Lan-Lew: Lane through Lewis

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


LANE, Henry Smith, 1811-1881, U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 607; Congressional Globe). 

LANE, HENRY SMITH (February 24, 1811 June 18, 1881), representative and senator from Indiana, was born on a farm near Sharpsburg, Bath County, Kentucky, the son of James H. Lane, a colonel of militia and Indian fighter. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, in 1832, at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. In 1834 he moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he practised his profession until he became a banker there, in 1854, with his father-in-law, Isaac C. Elston: He was a Whig member of the state House of Representatives (1838-39) and took an active part in the campaign of 1840. Elected to the twenty-sixth federal House of Representatives to fill a vacancy caused by resignation and reelected to the next Congress, he served from August 3, 1840, to March 3, 1843. When Tyler succeeded Harrison and vetoed bills to charter a new federal bank Lane, like most of his party, broke with the President and denounced him in bitter terms. He greatly admired Henry Clay and campaigned ardently for him in 1844; the defeat of his idol was one of the great disappointments of his life. Unlike many northern Whigs he strongly supported the Mexican War, raised a company of volunteers, became its captain, and subsequently rose to be major and then lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Indiana Regiment. He went to Mexico but was mainly engaged in guarding supply trains and in garrison duty, and he did not participate in any battles. After his return home he again ran for Congress but was defeated by one of the leading Indiana Democrats, Joseph E. McDonald.

Early in his life, he recognized that slavery was out of harmony with the spirit of the age, but he opposed the methods of the active abolitionists. However, when the Republican party was founded upon the principle of opposition to slavery in the territories, he became one of its leaders in Indiana. He presided over the national convention of 1856 and made an impassioned speech that gave him a national reputation. In 1859, holding that the election of Bright and Fitch in 1857 had been irregular, the Republicans and "Americans" or old Whigs, who now controlled both houses of the state legislature, chose Lane and Monroe McCarty for the United States Senate, but they were not allowed to take the seats because the Democratic majority in that body supported Bright and Fitch. In the Republican National Convention of 1860 he energetically opposed the candidacy of Seward and played a large part in bringing about Lincoln's nomination. He was nominated for governor by the Indiana Republicans, with Oliver P. Morton as the candidate for lieutenant-governor. The two campaigned vigorously and were elected. Two days after his inauguration, in accordance with a previous understanding, he was elected United States senator and resigned the governorship in favor of Morton. In the Senate he was a member of the committee on military affairs and of the committee on pensions, of which latter he became chairman. He gave zealous support to the Union cause and, later, to the congressional plan of reconstruction, but he originated few measures and rarely spoke at any length, his talents "being better suited to the hustings than to a legislative body" (Woolen, post, p. 124). His influence was, however, much greater than the record of his activities in the Congressional Globe indicates.

He declined to be a candidate for reelection and upon the expiration of his term in 1867 returned to Crawfordsville to take up again his banking interests. In 1869 he became special Indian commissioner and, in 1872, served as commissioner for the improvement of the Mississippi River. He was a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1868 and 1872 and for many years a trustee of Asbury College (now De Pauw University). He was fond of telling how in the days of attending court in Fountain County before the war, he approached a group that included Abraham Lincoln. "Here," said Lincoln, "comes an uglier man than I am." As a stump speaker he had few equals, but his oratory was of the impassioned type, and he was not a logical speaker nor a good debater. Unlike his fellow partisan, Oliver P. Morton, he made few enemies, being popular even with most of his political opponents. He was twice married, first, to Pamelia Bledsoe Jameson of Kentucky, who died in 1842, and, second, on February II, 1845, to Jonna Elston, of Crawfordsville, a sister of the wife of Lew Wallace [q.v.].

[Files of the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing; Encycl. of Biography of Indiana, ed. by G. I. Reed, volume I (1895); A Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men of the State of Indiana (1880), volume I; W. W. Woolen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (1883); Indianapolis Journal, June 20, 1881; Indianapolis News, April 6, 1914, August 8, 1914.] P.L.H.


LANE, James Henry, 1814-1866, lawyer, soldier.  Union General.  U.S. Senator from Kansas, 1861-1866.  Elected Senator in 1861 and in 1865.  Active in the abolitionist movement in Kansas in the 1850’s.  A leader in the Jay Hawkers and Free Soil militant groups.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 606; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, pp. 576-578; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 121; Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 576-578:

LANE, JAMES HENRY (June 22, 1814- July II, 1866), soldier and Kansas political leader, was the son of Amos and Mary (Foote) Howes Lane. His father, a native of New York, emigrated to Indiana in 1808, became an itinerant attorney, a member of the legislature (speaker- in 1817), and congressman from the fourth Indiana district during Jackson's second term. His mother was born in Connecticut, acquired a good education, and imparted the fundamentals of learning to her son. Lane's birthplace was probably Lawrenceburg, Indiana, although when it gave him political advantage he claimed Kentucky as his native state. He was a product of the frontier, and like his father, a Democrat of the Jackson school. He studied law in his father's office, was admitted to the bar, and practised his profession occasionally. In 1841 he married Mary E. Baldridge of Youngstown, Pennsylvania, a grand-daughter of General Arthur St. Clair; they were divorced some fifteen years later and remarried in 1857. In the Mexican War he served as colonel of the 3rd Indiana Regiment, and as a volunteer commander without previous military experience acquitted himself creditably at Buena Vista. Later he commanded the 5th Indiana, which he led to Mexico City. Military achievement brought political advancement: he served as lieutenant-governor, 1849-53, and as member of Congress, 1853-55, where he voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Refusing to stand for. reelection, he emigrated to Kansas Territory in April 1855 and soon attempted to organize the Democratic party there. Failing in this endeavor, he joined the Free-State movement, and as chairman of the platform committee of the Big Springs convention, in September 1855, he advocated a broad and constructive program designed to unite antislavery factions in the Territory. At the "People's Convention" two weeks later he was made chairman of the "Executive Committee of Kansas Territory," and as such directed the activities of the party in its quest for statehood. Posing as the spokesman of Stephen A. Douglas

 [q.v.], he assured Free-State men that they had only to frame a constitution and it would command. the support of the Illinois Senator ... In October he was elected president of a convention assembled at Topeka which framed and adopted a constitution ratified a month later by the voters of the party. The "Topeka Movement" was interrupted by the Wakarusa War in December, during which Lane fortified Lawrence again st pro-slavery Missourians and, had it not been for the cautious Robinson (Charles Robinson [q.v.], leader of the anti-slavery forces), might have taken the offensive. This crisis was a turning point in Lane's career. He was essentially a conservative until the hysteria of exciting events produced the proper background for radical leadership. A "state" government was organized in March 1856, and Lane and Andrew H. Reeder [q.v.] were elected to the Senate by the would be legislature.

Lane immediately went to Washington to labor for the admission of Kansas, armed with a memorial framed by the "Senators and Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of Kansas." It was favorably received in the House but was rejected by the Senate, where Douglas and other Administration leaders pronounced it a fraud and a forgery, largely upon technical grounds. Douglas refused to be drawn into a duel, and Lane toured the Northwest to lay the cause of Kansas before the people. Since the Missouri River had been closed to emigrants from the Northern states he opened a new rout e via Iowa and Nebraska, and through this channel "Lane's Army of the North" invaded Kansas. Arriving in August 1856 he attacked proslavery strongholds, and his men committed depredations fully as atrocious as those of the "border ruffians." Peace was restored upon the arrival of Governor John W. Geary [q.v.] in September.

