Abolitionism and Temperance
Influenced particularly by his mother, Cheney developed core beliefs in the causes of abolitionism and temperance. He supported these causes throughout his life as an abolitionist, teacher, Freewill Baptist minister, state legislator, editor of The Morning Star, an abolitionist paper; and as founder and president of Bates College. Cheney's father Moses was the original printer for The Morning Star newspaper, and he was a friend of Frederick Douglass, the noted abolitionist. Cheney's brother Person became a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.
Oren Cheney was the principal at Parsonsfield Seminary, a stop on the Underground Railroad, for several years in the 1840s. He founded the Lebanon Academy in Lebanon, Maine in 1850. In 1851 Cheney was elected to the Maine House of Representatives as a Free Soil Party candidate, and was a strong supporter of the Maine law in favor of prohibition.
Read more about this topic: Oren B. Cheney
Famous quotes containing the word temperance:
“No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)