Benjamin Lundy

January 4, 1789 - August 22, 1839

Benjamin Lundy
By R. H. Taneyhill

Whatever may have been the estimate placed upon the "Old Abolitionists" by their contemporaries; whatever may have been the opinion entertained of them by those who had to grapple with the mighty questions precipitated by their agitation of American slavery; however they may have suffered in the earlier stages of that agitation from the scorn, contempt and hatred of their fellow men; and however much they may have been whipped and scourged by the storm of passion they aroused and that finally swept the country on to civil war, it is certain that when the cold, calm and unyielding pen of the historian shall assign them their station in the annals of mankind, and when the unerring criticism of the ages shall fix upon them their worth, they will have accorded to them the character of Apostles of freedom and the place of teachers to this busy century. They taught the nations of earth the way to the best political rule and to the highest Christian civilization. And so they will remain the lights of liberty and the heroes of human rights until that government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" shall sway in every land, and shed its blessings on every people.

And that Belmont county furnished out of her midst the first American citizen who declared American slavery a crime; who organized the first society whose sole object was to strike that crime out of being; and who edited the first newspaper that dared burl the curses of outraged humanity against African slavery in the United States, is assuredly the proudest memory that can thrill the hearts of her children.The pioneer Abolitionist in the United States was Benjamin Lundy, and he began big labors as such at St. Clairsville, Belmont county, Ohio. He there formed the first society, whose only and avowed purpose was the overthrow of African slavery in the United Status, and he there edited the first newspaper devoted to bringing into odium the monstrous crime of that slavery and to finally driving it from the nation.

Mr. Lundy was born in the state of New Jersey on the 4th day of January, A. D. 1789, at the town of Hardwick,Sussex County. Both his father and mother were Quakers, and he, of course, was born in the communion of that church. When he was a mere boy be gave assurance of future greatness, by doing things on his father's farm that required strength far above that possessed by him. He was of a quiet and gentle disposition and by accident came very near losing his hearing – remaining through his life partially deaf. He was about five feet five inches high and so slightly built that be appeared to be delicate. His face was a little florid, eyes pale blue and big hair bright auburn with a strong tendency to curl. His beard was light and he wore it like the Burnside style. Such are the outlines and features of him, who put in motion a set of ideas that have shaken a continent and are still thrilling the world.

The bodily powers of Mr. Lundy not increasing with his years, induced him to seek the Great West with a hope to strengthen his physical powers by the change of residence. So in 1808 he went to the vicinity of Wheeling Va., and after working at several places west and east of that town, finally settled there to learn the trade of a saddler. Having finished his apprenticeship, he went to Mt. Pleasant Ohio, but in a short time went back to New Jersey, where he was married. Soon after his marriage he returned to Ohio, settled at St. Clairsville, and yet up the trade of saddle and harness maker.

When Mr. Lundy was learning his trade at Wheeling, that town was one of the great channels through which passed the slaves from the breeding lands of Maryland and East Virginia to the labor fields of the "sunny South." Gangs of slaves of both sexes. of from fifty to a hundred persons each, were often driven through the streets of that town, handcuffed in couples with a chain running between the couples to the length of the gang. Those gangs so handcuffed and secured were called "chain gangs of slaves." It was such scenes as those that met the eyes, and wrung the heart of Mr. Lundy and caused him to write in his diary: "My heart was greatly grieved by the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." Nor are those reflections and feelings of Mr. Lundy to be wondered at, when we remember big temperament, the influence under which he keel been raised and the training he had received.

In the year 1815 he called a meeting of his neighbors to be held at his own house in the town of St. Clairsville, to organize an anti-Slavery Society. Only six persons attended that meeting, but they formed what they called a “Union Humane Society.” That was the first Abolition Society ever organized in the United States. It was a small beginning of a counterwave to the flood that was overflowing the nation. In a few weeks the house of Mr. Lundy was too little to hold the members of that society, and in six months from its "small beginning" the "Union Humane Society" had over four hundred members, and among them some of the best citizens of Belmont county.

