but fatal to all like efforts on this part in behalf or the slave. He was again arrested, imprisoned, and placed on trial. He secured the services of Reverdy Johnson, but not until, with characteristic honesty, he had confessed that he had once aided one or that gentleman's slaves to escape. He experienced the annoyances and hardships that might be reasonably expected for such an offence in such a community. Through the kind offices of friends, however, they were much lessened and alleviated; and, like the Missouri prisoners, he at once entered upon his missionary efforts, conversing and praying with his fellow-prisoners. But, while laboring for their benefit, he did not forget the great cause of freedom, but wrote to friends, to bodies secular and ecclesiastical, and one long and able letter to the State of Maryland. After being in jail some three months, awaiting his trial, he, in company with others, made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. Being betrayed, they failed of carrying their purpose into effect, and, he writes, were heavily ironed, and placed in damp, low-arched cells, and treated worse than if we had been murderers. I was loaded with irons weighing, I fudge, twenty-five pounds, so twisted that 1 could neither stand up, lie down, nor sleep for seven days and nights he said he slept none, from, pain and the utter prostration of the nervous system. His trial came on, he was convicted, and, on the 30th of December, 1843, he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the penitentiary.

Strenuous efforts were .soon made for his release. Leading men, comprehending the essential wickedness of such a penalty for such an offence, signed memorials to the Governor of Maryland for pardon. Appeals, too, were made in person by several individuals. But the public sentiment of the State and of the South was too imbittered; and, though Governor Pratt expressed himself as personally favorable to the request, he did not deem it wise to brave the popular feeling against it. Some of the citizens of Baltimore approached Mr. Torrey with the idea of preparing the way for release by some seeming concession and the confession of doing wrong in violating slave laws. But he nobly adhered to his principles. In a letter dated 21st of December, 1844, he writes: "I cannot afford to concede any truth or principle to get out of prison. I am not rich enough." Indeed, it is doubtful whether any concession would have appeased the bloodthirsty appetite of the demon who now had him within his power. Though his health was failing, and it was evident he must soon succumb to the rigors of prison life, the governor remained inexorable. He died in prison, on the 9th of May, 1846.
But the most humiliating fact remains to be noted. After his death, his remains were taken to Boston; and Park Street Church, in which a-brother-in-law was a worshipper, was engaged for the funeral services. The permission was, however, revoked, the, house of another denomination procured, and Tremont Temple was thronged by the multitude, many of whom were hardly less indignant at the heartless intolerance of Boston than at the barbarism in Maryland. His body was followed by a long procession to Mount Auburn, where a fitting monument was afterward raised to his memory. There lies, in the words of Whittier, the young, the beautiful, the brave! He is safe now from the malice of his enemies. Nothing can harm him more. His work for the poor and helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of God's poor. He put his soul in their soul's stead; he gave his life for those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood."

On the evening of the day of his burial there was a large meeting in Faneuil Hall, at which addresses were made by General Fessenden of Maine, Henry B. Stanton, and Dr. Walter Channing, and a poem from James Russell Lowell was read. Referring to the acts for which: Mr. Torrey suffered, Mr. Stanton said: " Stripped of all extrinsic ornament, it was this, he aided oppressed men peaceably to cast away their chains; he gave liberty to men unjustly held .in bondage…He has done something for liberty, and his name deserves a place in the calendar of its martyrs. Now that he has been laid quietly and serenely in his grave, we may safely publish those acts to the world which, while he lived, could be safely known only to the few. In a letter addressed to me, while he was in prison awaiting his trial, he said: ' If I am a guilty man, I am a very guilty one; for I have aided nearly four hundred slaves to escape to freedom, the greater part of whom would probably but for my exertions have died in slavery.' “This statement was corroborated by the testimony of Jacob Gibbs, a colored man, who was Mr. Torrey's chief assistant in his efforts. The selection of Mr. Gibbs was not only an example of Mr. Torrey's shrewdness, but one instance, at least, in which the slave-masters overreached themselves, and where laws enacted in behalf of slavery, inured to the interests of freedom. For by the slave codes of all the slaveholding States the testimony of colored persons could not be received in court, so that Mr. Gibbs could never testify against his employer.

Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 74-80.



VAN VLEET, Jane, published Liberty Party newspaper, Star of Freedom, in Michigan.

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

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.