LUNDY, BENJAMIN, 1789-1839; b. Hardwich, Suffolk co., N. J., of Quaker parent age; had no advantages of education, save those afforded by the common-schools; was imbued with a keen thirst for knowledge, and read eagerly such books as were within his reach. While serving an apprenticeship to the saddler's trade in Wheeling, Va., his heart was touched with sympathy and indignation at the sight of coftles of slaves pass ing through that place on their way to a southern market, and he resolved to give his life to the work of abolishing slavery. Having completed his apprenticeship, he mar Tied, and settled in St. Clairsville, Ohio, where hc carried on the business of a saddler for four years, accumulating a considerable surn of money. His pecuniary prospects were highly flattering, but the remembrance of the slave was ever with hirn. Accordingly, he persuaded five others to join him in organizing a" " union humane society," which, in a few months, enrolled nearly 500 members. A short time after this he began to discuss the subject of slavery in the Philanthropist, a weekly paper published in 3It. Pleasant, Ohio. In the autumn of 1819, the agitation of the" Missouri question" being then rife in the country, he took his whole stock in trade to St. Louis, resolved to sell it and devote the proceeds to the promotion of the antislavery cause. He lost by this venture nearly all that he had accumulated; but this did not discourage him in his chosen course. He devoted himself for a time to the work of exposing the evils of slavery in the news papers of Missouri and Illinois, hoping in this way to create a public sentiment averse to the admission pf Missouri to the union' as a slave ,state; but he soon returned to Ohio, settling at 3it. Pleasant, where, in Jan., 1821, he began the publication of a monthly journal entitled the Genius of Universal Emancipation. This paper was shortly after wards removed to Jonesborough, Tenn., where there was a considerable body of people who shared his hostility to slavery and gave him a warm welcome. In 1824 it was removed to Baltimore, Md., where it was published weekly. Mr. Lundy, while averse to the scheme for colonizing the negroes in Africa, was yet imbued with the idea that some place of refuge outside of the United States was necessary as a means of pro moting emancipation; aud, in 1825, he visited Hayti, where he sought to make arrange ments with the government for the settlement of such emancipated slaves as might be sent thither. In 1828 he journeyed on foot through parts of the middle and eastern states to lecture on slavery and procure subscribers to his paper. He found a few friends ready to aid him, but the people in general had grown apathetic on the subject since the admission of Missouri to the union as a slave state. In the winter of 1828-29 3Ir. Lundy
was brutally assaulted and nearly killed by Baltimore's great slave-dealer, Austin Wool folk, who had taken offense at something which had been said of him and his nefari ous business in the Genius of Universal Emaneivation. In the spring of 1829 he made a second visit to Hayti, taking with him a small number of emancipated slaves, for whom he sought an asylum. In the fall of the same year William Lloyd Garrison, by invitation, joined him in Baltimore as co-editor of the Genius. The two men were alike in their hostility to slavery, but Mr. Garrison was a pronounced'advocate of immediate emancipation, while Mr. Lundy, like most of the antislavery men of that day, was a gradualist, fearing, if not believing, that a sudden emancipation would be dangerous to the public welfare. 3Ir. Garrison, too, was for emancipation on the soil, while 3Ir. Lundy was committed to schemes of colonization abroad. When about half the first year of their partnership had expired, 3Ir. Garrison was convicted of a, criminal libel, fined, and thrust into prison for declaring that the domestic traffic in slaves was, in its nature, as piratical as the foreign, and that a New England sea-captain, who had taken a cargo of human flesh from Baltimore to New Orleans, was guilty of conduct which should cover him with " thick infamy." This occurrence led to a dissolution of the partnership between 3Ir. Lundy and 3Ir. Garrison, the former continuing the publica tion of the Genius, but making Washington the place of its nominal issue, while it was printed once a month in whatever place he found it convenient to stop for that purpose in the course of his travels. In the winter of 1830-31 he visited the Wilberforce colony of fugitive slaves in Canada, and soon afterwards went to Texas, for the purpose of securing siinilar asylum under the Mexican flag. He went to Texas again in 1833, but was baffled in his purpose on account of the scheme for wresting that country from Mexico, and annexing it to the United States. In 1836 he commenced the publication, in Philadel phia, of an antislavery paper, entitled the National Enquirer, absorbing therein the Genius of Universal Emancipation. A year later he resigned the editorship of the new paper, and in the winter of 1838-39 removed to Lowell, La Salle co., III., intending to resume there the publication of the Genius, but on the 22d of the ensuing October he died. He was a man of rare courage and self-sacrifice, a pioneer in the movement for the abolition of ,kmerican slavery. He traveled more than 5,000 miles on foot, and upwards of 20,000 miles in other ways, visiting 19 states of the union, and addressing hundreds of public meetings, to promote the object to which he had devoted his life.