User:Deisenbe/sandbox/Amos Dresser

Amos Dresser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lashing_of_Amos_Dresser

long article in Tennessean 11 aug. 1835 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22916268/amos_dresser/

DRESSER. AMOS. Julian, Neb.

B. Peru, Mass.. Dec. 17, 1812; Lane, '33-'34; Oberlin. '36-'39; Miss. Jamaica. W. Indies, '39-'41; ord. Cleveland Congl. Conf., '41; Ba- tavia and New Richmond. 0.. '41-'43; Lecturer and Agent. '44-'51, W. Farmington. O., '51-'57; Orwell and W. Williamsfield. '57-'6o; (https://archive.org/details/generalcatalog00lane/page/n21/mode/2up/search/Dresser)

Pentwater, Mich., '65-'69; H. Miss. Butler Co., Neb., •69-79; Red Willow, Neb., '79-'81; Finan. Agt. Franklin Acad., "Sl-'Se; P. Dover, Neb., Congl., '86-'96; Mod. Genl. Ass., Nebraska, "71, 77. The Bible AyaUist War, Oberlin, '49.

The public whipping in Nashville
After leaving Lane but before Oberlin, Dresser set out to visit an uncle in Mississippi, selling Bibles to finance his trip and his future studies.

Worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1835, Dresser was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, for distributing abolitionist materials. He was whipped, tarred and feathered by a mob.

“In 1835 Amos Dresser, former Lane Theological Seminary student and disciple of Theodore Weld, distributed antislavery "tracts and periodicals" in Kentucky and Tennessee. He also talked openly with slaves before a Nashville mob beat him severely for his efforts. Historians have frequently used the beating of Dresser to illustrate the difficulties northern abolitionists faced in the South, but Dresser also became a martyr whose conduct inspired others to go South to help the slaves."

"Amos Dresser, one of the Lane Seminary Rebels, who had been active in the [negro] teaching program in Cincinnati, set out to visit an uncle in Mississippi, but was seized by a mob in Nashville, and accused of peddling antislavery literature and of being a member of the students' antislavery society at Lane. The mob whipped him in the public square, tarred and feathered him, and drove him from the city. This episode gave him wide notoriety and added zeal in the cause. He went to Oberlin for a time, then accepted an agency as one of "the seventy". He worked with Stanton in Worcester County, Massachusetts, lecturing at Athol, Ashburn, and Slatersville, Rhode Island. He then went to Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and in 1839 to Jamaica to assist another Lane Rebel, David Ingraham, in missionary work among the Negroes. Both mrn broke under the strain. The devoted Ingraham died shortly after his return. Dresser survived and went to Olivet College, Michigan, to teach."

The Augusta Chronicle thought this too lenient a punishment: "He should have been hung up as high as Haman, to rot upon the gibbet.... The cry of the whole South, should be, DEATH, instant death, to the Abolitionist, wherever he is caught.

"It was an effective martyrdom and Dresser never tired of repeating the story of it from the platform or on the printed page. The whipping of Amos Dresser became a legend."

https://archive.org/details/antislaveryrecor01newy/page/120/mode/1up/search/Lane

Later years
In October of 1836 recruited by Weld as one of the famous seventy antislavery agents.(Lane Rebels 181). From 1839 to 1841<http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelTable.html) he assisted David S. Ingraham, another Rebel, in starting a mission for freed slaves in Jamaica.(Lane Rebels 189) He was subsequently employed as a "collecting agent" for the American Missionary Association.(Lane rebels 191)

"Lectured for American Anti-slavery society while attending Oberlin. Missionary with wife in Jamaica, 1839-41. Pastor in Batavia, OH, for 2 years. Then taught at Olivet Institution in MI until 1846. Worked for [[League of Universal Brotherhood. Lectured in Europe on temperance and abolition. Published The Bible Against War (1849). Pastor of churches in OH, 1852-65; MI, 1865-69; NE, 1869-93."(http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelTable.html)

"Dresser could report over seven hundred pledges for Oberlin. 30

Amos Dresser was one of the most active and radical peace ad- vocates in Oberlin. He had studied at the Oneida Institute and at Lane Seminary, and came to Oberlin in 1835 as one of the Rebels. He finished the Theological Course in 1839, but even be- fore this had made a reputation as a temperance lecturer and a martyr to the cause of anti-slavery. For a while he was a mission- ary in Jamaica. He returned on account of ill health and was for a while connected with Shipherd's new institute at Olivet. Dres- ser was a friend of H. C. Wright of the New England Non-Resis- tance Society and was himself a thorough non-resistant. 31 His Bible against War, published at Oberlin in 1849, was a denun- ciation of defensive war and an attempt to show that non-resis- tance was the true Christian doctrine— "a searching analysis of the Bible arguments so often quoted as testimony in favor of war, and a triumphant vindication of the principle that 'all war is inconsistent with Christianity.' " 32 It was intended as a direct answer to President Mahan, who declared that the Old Testa- ment expressly sanctioned the right of self-defense, 33 and to Pro- fessor Finney, who declared that "there can be no reasonable doubt" that "war has been in some instances demanded by the

30Burritt's Bond of Brotherhood (Sept. 1847) quoted in Devere Allen, The Fight for Peace (New York— 1931), 427. Oberlin continued to take a conservative posi- tion in general. On June 9, 1847, Henry Cowles, editor of the Evangelist ex- pressed the orthodox view editorially:

"As to the morality of the sword, we go just as far as Paul does in Rom. 13, and no farther. God has put it into the hands of the civil magistrate as a 'terror to evil works,' making him a 'revenger to execute wrath on him that doeth evil.' This is all. Just so far as the sword may become indispensable to protect community and maintain good order, so far we have God's authority for using it; and, in our view, no farther."

At this very time Dresser was collecting signatures to the pledge.

3iAmasa Walker, Memoir of Rev. Amos Dresser (n.d.) and Allen, Op. Cit., 427.

32Review in Burritt's Christian Citizen (Worcester, Massachusetts), July 28, 1849. Tne review continues: "We think Brother Dresser has done good service to the cause of Peace by the preparation of this volume, and believing that its arguments will reach and affect a class of minds which no other volume that we know of will reach and affect, we cordially commend it to the attention of our readers."

33Amos Dresser, The Bible Against War (Oberlin— 1849), 1 94 _1

spirit of moral law." 34 He early became associated with Burritt as western agent for the Christian Citizen and as agent for the League of Universal Brotherhood in northern Ohio. His head- quarters were at Oberlin where he carried on a cobbler's shop in order to pay his expenses. 35 He was Oberlin's leading radical in the peace movement. "

http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/html/page1b70.html?ID=2087&Current=03_01B

picture : http://www.americanabolitionists.com/illustrated-list-of-abolitionists-and-activists.html#D

In 1883 he spoke of his Nashville experience at the celebrations marking Oberlin's 50th year, and his Narrative was republished in the commemorative volume.