We have already met Theodore Weld in the third essay of this series (October 1974). There we noticed his role in generating the 1834 debates on slavery at Cincinnati’s Lane Theological Seminary. Trustee efforts to block a student anti-slavery society and to prevent their work among local blacks led to the “Lane Rebellion” in which abolitionist students withdrew to the newly founded Oberlin College, a major center of “Christian radicalism” produced by the revivalism of evangelist Charles G. Finney.
But Theodore Weld deserves more than that brief mention. The Lane debates were only one incident in a distinguished career full of meaning not only for his time but for ours. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, “Weld was not only the greatest of the abolitionists; he was also one of the greatest figures of his time.” Yet Weld was nearly lost to history and it is only by a strange twist of events that we know as much about him as we do.
By natural modesty and firm convictions Weld resisted all efforts to thrust himself into prominence. He declined the professorship of theology at Oberlin, insisting that it should go to Finney, and the executive secretaryship of the American Anti-Slavery Society, arguing that his own work was in the ranks. He refused all invitations to speak at anti-slavery conventions because he “loathed” such “ostentatious display” and feared the “habit of gadding” from one convention to another. Weld would not let his speeches and letters be printed and published his books anonymously. He shunned the press and worked in the “West” away from the Eastern centers of influence. He chose, moreover, the obscurity of working in small towns “among the yeomanry,” self-consciously arguing that “the great cities ... must be burned down by bock fires. The springs to touch lie in the country.”
Weld is consequently inadequately represented in the sources historians use, and most interpretations of the anti-slavery movement focus on Boston and William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator. Such history naturally emphasizes liberal and Unitarian aspects of the movement. Garrison, moreover, was erratic, extreme, anti-clerical, and often more a liability than an asset to the cause. Such an interpretation, therefore, had some difficulty explaining how anti-slavery sentiment became dominant throughout the North before the Civil War.
But this “Garrisonian” perspective was challenged in the 1930s by economist Gilbert Barnes of Ohio Wesleyan University who began to track down elusive references to Weld. Through Weld’s grandson, Barnes located in an old farmhouse a trunk of letters that enabled him to offer a new interpretation of the abolitionist movement that emphasized its revivalistic origins. Barnes argued that:
The agitation was accomplished not so much by heroes of reform as by very numerous obscure persons, prompted by an impulse religious in character and evangelical in spirit, which began in the Great Revival in 1830, was translated for a time into anti-slavery organization, and then broadened into a congressional movement against slavery and the South.
The validity and details of Barnes’ thesis are still debated. But recent studies of abolitionism assume his position to great extent. The least that we can say is that revivalism (especially that of Finney) was a major, if not the major, force behind the pre-Civil War crusade against slavery. Barnes’ work has also brought to the forefront a remarkable person all too long neglected -- Theodore Weld.
Weld was born in 1803 into a Connecticut minister’s home that traced its ancestry through a long line of distinguished New England clergymen and theologians. A failure of eyesight during his studies at Phillips Academy caused Weld to drop out of school and take up lecturing on mnemonics -- the art of memory improvement. After three years of astonishing success on the lecture platform (developing skills to be used later), Weld returned to Hamilton College near Utica, New York.
Shortly thereafter Weld was called to Utica by the death of an uncle. Evangelist Finney was in the area, and Weld’s aunt tricked him into attending a service. Weld had already gained quite a reputation for his ridicule of Finney, and the evangelist, tipped off in advance to Weld’s presence, preached on the text “one sinner destroyeth much good.” Weld later reported that “for an hour, he just held me up on his toasting fork before that audience.” Meeting Finney the next day in a store, Weld vented his disgust in “all the vocabulary of abuse the language afforded.” Later ashamed of his actions, Weld sought out Finney to apologize, but before he could start, they embraced and fell to the floor, “sobbing and praying, sobbing and praying.”
From this moment Weld was a disciple of Finney. He worked for a while as Finney’s assistant, in his “holy band.” In that work Weld added to Finney’s “new measures” another innovation -- that of allowing women to speak and pray in mixed meetings. This foreshadowed the later practice of women taking to the platform in defense of abolitionism and the consequent birth of feminism. A dozen years later Weld married one of the most prominent feminists, Angelina Grimke. Then Weld claimed that he had advocated since a boyhood debating society “that there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of state, plead at the bar or in the pulpit, if she has the qualifications.” Weld also broke convention by suggesting that women could initiate courtship.
Weld soon moved into the support of other reforms, to which Finney’s revivalism gave impetus. Under the influence of another member of Finney’s “holy band” Weld moved toward an anti-slavery position. He regularly lectured on temperance, marshalling a vast array of statistics and powerful rhetoric for the cause. In 1831 Weld became the general agent of the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions. In this work Weld became an early advocate of a theme that permeated both Lane and Oberlin and was, in effect, an early manifestation of a “total education” that included a concern for physical development.
But Weld turned more and more to the issue of slavery. At first he advocated colonization (gradual emancipation conjoined with sending the freed Blacks back to Africa), but travels in the South and contacts with advocates of the emerging school of “immediate abolitionism” pushed him in a new direction. Weld urged his financial supporters in New York (primarily the Tappan brothers) to join the anti-slavery struggle. These discussions eventuated in a series of meetings that culminated in 1833 in the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society. This organization then launched a major attack on “colonization” and it was in the midst of these discussions that Weld came to Lane Seminary.
