The Late Alvan StewartStewart, Alvan

Alvan Stewart (1790-1849) was a lawyer and abolitionist born in Granville, New York. In 1834 he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and began establishing abolitionist organizations in New York. The following year the New York State Anti-Slavery Society was founded with Stewart as the president. Stewart also helped to form the Liberty party in 1840 and was its gubernatorial candidate in 1842 and 1844. Along with Lysander Spooner, Stewart pioneered the abolitionist argument that slavery was not protected by the U.S. Constitution. William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 154, 205, 218, 254-57, 265-66; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 47-52; ACAB, 5:683; NCAB, 2:331-32; DAB, 18:5-6. .

Friend Douglass:—Can you, or any of your correspondents, inform me whether any arrangements have been made for preparing a suitable Biography or memoir of that eminent and lamented friend of Emancipation, the late ALVAN STEWART? Differ as we may about the best ways and means to bring about the liberation of the enslaved millions of our country, I do not see how any intelligent Abolitionist, who personally knows Mr. S., and had the privilege of listening to his public and soul-stirring appeals in behalf of the slave, can have a shadow of doubt that he was one of the noblest, truest, and most efficient men in the Anti-Slavery ranks, or that his eloquent words and generous deeds in behalf of Impartial Freedom are worthy of a handsome and enduring record. I am sure, too, that such a memorial as is due to the character and conduct of Mr. S., could not fail to exert a wide and healthful influence upon the minds of the rising generation, in favor of the cause in which he labored.

I have had some opportunities of hearing the men most famous for their talent and eloquence, in the Anti-Slavery ranks—having often listened to speeches from Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. , John Pierpont, Wendell Phillips, Wm. Lloyd GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , George ThompsonThompson, George

George Thompson (1804-78), originally from Liverpool, was an early advocate of slave emancipation in the British colonies and was an influential British ally of William Lloyd Garrison. Thompson lectured for the Agency Committee, a group that helped force passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. That same year, he was among the founders of the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World. As a member of Parliament from 1847 to 1852, Thompson was a member of the Parliamentary Reform Association and the Anti-Corn Law League, and promoted the production of East Indian cotton in order to undermine American slavery. Thompson also promoted the antislavery cause during trips to the United States during the 1830s, 1850s, and 1860s. Lib., 29 May 1846; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:434-522, 2:1-72; Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (Columbia, S.C., 1972), 23-29; C. Duncan Rice, "The Anti-Slavery Mission of George Thompson to the United States, 1834-1835," Journal of American Studies, 2:13-41 (April 1968); DNB, 19:691. , Frederick Douglass, Charles C. BurleighBurleigh, Charles Calistus

Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-78) was born in Plainfield, Connecticut, and received his early schooling at Plainfield Academy. He had begun to study the law when an attack he published on the Connecticut "Black Law" attracted the attention of abolitionist Samuel J. May. Through May, Burleigh was offered the editorship of the Unionist, a new antislavery paper financed by Arthur Tappan. Burleigh was instrumental in protecting William Lloyd Garrison from a mob in Boston in October 1835, and shortly thereatler became a regular contributor to the Liberator. In the late 1830s Burleigh became one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman, later the organ of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the antisabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847 for selling antislavery literature on Sunday. In 1845 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment. He participated in the woman suffrage conventions in Cleveland and New York City in 1854, and the American Equal Rights Association meeting in 1867. In the 1870s he joined his brother, William Henry, in the campaign for temperance reform. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, 1881-1922), 1:148-51; C. B. Galbreath, "Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 30: 389-91 (October 1921); ACAB, 1:455; DAB, 3:284-85. , Samuel J. MayMay, Samuel Joseph

Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871) mixed abolitionism with a variety of other humanitarian concerns during his long career as a Unitarian clergyman. Boston-born and Harvard-educated, May studied theology at Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in 1822. During his forty-year ministry he championed such causes as temperance, women's rights, pacifism, universal education, and abolitionism. Originally a supporter of African colonization, May joined the abolitionist ranks in 1830, supported Prudence Crandall's efforts to establish a school for black youths in 1833, and enjoyed a long tenure as an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1840s and 1850s he helped many fugitive slaves reach Canada; in 1851 he helped rescue Jerry McHenry from slave catchers inSyracuse, New York. After the Civil War he worked with black colleagues such as Jermain W. Loguen and Douglass to fight racial segregation in New York schools. Donald Yacovone, Samuel Joseph May and the Dilemmas of the Liberal Persuasion, 1797-1871 (Philadelphia, 1991); Pease and Pease, Bound with Them in Chains, 276-307; NCAB, 2:313; DAB, 12:447-48. , Dr. Wm. ElderElder, William