After spending the following winter in the East, Lane returned to the Territory in March 1857. He opposed participation in the Lecompton movement but favored contesting the October election for members of the territorial legislature. This policy was adopted, and the Free-State party gained control of the General Assembly, which immediately elected Lane major-general of militia. Following the homicide of Gaius Jenkins, June 3, 1858, Lane retired from politics, but emerged in 18s 9 to become a Republican candidate for the Senate, and when the state was admitted in 1861 he reached the goal of his ambition.

Arriving in Washington in April 1861, he immediately raised a "Frontier Guard" which bivouacked in the East Room of the Executive Mansion for a few days. This episode marked the beginning of an intimate friendship with Lincoln which gave Lane influence and prestige in the management of Kansas affairs in Washington. In June 1861 Lincoln appointed him brigadier-general of volunteers with authority to raise two regiments. During September and October this "Kansas Brigade" operated against Confederate forces under General Sterling Price in western Missouri and "jayhawked" property of both Union and Confederate sympathizers. Returning to the Senate in December, Lane demanded an aggressive winter campaign. The President, who admired his tireless activity and infectious enthusiasm, tendered him the command of an expedition from the department of Kansas into Arkansas and the Indian country, but a controversy with General David Hunter, the departmental commander, prevented the "Great Southern Expedition" from materializing.

Although Lane had expressed anti-slavery convictions as a member of Congress from Indiana, he went to Kansas declaring that his attitude toward the institution there would depend upon the suitability of the soil and climate for hemp production. In 1857, however, he announced himself a "crusader for freedom." At the outbreak of war he asserted that "slavery would not survive the march of the Union Army," and his brigade assisted many blacks in escaping from Arkansas and Missouri. As recruiting commissioner for Kansas he assembled a regiment of negroes which was mustered January 13, 1863, perhaps the second to be officially received into Union service.

The Lane-Robinson feud which began in the territorial period continued with credit to neither of the principals. In the Kansas election of 1862 indorsement of Lane became the chief issue, and dissatisfied Republicans, supported by Democrats, bolted the regular ticket. He was denounced as an "infamous demagogue" with "an insatiable thirst for power," but the result of the election was regarded as a Lane triumph. His enemies increased and in the legislative session of 1864 they sought to end his political career by electing Governor Thomas Carney [q.v.] to the Senate. Since Lane's term would not expire for over a year the premature election was branded "a fraud upon the people." Lane stumped the state the following summer and, aided by opportune military events. secured the election of a friendly legislature which returned him to the Senate by an almost unanimous vote. As early as December 1863 Lane advocated the reelection of Lincoln, and his Cooper Institute speech a few months later was a timely review of the Administration's successes. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention, and in the Grand Council of the Union League which assembled the evening before, he defended the President's record. In the campaign which followed he represented Kansas on the National Committee, and as chairman of the "National Union Committee for the West," he urged northwestern radicals to support Lincoln. He was a strong advocate of western expansion and gave the Homestead and Pacific Railroad bills his undivided support. He secured a grant of land to Kansas to aid the construction of the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Fort Gibson, and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroads. In the reconstruction of seceded states he deserted the radicals and reverted to conservatism. Accepting the perdurance theory, he advocated a "Topeka Movement" for Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the best method of combating "bogus authority." His support of President Johnson's veto of the Civil Rights Bill caused almost universal condemnation in Kansas as "misrepresenting a radical constituency." Depressed by his cold reception at home, overworked, mentally deranged, charged with financial irregularities connected with Indian contracts, he shot himself on July 1, 1866, but lingered ten days, dying July 11.

Lane's great service to Kansas in the territorial period lay in his organization of various anti-slavery factions into a compact Free-State party. Albeit the movement which he led for statehood was destined to fail, it gave the members of that party a common purpose which united them until the pro-slavery legislature was overthrown. Furthermore, Northern men in Kansas had implicit faith in Lane's military capacity which gave them confidence in contests with "border ruffians." After the beginning of the Civil War, he was a pioneer in advocating emancipation and enlistment of negroes. Indigent, ambitious, provocative, magnetic, he was primarily an agitator. His "demoralized wardrobe," his unkempt hair and beard, his "lean, haggard, and sinewy figure," all contributed to his success in a frontier political canvass. His use of sarcasm and invective, his crude gestures and his long, bony fore-finger, his harsh and raspy voice made him an effective stump orator. "That he loved Kansas, and that Kansas loved him, is undeniable."

[John Speer, Life of General James H. Lane (1896), is eulogistic; Wm. E . Connelley, James Henry Lane (1899) is fragmentary; W. H. Stephenson, "The Political Career of General James H. Lane" (Kansas State Historical Society Publications, volume III, 1930), emphasizes his political activities but devotes some attention to this military background. See also R. G. Elliott,  "The Big Springs Convention," Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volume VIII (1904); L. W. Spring, "The Career of a Kansas Politician," American Historical Review, October 1898; W. O. Stoddard, "The story of a Nomination," North American Review, March 1884; Jacob Stringfellow (N. V. Smith), "Jim Lane," Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1870; Kansas State Historical Society Collections, volume XIII (1915); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); W. H. Stephenson, "Amos Lane, Advocate of Western Democracy," Ind. Magazine of History, September 1930; Congressional Globe, 1853-66; War of the Rebellion: Official Records, series I, II, III; Leavenworth Daily Conservative, July 12, 1866. The "Webb Scrap Book" (17 volumes), preserved in the Kansas State Historical Library, contains copious clippings from a wide range of newspapers, May 1854-September 1856.]

W.H.S.


LANE, Lunsford, 1803-1870, North Carolina, author, former slave, abolitionist.  Published The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, North Carolina, Embracing an Account of his Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and his Banishment from his Place of Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin. 1842.

(Dumond, 1961, p. 330; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 30)


LANGSTON, Charles Henry, 1817-1892, African American (Black mother, White father), abolitionist leader.  Active in Ohio Negro Convention Movement.  Active in Liberty, Free Soil and Republican parties.  Involved in slave rescue in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  Helped to establish and organize the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.  Recruited Black troops for the Union Army. 

(Blue, 2005, pp. 5-6, 13, 65-67, 66-78, 83-84, 86-88, 118, 120, 156, 266-267, Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


LANGSTON, Gideon, abolitionist, brother of Charles Henry Langston (Blue, 2005, pp. 65-67)


LANGSTON, John Mercer, 1829-1897, free African American, lawyer, diplomat, educator, abolitionist, political leader.  Brother of Charles Henry Langston.  Graduate of Oberlin College.  U. S. Congressman, Virginia, 4th District, 1890-1891.  First Dean of Howard University law school, Washington, DC.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 2, p. 597; Blue, 2005, pp. 5-6, 65-66, 69, 72-76, 78, 79, 81, 85-88; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 164; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 7, p. 162)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 597:

LANGSTON, JOHN MERCER (December 14, 1829-November15, 1897), educator and diplomat, was born in Louisa County, Virginia. His father, Ralph Quarles, was the owner of the estate. His mother, Lucy Langston, of African and Indian blood, Quarles's favorite slave, was emancipated by him in 1806 and subsequently bore him three sons, who followed the condition of their mother and took her name. Ralph Quarles was a kind master, who believed that slavery should be abolished by the voluntary act of the owner. In 1834 both of Langston's parents died. By his father's will the principal slaves were emancipated and liberal provision was made for the three sons. Langston was sent by the executors to live with his father's friend, William D. Gooch of Chillicothe, Ohio, who became his guardian and who gave him the care and education of a son. When the boy was about ten, Gooch decided to move to Missouri, a slave state. Langston started with him, but the sheriff, at the instigation of his half-brother, William Langston, followed with a process requiring Gooch to answer to the charge of attempting to carry the boy beyond the jurisdiction of the court that had made him guardian. Allen G. Thurman, then a young lawyer, appeared for William Langston, and the court ruled that the boy could not leave Ohio. After spending two years in a. Cincinnati private school, he returned to Chillicothe and, in 1844, entered the preparatory department of Oberlin College. In 1849 he graduated from the collegiate department and in 1853 from the theological department. However, he had studied theology only in order to prepare himself for law, and, not being able to gain admission to a law school, he read law under Philemon Bliss, of Elyria. In September 1854, he was admitted to the bar and, the next month, married Caroline M. Wall, who was then a senior in the literary department of Oberlin College.