Mr. Lundy believed that God had put on him the duty to free the black man, and he entered upon the discharge of that duty with the fervor of a reformer and the zeal of an enthusiast. Not satisfied with simply organizing an Anti-Slavery Society and bringing his fellow-citizens into sympathy- with its object, he began to write articles against the "great abomination." On his twenty-sixth birthday, Mr. Lundy wrote his first article upon the abolition of American slavery. He entitled the article, "The Appeal to Philanthropists." That "appeal" contains nearly every thought ever urged against African slavery in the United States, and whatever was afterwards said or written upon that subject is only a repetition of that "appeal" or an elaboration of its ideas. In addition to the "appeal" he wrote several articles for the "Philanthropist," a paper then printed and published at Mt Pleasant, Ohio and edited by one Charles Osborne, a Quaker gentleman. The general bearings of that paper were against slavery, but discussed the question rather abstractively. Shortly after he had written those articles for the “Philanthropist” he became an assistant editor of that paper.

So soon as Mr. Lundy had assumed the character of editor, he did an act that happily illustrates the force of his feeling against slavery, and the dogged determination of his mind to wrestle with its crime. In order to have funds with which to make the paper a more powerful one, he puts big entire stock of harness and saddles into a flatboat to take them to St. Louis to sell. The trip down the river was a slow one, and he did not reach St. Louis until late in the fall of 1819. He found all business at a standstill, and everybody excited over the admission of Missouri as a State, with the memorable proviso known as the "Missouri Compromise." A fiery discussion was going on in the newspapers of the city, and Mr. Lundy, indiscreetly, yet manfully entered the arena of discussion as a combatant for freedom. That course inflamed the public against him, and he could get no sale for his goods only at disastrous prices.

Getting out of them all he could, he, to save all the money possible, made the journey home on foot, although it was the "dead of' winter of 1820-1." 'Tis said calamities never come singly, and so Mr. Lundy found it to be in his case, for when he got back to Mt. Pleasant Mr. Osborne had sold out his establishment, and the press and type shipped to Jonesboro, Tennessee.

But the loss of his property, the unexpected destruction of the business, to give strength and prosperity to which he had sacrificed his means; with midwinter upon him, without friends, among strangers, and his money scant, all seemed to form a grand stimulating compound that gave fresh vigor to the energy of Mr. Lundy. He at once resolved to start a newspaper of his own, exactly suited to his conception of the needs of the tremendous situation, for the charge of which he felt it his duty to act. Having gone on foot to several of the adjacent towns, on the hunt of a printer, willing to print his paper for him, he at last discovered the object of his wish at Steubenville, Ohio. That town was twenty miles distant from Mt. Pleasant, but Lundy undaunted by obstacles and undismayed by his poverty, carried his manuscript and selections in his pocket, to that town on foot, had his paper printed and then walked back to Mt. Pleasant, carrying the first issue of the Genius of Universal Emancipation on his shoulders. 'Six persons took the paper. Lundy bowed to fate, but trusting in God and the "sacredness of the cause," straightened himself to a loftier mein and went on with his paper, going to and fro on foot. He continued to be his own mail carrier, carrying his manuscript and selections one way, and the Genius of Universal Emancipation the other. Such zeal, such labor, such worth, can not be defeated; and so in a few months his efforts brought him a considerable list of subscribers – enough to pay him well. Just as he had made the Genius of Universal Emancipation a newspaper success, he received a pressing invitation from the editor of the Philanthropist, then published at Jonesboro, Tennessee, to come there and print his paper at that office. Mr. Lundy very foolishly accepted the invitation, He went to Jonesboro and remained there three years publishing his paper, but an abolition paper at the very heart of Tennessee, was too much for the "hot bloods" of that region to tolerate. He was often insulted as he passed about the streets, and threatened with personal violence, and on one occasion two ruffians locked him in a room, brandishing pistols in his face, declaring that “if he didn’t get out of thar. They’d be the death of him,” but he stayed in Jonesboro until it suited him to leave it.

