Theodore Dwight Weld

Theodore Dwight Weld (November 23, 1803 – February 3, 1895) helped build the American abolitionist movement during its key early period, from 1830 to 1844, working as a writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. His most famous contribution was co-writing American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839), a thorough collection of firsthand accounts.

Anti-slavery activity

Harriet Beecher Stowe drew on this book for parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Weld’s work is considered second only to Stowe’s novel in shaping antislavery opinion. He stayed active in the cause until the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in 1865. Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, called Weld “as eloquent as an angel, and as powerful as thunder,” adding that his words were “logic on fire.” By 1950, however, one writer noted that Weld was “totally unknown to most Americans.”

Early life

Weld was born in Hampton, Connecticut, into a family of Congregational ministers—his father and grandfather both served in the pulpit. He descended from Thomas Welde, an original trustee of Harvard College. His mother owned slaves. At fourteen, he took over his father’s hundred-acre farm near Hartford to earn money for school. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1820 to 1822, but left when his eyesight failed.

College education

A doctor advised travel, so Weld began a three-year lecture tour on mnemonics across the United States, including the South, where he witnessed slavery directly. In 1825 his family moved to Fabius, upstate New York; by the time of his marriage to Angelina Grimké, they lived in Manlius, New York. Around 1825, Weld attended classes at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, though he never formally enrolled and does not appear in the college’s student lists. He stayed in the suite of tutor William Kirkland, attended lectures, and became “something of a leader among the students.” Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney, based in Oneida County, recalled that Weld “held a very prominent place among the students of Hamilton College, and had a very great influence.” Weld later described himself as “educated at Hamilton College,” but the school rejected his proposal for a manual labor program.

While there, he attended Finney’s revivals and became his disciple. In Utica, the intellectual hub of western New York and a center of abolitionism, he befriended Charles Stuart, an early abolitionist who headed the Utica Academy. They spent several years in Finney’s “holy band.” During the winter of 1827, Weld and his brother Charles worked on a whaling vessel off Labrador.

Later in 1827, following Stuart’s advice, Weld left Hamilton and enrolled at the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry in Whitesboro, New York—the most abolitionist school in the country. Stuart paid his fees. Before that, he took part in a pilot program at George Washington Gale’s farm in Western, New York, working for instruction. At Oneida, he managed the cow-milking operation and spent two-week stretches traveling to lecture on manual labor, temperance, and moral reform. One observer noted that Weld “had both the stamina and charisma to hold listeners spellbound for three hours.” By 1831, a letter published in the Utica Elucidator described him as a “well known citizen” of Oneida County.

James Fairchild, a fellow student at Oberlin who later became its president, described Weld’s presence. An editorial in The Liberator, likely by editor William Lloyd Garrison, declared that “Weld is destined to be one of the great men not of America merely, but of the world. His mind is full of strength, proportion, beauty, and majesty. …[In his writing] there is indubitable evidence of intellectual grandeur and moral power.” Dr. Beecher later recalled Weld’s impact. Garrison also noted that at a convention of antislavery agents—traveling lecturers who founded local societies—Weld “was the central luminary around which they all revolved.” Angelina Grimké, his future wife, first saw him in 1836 when he spoke for two hours on “What is slavery?” She wrote, “I never heard so grand & beautiful an exposition of the dignity & nobility of man in my life.”

Manual labor and education agent

In 1831, at age twenty-eight, Weld’s reputation as a speaker reached New York City, where philanthropists Lewis and Arthur Tappan summoned him. He turned down their offer of a ministerial position, feeling unprepared. Because he was “a living, breathing, and eloquently-speaking exhibit of the results of manual-labor-with-study,” the Tappans created the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions solely to employ him. They hired him as its general agent, sending him on a fact-finding and speaking tour.

(The Society did nothing else besides hire Weld, host some lectures, and publish his report.) He carried out this work during 1832. His 100-page report, dated January 10, 1833, included twenty pages of letters he had received. The Quarterly Christian Spectator reviewed it at length, and an abridged version soon appeared.