He began practising law in Brownhelm but, two years later, located in Oberlin. In March 1855 he was nominated by the Liberty Party for clerk of Brownhelm township and was elected, probably the first negro to be chosen to an elective office in the United States. During the Civil War he served as an agent for recruiting regiment, the 54th Massachusetts and, later, the 55th Massachusetts and the 5th Ohio regiments. From 1865 to 1867 he was a member of the Council of Oberlin and, in 1867 and 1868, of the city Board of Education.

In 1868 he was called to Washington and appointed inspector-general of the Freedmen's Bureau. In this capacity he visited many sections of the South, where his tactful educational addresses were received with enthusiasm by both the colored and white population. Upon the termination of these activities he accepted the professorship of law in Howard University. As dean (1869-1876) and vice-president and acting president (1872) he organized and established the law department of this institution. For seven years he was a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia and its attorney. In 1877 he became minister-resident to Haiti and charge d' affaires to Santo Domingo and, until 1885, was in the diplomatic and consular service, where his tact, easy manner, and diplomatic address made a favorable impression. In 1883 he published Freedom and Citizenship, a selection from the many addresses that had made his reputation as an orator of power and distinction. Upon his return to the United States he was elected president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg, Virginia. In 1888 he was the Republican nominee for Congress from his district, and, although his election was contested, he was seated by the House in 1890. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. He retired to his home in Washington, where he continued to interest himself in political affairs and wrote From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital (1894) in which he told with real charm the story of his dramatic and useful life.

[Autobiography mentioned above; introductory sketch by J. E. Rankin in Freedom and Citizenship (1883); Souvenir Journal of the 35th National, Celebration at Culpeper, Virginia ... under Auspices of the Langston National Monument Historical and Emancipation Assn. comp. by R. B. Robinson (1898); W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark, (1887); J. W. Cromwell, The Negro in American History (1914); B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (2 volumes, 1909); New York Tribune, November 16, 1897.]

R.C.M.


LANSING, Dirck Cornelius, 1758-1857, New York.  Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. 

(Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III)


LAURENS, Henry, 1724-1792, statesman, South Carolina, opponent of slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 630-631; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 32; Bruns, 1977, pp. 427-428; Drake, 1950, p. 85; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 23, 362; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 261). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 32:

LAURENS, HENRY (March 6, 1724-December 8, 1792), merchant, planter, Revolutionary statesman, came from pure Huguenot stock. His grandfather, Andre Laurens, fled from Rochelle in 1682 at the beginning of the persecutions, settled for a while in England and Ireland, then emigrated to New York City, and finally moved to Charleston, South Carolina, shortly before his death about 1715. His son, Jean Samuel, later called John, married in New York Hester or Esther Grasset, who also came from a Huguenot refugee family. Henry, the third of their six children and their eldest son, was born at Charleston. John Laurens became a saddler, building up the largest business of its kind in the colony, and bequeathing a considerable estate to Henry as his residuary legatee upon his death in 1747. Henry received the best education available in the colony, deficient in the classics, but well suited to the needs of a colonial gentleman-merchant. In 1744 he was sent to London by his father, in order to receive further commercial training and to make business contacts. Three years later, a letter offering him a partnership in a London commercial house missed him by five hours at Portsmouth, perhaps thus altering his whole career. When he returned to England after settling his father's estate, the vacant position had been filled and Laurens accepted instead a Charleston partnership with George Austin, later joined by George Appleby. This firm, conducting a general commission business, became one of the most active in the important South Carolina trade, and when it was dissolved in 1762, Laurens continued alone as probably the leading merchant of Charleston.

The business consisted mainly of exporting rice, deerskins, and indigo, and importing wine, slaves, and indentured servants. Probably the most common form of trade was the exchange of rice for slaves. The firm occasionally undertook ventures of its own, but in general it handled transactions for others, charging a commission of five per cent off all but the "Guinea business" in slaves; which paid double that amount. Laurens finally withdrew from this last phase of the business, almost apologizing for his humanitarian motives. Most of the firm's trade was with London, Liverpool, and Bristol, but from time to time, Laurens also had correspondents in Glasgow, Rotterdam, Oporto, Lisbon, Madrid, and in the British, French, and Spanish West Indies. He owned a part interest in several vessels, but the southern colonies as a whole were far behind the northern in ship-building and ship-owning. After 1764 he gradually withdrew from the commission business, though still continuing some of his mercantile operations. His interest shifted to the acquiring and managing of plantations. He doubtless hoped to strengthen his already secure social position by becoming a landed proprietor. His principal holding was "Mepkin," a beautiful three-thousand-acre estate on the Cooper River some thirty miles above Charleston, where he raised rice and indigo. He raised indigo also on his "Mt. Tacitus" and "Wambaw" estates in the Santee region. He owned several rice plantations on the Georgia coast and a large unsettled tract around Ninety Six in the back country of Carolina. His entire holdings totaled some 20,000 acres and were becoming very profitable at the outbreak of the Revolution.

The year 1764 marks a turning point in Laurens' life. The previous twenty years had been spent almost entirely in overseas commerce, a field for which he was eminently adapted; during the next twenty years, he not only became a planter, but he also became increasingly involved in the preliminaries and events of the Revolution. At forty he was one of the wealthy men of the province. Short and rather swarthy in appearance, he looked "aggressive and just a bit cock-sure." His health was good, but later he was tortured with recurrent visitations of gout. His personal morality was unquestioned and he was a strong "family man." He enjoyed a high reputation for business sagacity and honesty. He had keen insight, great ingenuity, methodical habits, and unusual industry, frequently rising before dawn to handle his correspondence. He was a merciful creditor, never imprisoning and seldom suing for debt, though he was strict with the slack and the slippery. He was a humane and considerate slaveowner. On several occasions he showed great personal courage in taking an unpopular stand. He had, however, some less fortunate qualities. He lacked a genial and expansive nature, except possibly with social intimates. He was inclined to be self-satisfied, self-righteous, and sensitive about his dignity and honor. He could be brusque and insolent on occasion. Though he generally maintained strong self-control, he sometimes showed a merciless sarcasm with tongue or pen in debate or pamphlet dispute. More than once he became involved in duels, in which he refused to fire a shot. It was his misfortune that his public services in the Revolutionary period were more in the legislative and diplomatic field, where the less amiable qualities of his nature often handicapped him, than in executive, administrative positions for which he was so well adapted (Wallace, post, p. 432). His public career had started before 1764. He was elected to the provincial Commons House of Assembly in 1757 and was reelected regularly, with one exception, from that time until the Revolution. In 1764 he declined a seat in the provincial Council on the ground that it was being degraded by the inclusion of royal placemen. He served as a lieutenant colonel of militia against the Cherokees in 1761 and supported the colonel of British regulars in his subsequent quarrel with the militia colonel.

