“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,…shall exist within the United States”declared the U.S. Congress on January 31, 1865, as it passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On January 31, 2009, the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) announced the induction of two abolitionists who dedicated their lives to the abolition of slavery. The 2009 abolition inductees to the Hall of Fame are Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld. The two abolitionists will be inducted at ceremonies October 24, 2009 at Colgate University and commemorated October 23, 2010.NAHOF is searching for relatives and affiliates of both inductees to join the ceremonies.  

Lewis Tappan was born May 23, 1788, in Northampton, Massachusetts. During his lifetime Tappan, a dry goods merchant and silk industrialist, used much of his wealth and energy in the struggle to end slavery. The New York Times described Lewis Tappan as “one of the pioneers in the movement for the abolition of slavery in this country” in his obituary notice published at the time of his death in Brooklyn NY in 1873. Tappan helped to found the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833. When the American Anti-Slavery Society split in 1840, Tappan took a leadership role in establishing the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

 

Tappan gave liberally to the American Anti-Slavery Society and helped to publish The Emancipator. Lewis Tappan and his brother Arthur Tappan provided the financial backing for the establishment of Oberlin College in Ohio, where black and white students were educated together in an abolitionist environment. Tappan worked for the elimination of the “the black pew” in American churches. He aided in the formation of the American Missionary Society in 1846, an organization that did extensive work among the freed people after the Civil War. He supported the Republican Party and the emancipation efforts of Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps best known for his leadership in the defense of the Africans in the Amistad trials of 1841, Tappan not only helped achieve the release of the Mende people, but also arranged English tutoring and their return to Africa.

Lewis Tappan’s anti-slavery zeal was so well known that it drew him many allies, but also enemies. A pro-slavery mob broke into his dwelling on July 4, 1834, carrying his furniture out to the street and setting fire to it.

Theodore Dwight Weld has many ties to Central New York. Born November 23, 1803, in Hampton Connecticut, Weld moved to Fabius, NY in 1825 with his family. Soon after, Theodore began spending significant time with his mother’s brother Erastus Clark in Utica. Clark, a lawyer, came to Old Fort Schuyler in 1791, commenced a law practice and civic and church involvement, was a founding trustee of Hamilton College, and gave the city the name of “Utica.” Weld met William Kirkland (a tutor at the college his father founded) and roomed at Hamilton College with Kirkland participating on campus in an unofficial status. Weld also became close friends with abolitionist Charles Stuart, a principal at a local academy. Weld’s Pilgrim’s Progress in the Nineteenth Century was first printed in the Utica Christian Repository in 1825. Following a conversion at a Utica revival with Charles Grandison Finney in 1826, Weld enrolled in the Oneida Institute in Whitestown (now Whitesboro, NY).    

Drawn to the reform-oriented western frontier of Ohio, Weld entered Lane Seminary in 1833, and adopted the immediate abolition of slavery as his major reform theme. He led a series of student debates that gained him national recognition as an abolition movement leader. When the faculty and administration of Lane counteracted the abolition position, the “Weldites” left Lane to enter Oberlin College, making it a center of abolition thought.

Weld became a superb orator and organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society in the mid-1830s. Weld recruited agents known as “The Seventy” who traveled and spoke in assigned districts representing the American Anti-Slavery Society. By late 1836, his vigorous oration had caused the loss of his voice, so he turned to writing as a means of expression. As editor of the Antislavery Almanac, author of American Slavery as It Is, and researcher of arguments to oppose the “gag rule” which forbade the discussion of antislavery petitions received by Congress, Weld was influential in fostering the antislavery movement. Weld, called the “St. John of the Abolitionists” by his daughter Sarah, died in Hyde Park, Mass. February 3, 1895.

The 2005 Abolition Hall of Fame inductees were Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Gerrit Smith, and Harriet Tubman. The 2007 inductees were John Brown, Lydia Maria Child, Wendell Phillips, and Sojourner Truth. These abolitionists were inducted at ceremonies at Colgate University in 2005 and 2007, and commemorated at ceremonies at Morrisville State College in 2006 and 2008.  Self-standing biographical banners for each inductee, sponsored by relatives, affiliates, sponsors, and the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment of the Humanities, are on exhibit at the Hall of Fame. (The exhibit will be at the New Woodstock Free Library for Black History Month 2009.)

The inductees were designated from a listing developed in 2005 from responses of nationally recognized abolition scholars contacted by the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum. Public nomination procedures to the Hall of Fame were announced at the annual October event and are available on the website www.abolitionhof.com  For more information contact mail@abolitionhof.org or 315-684-3262.

 


Comments




Leave a Reply