Josiah Wedgwood famous for pottery

It is the birthday of the famous English potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730), whose unique pottery design is known throughout the world and is still manufactured today. Wedgwood was intensely interested in scientific advancements, and that curiosity fueled his improvement of the quality of his pottery and methods for producing it. Wedgwood also was a leader in the British abolitionist movement and is famous for producing an anti-slavery medallion titled “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” The eldest of Wedgwood’s four daughters, Susannah, was Charles Darwin’s mother.

The man who designed the Capitol Building

Thornton's design for the Capitol Building. Inset, William Thornton.

It is the birthday of British-American architect William Thornton (1759), who designed the United States Capitol Building. His plan was the winner in a design competition. He won $500 and a lot in the city. Thornton also served as the first Architect of the Capitol and the first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office. He also was a physician, inventor, and painter, and was considered a Renaissance man of vast knowledge. He was born in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, where his family had sugar plantations and slaves. In fact, as a young man he had inherited 70 slaves, an event that troubled him greatly. He subsequently became an abolitionist, and tried unsuccessfuly to lead a group of American Free Black Americans to Sierra Leone to join a British colony there.

John Brown led violent abolitionists

It is the birthday of fiery abolitionist John Brown (1800), who led antislavery forces in battles against slavery supporters in Kansas in the tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War. Brown resorted to violence in an era when most abolitionists advocated peaceful resistance to slavery. Brown’s final act was raiding the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859 and attempting to incite a revolt among the slaves. He was tried for treason in the Commonwealth of Virginia and excited by hanging. He became a martyr for the Union cause and the song John Brown’s Body became an anthem during the Civil War.

Happy birthday, activist Lydia Maria Child

It is the birthday of Lydia Maria Child (1802), who was an activist against slavery, for women’s rights, and for Indian rights. She wrote fiction and non-fiction books on her causes, edited an anti-slavery newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840), started the first children’s magazine in America, Juvenile Miscellany (1826) and wrote domestic manuals.  Among her books are Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times (1824), The Indian Wife (1828), The Mother’s Book (1831), An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), and The Freedmen’s Book (1865). For all that, she may be best remembered for her Thanksgiving poem, Over the River and Through the Wood (1844).

'Over the river and through the wood ...'

Lydia Maria Child

It is the birthday of poet and novelist Lydia Maria Child (1802), who may be best remembered for her Thanksgiving poem Over the River and Through The Woods (1844), about going for holiday dinner at her grandfather's house on the Mystic River in Medford, Massachusetts. Child became involved in the anti-slavery movement and published a book, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), arguing for immediate emancipation of slaves. Under a pseudonym "An American," she wrote Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times (1824), about and interracial marriage between a white woman and a Native American man. A World War II Liberty Ship was named for her.

Waging the American anti-slavery campaign

In 1835, the main organization in the American abolitionist movement was facing a conundrum. Too few people throughout the country knew about the American Anti-Slavery Society or its objectives. The solution: a postal campaign to create awareness and, of course, solicit donations to help pay for the campaign.

 Arthur Tappan, left, and William L. Garrison

The organization had been founded two years earlier by a Boston abolitionist newspaper editor, William Lloyd Garrison; a New York silk importer; and journal publisher, Arthur Tappan, among others. It’s hardly surprising, with Garrison and Tappan on the team, that they selected the production of anti-slavery literature as their medium of choice, though Garrison had become an increasingly radical public speaker on the subject.

An 1835 pamphlet produced by the society to further its aims of ending slavery in America is in the collection of rare and unusual items at Lighthouse Books, ABAA. It contains eleven articles, all variations on the anti-slavery theme. The pamphlet, titled The Anti-Slavery Record, is marked Volume 1, Number 9, and was part of a continuing series.

One article, The Desperation of a Mother, tells in graphic detail the harrowing tale of a slave woman in Missouri whose children were to be taken away by a slave trader the next day and resold far away. The woman, who had been chained to keep her from interfering, managed to free herself during the night. She killed her children, and then herself, in order to prevent what she obviously considered a fate worse than death.

Another article, The Doctrine of the Bible in Regard to Slavery, sets straight the record for pro-slavery citizens who consistently and incorrectly tried to make the case that the Holy Bible supports the practice.

Ultimately, the organization achieved its goals, though not until after the Civil War and adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.

The society was beset by its own internal problems. The two main founders, Garrison and Tappan, had a philosophical difference of opinion. Tappan fought passionately for the emancipation of slaves but, curiously, took a dim view of giving women any say in the affairs of the nation. He opposed women's suffrage and felt women should be kept from positions of responsibility within society, including within the American Anti-Slavery Society.

That didn’t square with Garrison’s philosophy that women ought to be allowed full participation not only in the Society, but within American society in general. Some of Garrison’s friends included Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone, who, no doubt, influenced his thinking on the subject.

Tappan eventually resigned as president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and formed a separate anti-slavery organization in which no women were allowed participation. Garrison became president of the AAS and continued to publish his own abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, until 1865, when he declared his work finished, shut down his paper, resigned his presidency and went into retirement.