Laurens naturally became involved in the problems which strained Anglo-American relations in the decade before the Revolution. Then, as later, he took a middle ground between the radicals like Gadsden and the conservatives who favored little if any action. He believed in an attitude of "constitutional stubbornness" against the policy of the British ministry, but he feared the colonial mob element. This feeling was strengthened during the Stamp Act crisis when an armed mob searched his Charleston home, seeking the stamps, in spite of his contemptuous defiance. He declared that he never knowingly violated the Navigation Acts, but when the royal customs officials seized two of his vessels on frivolous technical charges, he tweaked the nose of the collector of customs and challenged Leigh, the apparently corrupt vice-admiralty judge, to a duel, justifying his conduct in a pamphlet full of incisive invective. (See Extracts from the Proceedings of the High Court of Vice-Admiralty in Charleston, in 1767 and 1768, 1769, and An Appendix to the Extracts, etc., 1769.) He approved of South Carolina's non-importation agreement of July 3, 1769, in opposition to the Townshend Acts, and supported the action of the provincial Assembly in sending money for the support of John Wilkes. He had married "the beautiful Eleanor Ball," daughter of Elias Ball, on July 6, 1750, and she had borne him at least a dozen children, only four of whom reached maturity, before her death in 1770. Their daughter Martha married David Ramsay [q.v.] and their daughter Eleanor married General Charles Pinckney [q.v.]. In 1771 Laurens went to London for three years for the education of his sons John [q.v.] and Henry. Residing at Westminster, and associating chiefly with merchants, he used every opportunity for arguing in the interests of South Carolina and the other colonies. He became thoroughly disgusted with the corruption of the English ruling classes and removed his sons to schools in the stricter atmosphere of Geneva.

Late in 1774 he returned to America, arriving at Charleston in December. Four weeks later he was elected to the first Provincial Congress. His ability and standing gave him a commanding position in the province. He quickly became president of the executive General Committee, and in June 1775 he succeeded Charles Pinckney as president of the first Provincial Congress. In that position he boldly denounced the proposed persecution of those who would not sign the "Association." Later in June he became president of the powerful Council of Safety. In November 1775 he was in the second Provincial Congress. He was president of the second Council of Safety and a member of the so-called "dictatorship committee." In February 1776 he helped to draft South Carolina's temporary constitution and became vice-president when John Rutledge was elected president. He took a very active part in the successful defense of Charleston against the British attack in June 1776 and did what he could to avert the bitter civil war which threatened to break out 'n the Carolinas.

The following year, he moved from the provincial to the national sphere of politics. Elected to the Continental Congress on January 10, 1777, he took his seat on July 22 and was soon actively engaged on several important committees. He was unanimously elected to succeed John Hancock as president of the Congress on November 1, 1777, holding that office until December 9, 1778. The Congress was at a low ebb during much of that time. The active membership at times was barely fifteen. Yet, small as it was, it was torn with factions. Laurens, racked with gout and sometimes working twenty hours a day, remained partly but not completely above these cliques, tending at times to side with the Adams-Lee group. He was active in securing the suspension of the Saratoga Convention on January 8, 1778, angered at Burgoyne's charges of broken faith and hoping to force Parliament into recognizing Congress as a sovereign body. In the Conway Cabal, he exposed some of the plotting and strongly supported Washington, though he was accused, apparently falsely1 of favoring Gates at the outset. He was skeptical of the motives of the French, calling them "artful specious half friends" (Wallace, post, p. 276), but he fully realized the value of the alliance. He did not favor, however, leaning too heavily on French loans. When the British sent the fruitless peace commission of 1778, Laurens was unsuccessfully approached with a letter from his British merchant friend, Richard Oswald. Laurens descended to partisan levels in the controversy between Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, arising from the mission to France. He sided with Lee, supporting the recall of Deane and treating him with suspicion upon his arrival. Angered at Deane's appeal to the public, which he considered an affront to the dignity of Congress and himself, he moved to suspend hearings with Deane pending a committee investigation. The motion failed and Laurens resigned his presidency on December 9, 1778, declaring his disapproval of "the manner in which business is transacted here." His friends failed to reinstate him and the presidency fell to his opponent, John Jay.

Laurens continued in Congress for another eleven months. He rose above provincial lines in 1779 when he urged continuation of the war until fishing rights off Newfoundland should be granted; and he advocated a constitutional convention. At the same time, he descended to lower partisan levels. He suspiciously investigated the semi-official commercial dealings of Robert Moy ris; he also quarreled with his young colleague Drayton. He barely escaped a vote of censure when the British published his captured letter to the governor of Georgia, referring to the "venality, peculation and fraud" in the government. Finally, he was elected to negotiate a loan of $10,000,000 and a treaty of amity and commerce with the Dutch. He left Congress for Charleston on November 9, 1779, after more than two years in that body. The impending British attack on Charleston prevented his sailing from there, and he finally set out from Philadelphia on August 13, 1780, in the little brigantine Mercury. Three weeks later she was captured off Newfoundland by the British, who had thrown out of the sea a sack of papers which Laurens had thrown overboard too late. Among these was the Lee-Van Berkel draft of a projected treaty with Holland, which served as a pretext for the British declaration of war on the Dutch (December 20, 1780).

Laurens was taken to England and, after a trying meeting with the ministers, was confined in the Tower of London on October 6, 1780, remaining there until December 31, 1781. His claims to diplomatic immunity were ignored, and his status as a state prisoner on suspicion of high treason prevented his exchange as a military prisoner of war. His treatment seems to have been unnecessarily harsh at times; his health was poor, and he was charged for rent, living, and even for the wages of his warders. He was able to smuggle out frequent communications to the "rebel press." He resisted the efforts of British friends to seduce him from his American allegiance, in spite of threats of hanging, but he felt completely neglected by Congress. The most discreditable incident in his career was the rather subservient petition which he addressed to the three secretaries of state on June 23, 1781, with merely the request for pen and paper to write a draft and for permission to see his son. In this so-called "submission," Laurens declared that he had "never lost his affection to Great Britain" and reviewed his career, giving to almost every incident a pro-British slant, stating that he had been called a "King's Man" and that he had done what he could to avert the struggle. On December 1, 1781, he made a briefer petition, in the same vein, to the Commons. In these petitions he did nothing which technically compromised his position as a citizen of the United States, but it was naturally distasteful to the Americans to see an accredited envoy and former president of the Continental Congress using so submissive a tone. Madison felt that Laurens' diplomatic commission should be annulled, but Congress on September 20, 1782, refused to recall him. By that time Laurens was free. The efforts of Franklin and Burke and finally secured his release on heavy bail on December 31, 1781, and he was at last cleared in exchange for Cornwallis four months later. He went to Bath for his health and later held conferences with Shelburne.