When the “Lane Debates” led to the withdrawal of the abolitionist students, Weld accepted assignment as an agent for the new society. Here Weld was in his element. He traveled throughout Ohio lecturing against slavery and adapting revivalistic techniques (“protracted meetings” that climaxed in a “call for decision”) to converting people to abolitionism. Weld would usually start by lecturing in the Presbyterian church, but his first night would often incite a riot causing him to seek other quarters. After a day or two the resistance would usually break, and Weld would leave behind some new converts” to found a local chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Weld started his work in Ohio in October of 1834. In May of 1835 the national organization reported 38 local chapters in Ohio (out of a total of 220). A year later the chapters totaled 527, but 133 were in Ohio.
Impressed with Weld’s success, the national committee decided to send out 70 such agents just as Jesus had sent out 70 disciples to preach. Weld and Henry B. Stanton, a Lane Rebel and later husband of feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were called to New York to train this famous group of the “Seventy” -- over a third of whom were Lane Rebels. By this means Weld multiplied his influence and played a major role in spreading the abolitionist Gospel across the country.
Unfortunately Weld lost his voice about this time and retired from the lecturing to behind-the-scenes editing and writing. Weld’s first task was to produce in book form the “Bible Argument Against Slavery” that he had developed and in the use of which he has instructed the “Seventy.” Though published anonymously, this book immediately went through several editions and became a major tool of the anti-slavery movement.
Soon after this Weld first declared his long concealed love for Angelina Grimke, one of the “Seventy.” This mutual affection, long sacrificed to the needs of the reform movement, now found culmination in a wedding in 1838. Committed to simplicity of life, they had difficulty outfitting their new home with furniture that was not “tricked out and covered with carved wood or bedizoned and gew gawed and gilded and tipt off with variegated colors.” The wedding cake was prepared by a black confectioner who used nothing but "free sugar." The wedding was a simple exchange of vows in which Weld renounced the rights to Angelina's person and property granted by the contemporary laws. Prayer was offered by both black and white clergymen. And soon thereafter Angelina was ex-communicated by her Quaker society for marrying outside the faith.
Weld's next major project was another book, Slavery As It Is. For this Weld combed Southern newspapers for evidence (e.g. ads seeking the return of runaway slaves that mentioned such identifying characteristics as scars from whippings, etc.) of the cruelty of slavery. These were compiled by Weld, Angelina, and her sister Sarah into a devastating critique of slavery that sold more than 100,000 copies in the first year. This book was a major influence in the composition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose anti-slavery concerns had been given a major boost by her attendance at the Lane debates while her father had been president of Lane Seminary. Mrs. Stowe later reported that she had slept with Weld’s book under her pillow while writing her anti-slavery novel.
Such anti-slavery research and propaganda prepared Weld for the next step in the struggle. In the early 1840s he was called to Washington to research for John Quincy Adams, who was leading the anti-slavery struggle in Congress. After this service Weld retired to farming and teaching, though his life was often interrupted for various anti-slavery activities. Weld was apparently a superb teacher and was entrusted with the children of many abolitionists who sought the particular mixture of modern techniques and moral education that Weld offered. Weld lived to the age of 91, dying in 1895.
In the literature there are hints of spiritual and theological struggles later in the life of Weld that contributed to a major transformation of his faith. Those who have worked with the sources are not attuned to the questions we would ask. Weld certainly shared the increasing alienation from the churches that many abolitionists experienced in the 1840s when church leaders resisted their concern for reform. Weld was especially strong in his denunciation of the churches he found in Washington, D.C., where he saw the “profitless forms and dead formality and timid time serving of the church and ministry as a body.” He and Angelina turned increasingly toward the “practicalities” of faith known “experimentally.” This involved a moving from church forms and doctrinal structures to a simple “loving and following Jesus.” How much more is involved is not clear. The documents for such a study exist, but have not been published.
When this article appeared, Donald Dayton was a contributing editor to the Post American and director of Mellander Library and Assistant Professor of Theology at North Park Theological Seminary.
For further reading:
Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Anti Slavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (New York: Appleton-Century Co., 1933), also available in a Harbinger paperback with an interpretive essay by William G. McLoughlin.
Gilbert Hobbs Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (eds), Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and Sarah Grimke, 1822-1844 (New York: Appleton-Century Co., 1934) 2 vols. The cheapest reprint is by Peter Smith of Gloucester, Mass.
Benjamin P. Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1950), reprinted in 1972 by Octogon Press of New York.
Theodore Weld, Slavery As It Is (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), reprinted in paperback as American Slavery As It Is by Arno press of New York, 1969.
Theodore Weld, The Bible Against Slavery (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837), reprinted in 1970 by Negro History Press of Detroit.
For the rest of the series, see:
Recovering a Heritage, Part I:
Recovering a Heritage, Part II: Evangelical Feminism, by Donald W. Dayton and Lucille Sider
Recovering a Heritage, Part III: The Lane Rebellion and the Founding of
Recovering a Heritage, Part IV: The "Christian Radicalism" of
Recovering a Heritage, Part V: The Rescue Case, by Donald W. Dayton. December 1974.
Recovering a Heritage, Part VI:
Recovering a Heritage, Part VII: The Sermons of Luther Lee, by Donald Dayton. February 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part VIII: Theodore Weld, evangelical reformer, by Donald W. Dayton. March 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part IX: The Tappan Brothers: businessmen and reform, by Donald Dayton. April 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part X, by Donald Dayton. May 1975.
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