Benjamin Lundy

• Benjamin Lundy
• Born: January 4, 1789
• Died: August 22, 1839

Abolitionist, was born in Greenville, New Jersey, the only child of Joseph Lundy, a farmer, and Elizabeth (Stockwell) Lundy. His paternal ancestor, Richard Lundy, had emigrated from Devonshire, England, on account of religious persecution and settled in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, in the seventeenth century. His great grandfather, Richard Lundy, a Quaker leader, established several Friends meeting halls in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Benjamin Lundy was brought up in the Quaker faith, and remained a devout lifelong adherent. Lundy’s mother died when he was four years old, and two years later his father married Mary Titus, a local woman.

Benjamin Lundy’s formal education was limited to irregular attendance at the local district school. Most of his time was spent in assisting his father on the farm, and hard physical work led to poor health and a loss of hearing during adolescence. At the age of twenty Lundy left the farm to travel to improve his health and to find an occupation. After a few months he became an apprentice to a saddler in Wheeling, Virginia, now West Virginia. There he encountered the slave system for the first time, as he observed chained blacks being shipped to plantations in Ohio and Mississippi. Horrified by what he saw, he made a vow to work for their emancipation. Lundy moved to Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and became a journeyman saddler. There he met resettled southern Quakers, whose descriptions of the horrors of the southern plantation’s slave system strengthened his determination to work for abolitionism.

In February 1815 Lundy married Esther Lewis, a devout Quaker and a resident of Mount Pleasant. The couple settled in St. Clairsville, Ohio, where Lundy opened his own saddle and harness shop. His business prospered, and he remained loyal to his pledge. In January 1816 he formally announced his plans to form a national society to encompass all existing abolitionist groups. On April 20 of that year he took the first step by establishing the Union Humane Society. The society’s objectives were to emancipate the blacks and give them full rights of American citizens by using available legal means and remedies. Its work was carried out primarily in Ohio, and the society grew rapidly. It was the start of Lundy’s abolitionist career.

In August 1817 abolitionist Charles Osborn began to publish a weekly reform newspaper, the Philanthropist, in Mount Pleasant. Shortly afterward, Lundy joined Osborn in producing the paper, and he became its agent in St. Clairsville. In October Lundy contributed his first antislavery article to the newspaper. In this and succeeding articles Lundy developed his views on abolitionism. In his mind the final result was more important than the means in ending slavery. He welcomed any method that would emancipate blacks, and he believed that no price was too great to pay for freedom, even if it meant sending blacks back to Africa. Eventually Lundy came to the opinion that emancipation could only be won if slaves were removed from the southern states, thus relieving white anxieties of having a large free black population in their midst. Osborn and Lundy disagreed over recolonization, but Osborn, nevertheless, considered offering Lundy a full partnership in the newspaper in 1819. However, Lundy’s extended absence to the Missouri Territory, where he was liquidating his business assets in order to accept the offer, led to Osborn’s sale of the paper prior to his return.

Without a business or the immediate prospect of a journalistic career, Lundy made the decision to return to the Missouri Territory, which Congress was considering admitting to statehood, to work to keep the region free from slavery. Lundy organized antislavery societies, lectured extensively, and wrote numerous articles on conditions in the area. His participation in the Missouri campaign taught him how to use political power to gain the objectives of the abolitionist movement. When he returned north, he moved his family to Mount Pleasant to be nearer the center of Ohio’s reform movement. Moreover, by this time he had become convinced that the existing antislavery papers did not properly serve the movement, since they tended to deal with other social issues. In 1821 Lundy began The Genius of Universal Emancipation to rectify this. The newspaper was financed by Lundy’s part-time job as a saddler and from money lent to him by friends. In 1822 he moved the newspaper to Greenville, Tennessee, to be closer to the group of people he hoped to influence most. The Genius was an abolitionist journal published in a slave state; it circulated in more than twenty-one states and territories, and it helped to stimulate and keep alive the abolitionist movement. In time it became the journalistic organ for anti-slavery groups in the upper South, especially in Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina, and it provided geographically dispersed antislavery groups with information on abolitionist activities across the nation.

By 1821 Lundy had come to the conclusion that the best way to end slavery was by a gradual emancipation: he wanted the federal government to end slavery in the territories and districts under its control and to end the interstate slave trade, while the slave states would slowly end the system and deport their freed slaves to the North, where they would become full citizens. These were the views Lundy expressed in the Genius. The newspaper, however, did not prove a financial success, and Lundy had to borrow money to support his family, To improve his income Lundy began publishing The American Economist and Weekly Political Recorder in June 1822; it reported on farm prices, poetry, and local and national economic and political news.

In Greenville, Lundy became a member of the Humane Protecting Society, a charitable group, and the Tennessee Manumission Society. In 1823 he was chosen president of the latter’s Greenville branch. In that capacity he attended the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in Philadelphia that year. It was to be his first contact with eastern abolitionists. The convention recognized Lundy’s leadership in the abolition movement by making him a member of several important committees, including the one responsible for handling affairs between national meetings. His contacts in Philadelphia opened up to him access to eastern and British antislavery literature, which he republished in the Genius. His trip to the East also made him decide to move his newspaper closer to political information and power, and to sources of finance. In 1824 the Lundys took up residence in Baltimore, Maryland.