He had been appointed a peace commissioner in May 1782 but was about to return home in November when he received definite instructions to join Franklin, Adams, and Jay at Paris. He reached there only two days before the signing of the preliminary articles, but during that brief time he used his influence to secure the fishing rights and the stipulation that-the British should not carry away negroes and other American property. He seems to have been more worried than Jay about making peace independently of the French. For the next year and a half he acted as a sort of unofficial minister to England, frequently crossing the Channel to confer with the ministry on commercial and other matters. He happened to be absent on one of these missions when the final peace treaty was signed. He finally arrived in New York on August 3, 1784, just four years after he had left America. He reported to Congress and was mentioned for another term as president. He reached Charleston early in 1785 and retired to "Mepkin" for the remaining seven years of his life. His health had been broken by his rigorous experiences; he was saddened by the death of his son John, one of the last casualties of the war; his property had suffered heavily, and he estimated his war losses at 40,000 guineas. He received several political honors from South Carolina, including election to the federal constitutional convention in 1787, but he remained at his estate, where he died after a prolonged period of feeble health. He was one of the first Americans to be cremated, having stipulated this disposal of his body in his will. In addition to the controversial pamphlets already mentioned, he wrote Mr. Laurens's True State of the Case, by Which, his Candor to Mr. Edmund Jennings is Manifested, etc. (1783). Among his writings subsequently published are "A Narrative of the Capture of Henry Laurens, of his Confinement in the Tower of London" (South Carolina Historical Society Collections, I, 1857, pp. 18-68) in Correspondence of Henry Laurens, of South Carolina, 1776-82 (1861), and A South Carolina Protest against Slavery (1861).

[The best biography is D. D. Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens (1915), a very detailed, intimate account, thoroughly documented. and based on the several collections of Laurens papers, particularly the "Laurens Papers," in the South Carolina Historical Society, and also those in the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Long Island Historical Society, and Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It contains a detailed bibliography and the frontispiece is a Copley portrait of Laurens. See also: David Ram say, The History of South Carolina (2 volumes, 1809) and Memoirs of the Life of Martha Laurens Ramsay (1811); Freeman Hunt, Lives of American  Merchants (1858), volume I; Francis Wharton, The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the U. S. (6 volumes, 1889); E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, volume I-V (1921-31); Elizabeth Donnan, "The Slave Trade into South Carolina before the Revolution," American Historical Review, July 1928; South Carolina Historical and Genealogy Magazine, April 1902-October 1905, January 1906-October 1908, January 1923-April 1924, July 1927-July 1930.]

R.G.A-n.


LAWRENCE, Amos Adams, 1814-1886.  Principal manager and treasurer of the Kansas Emigrant Aid Society.  Worked to keep Kansas a free state.  Lawrence, Kansas, was named in his honor.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 639; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 47).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, pp. 47-48:

LAWRENCE, AMOS ADAMS (July 31, 1814-August 22, 1886); merchant and philanthropist, was the second son of Amos Lawrence [q.v.], a leading Boston merchant and philanthropist, and Sarah (Richards) Lawrence. He was educated at Franklin Academy, North Andover, and at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1835. Entering business for himself, after graduating from college, as a commission merchant, he formed a partnership in 1843 with Robert M. Mason, under the firm name of Mason & Lawrence. Mason ceased after a few years to be active in the firm and Lawrence continued to be the principal partner for forty years. The firm was very successful, holding the selling agency for several important textile mills and eventually acquiring the selling agency for the Pacific Mills at Lawrence, which for many years was the largest plant of its kind in the United States. Lawrence also engaged independently in manufacturing textiles, his principal venture being the Ipswich Mills, which he acquired in 1860 for the manufacture of cotton hosiery and other knit goods. This was then a new industry in the United States. Although for many years he operated the mill at a, loss, he ultimately succeeded in making it profitable and established the industry on a sound basis, becoming the largest manufacturer of knit goods in the country. He took an active part in promoting the interests of the textile industry, being for many years an ardent advocate of a protective tariff and in later life serving as president of the American Association of Knit Goods Manufacturers and also of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers and Planters.

His father's philanthropic activities naturally brought the son many opportunities for charitable work. While still a young man he became a trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital and took a great interest in the hospital and in the McLean Asylum for the Insane. He became interested also in the colonization of free negroes in Africa. With increasing years he became more and more interested in education. He establish ed Lawrence University, named after him, in Appleton, Wis., in connection with a large real-estate speculation, in which he became a reluctant partner, and another college at Lawrence, Kansas, which afterward was taken over by the state and became the nucleus of the state university. He served for several years as treasurer of Harvard College, and for many years as treasurer of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. He was a generous benefactor of both institutions.

His most distinguished public service was that which he rendered in connection with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, of which he was treasurer. This company was founded in 1854 by Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, an ardent but impecunious anti-slavery man, for the purpose of excluding slavery from the territory of Kansas by colonizing it with freemen. Thayer's scheme was to organize a company on a strictly business basis, which would finance settlers and by their success earn profits for the stockholders. A charter was secured and funds raised by the sale of stock. Lawrence had no faith in the Emigrant Aid Company as a business venture, never regarding it in any other light than as a patriotic and charitable enterprise, and seems to have sold the stock on that basis. (See Samuel A. Johnson, "The Genesis of the New England Emigrant Aid Society," in the New England Quarterly, January 1930.) To his zeal, aptitude, and business efficiency the success of the enterprise must be largely ascribed. After victory was in sight for the free state forces, he withdrew from the management of the company, though retaining his interest in the university at Lawrence and in other public institutions in Kansas.

Despite Lawrence's hostility to slavery and his strenuous efforts to keep the "peculiar institution" from spreading onto free soil, he was a conservative in politics. Brought up as a Whig, he never joined the. Free Soilers and was opposed to the radical Republican party in the campaigns of 1856 and 1860. In 1856 he was nominated for the governorship of Massachusetts on the Fillmore ticket, but declined. Two years later he accepted a similar nomination and was defeated. In 1860 he was the candidate of the Constitutional Union party and ran unsuccessfully on the ticket with Bell and Everett. After the secession of South Carolina he continued to work for the maintenance of the union by peaceful means and joined Everett and Robert C. Winthrop in a trip to Washington to support the Crittenden compromise. When war broke out, he gave the Lincoln administration unwavering support to the end. He took the lead in raising a regiment of mounted troops, the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, but the condition of his health prevented him from taking personal command.

Like his father, Lawrence was more interested in religion than in politics. The Unitarianism which his father and uncles adopted in place of their ancestral Puritanism on moving into the city from the country failed to satisfy the religious needs of the next generation of Lawrences, and several of them became members of the Episcopal Church. Amos Adams Laurence was one of these and in 1842 he was confirmed at St. Paul's, together with his wife and his brother. It was his strong religious feeling rather than his politics which made him an admirer of John Brown. Brown's forceful methods he never fully approved and the raid on Harpers Ferry he condemned as the act of a lawless fanatic. The rifles which had once belonged to the Emigrant Aid Company and which were used on Brown's raid were not so used with Lawrence's consent, but Lawrence did give money to Brown and he contributed toward the purchase of the farm at North Elba for Brown's family and toward the employment of counsel at his trial after the raid on Harpers Ferry. He foresaw that Brown would be lauded by the Abolitionists as a martyr and predicted that his death would hasten the end of slavery. Lawrence died suddenly, of heart disease, in August 1886. He had married, March 31, 1842, Sarah Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of William Appleton, a leading Boston merchant. She, together with six of their seven children, survived him.

[There is an excellent biography, Life of Amos A. Lawrence with Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence (1888), by Lawrence's son, Wm. Lawrence. Additional material of much interest will be found in the same author's Memories of a Happy Life (1926). An obituary appeared in the Boston Transcript, August 23, 1886.]

A. N. H.


LAY, Benjamin, 1677(?)-1759, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker leader, anti-slavery activist, temperance activist, and opponent of the death penalty.  Lay promoted colonization projects.  He published “Apostates!” and “All Slave Keepers, That Keep the Innocent in Bondage…”  At a Society of Friends meeting in Philadelphia in 1758, he encouraged Quakers who were slaveholders to “set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them.”  He was excommunicated by the Quakers twice for his anti-slavery activities.  He lobbied governors of neighboring provinces against the evils of slavery.  Poet John Greenleaf Whittier said of Lay that he was an “irrepressible prophet who troubled the Israel of slaveholding Quakerism, clinging like a rough chestnut to the skirts of its respectability and settling like a pertinacious gadfly on the sore places of its conscience.”  He was lifelong friends with Benjamin Franklin. 