, Samuel R. WardWard, Samuel Ringgold

Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-c. 1866) was a Congregational minister, abolitionist, editor, and orator. His parents carried him along on their escape from slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in about 1820. The family settled six years later in New York City, where young Ward received an elementary education. In 1833 he embraced religion and received ordination in 1839. His two New York congregations, at South Butler (1841-43) and Courtland (1846-51), consisted mostly of whites, but Ward vigorously agitated for the rights of both slaves and free blacks. The American Anti-Slavery Society appointed Ward a lecturing agent in 1839. As one of the earliest black supporters of political abolitionism, Ward acted as spokesman for the Liberty party after 1844. Ward studied law and medicine briefly, and also tried his hand at editing during the late 1840s. His Impartial Citizen, published from Syracuse, and another newspaper venture both failed financially. In 1851 Ward's leading role in the Jerry Rescue caused him to fear arrest and to emigrate to Canada. There he launched the Provincial Freeman in 1853 and acted as agent for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. In the latter capacity, Ward journeyed to Britain in 1853 on a fundraising tour. In 1855 Ward published his Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro and accepted a British Quaker's gift of fifty acres of land in Jamaica. He lived his last decade on that island, farming, writing, and ministering to a small Baptist congregation. Ward’s involvement in abolitionist activities necessarily brought him into close contact with Douglass, who remarked that “as an orator and thinker he [Ward] was vastly superior . . . to any of us,” and that “the splendors of his intellect went directly to the glory of his race.” Douglass, Life and Times (1881), 284; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England (1855; New York, 1968); NS, 2 February 1849; Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2d ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206-08, 227, 265-66, 361,395; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 79, 98, 133, 138, 210. , and a host of others whom it is at all times a treat to hear; and I do not hesitate to say that, as an eloquent and powerful speaker for the Slave, ALVAN STEWART was often not a whit behind the very chiefest of these able and noble men; and Mr. S. was not less earnestly devoted to the Temperance cause than to that of Impartial Liberty.

If, therefore, no steps have yet been taken to furnish the public with a proper memoir of life and labors of that excellent man, why should not John G. WhittierWhittier, John Greenleaf

Born to Quaker parents, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) tended his family farm near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in his youth. Inspired by poets Robert Burns and John Milton, Whittier's first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," appeared in William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press in 1826. Garrison encouraged Whittier's father to allow his son to attend the Haverhill Academy in Boston for a year. Again with Garrison's help, Whittier secured his first editorial position in 1829 at a political weekly, the American Manufacturer, in Boston. There he became acquainted with the abolitionist movement and was one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Whittier was elected to a term in the Massachusetts state legislature in 1835, and two years later friends published the first collection of his poems, Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States. Whittier worked as a corresponding editor for the antislavery journal the Washington National Era, which published many of his antislavery poems, until he cofounded the Atlantic Monthly in 1857. Roland H. Woodwell, John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography (Haverhill, Mass., 1985); DNB, 20:173-75; ANB, 23:320-21. , or Wm. H. BurleighBurleigh, William Henry

, or some other competent hand

be at once employed in preparing one for the press?

I had hoped, friend Douglass, before this time, to have written somewhat for your columns. But my health, for the last six months, has been such as to have wholly disabled me for business. I glory in the stand made against the Baltimore manstealers and their despicable official allies, by the brave black patriots of Christiana, who it seems are to be tried for treason! Is it "treason" then, in this "free country," for a man to refuse to be enslaved, and to prevent his own enslavement at all hazards? Where do our long-eared Presidents and their obsequious Judges find such a definition of "treason" as that [is] certainly not in the Constitution of the United States; and that is the instrument which gives the only definition of treason known to the people of this country. There is a fair chance, I think, that the miserable wretches who enacted the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and the equally miserable wretches who are now trying to enforce it, will carry the matter too far for the public endurance, and thus insure their own destruction. Let all the people say Amen!

O. A. BoweBowe, Obadiah A.

.

Mohawk, Oct. 24, 1851.