Lundy, Benjamin

Related Category: Social Reformers

1789–1839, American abolitionist, b. Sussex co., N.J., of Quaker parentage. A pioneer in the antislavery movement, Lundy founded (1815) the Union Humane Society while operating a saddlery in Ohio. He soon began to devote his efforts full time to the abolitionist cause by founding (1819) the antislavery periodical Philanthropist. In 1821 he began publishing the better-known Genius of Universal Emancipation. William Lloyd Garrison became associate editor of the Genius in 1829, but Lundy's belief in forming colonies abroad for freed slaves led the two to part. The Genius ceased publication in 1835, and in 1836, at Philadelphia, Lundy founded the National Enquirer, edited after 1838 by John Greenleaf Whittier as the Pennsylvania Freeman.

See T. Earle, ed., The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (1847, repr. 1971).