(Bruns, 1977, pp. 46-64; Drake, 1950, pp. 34, 37, 43-48, 51, 55, 107, 115-116, 121, 136, 177; Nash, 1991, pp. x, 48-49, 50, 52-53, 57, 63, 202; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 15, 94, 433; Soderlund, 1985, pp. 4, 15-17, 23n, 32, 35, 78, 149, 166-167, 173-175, 186-187; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 67-69, 72, 75; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 643; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 63; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 514-515; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13; Vaux, R., Memoirs of the Lives of Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandford, 1815; Rowntree, C. B., 1936, “Benjamin Lay (1681-1759),” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 33.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 63:

LAY, BENJAMIN (1677-February 3, 1759), Quaker reformer, was born in Colchester, Essex, England. He was deformed, and when full grown was hump-backed and only four feet seven inches in height, with a large head and slender legs that seemed almost unequal to bearing the weight of his body. Along with his physical deficiencies went mental peculiarities which had a determining influence upon the course of his later life. As a youth, after engaging in various occupations ashore, he went to sea, and on one voyage visited Syria, but about 1710 returned to Colchester, where he married and remained for, several years. His assertiveness made him so troublesome 'in the affairs of the Quaker meeting that about; 1717 he was removed from membership. He did not, however, either then or later, regard himself as cut off from the Society, and throughout his later life continued to be associated with the Friends. In 1718 he migrated to Barbados and engaged in business. The large black-slave population at once attracted his interest and stirred him to humanitarian efforts. He gathered the slaves about him on Sundays, feeding them and talking to them about religion. Suspicion and animosity aroused by his concern for the blacks and his constant readiness to argue on slavery caused him to leave the island in 1731 and go to Pennsylvania, where he settled near Philadelphia. In this colony he was able to bear his testimony against slavery without hindrance and it is from this period that most records of his eccentricities have come. He once attempted to imitate Christ by fasting for forty days. This act brought him near death, and only great care by friends restored his health. He feigned suicide in a Quaker meeting house, appearing to stab himself and causing a quantity of red fluid resembling blood to stream forth. Those present were greatly alarmed. He understood the value of a dramatic protest, and on one occasion stationed himself at the gateway to a meeting house with one leg bared and half buried in deep snow. To those who remonstrated he answered: "Ah, you pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad" (Vaux, post, p. 28). His eccentricities attracted much public attention and he was once visited by Governor Penn, Benjamin Franklin, and other gentlemen, before whom he set a plain meal of fruits and vegetables, since the use of animal products for either food or clothing was another matter upon which he bore testimony against prevailing practice. Franklin printed one of his numerous pamphlets against slavery, All Slave-keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure & Holy Christian Religion, etc. (1737). From time to time Lay made public condemnation of the use of liquors, tobacco, and tea, and also advocated a more humane criminal code. After 1740 he lived with John Phipps near Abington Friends' meeting house, and there he died in February 1759, being buried in the Friends' burial ground. His wife, Sarah, who predeceased him, like himself was small of stature, and deformed. She is described as an intelligent and pious woman, an approved minister in the Society of Friends, who supported her husband at all times in his anti-slavery activities. Despite his eccentricities, Lay exercised considerable influence upon the Quaker attitude towards slavery and shortly before his death had the satisfaction of learning that the Society had resolved to disown slave-holding members.

[Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Lives of Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandiford (1815); Lydia Maria (Francis) Child, Memoir of Benjamin Lay (1842); Benjamin Rush, "Biographical Anecdotes of Benjamin Lay," The Annual Monitor, volume I (1813); Joseph Smith, A Descriptive Catalog of Friends' Books (1867), II, 92-93; Biographical Catalog ... London Friends' Institute (1888); W. A. J. Archbold, in Directory National Biography ]

F. L.


LEARY, Lewis Sherrard, free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, December 1859 (see entry for John Brown). (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 62, 327)


LEAVITT, Hart, 1809-1881, Massachusetts, legislator, prominent abolitionist.  Brother to abolitionist Roger Hooker Leavitt and Joshua Leavitt.  Active in abolitionist organizations and in the Underground Railroad.


LEAVITT, Joshua, 1794-1873, New York, reformer, temperance activist, editor, abolitionist leader.  Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), New York, 1833.  Advocated political action to end slavery, which led him to help found the Liberty Party.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS).  Edited the newspaper, The Evangelist, which was founded by abolitionists Arthur and Lewis Tappan.  He later became editor of The Emancipator, which was founded by Arthur Tappan in 1833.  Leavitt toured extensively, lecturing against slavery.  His speeches were edited into a pamphlet entitled, “The Financial Power of Slavery.”  It was one of the most widely circulated documents against slavery. 

(Blue, 2005, pp. 20, 25, 34, 45, 50, 54, 94, 119, 122; Davis, 1990; Dumond, 1961, pp. 159, 175, 179, 266, 286, 301; Filler, 1960, pp. 24, 63, 101, 132, 142, 150, 168, 172, 174, 177, 189, 194, 266-267; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 1, 7-8, 17, 20, 28-30, 36, 45-49, 167, 217; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 363-364; Sorin, 1971, pp. 51, 68-71, 96, 131, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 649-650; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 84; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 518-519; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 339).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 84:

LEAVITT, JOSHUA (September 8, 1794-January 16, 1873), clergyman, reformer, abolitionist, editor, was born at Heath, Massachusetts, the son of Roger Smith Leavitt, a leading citizen, and Chloe Maxwell, daughter of Colonel Hugh Maxwell, an Irish soldier in the American Revolution. His paternal grandfather was the Reverend Jonathan Leavitt, of Suffield, Connecticut. Early distinguished by good scholarship, young Leavitt entered Yale in 1810 and graduated in 1814. He then served as preceptor at Wethersfield Academy, whence he went to Northampton, Massachusetts, to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1819. The following year he was married to Sarah, daughter of the Rel Solomon Williams of Northampton, Massachusetts He practised a short time at Heath and at Putney, Vermont, but in 1823 returned to Yale and completed a two-year divinity course in a year. He was ordained and installed, February 1825, as Congregational minister at Stratford, Connecticut. Three years later he went to New York to be secretary of the Seamen's Friend Society and editor of the Sailor's Magazine. Known among New York friends as "the sturdy Puritan of New England," he entered upon strenuous literary and reformatory activities. He founded sailors' missions in several cities, and he was one of the first lecturers of the American Temperance Society. "Possessing," as he wrote, "no musical skill beyond that of ordinary. plain singers," he compiled an evangelical hymnal, The Christian Lyre, which went into many editions. As early as 1825 he wrote for the Christian Spectator in opposition to slavery. His name appears also in the Journal of Public Morals as an editor and chairman of the executive committee of the American Seventh Commandment Society.

