Charles Stuart

Background

Charles was born in 1783 in Jamaica, the son of a British army officer, and spent his boyhood in various military posts. His father was presumably a British army officer posted to the Bermuda Garrison (possibly Lieutenant Hugh Stewart of the detachment of invalid regular soldiers belonging to the Royal Garrison Battalion, which was disbanded in 1784, following the Treaty of Paris, probably resulting in Stuart's emigration from the colony).

Education

He was given his elementary education by his mother, a Scotch Presbyterian of the strictest Calvinistic stamp, and was sent to Belfast, Ireland, for his academic training.

Career

At the age of eighteen Stuart secured a lieutenant's commission in the British East India Company's forces, with which he served for thirteen years, resigning with the rank of captain on a pension of $800 a year. He then migrated to America, received a grant of land on Lake Simcoe in upper Canada where he lived intermittently for some years, served as justice of the peace, and published The Emigrant's Guide to Upper Canada (1820). For part of the time he taught school during the winters and distributed Bibles and religious tracts at his own expense during his vacations.

In 1824, when he was principal of a boys' academy in Utica, New York, he met Theodore D. Weld, then a youth of fifteen, and conceived for him a regard "more than a father's affection for his first born". The next year both Stuart and Weld were converted as a result of the preaching of Charles G. Finney, joined the "holy band" of Finney's assistant revivalists, and accompanied him for much of the next two years in the mighty revivals which he conducted in western New York.

Stuart sent Weld to Oneida Institute in 1827 to prepare for the ministry, and, after another year in Finney's "holy band, " sailed to England in order to take part in the movement to abolish slavery in the British West Indies. At his own expense he traveled through the provinces as lecturing agent, and wrote pamphlets for the antislavery press.

Against the "malignant jesuitry" of the colonization program Stuart penned a succession of pamphlet philippics, of which Prejudice Vincible (subsequently published with James Cropper's A Letter to Thomas Clarkson, 1832) was the most devastating. By the winter of 1831 he had turned not only the leading abolitionists but also the British public against the colonization cause.

Meanwhile Stuart had rendered invaluable service to antislavery beginnings in America. From the first he had imbued his disciple, Theodore Weld, with antislavery principles; and in the spring of 1831, when Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the New York philanthropists, called a council of reformers to plan an "American National Antislavery Society" on the British model, it was Stuart's abolition doctrine which Weld expounded to the council.

Indeed, for several years after the American Antislavery Society had been organized, his pamphlet, The West India Question, was the approved statement of its abolition creed. Other notable antislavery tracts, among the scores he wrote, were Is Slavery Defensible from Scripture? (1831) and A Memoir of Granville Sharp (1836).

In 1834 Stuart returned to the United States and, as the American Antislavery Society's agent but at his own expense, lectured in Ohio, Vermont, and New York, suffering considerable mob violence at times, but courageously maintaining his course.

In 1838 he visited the West Indies, where he studied the workings of emancipation, reporting his findings both to the American and to the British antislavery press.

He returned from this mission in 1840, in time to attend the world antislavery convention at London. During the next two years he spoke and collected funds in England for those American abolitionists who had separated from the faction of William Lloyd Garrison.

At the world antislavery convention of 1842, the British philanthropists with whom he had so long been associated united to do him honor. In the main, however, his work was done, and he retired about 1842 to his property on Lake Simcoe, where he lived until his death.

Achievements

• Charles Stuart's most distinguished service was in connection with the campaign of the American Colonization Society, which was begun in 1830 to secure British support for their cause. Stuart had also done pioneer work in England and Scotland in behalf of the American temperance movement, and he was subsequently instrumental in America in organizing relief for the sufferers in the Irish potato famine. His tract, The West India Question: Immediate Emancipation Safe and Practical (1832, often reprinted), was one of the most famous pamphlets in the British propaganda.

Works

More photos

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  • A Memoir of Granville Sharp, to Which Is Added Sharp's Law of Passive Obedience, and an Extract from His Law of Retribution

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • A Memoir of Granville Sharp, to Which Is Added Sharp's Law of Passive Obedience, and an Extract from His Law of Retribution

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Remarks on the Colony of Liberia and the American Colonization Society

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Immediate emancipation: safe and profitable for masters;--happy for slaves;--right in government;--advantageous to the nation;--would interfere with ... danger. : An outline for it, and rema

    (This volume is produced from digital images from the Corn...)

  • Captain Charles Stuart: Anglo-American Abolitionist

    (Dust Jacket in Very Good condition.)

  • **REPRINT** Stuart, Charles, 1783?-1865. A memoir of Granville Sharp, to which is added Sharp's Law of passive obedience, and an extract from his Law of retribution. New York. American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836.**REPRINT**

Views

More than any other man, Stuart brought the impulse of the British antislavery movement to the rising agitation in America.