Lewis Tappan Biography Quotes 16 Report mistakes

Early Life and Formation
Lewis Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1788, into a large New England family shaped by the currents of religious revival and industrious commerce that marked the early republic. He grew up with a strong sense of duty, frugality, and piety, traits that would define his public life. As a young man he learned the dry-goods trade and bookkeeping, practical skills that carried him from small-town apprenticeship to the larger mercantile world. His closest collaborator throughout his career was his older brother Arthur Tappan, a fellow evangelical reformer and entrepreneur whose convictions closely matched his own.

Merchant Enterprise and Credit Innovation
By the 1820s and 1830s, Lewis Tappan had joined Arthur in New York City, where the brothers developed a successful import and dry-goods business and became known for scrupulous honesty and punctuality. The financial aftershocks of the Panic of 1837 convinced Lewis that merchants needed reliable, systematic information about creditworthiness in a nation expanding westward faster than personal reputations could travel. In 1841 he founded the Mercantile Agency in New York, building a national network of correspondents who gathered reports on commercial behavior and solvency. This system professionalized credit evaluation and reduced risk for distant transactions. The agency later evolved into R. G. Dun & Co., a forerunner of the modern credit-rating industry that would ultimately become part of Dun & Bradstreet. Tappan's reputation for rigor in business made him a trusted figure even among some who disagreed with his reform agenda.

Evangelical Convictions and Reform Commitments
Tappan's business ethic was inseparable from his religious convictions. Influenced by evangelical Protestantism associated with the Second Great Awakening, he supported causes that linked personal morality to public reform. He backed temperance, Sabbath observance campaigns, and missionary work. His philanthropy reflected a belief that economic success obligated him to support institutions that would elevate society. These commitments drew him powerfully into the movement against slavery, which he approached as both a moral crisis and a national test.

Antislavery Leadership in the 1830s
In 1833 Lewis Tappan joined a core group of reformers, including his brother Arthur and William Lloyd Garrison, to found the American Anti-Slavery Society. He worked closely with organizers such as Theodore Dwight Weld, whose oratory galvanized new recruits, and with editors and clergy who spread abolitionist arguments. Tappan promoted boycotts of slave-made goods, an attempt to align everyday consumption with conscience. His activism made him a target during the anti-abolitionist riots that erupted in New York in 1834, when mobs attacked the property of abolitionist leaders and their allies. The violence only hardened his resolve to pursue abolition within a framework of disciplined organization, legal advocacy, and Christian benevolence.

Education, Lane Seminary, and Oberlin
Believing that reform required institutions as well as appeals, the Tappan brothers supported schools and seminaries open to students regardless of race. They helped finance Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, where spirited debates on slavery led by Theodore Dwight Weld inspired a cohort of students to embrace immediate emancipation. When conflict over activism and governance prompted the so-called Lane Rebels to depart, Lewis Tappan backed arrangements that helped many continue their studies at Oberlin in northern Ohio. There, under the leadership of figures such as Charles Grandison Finney, Oberlin College became an early center of interracial education, a development Tappan regarded as both a religious witness and a practical demonstration that equality in learning was possible.

The Amistad Case
Tappan's most famous single effort came as a leader of the committee that aided the Africans who seized the schooner Amistad in 1839 after being kidnapped into the Atlantic slave trade. Working with allies including Simeon S. Jocelyn and Joshua Leavitt, he raised funds, coordinated public support, and engaged legal counsel. Attorneys Roger Sherman Baldwin and former President John Quincy Adams argued the captives' case before the Supreme Court. Tappan organized housing, instruction in English, and religious support for the men and boys during their imprisonment and trials. When the Court recognized their freedom in 1841, he helped arrange their return to Africa. The effort also led to the creation of the Mendi mission, an undertaking that connected abolitionism with long-term educational and religious work on the West African coast. The leadership displayed by Tappan, and the dignity of Sengbe Pieh (known in the United States as Joseph Cinque) and his companions, reshaped public opinion by personalizing the injustice of the slave trade.

Movement Strategy and the 1840 Split
Although Tappan worked amicably with Garrison in the early 1830s, deep disagreements emerged over strategy. Garrison increasingly emphasized disunionism and a radical critique of church and state. Tappan believed organized religion and, where possible, political action were necessary instruments for ending slavery. In 1840 he and like-minded colleagues formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, seeking a more broadly evangelical and institutionally engaged course. He cooperated with political abolitionists, including James G. Birney and others who helped launch the Liberty Party, even as he continued to support nonpartisan educational and missionary work.

American Missionary Association and Midcentury Work
In the 1840s Lewis and Arthur Tappan were among the founding spirits of the American Missionary Association, a nondenominational evangelical body devoted to antislavery, missions, and education. Lewis served in leadership roles and used his business acumen to stabilize finances, extend networks, and publicize the organization's projects. The AMA would later play a crucial role during and after the Civil War, establishing schools for formerly enslaved people across the South and supporting teachers and ministers who advanced literacy and citizenship.

Later Years and Legacy
Tappan remained a steady correspondent, organizer, and donor throughout the 1850s and 1860s, supporting antislavery lecturers such as Frederick Douglass and collaborating with veteran colleagues including Weld as the movement adapted to changing political realities. During the Civil War he supported the Union cause and the push toward emancipation. He watched as goals long championed in the lecture hall and the church parlor became national policy. Lewis Tappan died in 1873 in Brooklyn, New York, remembered as a businessman who used innovation to serve public ends and as an abolitionist who married pragmatic institution-building to moral conviction. His work with Arthur Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison (despite later differences), Theodore Dwight Weld, John Quincy Adams, Roger Sherman Baldwin, Simeon Jocelyn, and many others reveals a career rooted in collaboration. From the Mercantile Agency that helped define modern credit to the Amistad defense that crystallized the cause of freedom, his life joined commerce, conscience, and citizenship in a way that left a durable imprint on American society.

Our collection contains 16 quotes who is written by Lewis, under the main topics: Justice - Funny - Freedom - Faith - Life.