The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1950-02-16
He Heard The Walls


issues.
He Heard The Walls
All things have a beginning.
Slavery was an accepted and perfect
ly respectable institution in the
United States until 1903, when a 19-
year-old saddler's apprentice at
Wheeling, West Virginia, began to
make a noise about it.
II heard the wall of the captive;
| felt his pang of distress, and the
iron entered my SOUL" the youthful
harness maker that year wrote in his
diary. He wrote and talked about it
for 80 years and after his death his
abolition movement grew into the
Civil War in 1861.
The saddler was Benjamin Lundy,
born January 4, 1889, at Hardwick,
Sussex County, New Jersey. A farm
| er boy and Quaker, it was when
learning the harness and saddle
trade at Wheeling that he saw the
| first slaves. Wheeling was town
on the great road from Virginia for
transporting slaves to the South and
Lundy saw many of the noisy, chain
ed gangs go by. The boy was sym
pathetic and tender hearted.
First Anti-Slavery Society
A
When he married and settled in
St. Clairsville, Belmont County, still
a saddler, Lundy began advocating
the abolition of slavery. Finally he
learned the printers trade so he
would be able to write and publish
things against slavery. In 1916,
when he was 26, Lundy organized
an anti-slavery society and called it
THE Union Humane Society,"" With
six members to start it grew to more
than 500 members.
Lundy wrote numerous articles for
the Quaker, Charles Osborne's phil
anthropist," Mt. Pleasant, jefferson
County, and soon sold out his harm
ess shop at loss in order to join
Osborne in publishing the paper.
In 1919 a controversy over admit
ing Missouri as a free or slave state
| to the Union was in its hottest
| period. Lundy moved to st. Louis
| and began to write anti-slavery
| articles for the newspapers there and
| in Illinois. In 1922 he had to walk
all the way back to Ohio. There he
found that Osborne had sold out the
Philanthropist. So Lundy started
another, the monthly Genius of Uni
versal Emancipation" 1t had six
subscribers.
More Societies Formed
The Genius of Universal Emanci-
patton was moved to Jonesboro, in
eastern Tennessee, and in 1924 to
Baltimore, to which Lundy walked
and held anti-slavery meetings
among Quakers and others in North
and South Carolina and Virginia, on
his way. In 1928 he was in Boston
and there hired William Lloyd Gar
rison as his associate editor. He
then had more than 100 societies for
the gradual but total abolition of
slavery"
In the winter of 1828-1s29 Lundy
nearly was killed in an attack by
Austin Voolfolk, a slave dealer, at
Baltimore. Driven out of Baltimore,
he established his paper at Philadel-
phia, where it was burned the seme
year by the pro-slavery mob which
fired Pennsylvania Hall.
Lundy then went to LaSalle, IL
linois, where he tried to establish his
anti-slavery paper but died in the
winter of 1s29-183O before he could
get it started.
In fighting slavery Lundy had
travelled in the first few months
2,400 miles, about 1000 of it afoot;
had held nearly so public mass meet
ings and talked to thousands of per-
sons. He was "a meek, little fellow,
about five feet, five. inches tall,
slender, light eyes and hair and was
hard of hearing. Though he fought
the institution of slavery, he treated
the slave holders with the greatest
consideration"
Ohio Favors Slavery
Before 1915, when Lundy formed
his Union Humane Society" at st.
Clairsville, the whole of Ohio was
strongly ro-slavery-almost fanatic
ally so. This excerpt is lifted from
the writer's own current Gross
Roads," Sesqui-Cente 1nial History of
Pleasant Ridge and Columbis Town
ship, Hamilton County:
'In 1910 there began a great
influx of negro population from
across the Ohio River into CO.
lumbia township. They came un-
armed, without gun, ammunition
or sword, disappeared into the
woods and built huts, shacks or