The first "Anti-Slavery Convention" ever held in the United Status, met at Philadelphia in the winter of 1823-4. Mr. Lundy made the journey of six hundred miles to attend its sittings. While at that convention he was induced to remove his paper to the East, and by an unlucky choice, located its publication at Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Lundy left Jonesboro for Baltimore on foot, with knapsack on his back. He went by the way of North Carolina. At Deep Creek, that state, lie made his first public “Anti Slavery” speech. He spoke in a beautiful grove near, “Friends Meeting House,” directly after divine service.

He also spoke in the meeting at another time, and made speeches at some house raisings, and at a "militia muster." While at Deep Creek, he organized an "Abolition Society." He once spoke at Raleigh, that state. As he went through Virginia, he made speeches at several places and organized one Abolition Society.

He arrived at Baltimore, about the first of October, 1824, and the first issue of his paper was made October 10, 1824, being No. 1, fourth volume. Not long after his arrival at Baltimore, the, masters of a considerable number of slaves, informed Mr. Lundy that if he would find homes for them, they would set them free. He immediately went North to secure them homes. Being detained much longer than be had expected to be, Mr. Lundy found on his return to Baltimore, that his wife had died in his absence, after giving birth to twin babies. That was the mightiest sorrow of his life, and from the shock, he never entirely recovered. Kind friends, however, had provided homes for his children, of which he had five.

In the year 1828 Mr. Lundy went to New England on a lecturing tour. Arriving at Boston he visited the clergymen of the city, and eight of them subscribed for his paper and prevailed upon him to hold an anti-slavery meeting. The meeting was held and largely attended by the people. At the close of the meeting several of the clergymen addressed the people, concurring in the views of Mr. Lundy. He went on to New Hampshire and Maine lecturing when he could get the privilege. As he was returning be spoke in the principal towns of Massachusetts. Rhode Island and Connecticut. He also traversed a large part of the state of New York, speaking at many of its prominent towns. It was on this tour at the city of Boston that he first met Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, who was then quite a young man and a boarder at the house where Mr. Lundy sojourned. During his stay at Boston he had frequent conversations with Mr. Garrison, and at last converted him to his views on the slavery question. In a short time Mr. Garrison became an active worker in the cause of abolition. So it may be truly said that Mr. Lundy cleared away the mists from before the face of that mighty luminary of universal emancipation, whose light continued to grow brighter and brighter until every spot, of our fair land was made bright by the light of liberty.

Many of the slaveholders of Maryland at that time were heartily tired of slavery and emancipated their slaves whenever homes could be found for them "out of the state." A statute of the state of Maryland in force at the time forbade the perfect liberation of the slaves unless the master had them sent out of the state. Mr. Lundy was therefore constantly employed in behalf of the freedmen, finding them homes and getting them to them. Some of them be sent to Haiti, others to Canada and on one occasion Mr. Lundy made a trip to Texas to make the effort to secure from the Mexican government a large tract of land on which to put emancipated slaves, but he failed to obtain the land. In 1829 he visited Haiti, and went many times to Canada to see how " his people " were getting along.

Mr. Lundy was a man who always bridled his tongue and pointed his pen with caution. He detested slavery but loved and pitied the slaveholder, and so while he handled the crime of slavery with no soft hands, he stroked the owners of the slaves with the gentlest touch. But an abolitionist and his abolition newspaper in the Monumental city, in the very midst of slave dealers and the markets for slaves, were things not to be borne without resistance. Lundy must leave; willingly well, but leave he must. In the winter of 1829 he was met on the street by Austin Woolfolk, a notorious slave trader of that day, and assaulted and nearly beaten to death by him. Woolfolk was brought before Judge Nicholas Brice for that offense, but Woolfolk was summarily set at liberty by “his Honor,” with the remark the remark that "Lundy had got no more than he deserved." Brice, not content with his brisk behavior as to Woolfolk, tyrannically directed tile Grand Jury to indict Lundy for publishing an incendiary newspaper, but the Grand Jury, having more sense and better principles than Brice, ignored the bill.

