James Redpath

• James Redpath
• Born: 1833
• Died: February 10, 1891

Writer, editor, crusader for abolition and other causes, and organizer of a pioneer national lecture bureau, was born in Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland, of a Scottish father and English mother, James Redpath and Marie Ninian (Davidson) Redpath. Hoping to see him become a clergyman, the elder Redpath planned his son’s education accordingly, but young James Red-path evinced a greater inclination toward writing and the printing craft. When the boy was sixteen, father and son collaborated on a small book, Tales and Traditions of the Border (the Scottish-English border).

Shortly thereafter (about 1850), the family emigrated to the United States, settling on a farm some twenty miles outside Kalamazoo, Michigan. Redpath went to work for a printer in that city, and a few months later moved on to Detroit, as printer and writer. Impressed with Redpath’s work, which had come to his attention, Horace Greeley, editor of The New- York Tribune, offered the young man a job as a correspondent; Redpath remained with the Tribune for most of his life, either as staff member or contributor.

From the moment of his arrival in America, Redpath was passionately concerned, according to his biographer Charles Francis Horner, with the burning topic of slavery. He went West to cover events in Kansas, writing several highly regarded series of articles during the years 1854—59. The exploits of John Brown particularly were an inspiration to him; Redpath saw Brown as a knight of the New World, and when in 1860 he wrote a book about Brown he dedicated it to Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, “The Defenders of the Faithful.”

Redpath also traveled into the South during the same period, and right up to the start of the Civil War, studying slavery, interviewing many slaves, and appraising conditions in what was to become the Confederacy. His first American book was titled The Roving Editor, or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (1859). In it, he wrote:

I am an Emancipationist. … I believe slavery to be a curse which it is desirable to speedily abolish. But to gradual emancipation I am resolutely antagonistic. …

I am an Abolitionist…. I am in favor not only of abolishing the Curse but of making reparation for the Crime. Not an Abolitionist only, but a Reparationist. . . .

I am a Peace-Man. . . .

I am a Non-Resistant—and something more. I would slay every man who attempted to resist the liberation of the slave.

… I believe in humanity and human rights. I recognize nothing as so sacred on earth. Rather than consent to the infringement of the most insignificant or seemingly unimportant of human rights let races be swept from the face of the earth—let nations be dismembered—let dynasties be dethroned—let laws and governments, religions and reputations be cast out and trodden under feet of men!

This is my creed. …

It is not surprising that Redpath espoused the idea of helping fugitives from the South to emigrate to the independent black nation of Haiti. Redpath’s interest moved the president of that republic in 1859 to name him Commissioner of Emigration in the United States for the Republic of Haiti. In this capacity, he established Haitian emigrant bureaus in Boston and New York City and published a newspaper in support of the cause. Several thousand slaves and former slaves were able to make their way to the Caribbean republic through his efforts. He then was named Haitian consul at Philadelphia, and it was largely because of his intercession that the United States at last recognized the government of Haiti.

Having acted as a war correspondent with the Union armies, Redpath was, during the Reconstruction period, appointed superintendent of education at Charleston, South Carolina; he contributed greatly to the reorganization of the schools in that state, in particular to the establishment of schools for black children. He also organized the first black orphan asylum there and adopted the practice of decorating the graves of the Civil War dead during the month of May—a ceremony that foreshadowed the celebration of Decoration Day as a national holiday.

The lyceum movement of adult-education lectures having waned in popularity after the interruption of the Civil War, Redpath perceived the need for a system of booking lectures by writers, clergymen, professors, and other persons of note throughout the country. In 1868 he founded the Boston Lyceum Bureau, soon renamed the Red-path Lyceum Bureau. This was the first commercial booking agency of its kind, and he represented such outstanding speakers as Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many others.

Feeling that offering only serious lectures limited the scope and appeal of his attractions, Redpath added such humorists as Mark Twain, Josh Billings, and Petroleum V. Nasby to his stable, as well as popular poets reading from their own works. From this broadening of his programs, it was but a step to the inclusion of outright “entertainment” turns, including magicians, musicians, small operatic companies, and other theatrical groups. Although he was widely criticized for these presentations, he was in fact anticipating the arrival of vaudeville, which was to assume its importance in the American theater only around 1881.

His business established and thriving, Red-path was attracted to a new cause, that of Ireland, which he visited twice in the years 1879-81. In articles and reports that virulently attacked British rule and the absentee landlordism that fed continuing troubles, he found an outlet for the crusading spirit that had earlier led him to the support of John Brown.

In 1886 Redpath became an editor of The North American Review but was forced to leave the position the next year, when he was partially paralyzed by a stroke. In 1888 he married Caroline Chorpenning, who survived him when he died, at the age of fifty-seven, five days after being run down by a New York City streetcar.

A writer of stirring journalism, James Red-path helped to arouse the conscience of the North against slavery. Immediately after the Civil War he tried to aid the newly freed blacks in the South in practical ways. His subsequent lecture bureau was important in providing audiences for reform speakers as well as for notable writers and humorists.

Redpath’s works include A Handbook to Kansas Territory (1859); Echoes of Harper’s Ferry (1860); The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860);A Guide to Hayti [sic] (1860); and Talks About Ireland (1881). Biographical sources include C. F. Horner, Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum (1926); Publishers’ Weekly, December 1945; Americas, October 1955; and the Dictionary of American Biography (1935). Obituaries appeared in New York newspapers, February 11, 1891.