Theodore Dwight Weld
| Theodore Dwight Weld | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
November 23, 1803 Hampton, Connecticut |
| Died | February 3, 1895 (aged 91) Hyde Park, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Abolitionist |
| Spouse(s) | Angelina Grimké |
Theodore Dwight Weld (November 23, 1803 in Hampton, Connecticut – February 3, 1895 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts) was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 through 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best known for his co-authorship of the authoritative compendium American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, published in 1839. Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Weld's text and it is regarded as second only to that work in its influence on the antislavery movement. Weld remained dedicated to the abolitionist movement until slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
Born in Hampton, Connecticut, the son and grandson of Congregational ministers, at age 14 Weld took over his father's 100-acre farm near Hartford, Connecticut to earn money to study at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, attending from 1820 to 1822 until failing eyesight caused him to leave. After a doctor urged him to travel, he started an itinerant lecture series on mnemonics, traveling for three years throughout the United States, including the South where he saw slavery first-hand. In 1825 Weld moved with his family to Pompey, New York in upstate New York.
Weld then studied at Hamilton College in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, where he became a disciple of the famous evangelist Charles Finney, spending several years working as a member of his "holy band" before deciding to become a preacher and entering the Oneida Manual Labor Institute in Oneida, New York. While there, he would spend two weeks at a time traveling about lecturing on the virtues of manual labor, temperance, and moral reform. At age 28 he was hired by moral reform philanthropists Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan as the general agent for the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions. Weld’s report to the Tappans as a manual labor agent reveals he "traveled 4,575 miles; 2,630 miles by boat and stagecoach; 1800 miles on horseback, 145 miles on foot. En route, he made 236 public addresses."
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