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the South.1 In the interests of this scheme he visited Hayti in 1825, and returned after several months to find his beloved wife dead, after giving birth to twins, his home desolate, and his surviving children scattered.
These he collected and placed in the care of friends, and then renewed his vow to devote his energies to the cause of the slaves until the nation was aroused in their behalf.
Resuming his task, he enlarged the Genius, and converted it into a weekly paper.
William Swain, ‘a very capable, intelligent, and philanthropic young man,’ one2 of his North Carolina converts, became his assistant, and to him Lundy could intrust the paper while he made occasional journeys to hold meetings, obtain subscribers, and stimulate the formation of anti-slavery societies.
It was not until 1828, however (a year after he had been brutally assaulted and almost killed in the streets of3 Baltimore by Austin Woolfolk, a notorious slave-trader), that he made his way northward on one of these missions, beginning at Philadelphia, and holding there the first meeting ever held in this country for encouraging the use of free-labor products.
In New York he became slightly acquainted with Arthur Tappan, a merchant4 already distinguished for his munificent philanthropy, and in Providence he met William Goodell, who was then5 publishing a paper called the Investigator. ‘I endeavored6 to arouse him,’ records Lundy, ‘but he was at that time slow of speech on my subject’—a slowness for which he afterwards amply atoned.7
1 And yet, only a few months previous, Lundy had expressed some distrust of the Colonization Society because Clay, Randolph, and other prominent slaveholders were active in its councils.
3 Ibid., pp. 206-209.
4 Ibid., p. 25.
5 Ibid., p. 25.
6 Ibid., p. 25.
7 William Goodell (born in Coventry, N. Y., Oct. 25, 1792, died in Janesville, Wisconsin, Feb. 14, 1878) was a lineal descendant of Robert Goodell, one of the earliest settlers of Danvers, Massachusetts (1634). Disappointed in his hope of a collegiate education, he early entered business life at Providence, R. I., and subsequently, at the age of 24, made a long voyage to the East Indies, China, and Europe, as supercargo. After his return he was merchant and book-keeper successively at Providence, Alexandria, Va., and New York, until, in 1827, he established the Investigator at Providence, ‘devoted to moral and political discussion, and reformation in general, including temperance and anti-slavery.’ He had denounced the Missouri Compromise at the time of its adoption, and was earnestly opposed to slavery, but at the period of Lundy's visit the temperance question was the more absorbing one with him. His subsequent labors in the anti-slavery cause will be frequently alluded to in these pages. He was the author of several works, the most important of which were “Views of American Constitutional law” (1844), “The democracy of Christianity” (1851), “Slavery and Anti-slavery” (1852), and “The American slave Code” (1853). He was an able writer and close reasoner, though diffuse in style. In his religious views he was rigidly Clavinistic. (See “Memorial of William Goodell,” Chicago, 1879.)
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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