Amos Adams Lawrence

Background

Amos Adams Lawrence was the second son of Amos Lawrence, a leading Boston merchant and philanthropist, and Sarah (Richards) Lawrence.

Education

He was educated at Franklin Academy, North Andover, and at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1835.

Career

Entering business for himself, after graduating from college, as a commission merchant, he formed a partnership in 1843 with Robert M. Mason, under the firm name of Mason & Lawrence. Mason ceased after a few years to be active in the firm and Lawrence continued to be the principal partner for forty years. The firm was very successful, holding the selling agency for several important textile mills and eventually acquiring the selling agency for the Pacific Mills at Lawrence, which for many years was the largest plant of its kind in the United States.

Lawrence also engaged independently in manufacturing textiles, his principal venture being the Ipswich Mills, which he acquired in 1860 for the manufacture of cotton hosiery and other knit goods. This was then a new industry in the United States. Although for many years he operated the mill at a loss, he ultimately succeeded in making it profitable and established the industry on a sound basis. He took an active part in promoting the interests of the textile industry, being for many years an ardent advocate of a protective tariff and in later life serving as president of the American Association of Knit Goods Manufacturers and also of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers and Planters.

His father's philanthropic activities naturally brought the son many opportunities for charitable work. While still a young man he became a trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital and took a great interest in the hospital and in the McLean Asylum for the Insane. He became interested also in the colonization of free negroes in Africa. With increasing years he became more and more interested in education. He established Lawrence University, named after him, in Appleton, Wisconsin, in connection with a large real-estate speculation, in which he became a reluctant partner, and another college at Lawrence, Kansas, which afterward was taken over by the state and became the nucleus of the state university.

He served for several years as treasurer of Harvard College, and for many years as treasurer of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. He was a generous benefactor of both institutions. His most distinguished public service was that which he rendered in connection with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, of which he was treasurer. This company was founded in 1854 by Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachussets, an ardent but impecunious anti-slavery man, for the purpose of excluding slavery from the territory of Kansas by colonizing it with freemen. Thayer's scheme was to organize a company on a strictly business basis, which would finance settlers and by their success earn profits for the stockholders. A charter was secured and funds raised by the sale of stock. Lawrence had no faith in the Emigrant Aid Company as a business venture, never regarding it in any other light than as a patriotic and charitable enterprise, and seems to have sold the stock on that basis. ( Samuel A. Johnson, "The Genesis of the New England Emigrant Aid Society, " in the New England Quarterly, January 1930. ) To his zeal, aptitude, and business efficiency the success of the enterprise must be largely ascribed. After victory was in sight for the freestate forces, he withdrew from the management of the company, though retaining his interest in the university at Lawrence and in other public institutions in Kansas.

Despite Lawrence's hostility to slavery and his strenuous efforts to keep the "peculiar institution" from spreading onto free soil, he was a conservative in politics. Brought up as a Whig, he never joined the Free Soilers and was opposed to the radical Republican party in the campaigns of 1856 and 1860. In 1856 he was nominated for the governorship of Massachusetts on the Fillmore ticket, but declined. Two years later he accepted a similar nomination and was defeated.

In 1860 he was the candidate of the Constitutional Union party and ran unsuccessfully on the ticket with Bell and Everett. After the secession of South Carolina he continued to work for the maintenance of the union by peaceful means and joined Everett and Robert C. Winthrop in a trip to Washington to support the Crittenden compromise. When war broke out, he gave the Lincoln administration unwavering support to the end.

He took the lead in raising a regiment of mounted troops, the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, but the condition of his health prevented him from taking personal command. Like his father, Lawrence was more interested in religion than in politics. The Unitarianism which his father and uncles adopted in place of their ancestral Puritanism on moving in to the city from the country failed to satisfy the religious needs of the next generation of Lawrences, and several of them became members of the Episcopal Church. Amos Adams Lawrence was one of these and in 1842 he was confirmed at St. Paul's, together with his wife and his brother. It was his strong religious feeling rather than his politics which made him an admirer of John Brown. Brown's forceful methods he never fully approved and the raid on Harpers Ferry he condemned as the act of a lawless fanatic. The rifles which had once belonged to the Emigrant Aid Company and which were used on Brown's raid were not so used with Lawrence's consent, but Lawrence did give money to Brown and he contributed toward the purchase of the farm at North Elba for Brown's family and toward the employment of counsel at his trial after the raid on Harpers Ferry. He foresaw that Brown would be lauded by the Abolitionists as a martyr and predicted that his death would hasten the end of slavery. Lawrence died suddenly, of heart disease, in August 1886.

Achievements

• Lawrence was the largest manufacturer of knit goods in the country. He was a key figure in the United States abolition movement in the years leading up to the Civil War, and instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was also credited with founding an Episcopalian dynasty in Boston, Massachusetts. He contributed large amounts of capital to the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company and for the colonization of free negroes in Liberia.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The condition and prospects of American cotton manufactures in 1849-50.

    ( Title: The condition and prospects of American cotton m...)

Connections

Lawrence had married, March 31, 1842, Sarah Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of William Appleton, a leading Boston merchant. She, together with six of their seven children, survived him.

Father:

Amos Lawrence

Mother:

Sarah (Richards) Lawrence

Spouse:

Sarah Elizabeth Appleton

References

• Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With extracts from his diary and correspondence