Lundy, Benjamin

Lundy, Benjamin an American philanthropist, of Quaker parentage, was born at Handwich, Sussex County, N.J., January 4, 1789. At the age of nineteen he went to learn the saddler's trade in Wheeling, Virginia, and there gained an insight into, and a lasting hatred of, negro slavery. He organized in 1815 an association called the "Union Humane Society," and soon after joined Charles Osborne. Esq., in publishing The Emancipator, at Mount Pleasant, O. In 1821 he successfully started a monthly entitled The Genius of Universal Emancipation, into which he afterwards merged The Emancipator. In 1824 he delivered his first antislavery address at Deep Creek, North Carolina, and lecturing and journeying about on foot from place to place, organized about fourteen abolition societies in that state, besides some in Virginia. In the same year he removed The Genius to Baltimore, and issued it weekly. In 1825 he visited Hayti, and made provisions there for emancipated slaves. In 1828 he visited the antislavery advocates of the East, and lectured in their principal cities. In 1828-9 he was assaulted for alleged libel, censured by the court, and compelled to remove his paper to Washington, and finally to Philadelphia, where he gave it the name of The National Inquirer, and finally it merged into The Pennsylvania Freeman. In 1838 his property was burnt up by the proslavery mob which fired Pennsylvania Hall. Undaunted, he began anew by issuing The Genius at Lowell, La Salle County, Illinois, and there continued until his death, August 22, 1839. See Earle, Life, Travels, etc., of Benj. Lundy; Greeley, American Conflict, 1:111; Drake, Dict. of Amer. Biog. s.v.