Mr. William Lloyd Garrison went to Baltimore, September 1, 1829, and became the associate editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation. As is universally known, Mr. Garrison was a strong and fearless writer, and in a short time rendered himself subject to the fury of the “chivalry.” An occurrence soon took place that gave him ample play to his ablest powers as a writer. A vessel commanded by a native of the same town with Mr. Garrison (Newburyport, Mass.) sailed with a cargo of slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans. Mr. Garrison, in the next issue of the paper, in a scathing editorial, discussed the captain, the cargo, and the trip of the slave ship. So terrible was the invective, so scorching the eloquence, and so burning the rebuke of the slave traffic contained in that editorial, that a criminal prosecution was forthwith began against the writer. Of course he was convicted, and a fine of fifty dollars imposed upon him for the infraction of the law. Mr. Garrison in that celebrated editorial, had called the coastwise slave trade "domestic piracy," and as one of the "gentry" which owned the slaves had gone with the vessel, he brought suit for the "libel" against him. The jury awarded a verdict of one thousand dollars against Mr. Garrison, and judgment was entered accordingly; but it stands an unpaid judgment to this day. When Mr., Garrison was poor he could not pay it, and when lie became wealthy he would not pay it.

Mr. Garrison had to remain in prison until his friend and fellow Abolitionist, Arthur Tappan, of New York, could go from that city to Baltimore to pay his fine and have him released. Mr. Garrison was in prison forty nine days. On the very day that Mr. Tappan paid the fine, Hon. Henry Clay arrived at "the city of monuments," to pay Mr. Garrison's fine and have him set at liberty, but be was too late, as Mr. Tappanl had already paid the fine and Mr. Garrison was again free.

In a short time after those prosecutions of Mr. Garrison and outrages upon Mr. Lundy, the partnership between those gentlemen was dissolved. The publication of The Genius of Universal Emancipation was transferred to Washington, D.C.; Mr. Lundy removing to that city. Mr. Garrison went back to Boston, and all the 1st day of January, 1831, he issued the first number of his illustrious Abolition paper, The Liberator.

So soon as Mr. Garrison became associate editor of the Genius he denounced slavery as "the sum of all crimes," and demanded its immediate and unconditional abolition. He branded all other schemes about it, as mere shifts and tricks for its perpetuation. "Liberty" he said “was the right of the slave, and it was the duty of the master to give it to him." Mr. Lundy was in favor of any scheme that brought liberty to a slave. He favored colonization, manumission and emancipation, and hoped by those instrumentalities, to gradually do slavery away. Mr. Garrison believed the American Constitution, to be a bulwark around slavery and denounced it as “a covenant with death and a league with hell.” Mr. Lundy believed that the American Constitution simply treated slavery as an existing condition of a part of the people, and in no manner stood in the way to the final emancipation of that body of the people.From 1830 to 1835, Mr. Lundy was constantly engaged in providing homes for slaves set free, and getting them to their homes.

He continued the publication of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, at Washington, D. C., until 1836, when he removed to the city of Philadelphia. After his arrival at Philadelphia, the name of his paper was changed to The National Enquirer and in a short time to that of Pennsylvania Freeman. On the 17th day of May, 1838, Pennsylvania Hall, owned by abolitionists, was burned by a mob. Mr. Lundy, preparatory to his removal to the West, had collected his property in one of the rooms of that “Hall,” and his books, papers, clothing and household goods were consumed in the burning. In July, 1838, Mr. Lundy started for the state of Illinois, where his children then resided. He reached that state in September, and finally settled at Lowell, La Salle county. He purchased a press and started the Genius of Universal Emancipation once more, but in August, 1839. he contracted a prevailing disease and died on the 22d day of that month. He was buried at the town of Lowell.

The Genius of Universal Emancipation, from its start at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, until one year after its first publication at Baltimore, was a “monthly,” From that time on until it ceased to be published it was a weekly. Mr. Lundy learned the printer’s trade at Jonesboro, and when going about in behalf of the freedmen, if his money failed him, he would work at his trade to make money to keep him going.