- Weld, Theodore Dwight
-
born Nov. 23, 1803, Hampton, Conn., U.S.died Feb. 3, 1895, Hyde Park, Mass.U.S. reformer.He left divinity studies to become an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (1834). His pamphlets The Bible Against Slavery (1837) and Slavery as It Is (1839) helped convert figures such as James Birney, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe to the antislavery cause. He married his coworker Angelina Grimké (1838), and they directed schools and taught in New Jersey and Massachusetts. In 1841–43 Weld organized an antislavery reference bureau in Washington, D.C., to assist congressmen seeking to repeal the gag rule restricting the consideration of antislavery petitions in Congress.
* * *
▪ American abolitionistborn November 23, 1803, Hampton, Connecticut, U.S.died February 3, 1895, Hyde Park, MassachusettsAmerican antislavery crusader in the pre-Civil War period.While a ministerial student at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, Weld participated in antislavery debates and led a group of students who withdrew from Lane to enroll at Oberlin (Ohio) College. Weld left his studies in 1834 to become an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, recruiting and training people to work for the cause. His converts included such well-known abolitionists as James G. Birney (Birney, James Gillespie), Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe, Harriet Beecher), and Henry Ward Beecher (Beecher, Henry Ward).Weld wrote pamphlets (largely anonymous), notably The Bible Against Slavery (1837) and Slavery As It Is (1839). The latter was said to be the work on which Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based her Uncle Tom's Cabin.Soon after his marriage (1838) to Angelina Grimké (Grimké, Angelina Weld), a coworker in the antislavery crusade, Weld withdrew to private life on a farm in Belleville, New Jersey. He ventured back into public life in 1841–43, when he went to Washington, D.C., to head an antislavery reference bureau for the group of insurgents in Congress who broke with the Whigs on the slavery issue and were seeking the repeal of the “gag rule” restricting the consideration of antislavery petitions in Congress. Having demonstrated the value of an antislavery lobby in Washington, Weld returned to private life. He and his wife spent the remainder of their lives directing schools and teaching in New Jersey and Massachusetts.Additional ReadingBenjamin Platt Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (1950, reprinted 1973).* * *
Universalium. 2010.