Having a vigorous physique and, according to his Independent associate, Henry E. Bowen, "rare confidence in his own judgment," Leavitt undertook publication, in 1831, of the Evangelist, an organ of religious revivals, temperance, anti-slavery, and other causes. He was a member for a time of the Colonization Society, but he differed with William Lloyd Garrison as to its policies. When the New York Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833 Leavitt was a member of its executive committee and was instrumental in merging it into the National Anti-Slavery Society. He was among those who fled from physical violence when Dr. Lewis Tappan's house, an  abolitionist rendezvous, was mobbed. The financial depression of 1837 forced Leavitt to sell the Evangelist, but he reappeared as editor of the Emancipator. Before the election of 1840 he also edited the Ballot Box, which supported the party headed by J. G. Birney. Soon after this he moved the Emancipator to Boston where he opposed the Mexican War and espoused, besides anti-slavery, many causes, such as temperance, cheap postage, and free trade. He wrote vigorously and sometimes abusively. In 1848, when the pioneer work of the abolitionists was complete, and the Emancipator was visibly struggling for existence, Leavitt had an offer to return to New York as assistant editor of the Independent, then about to appear. He hesitated, but his friend, J. G. Whittier, advised: "Not all that thee might wish, Joshua, but a good harbor for thy old age." Such it proved to be. As office editor of the Independent for nearly twenty-five years Leavitt disappointed the expectations of those who predicted that he would be fiery and troublesome. He wrote millions of words of lucid editorial comment, handled correspondence, and won the affection and respect of his younger associates. He was in honor in Great, Britain where, in 1869, the Cobden Club awarded him a gold medal for his work in behalf of free trade. His editorial labor continued until a few days before his death, which followed a stroke of paralysis.

[The journals edited by Leavitt contain much autobiographical material, not yet collated. See F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume VI (1912); obituary in Independent, January 23, 1873; Elizur Wright, "The Father of the Liberty Party," Ibid., January 30, 1873; C. G. Finney, "Dr. Leavitt's Death," Ibid., February 6, 1873; Leonard Bacon, "Reminiscences of Joshua Leavitt," Ibid., February 13, 1873; J . P. Thompson, "Personal Recollections of Dr. Leavitt," Ibid., March 6, 1873; J. P. Bretz, "The Economic Background of the Liberty Party," American Historical Review, January 1929; L. H. Everts, History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1879), volume II; New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1873; New York Times, January 17, 1873. In 1916 the Massachusetts Historical Society acquired a collection of free-soil papers assembled by Leavitt.]

F. W. C.


LEAVITT, Roger, Heath, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Father of abolitionists Roger Hooker Leavitt and Joshua Leavitt.


LEAVITT, Roger Hooker, 1805-1885, Claremont, Massachusetts, abolitionist leader, landowner, industrialist, temperance activist, soldier.  President, Franklin County Anti-Slavery Society.  Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1838-1840, 1840-1841.  Gubernatorial candidate for Massachusetts on the Liberty Party ticket.  Brother of abolitionist leader Joshua Leavitt.  Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad.


LEE, Luther, 1800-1889, clergyman, Methodist congregation, Utica, New York, abolitionist leader.  Began his abolitionist career in 1837.  Helped create Wesleyan anti-slavery societies.  In 1843, co-founded the anti-slavery Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, of which he became president.  Lecturer for New York Anti-Slavery Society (NYASS) and agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Luther was attacked on a number of occasions by pro-slavery advocates.  In 1840, Lee helped to co-found the Liberty Party. 

(Filler, 1960, p. 123; Sernett, 2002, pp. 57-58, 59, 80-83, 299n8, 300n16; Sorin, 1971; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, 603; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 115; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 384; L. C. Matlack, The History, of American Slavery and Methodism, from 1780 to 1849; and History of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (1849);

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 115:

LEE, LUTHER (November 30, 1800-December 13, 1889), clergyman, abolitionist, was a leading figure in the anti-slavery movement within the Methodist Episcopal Church. Born in Schoharie, New York, of humble, illiterate parents, Samuel and Hannah (Williams) Lee, he received no schooling, and from the age of thirteen was dependent on his own resources. He had a vigorous, disputatious mind, however, and as occasion offered he spoke and preached at the little Methodist churches in his community. An elder brother taught him to read, and on July 31, 1825, he married a school-teacher, Mary Miller, who gave him whatever other formal education he received. In 1827, when he was admitted to the Genesee Conference, he was too ignorant to satisfy the examining committee, but he was approved because of his power as a revivalist. After an apprenticeship on frontier circuits in New York, he transferred to the Black River Conference in 1836, where he rapidly advanced to a position-of leadership. He was a fighting reformer, a powerful debater by disposition and training, and the . increasing anti-slavery agitation in the Church early caught his interest. The assassination of Elijah Lovejoy [q.v.] at Alton, Illinois, late in 1837, moved him to declare himself an abolitionist.

Most Methodists of that day did not take kindly to the official abolition organizations. Believing them "important links in the great chain of operations of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches,'' Methodists organized societies of their own in order to "do their benevolent works. in the name of their own denomination and proper character." Accordingly, Wesleyan anti-slavery societies were formed, in the promotion of which Lee engaged with consuming zeal. His efforts were so successful that in 1838 the American Anti-Slavery Society made him their agent in western New York. Describing slavery in language "expressive of the shrieking terrors of death, the gloom of rayless despair, and the glowing fires of hell" (Autobiography, post, p. 210), he met with much violence, which he fronted dauntlessly. In the fall of 1839 he was employed by the Massachusetts abolitionists. He now used all his influence to further the rising agitation for political anti-slavery organization, and in 1840 he took a leading part in founding the Liberty Party.

During these critical years Lee's  services were frequently required to defend Methodist clergymen in church trials for participating in abolition activity. Through the board of bishops the Church was making a determined effort to thwart such activity among its ministers; but the dual nature of Methodist polity, with authority exercised both from above through the bishops, and from below through the Conferences, made a peaceful adjustment impossible wherever the Conferences protected the abolitionists. After years of increasing friction, many abolitionists withdrew, and in 1843 they organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, without an episcopacy and on an anti-slavery basis. At the first General Conference of the new denomination, in 1844, Lee was elected president Delegates reported fifteen thousand communicants; . but the denomination never grew larger. That same year Northern Methodists precipitated a division in the church on the slavery issue, and there were no ignore secessions. Lee faithfully served his Church during the two following decades, as editor of its organ, the True Wesleyan., as pastor in New York state, Ohio, and Michigan, and as professor on the faculty of the Wesleyan Methodist school, Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan. In 1867 he returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church and after ten more years' ministry in southern Michigan, he was superannuated, dying at the age of eighty-nine at Flint, Michigan  he wrote Universalism Examined and Refuted (1836); Ecclesiastical Manual, or Scriptural Church Government Stated and Defended (1850); Slavery Examined in the Light of the Bible (1855); Elements of Theology (1856); Natural Theology (1866). Their importance is inconsiderable. In 1882 he published Autobiography of the Reverend Luther Lee, D.D. In addition to the above, see Massachusetts Abolitionist, 1839-1840;

[L. C. Matlack, The History, of American Slavery and Methodism, from 1780 to 1849; and History of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (1849); Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church (1890).]

G.H.B.


LEEMAN, William H., radical abolitionist, accompanied John Brown in his raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Lee wrote to his mother, “We are now all privately gathered in a slave state, where we are determined to strike for freedom, incite the rebels to rebellion, and establish a free government.” (See entry for John Brown.) (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 207, 327)


LEMOYNE, Francis Julius, 1798-1879, Washington, Pennsylvania, physician, abolitionist leader.  Le Moyne became active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s.  Was against the colonization movement.  In 1840, ran as the vice presidential candidate of the Liberty Party.  Also unsuccessfully ran on Pennsylvania abolitionist tickets, 1841, 1844, 1847.  Was active in helping fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad.  Founded Le Moyne College in 1870 in Memphis, Tennessee. 

