Moncure Daniel Conway
Encyclopedia
American Unitarian Association
The American Unitarian Association was a religious denomination in the United States and Canada, formed by associated Unitarian congregations in 1825. In 1961, it merged with the Universalist Church of America to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.According to Mortimer Rowe, the Secretary...
clergyman, and author.
Early life and education
Conway was born of an old VirginiaVirginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
family in Falmouth
Falmouth, Virginia
Falmouth is an unincorporated community in Stafford County, Virginia, United States. Situated on the north bank of the Rappahannock River at the falls, the community is north of and opposite the city of Fredericksburg. Recognized by the U.S...
, Stafford County
Stafford County, Virginia
Stafford County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a U.S. state, and just across the Rappahannock River from the City of Fredericksburg. As of the 2000 census, the population was 92,446, increasing to 128,961 in 2010.. Its county seat is Stafford. In 2006, and again in 2009,...
. His father was a wealthy gentleman farmer, a slaveholder, and county judge whose home still stands in Falmouth at 305 King Street (aka River Road) along the Rappahannock River
Rappahannock River
The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia, in the United States, approximately in length. It traverses the entire northern part of the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west, across the Piedmont, to the Chesapeake Bay, south of the Potomac River.An important river in American...
. Conway's mother was a homemaker and homeopathic physician. Both parents were Methodists, his father having left the Episcopal church, his mother the Presbyterian. Moncure's later opposition to slavery came from his mother and from his boyhood experiences. His father and three brothers remained staunchly pro-slavery. As a youth he himself briefly took a pro-slavery position, under the influence of a cousin, the Richmond editor John Moncure Daniel.
He graduated at Dickinson College
Dickinson College
Dickinson College is a private, residential liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally established as a Grammar School in 1773, Dickinson was chartered September 9, 1783, five days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, making it the first college to be founded in the newly...
in 1849, studied law for a year, and then became a Methodist minister in his native state. In 1852, thanks largely to the influence of 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...
, his religious and political views underwent a radical change, and he entered the Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
school of divinity, where he graduated in 1854. Here he fell under the influence of "transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
", and became an outspoken abolitionist. After graduation from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Conway accepted a call to the First Unitarian Church of Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, where he was ordained in 1855, but his anti-slavery views brought about his dismissal in 1856.
Later life
On his return to Virginia, his abolitionist stance and his rumoured connection with the attempt to rescue the fugitive slave, Anthony BurnsAnthony Burns
Anthony Burns was born a slave in Stafford County, Virginia. As a young man, he became a Baptist and a "slave preacher"...
, in Boston, Massachusetts, aroused the bitter hostility of his old neighbours and friends. In consequence, he left the state. From 1856 to 1861 he was a Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister in Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
, where he also edited a short-lived liberal periodical called The Dial. After the Civil War broke out, Conway located several dozen of his father's slaves in Washington, DC., who had fled from Virginia, and escorted them through Maryland—still a slave state—to safety in Ohio.
While in Cincinnati, Conway married Ellen Davis Dana. Ellen was a member of the Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
faith, a feminist and an abolitionist. The couple had four children. Despite the previous tension with his family over slavery issues, Conway nevertheless brought his bride to meet his family. His wife broke a Southern social constraint by hugging and kissing a young slave girl in front of family members. After this, it would take seventeen years before Conway reconciled with his family.
Subsequently he became editor of the Commonwealth in Boston, and wrote The Rejected Stone (1861) and The Golden Hour (1862), both powerful pleas for emancipation. In 1862, after spending more and more time away from his church advancing the abolitionist cause, Conway left its ministry. He had grown dissatisfied with the theological, liturgical, and social conservatism
Social conservatism
Social Conservatism is primarily a political, and usually morally influenced, ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values. Social conservatism is a form of authoritarianism often associated with the position that the federal government should have a greater role...
of mainstream Unitarianism. After that, he maintained an uneasy and uncertain relationship with Unitarianism, in America and subsequently in England, until he made a clean break.
In 1863, Conway was asked by American abolitionists to go to London to convince the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
that the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
was a war of abolition. Under English influence, Conway eventually contacted the Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
"on behalf of the leading antislavery men of America," offering the preservation of the Confederacy after the war's end in exchange for emancipation of the slaves. His support by his sponsors was quickly and angrily withdrawn. Rather than go back to America, where he no longer felt welcome, he went briefly to Venice, Italy, where he was reunited with his wife and children.
In 1864, he became the minister of the South Place Chapel and leader of the then named South Place Religious Society in Finsbury, London. He also abandoned theism
Theism
Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe....
that year after one of his sons died. His thinking continued to move from Emersonian transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
toward a more humanistic
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
"freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
". The South Place congregation and Conway soon left fellowship with the Unitarian Church. Conway remained the leader of South Place until 1886, when Stanton Coit
Stanton Coit
Stanton George Coit was an American-born leader of the Ethical movement in England. He became a British citizen in 1903....
took his place. Under Coit's leadership South Place was renamed to the South Place Ethical Society. However Coit's tenure ended in 1892 in a losing power struggle, and Conway resumed leadership until his death.
In 1868 Conway was one of four speakers at the first open public meeting in support of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. Conway's many literary and intellectual friends included Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
, Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
, and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. In the 1870s and 1880s, he returned on and off to the United States. In 1875, he reconciled with his family. In 1897, Conway and his wife returned from London to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Ellen, terminally ill, wished to die in the United States of America. She died on Christmas Day. As the Spanish American War approached, Conway became disaffected with his countrymen. He moved to France to devote much of the rest of his life to the peace movement and writing. Conway died alone in his Paris apartment on November 15, 1907. The Conway Hall in Holborn, London is named in his honour.