James Redpath
Encyclopedia
James Redpath was an American journalist
and antislavery activist.
. After working as a printer in Kalamazoo and Detroit
, where he wrote antislavery articles under the pseudonym "Berwick," he worked as a reporter for Horace Greeley
's New-York Tribune. An early assignment at the Tribune involved compiling "Facts of Slavery," a regular series of articles gathered from Southern newspaper exchanges. Beginning in March 1854, he traveled in the South to examine slavery for himself, interviewing slaves and collecting material published in 1859 as The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States. The book's production costs were covered by prominent antislavery philanthropist Gerrit Smith
.
In 1855, Redpath moved to the Kansas-Missouri border and reported for a Free Soil newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, on the dispute over slavery in Kansas Territory. For the next three years, he was active in Kansas affairs, engaging in politics, writing dispatches, securing support in New England for Free Soil setters, and writing poetry about Kansas. In 1856, he interviewed John Brown
just days after the massacre at Pottawatomie Creek. He and Brown shared the same abolitionist views, and he became Brown's most fervent publicist. In 1858, Brown encouraged Redpath to move to Boston to help rally support for his plan for a Southern slave insurrection. After the failure of Brown's 1859 attack on Harpers Ferry, Virginia
, Redpath wrote a highly sympathetic biography of the executed abolitionist, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (1860).
Redpath returned East from Kansas in July 1858. During the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859, he and fellow journalist Richard J. Hinton prepared a guidebook for gold prospectors, Hand-Book to Kansas Territory and the Rocky Mountains' Gold Region. It was hoped that the book would spur a greater number of Free Soil immigrants to settle in Kansas Territory, which included part of what later became Colorado
.
In 1860, Redpath toured Haiti
as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, which he secured within two years. He simultaneously served as director of Haiti's campaign to attract free black emigrants from the United States and Canada. His Guide to Hayti (1860) is an anthology of articles by various authors on a wide range of Haitian subjects. Redpath hoped that immigration of skilled blacks to Haiti would elevate conditions there and dispel racial prejudice in the United States. After the Civil War, he abandoned his ideas when he recognized that North American blacks preferred to remain at home.
In 1863 and 1864, following the failure of Redpath's Boston publishers Thayer and Eldridge, he set up his own firm and began the series "Books for the Times," which included William Wells Brown
's The Black Man, John R. Beard's Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Louisa May Alcott
's Hospital Sketches
. In 1864, he published another series of cheap paperbound books, titled "Books for the Campfires," principally intended for distribution to Union soldiers. Later that year he abandoned publishing to serve as a war correspondent with the armies of George Henry Thomas
and William Tecumseh Sherman
in Georgia and South Carolina. In February 1865, federal military authorities appointed him the first superintendent of public schools in the Charleston, South Carolina, region. He soon had more than 100 instructors at work teaching 3,500 students of both races. He also founded an orphan asylum. In May 1865 in Charleston, Redpath organized the first-ever Memorial Day service to honor buried Union Army dead there.
His reputation as a radical abolitionist and his tentative steps toward integrating South Carolina's school caused worried military officials to replace Redpath and remove an irritation to Southern-born President Andrew Johnson
. Ironically, Redpath served as the ghost writer of Jefferson Davis
's history of the Confederacy.
. Later known as the Redpath Bureau, it supplied speakers and performers for lyceums all across the country. It represented figures such as Mark Twain
, Julia Ward Howe
, Charles Sumner
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, Wendell Phillips
, Henry Ward Beecher
, Susan B. Anthony
, and Frederick Douglass
. The Redpath Bureau became the most prominent and successful agency of its kind. Leland Powers, a faculty at the Bureau, established his own school
after Redpath left.
Redpath sold his interest in the Bureau in 1875 and lived alternately in Washington, D.C., and New York when not traveling. At the end of the decade, his health declined, but in 1880-81 he reported on famine and the land war in western Ireland. Upon his return to the United States, he lectured on the lyceum circuit, wrote newspaper articles, and published Talks about Ireland and Redpath's Weekly, both devoted to Irish causes.
Redpath became editor of the North American Review in 1886. He died in 1891, shortly after being run over by a horse-drawn trolley in New York.
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and antislavery activist.
Life
In 1848 or 1849, Redpath and his family emigrated from Scotland to a farm near Kalamazoo, MichiganKalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
. After working as a printer in Kalamazoo and Detroit
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, where he wrote antislavery articles under the pseudonym "Berwick," he worked as a reporter for Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
's New-York Tribune. An early assignment at the Tribune involved compiling "Facts of Slavery," a regular series of articles gathered from Southern newspaper exchanges. Beginning in March 1854, he traveled in the South to examine slavery for himself, interviewing slaves and collecting material published in 1859 as The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States. The book's production costs were covered by prominent antislavery philanthropist Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith was a leading United States social reformer, abolitionist, politician, and philanthropist...
.
