LEWIS TAPPAN

NEW YORK MERCHANT, ABOLITIONIST

Tappan brought the Amistad case to public attention throughout the United States.

LEWIS TAPPAN (1788-1863), one of the most influential abolitionists in Antebellum America, was born in Northampton, Mass. Growing up in a devoutly Calvinistic family, he was deeply influenced by his parents' evangelical beliefs. He entered the business world at age sixteen when he began clerking in a Boston dry goods store. In 1828, he joined his brother Arthur in the New York silk trade. He was so successful as credit manager of Arthur Tappan and company that in 1841 he withdrew from the partnership and formed the Mercantile Agency (later to become Dun and Bradstreet). By 1849, having accumulated enough wealth to retire he decided instead to devote the rest of his life to humanitarian causes.

His concern for the abolition of slavery dates from the early 1830's, a dangerous period for public expression of abolitionist sentiment. At that time, the anti-slavery movement had not made much progress because many businessmen saw it as a threat to law and order. This sentiment repeatedly incited mob action against the abolitionists and free blacks in the Northeast and in the Midwest.

It took courage to speak out, but in 1833 Lewis and Arthur Tappan and Theodore Weld formed the American Anti-Slavery Society and in the same year the Tappan brothers founded Oberlin College, open to blacks and whites alike. Lewis Tappan financially backed the Emancipator, the most widely circulated anti-slavery journal. To his brother Benjamin, U. S. Senator from Ohio, Lewis wrote that slavery "was the worm at the tree of liberty. Unless killed, the tree will die."

The Tappans' public statements against slavery brought about public reaction on the 4th of July, 1834, when a mob trashed Lewis's home and burned his furniture in the street. Tappan wrote to Weld that he wanted his house to remain "this summer as it is, a silent anti-slavery preacher to the crowds who will see it." The next year, a church built by the Tappans was set on fire when it was rumoured that they intended to promote racial "amalgamation."

Undeterred, the Tappans continued their efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to end slavery. Lewis was more fully committed than his brother Arthur, who stopped short of associating with blacks. Lewis tried to eliminate the "black pew" in New York churches and caused a furor in upstate New York when he and his family sat in the pews reserved for black communicants. On another occasion members of the American Anti-Slavery Association blocked his proposal to invite a black minister to speak to the Association.

After the Amistad had been taken, Lewis Tappan recognized the opportunity not only to help the captured Africans, but also to dramatize the evils of the slave trade. He had been handed a "Providential occurence," he admitted when the district court opened proceedings. Ultimately, he hoped to use the opportunity to strike at slavery itself -- "the market that invites the supply," he concluded, in suitably businesslike fashion.

He assumed major responsibility for mapping out the strategy for the court trials, raised money in "the voice of humanity and liberty," visited the imprisoned captives, located Africans who could talk with the Mendes, wrote letters to the New York Journal of Commerce presenting the Africans's side of the mutiny, and in company with Ellis Gray Loring, John Quincy Adams's friend of many years, pleaded eloquently with Adams to join Roger Sherman Baldwin in arguing the case for the defense before the U. S. Supreme Court. On hearing the decision of the Supreme Court, Adams wrote to Tappan, "The captives are free . . .'Not unto us, not unto us!' but thanks, thanks, in the name of humanity and justice to you."

In the year following the release of the Mendes, Tappan devoted his energy to arranging for their transportation home to Sierra Leone, and very likely helped spirit away Antonio (the slave cabin boy of the Amistad's captain) to freedom in Canada.

Tappan's participation in the Amistad case may be considered the high point of his career as an abolitionist. In the 1840's he split with William Lloyd Garrison, who wanted to branch off into kinds of reform, including women's rights. At the suggestion of Adams he attended an anti-slavery convention in London in 1843, and in 1846 was instrumental in merging the Amistad committee with other missionary groups to form the American Missionary Society. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 he actively supported the efforts of the Underground Railroad.

Over many years, Lewis Tappan came to believe that under the Constitution, the federal government could abolish slavery throughout the South. Typical of many abolitionists, he proposed reforming the system from within and tirelessly worked to win over churches and missionary societies to his views.

Calvin Lane

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Further Reading:

Barnes, Gilbert H. The Anti-Slavery Impulse:1830-1844. New York: Harbrace, 1933. Reprint, 1993.
(Continues to be an important source in abolitionist studies.)

Jones, Howard. Mutiny on the Amistad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
(The most authoritative study of the Amistad case.)

Klingberg, Frank. "Tappan, Lewis." Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 18. New York: Scribner's, 1936.
Valuable bibliographical listing at the end of the article

Richards, Leonard. "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
A provocative thesis, supported by research data, that anti-abolition mobs were incited to violence by merchants who did not want the political and social status quo disturbed or had ties to Southern commerce.

Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971.
A detailed, valuable study, with many cross references to other works on the subject.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Material on the Tappans,and in particular, the tensions between Lewis Tappans's private and public life. Wyatt-Brown is also the author of Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1969), to date the only biographical study of Lewis Tappan.