A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio: At the Annual Meeting of Said Society, in Columbus, December 22, 1839 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical ...)
Excerpt from A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio: At the Annual Meeting of Said Society, in Columbus, December 22, 1839
Having been invited by the board 0£curators;-unde lation of the ninth section, of the second article of on to discourse before the society, at this, its annual some subject, connected with the designs and institution; it seems to me, that before any particular subject can with propriety be selected for discussion, is necessary to.
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Benjamin Tappan was a senator, jurist, and antislavery leader.
Background
Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1773. He was the eldest of the seven sons of Benjamin and Sarah (Homes) Tappan. Among the other children of the family were the eldest sister, Sarah, who became the mother of David Tappan Stoddard and the much younger brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan. Their father, a goldsmith, later a dry-goods merchant, was descended from Abraham Toppan, who came from Yarmouth, England, to settle in Newbury, Massachussets, in 1637; their mother, of Irish Presbyterian stock through the paternal line, was also a grandniece of Benjamin Franklin.
Education
He attended the public schools in Northampton. A public-school education for the younger Benjamin was followed by an apprenticeship to a copperplate printer and engraver, a voyage to the West Indies, brief study of portrait painting under the famous Gilbert Stuart, and then a thorough legal education under Gideon Granger.
Career
Admitted to the bar at Hartford, Connecticut, in his twenties, he became a first settler (1799) of what is now Portage County, Ohio.
He returned to Ravenna, Ohio, where he became an aggressive force in local politics. Having served as a member of the state Senate, 1803-05, he moved in 1809 to Steubenville, where he continued the practice of law. He served as an aide to Major-General Elijah Wadsworth during the War of 1812 and as president judge of the 5th circuit of the court of common pleas, 1816-23. His decisions for 1816-19, published as Cases Decided in the Courts of Common Pleas, in the Fifth Circuit of . Ohio (1818 - 19), referred to as Tappan's Reports, were the first law reports in the state.
Failing to be reelected, he returned to private practice. He then served as an Ohio canal commissioner. An ardent Jacksonian, he was a presidential elector in 1832, and served as a federal district judge until his appointment, together with those of other Democrats, was rejected by the Senate in May 1834.
In 1838, Thomas Morris having assumed a position as "the first abolition senator" that made him unacceptable to the Ohio Democracy, Tappan was chosen as his successor. The latter had long been known as an opponent of slavery "in all shapes except that of abolitionism"; hence his selection satisfied the antislavery Democrats. His law office was then intrusted to his partner, Edwin M. Stanton.
In the Senate, Tappan refused to present abolition petitions from his constituents, asserting that Ohioans should not attempt to interfere with local institutions elsewhere and chiding women petitioners for leaving the home "to mix with the strife of ambition or the cares of Government". He was an anti-bank Democrat and "as uncompromising upon hard money as the Rock of Gibraltar". His agency in the publication in the New York Evening Post of Calhoun's proposed treaty for the annexation of Texas, which was being secretly considered, led to a severe censure by the Senate. Like his colleague Allen, in 1845 he refused to follow the instructions of the Whig legislature in opposition to Texas annexation. Remaining an antislavery man, on July 12, 1849, he presided at a Northwest Ordinance political celebration at Cleveland, and in 1856 he cast his last presidential vote for Fremont.
A lawyer of eminent talents and consistently a man of democratic principles, "of an intractable disposition", and with a gift of sarcasm which he used on friend and foe, he held firmly to his independent convictions. His views on slavery and corporate privileges were deemed radical by many of his contemporaries and he was referred to as "the hoary-headed skeptic" because of his blunt professions of religious heterodoxy.
Exemplary in private life and scholarly in tastes, he devoted his last years to an interest in mineralogy and conchology.
On March 20, 1801, he was married in Wethersfield, Connecticut, to Nancy Wright (d. 1822), sister of John Crafts Wright, later a congressman from Ohio. They had one son, Benjamin, born in 1812. His second wife was Betsy (Lord) Frazer (d. 1840), whom he had married in 1823.