Amos Dresser: Difference between revisions

'''Amos Dresser''' (December 17, 1812 – February 4, 1904) was an [[abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] and [[pacifism in the United States|pacifist]] minister, and one of the founders of [[Olivet College]]. His name was well -known in the [[Antebellum South|Antebellum]] period becausedue ofto a well-publicized incident: in 1835 he was arrested, tried, convicted, and publicly whipped in [[Nashville, Tennessee]], for the crime of possession of abolitionist publications. The incident was widely reported and became well -known. Dresser published an account of it,<ref name=Dresseryes/> and spoke of it frequently.

Dresser was born in [[Peru, Massachusetts]],<ref name="Oberlin">{{Cite web |title=Amos Dresser |url=https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelBios/AmosDresser.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210210202242/https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelBios/AmosDresser.html |archive-date=February 10, 2021 |access-date=June 20, 2021 |publisher=Oberlin College}}</ref> and was a descendant of [[Robert Cushman]], a [[Mayflower]] [[Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)|pilgrim]].<ref name="Necro">{{Cite news |date=February 18, 1904 |title=Sixty Years in the Ministry |page=2 |work=Lawrence Weekly World ([[Lawrence, Kansas]]) |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/41392092/necrology_of_amos_dresser/ |url-status=live |access-date=July 29, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191231115537/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/41392092/necrology_of_amos_dresser/ |archive-date=December 31, 2019 |via=[[newspapers.com]]}}</ref> His father died when he was an infant; he lived with his mother, Minerva Cushman, and his mother's second husband, Henry Pierce, until his mother’s death in 1826, when heAmos was 13.<ref name=Oberlin/> "He was for a time engaged in a store; he then taught a school."<ref>{{Cite news |date=September 12, 1835 |title=Amos Dresser |page=1 |work=The Watchman ([[Connersville, Indiana]]) |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/other-articles-clipping-sep-12-1835-1490440/ |url-status=live |access-date=July 29, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210729151727/https://newspaperarchive.com/other-articles-clipping-sep-12-1835-1490440/ |archive-date=July 29, 2021 |via=[[newspaperarchive.com]]}}</ref> To prepare for the ministry, in 1830 he enrolled in the new [[Oneida Institute of Science and Industry]], a [[manual labor school]] near [[Utica, New York]], predecessor of [[Oberlin College|Oberlin]], and briefly the most [[abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] school in the country. For a brief period of his life Dressler lived at a small home built in Pentwater, Michigan on Rutledge, now owned by Frederic and Donna DeGraaf

He was one of the first to join a group, led by [[Theodore Weld]], that left Oneida, eventually enrolling as students at the also new [[Lane Seminary]] near [[Cincinnati, Ohio]].<ref name="Snodgrass">{{Cite book

|url-status=live}}</ref> This was the first organized student activism in the country.{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}} Dresser was active in the initiative among the group to teach Negroes in Cincinnati.<ref name=Dumond/> He remained part of the Weld group, now called the [[Lane Rebels]], when it withdrew ''en masse'' in 1834 after Lane prohibited student discussion of slavery.<ref name=Dresseryes/>{{rp|5}}<ref name="Finkelman">{{Cite book

During the summer of 1835, in order to raise money to further his education, Dresser traveled around the [[American South|South]] selling the [[Cottage Bible]].<ref name=Dresseryes/><ref name=Finkelman/>{{rp|255}} In [[Nashville, Tennessee]], by unfortunate accident he was discovered to have abolitionist literature with him. He was taken before an extra-legal [[vigilance committee]]<ref name="Dumond">{{Cite journal |last=Dumond |first=Dwight L. |date=1949 |title=The Mississippi: Valley of Decision |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=3–26, at p. 10 |doi=10.2307/1895693 |issn=0161-391X |jstor=1895693}}</ref> of sixty prominent citizens.<ref name=Dresseryes/>{{rp|2}} Dresser openly denounced the [[kangaroo court]] and the institution of slavery altogether.<ref name=Finkelman/>{{rp|261}} From his "papers, pamphlets, correspondence and statements", the self-appointed Committee found him guilty of:

# Being an "active member" of an anti-slavery society in Ohio,.

# Having in his possession "sundry pamphlets of a most violent and pernicious tendency, and which if generally disseminated, would in all human possibility, cause an insurrection or rebellion among the slaves"."

A newspaper reporting the case commented editorially that Dresser's crime "might possibly lead to the violation by blacks of our wives and daughters"."<ref name="Sangamo2">{{Cite news |date=August 29, 1835 |title=Abolition |page=3 |work=[[Sangamo Journal]] ([[Springfield, Illinois]]) |url=https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=SJO18350829.2.11&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN-%22Amos+dresser%22-------- |url-status=live |access-date=July 30, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730160840/https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=SJO18350829.2.11&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN-%22Amos+dresser%22-------- |archive-date=July 30, 2021 |via=[[Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections]]}}</ref> He was sentenced to "twenty stripes on his bare back"," which were carried out in public. The Committee claimed that were it not for them, he would have been [[lynching in the United States|lynched]].<ref name=Sangamo2/><ref name="Sangamo">{{Cite news

|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/92414675/whipping-of-amos-dresser-in-nashville/}}</ref> Dresser then hurriedly left [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]], without his luggage and horse, which he never recovered, although "I have frequently written to my friends concerning them."<ref name=Dresseryes/>

Dresser published in the ''Cincinnati Daily Gazette'' the story of what had happened to him, twice had it reprinted in pamphlets, plus the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] issued it the following year, accompanied by other testimony on slavery.<ref name=Dresseryes/> He later spoke of it many times, in the course of abolitionist lectures.<ref>{{Cite news
|date=February 14, 1838
|title=(Untitled)
|page=2
|worknewspaper=[[Vermont Telegraph]] ([[Brandon, Vermont]]) |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/brandon-vermont-telegraph-feb-14-1838-p-2/ |url-status=live |access-date=September 11, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211009165754/https://newspaperarchive.com/brandon-vermont-telegraph-feb-14-1838-p-2/ |archive-date=October 9, 2021 |via=[[newspaperarchive.com]]}}</ref> In January, 1837, he spoke on it to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, forced to meet in the hay-loft of a barn.<ref>{{cite book

|publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news

** {{Cite book |last=Dresser |first=Amos |url=https://wwwbooks.google.com/books/edition/Slave_Rebels_Abolitionists_and_Southern/qTKyOwoO9IEC?qid=dresserqTKyOwoO9IEC&gbpvq=1&bsq=Slave%20Rebels,%20Abolitionists,%20and%20Southern%20courts#f=falsedresser |title=Narrative |date=c. 1835 |others="[By the request of many of my friends, I re-publish the following narrative of my "''Nashville experience.''".]" Link is to a reprinting in the collection ''Slave Rebels, Abolitionists, and Southern Courts'' |publisher=The Lawbook Exchange |isbn=9781584777441 |authorlink=Amos Dresser}}

[[Category:AmericanAbolitionists abolitionistsfrom Massachusetts]]