In October 1825 Lundy presented his plan for the “Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States without Danger or Loss to the South.” His ideas were very similar to those advocated by abolitionist Francis Wright. The plan called for the purchase of land in either Alabama or Mississippi, placing on it former slaves whose freedom had been purchased and who would work cooperatively to raise cotton. A school of industry would be established to prepare workers for freedom, which would be achieved after five years of labor. However, the lack of interest in this project led him to shift his thoughts to the colonization of freed blacks in Haiti. He had come to believe that there was little hope for fair treatment of blacks if they remained in the United States. In July 1825 Lundy sailed to Haiti to examine the area as a site for colonization. During his absence his wife died in childbirth. Twins survived, and he placed them and his three older children with friends and relatives. Freed from family responsibilities he dedicated himself totally to the abolitionist cause. In August of that year he founded the Maryland Anti-Slavery Society, becoming its corresponding secretary. Its aims were different from earlier abolitionist societies for rather than disseminating ideas, it intended to initiate political action to end slavery. Lundy planned to use the vote as his main weapon, and the society unsuccessfully ran candidates for Maryland’s General Assembly in 1825 and 1826.

In 1827 Lundy turned his attention to obtaining gradual abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C. He wrote a memorial to Congress that was tabled, and then decided on a national petition campaign to obtain a law barring that city’s slave trade. The following March Lundy undertook a six month speaking tour of the Northeast to organize petitions and to establish antislavery societies. He was one of the first abolitionists to bring the antislavery message to that part of the country. During this trip he met William Lloyd Garrison, a young journalist who had been influenced by Lundy’s newspaper to see the injustice of slavery. After the meeting Garrison became Lundy’s disciple and a dedicated abolitionist.

Returning to Baltimore, Lundy found the Genius in deep financial difficulties. Creditors had even taken part of the printing machinery. He suspended publication of the paper and used the time to study slavery in more detail. Lundy resumed printing a few months later, after transporting twelve freed blacks to Haiti. In September 1829 Garrison joined him as coeditor. While Garrison remained in Baltimore running the day-to-day operations of the paper, Lundy was able to travel for the abolitionist cause. The two men, however, came to differ on the time factor for emancipating the slaves. Garrison pressed for immediate and total freedom and was opposed to Lundy’s policy of gradualism. Garrison’s articles brought numerous libel suits against the paper, and the partnership was dissolved in 1830. Lundy moved the newspaper to Washington, D. C, in October of that year, and the following January he became that city’s subscription agent for Garrison’s new Boston-based abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

In 1832 Lundy traveled to Canada to consider the area for resettlement, visiting the existing black colony of Wilberforce. However, he felt the climate was too harsh for blacks accustomed to warmth, and instead toured the Mexican-owned area of Texas. He spent more than two years there and in Mexico negotiating for the establishment of a black colony and was out of touch with the American abolitionist movement. During his absence he carried part of the printing equipment with him and sporadically printed the Genius. He returned to Baltimore in 1835 in poor health. By the end of the year debt forced him to close the paper. Free of his journalistic obligations, Lundy turned his attention to the changing situation in Texas and in August 1836 began publishing The National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty. This weekly reestablished him as head of the abolitionist press. The main aim of the paper was to detail the situation in Texas. Lundy was strongly opposed to the area’s annexation, for such an acquisition would open up a large sector of territory to expand the slave system. In addition to running the paper, Lundy provided John Quincy Adams, former president and congressman, with material for his antislavery speeches, and he actively lobbied Congress.

In January 1837 Lundy helped to found the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. He continued to publish The National Enquirer in Philadelphia until March 1838, when debt forced him to sell the paper. That summer he moved to Illinois, where his children resided, and settled on a small farm. There he worked for antislavery societies, and published twelve issues of the Genius. He died at the age of fifty of a fever he had contracted a month earlier on his farm. Lundy was buried in the Friends Cemetery on Clear Creek in McNabb, Illinois. Although he did not live to see blacks emancipated, Lundy’s unstinting work for the movement helped keep it alive and flourishing. A pioneer in the establishment of antislavery societies and abolitionist newspapers, he inspired later abolitionists, especially William Lloyd Garrison.

The majority of Benjamin Lundy’s personal papers were destroyed in May 1838 when a mob attacked Pennsylvania Hall where they were stored. Scattered records can be found in the Ohio Historical Society, the Library of Congress, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, and the Illinois Historical Society. Lundy’s writings include The Origin and True Causes of the Texas Insurrection (1836); The War in Texas (1836); The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler (1836); The Legion of Liberty and Force of Truth (1843); The Anti-Texas Legion (1844); and Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (1847). See also F. Landon, ed., The Diary of Benjamin Lundy (1921).

The best account of his life can be found in M. L. Dillon, Benjamin Lundy and the Struggle for Negro Freedom (1966). Useful articles are G. A. Lawrence, “Benjamin Lundy, Pioneer of Freedom,” Journal of Illionis State Historical Society (1913); and F. Landon, “Benjamin Lundy, Abolitionist,” Dalhousie Review (1927) and “Benjamin Lundy in Illinois,” Journal of Illinois State Historical Society (March 1940). See also T. E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (1950); and D. L. Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (1961). For Lundy’s influence on Garrison see W. M. Merril, Against Wind and Tide, a Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (1963); and J. L. Thomas, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison: A Biography (1963).