In 1855, Redpath moved to the Kansas-Missouri border and reported for a Free Soil newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, on the dispute over slavery in Kansas Territory. For the next three years, he was active in Kansas affairs, engaging in politics, writing dispatches, securing support in New England for Free Soil setters, and writing poetry about Kansas. In 1856, he interviewed John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
just days after the massacre at Pottawatomie Creek. He and Brown shared the same abolitionist views, and he became Brown's most fervent publicist. In 1858, Brown encouraged Redpath to move to Boston to help rally support for his plan for a Southern slave insurrection. After the failure of Brown's 1859 attack on Harpers Ferry, Virginia
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859...
, Redpath wrote a highly sympathetic biography of the executed abolitionist, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (1860).
Redpath returned East from Kansas in July 1858. During the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859, he and fellow journalist Richard J. Hinton prepared a guidebook for gold prospectors, Hand-Book to Kansas Territory and the Rocky Mountains' Gold Region. It was hoped that the book would spur a greater number of Free Soil immigrants to settle in Kansas Territory, which included part of what later became Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
.
In 1860, Redpath toured Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, which he secured within two years. He simultaneously served as director of Haiti's campaign to attract free black emigrants from the United States and Canada. His Guide to Hayti (1860) is an anthology of articles by various authors on a wide range of Haitian subjects. Redpath hoped that immigration of skilled blacks to Haiti would elevate conditions there and dispel racial prejudice in the United States. After the Civil War, he abandoned his ideas when he recognized that North American blacks preferred to remain at home.
In 1863 and 1864, following the failure of Redpath's Boston publishers Thayer and Eldridge, he set up his own firm and began the series "Books for the Times," which included William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer...
's The Black Man, John R. Beard's Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
's Hospital Sketches
Hospital Sketches
Hospital Sketches is a compilation of four sketches based on letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the six weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown.-Summary:...
. In 1864, he published another series of cheap paperbound books, titled "Books for the Campfires," principally intended for distribution to Union soldiers. Later that year he abandoned publishing to serve as a war correspondent with the armies of George Henry Thomas
George Henry Thomas
George Henry Thomas was a career United States Army officer and a Union General during the American Civil War, one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater....
and William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
in Georgia and South Carolina. In February 1865, federal military authorities appointed him the first superintendent of public schools in the Charleston, South Carolina, region. He soon had more than 100 instructors at work teaching 3,500 students of both races. He also founded an orphan asylum. In May 1865 in Charleston, Redpath organized the first-ever Memorial Day service to honor buried Union Army dead there.
His reputation as a radical abolitionist and his tentative steps toward integrating South Carolina's school caused worried military officials to replace Redpath and remove an irritation to Southern-born President Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
. Ironically, Redpath served as the ghost writer of Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
's history of the Confederacy.
Redpath Lyceum Bureau
In 1868, Redpath started the Boston Lyceum BureauBoston Lyceum Bureau
The Boston Lyceum Bureau in Boston, Massachusetts, was a project of James Redpath and George L. Fall. Its office stood at no.36 Bromfield Street. "Through its agency, many ... lecturers and authors of celebrity have been introduced to American audiences," including Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain,...
. Later known as the Redpath Bureau, it supplied speakers and performers for lyceums all across the country. It represented figures such as Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".-Biography:...
, Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction,...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, and orator. He was an exceptional orator and agitator, advocate and lawyer, writer and debater.-Education:...
, Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century...
, Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
, and Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
. The Redpath Bureau became the most prominent and successful agency of its kind. Leland Powers, a faculty at the Bureau, established his own school
Leland Powers School
The Leland Powers School, also known as the Leland Powers School of Communication, Leland Powers School of Radio, Theatre, and Television, Leland Powers Theatre School, the Leland Powers School of Expression, Leland Powers School of the Spoken Word, and originally called the Leland Powers School of...
after Redpath left.
Redpath sold his interest in the Bureau in 1875 and lived alternately in Washington, D.C., and New York when not traveling. At the end of the decade, his health declined, but in 1880-81 he reported on famine and the land war in western Ireland. Upon his return to the United States, he lectured on the lyceum circuit, wrote newspaper articles, and published Talks about Ireland and Redpath's Weekly, both devoted to Irish causes.
Redpath became editor of the North American Review in 1886. He died in 1891, shortly after being run over by a horse-drawn trolley in New York.
Further reading
- McKivigan, John R. "James Redpath" in: Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007
- Koontz, John P. "James Redpath" in: Writers of the American Renaissance: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003
- Boyd, Willis D. "James Redpath and American Negro Colonization in Haiti, 1860-1862." The Americas, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Oct., 1955), pp. 169–182.
- Hart, Jim A. "James Redpath, Missouri Correspondent," Missouri Historical Review, 57.1 (1962-63): 70-78.
- Horner, Charles F. The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum. New York: Barse and Hopkins, 1926.
- Pond, James Burton. Eccentricities of Genius: Memories of Famous Men and Women of the Platform and Stage. NY: G.W. Dillingham, 1900. Google books
- The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans. 1904. Google books
- Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1915. Google books
- "James Redpath and the Pioneer Bureau he Founded." Lyceum Magazine. Aug. 1922.