(Blue, 2005, p. 25; Dumond, 1961, pp. 186, 266, 301; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 46; Sernett, 2002, pp. 109, 111; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 687;

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 163: 

LEMOYNE, FRANCIS JULIAN (September 4, 1798-October 14, 1879), physician, abolitionist, advocate of cremation, was the son and grandson of Parisian physicians. His father, John Julius LeMoyne de Villiers, came to Ameri ca with French colonists, among whom he practise d his profession for four years at Gallipolis, Ohio. In 1797 he married Nancy McCully, lately arrived  from Ireland, and they removed to Washington, Pennsylvania, where Francis Julius was born. After graduating at Washington College in 1815, he studied medicine first with his father and later at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Returning homeward across the Alleghanies in 1822, he encountered a great snowstorm. The party in the stagecoach were unable to find accommodation at the crowded taverns along the way and so all night pushed forward through intense cold. Reaching Pittsburgh, Francis procured a horse and rode on to Washington. Although he was of robust constitution, after this experience he suffered from chronic rheumatism that did not allow him a night's repose in bed through twenty-nine years.

In 1823 he married Madeleine Romaine Bureau, whom he met at his father's house, whither she had brought a sister from Gallipolis for medical treatment. They had three sons and five daughters. About the time of his marriage, Le Moyne's father in helping others became bankrupt, so that to the physical handicap of the young doctor was added a burden of debt. From friends he was able to borrow money and recover the fine homestead built by his father in 1813, which with its old garden is still a point of interest in Washington. By hard work and frugal living he succeeded in restoring the family fortune after several years. In the decade of the thirties he was an intrepid supporter of the anti-slavery movement, and an able debater in its cause, showing much physical courage in opposing the American Colonization Society, which he believed to be founded in the interests of slavery. He was the candidate of the Liberty Party for the vice-presidency of the United States in 1840, and the candidate of the Abolitionists for the governorship of Pennsylvania in 1841, 1844, and 1847. Later his house became one of the stations of the "Underground Railway," enabling slaves to reach freedom in the North.

When he was about fifty-five, the condition of his health made the active practice of medicine no longer possible for him, and he turned to scientific farming, introducing improved strains of sheep, cattle, and horses into the county. He donated $10,000 to the founding of a public library in his town, and for many years catalogued the books as they were acquired. Deeply concerned in the cause of education, he became in 1830 a trustee of Washington College (after 1865 Washington and Jefferson College) and in 1836, of the Washington Female Seminary at its founding. He gave the American Missionary Association $20,000 for the endowment and erection, on a bluff near Memphis, Tennessee, of the LeMoyne Normal Institute for colored. people, still a successful enterprise. Later he added $5,000 for its equipment. He established two professorships of $20,000 each at Washington and Jefferson College, one in agriculture and correlative branches (1872), the other in applied mathematics (1879). These donations were prompted by the conviction that for students not entering the learned professions more profit was to be derived from the physical sciences than from Latin and Greek.

About 1874, in France and Italy, there was a sudden rise of interest in favor of cremation as a means of disposing of the dead, and LeMoyne became its first prominent advocate in America. in 1876 he erected the first crematory in the United States, situated on his own property on a hill overlooking Washington, where it stands today. The first public cremation took place there on December 6, 1876. It was that of a Bavarian nobleman, Baron Joseph Henry Louis de Palm who had come to America in 1852 and had died in New York. The event aroused much, comment at the time. The body of LeMoyne himself was the third to be cremated, and up to the year 1900 there had been forty-one cremations in that place: since then none have occurred.

[Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1893); Alfred Creigh. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (2nd ed.. 1871); Boyd Crumrine, History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1882); E. R. Forrest. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1926): Philadelphia Record, October 1, 1879; information from LeMoyne's daughter, Mrs. George W. Reed of Washington, Pennsylvania]

E. M. W.


LEVINGTON, William, 1793-1836, African American, political and community leader, lawyer, abolitionist, organized and led new African American Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 7, p. 256)


LEWIS, Enoch, 1776-1856, mathematician, educator, publisher, African Observer, Society of Friends, Quaker, Wilmington, Delaware, moderate abolitionist, editor, anti-slavery monthly, the African Observer. Organized Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II; Drake, 1950, pp. 118, 132, 145, 171-173)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 211: 

LEWIS, ENOCH (January 29, 1776-July 14, 1856), mathematician, educator, publicist, and editor, was born on a farm in Radnor, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, and spent almost the whole of his life within twenty miles of his birthplace. His parents, Evan and Jane (Meredith) Lewis, were descended from Welsh Friends who had settled the neighborhood nearly a century earlier; his paternal ancestor was another Evan Lewis who came from Pembrokeshire, South Wales, to Pennsylvania in 1682. Enoch, a serious-minded and precocious boy, rapidly exhausted the educational facilities of the Radnor school, of which he was himself made master at the age of fifteen. Thereafter he was almost entirely self-educated, feeling himself debarred, as a conscientious member of the Society of Friends, from attending the University of Pennsylvania, the only easily accessible institution of higher learning. Despite this handicap he became eminent in mathematics, a study for which he inherited an aptitude from his mother. From his fifteenth to his fifty-first year his chief occupation was teaching, in Philadelphia, in Westtown, or as head of his own school, which he opened in 1808 at New Garden, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Wilmington, Del. He combined or varied the scholastic life with farming and surveying, and for a time held the post of city regulator of Philadelphia.

Lewis began writing early in his career, and his literary activities increased as he grew older. He was the author of a large number of books, pamphlets, and articles on a wide variety of subjects. His textbooks on arithmetic, a1gebra, trigonometry, and grammar were the direct outcome of his profession. His devotion to the principles of his sect (which he defended in A Vindication of the Society of Friends, 1834) was responsible for the greater part of his published work. He wrote for the Society "Memoirs of the Life of William Penn" (The Friends' Library, volume V, 1841), and nearly completed the first volume of a history of North America which was to emphasize the social and economic progress of the continent and to make plain the misery and folly of war. Although he sometimes dealt with purely doctrinal questions, his keenest interest was in moral and political issues, such as abandonment of compulsory military service, the protection of the Indians, and the abolition of slavery. He believed that this last problem could best be solved by convincing the South that slavery was economically unsound, and to propagate this idea he founded in 1827 a monthly magazine, the African Observer, the failure of which after one year of life was due in part to its editor's moderation. In 1847, he founded, in Philadelphia, the Friends' Review (first issue, September 4, 1847), a weekly journal which he edited until a few weeks before his death. In its pages he found an outlet for the expression of his views on all the wide range of subjects in which he was interested; he himself wrote most of the original material which it contained.

Lewis' mind was remarkable for its ingenuity and its lucidity; his character, for its consistency. If he convinced himself that a course of action was right he adopted it forthwith and held himself to it strictly, although with other people he was much more lenient. His personal efforts in behalf of the causes he supported were as persistent and as effective as his writings. He was twice married, first, on May 9, 1799, to Alice Jackson of New Garden, who died December 13, 1813; second, in May 1815, to Lydia Jackson of Londongrove, Pennsylvania, a cousin of his first wife. Charlton Thomas Lewis [q.v.] was his grandson.

[The authoritative source for the facts of Lewis' life is the Memoir of Enoch Lewis (1882), by his son, Joseph J. Lewis, privately printed at West Chester, Pennsylvania. It contains no formal list of Lewis' writings, but mai1y of them are mentioned in the text, pp. 77-100. See also J. S. Futhey and Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania (1881); Friends' Intelligencer (Philadelphia), 7th mo. 26, 1856; Daily News (Philadelphia), July 16, 1856.]



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.