Washington, D.C., May 20, 1874

My dear Mr CarpenterCarpenter, Russell Lant

The Reverend Russell Lant Carpenter (1816-92), a Unitarian minister, spent his childhood in Bristol, England. He attended Bristol College in preparation for a life of ministry, continued his studies at Manchester and York Colleges and was one of the first to graduate from London University in 1840. Carpenter became intensely involved in the temperance movement and subsequently quit his pastorate at Bridgwater, England, since part of the church's endowment came from taverns selling liquors. In August 18-19 he journeyed to the United States, where he spent a full year preaching from Montreal to St. Louis to Boston. His father, Dr. Lant Carpenter, was a well-known teacher whose Unitarian writings were already known to the antislavery men of the day. Thus, Carpenter became acquainted with Garrison, Douglass, and others. Having returned to England, he married in 1853 and continued his ministerial work there until his death. His works include Memoirs of Lant Carpenter (1842), Discourses and Devotional Services (1849), A Monotessaron (1851), and a biography about his brother, Philip, Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1880). Carpenter also contributed frequently to the Inquirer and to other periodicals. London Inquirer, 30 January 1892. :

The two copies of the Inquirer which have come into my hands recently, one directed by your own hand and the other in the well known hand of Miss Amé Draz reminds me that it is long since I have sent you a letter. I see, in your articles upon Mr Sumner, that you still keep a calm and steady look out upon American affairs especially as they relate to the welfare of my people. You can only imagine how we miss our champion from the senate? We are in that place, now like sheep without a sheppard. One good thing however is happily ours: He has left us with the means of self-protection. All that the written law can do in that line, except the "Civil rights Bill" penned by Mr Sumner has been Secured. It only remains now for the colored people here to make their own way.