Lundy, Benjamin, 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 Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805–79, American abolitionist, b. Newburyport, Mass. He supplemented his limited schooling with newspaper work and in 1829 went to Baltimore to aid Benjamin Lundy in publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation.
..... Click the link for more information. 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.

Bibliography

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

Lundy, Benjamin

(born January 4, 1789, Sussex county, N.J., U.S.—died Aug. 22, 1839, Lowell, Ill.) U.S. abolitionist and publisher. He worked in Virginia and Ohio, where he organized the Union Humane Society (1815), one of the first antislavery societies. In 1821 he founded a newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, which he edited in various places until 1835, when he began publishing another paper, the National Enquirer (later the Pennsylvania Freeman), in Philadelphia. He traveled in search of places for former slaves to settle, including Canada and Haiti.

Lundy, Benjamin (1789–1839) abolitionist; born in Sussex County, N.J. Observing slavery as a saddler in Virginia (1808–12), he formed a pioneering antislavery group soon after settling in St. Clair, Ohio (1815) and, risking harm, published several abolitionist papers, including The Philanthropist (with abolitionist Charles Osborne) and The Genius of Universal Emancipation (1821). He journeyed to such places as Haiti and Canada seeking colonies for freed slaves, and, though more of a gradualist, was an early influence on William Lloyd Garrison who coedited the latter paper for a time. In 1836 Lundy started The National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty, which opposed the annexation of Texas as a slaveholders' plot. After racist mobs destroyed all of his papers, he briefly reestablished The Genius shortly before his death.