Elizur Wright - Abolitionist

Abolitionist

Along with Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Theodore Weld, James Birney, and other like-minded individuals, Wright founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Wright became the national secretary of the organization. At this time, the American Anti-Slavery Society espoused the immediate abolition of slavery, called for an end to all racial prejudice and equality for all. To effect this change, members practiced a policy of "moral suasion," an appeal to people's ethics in an attempt to get them to embrace abolitionism and renounce slavery as sinful.

Wright edited a large number of publications, including The Emancipator and the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine. He was also involved in "The Great Postal Campaign" – a project whose job was to distribute abolitionist material across the country. The Anti-Slavery Society was successful in recruiting agents throughout the country to spread their message, but when Garrison and others began to broaden the scope of the Society to include women's rights and took on an anti-religion, anti-government tone, Wright and others objected and began to split from the Society in 1840.

Wright became involved with the newly created Liberty Party and began to separate from the evangelists and the religious anti-slavery movements, believing that government intervention was the way to abolition. Wright was arrested and charged for aiding in the escape of the first black man to be seized in New England under the Fugitive Slave Act. He was not convicted. He edited the Massachusetts Abolitionist and the Chronotype before eventually becoming estranged from the abolitionist movement altogether. Moreover, due partially to disappointment in the Church's lack of support for the Abolitionist cause, and to a slowly growing desire to find secular solutions to social problems, the formerly pious and devout Congregationalist became an atheist.