Ellis Gray Loring was an American lawyer and philanthropist. He was an adherent of abolitionism in the United States.
Background
Loring was born on April 14, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the only son of James Tyng Loring, an apothecary, who died in 1805, and Relief (Faxon) Cookson Loring. He was descended from Thomas Loring who emigrated to America in 1634 and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts.
Education
Ellis Gray attended the Latin School, where he was distinguished for scholarship, and where he made Emerson's friendship. Afterwards he went to Harvard College. He was a member of the class of 1823, attaining membership in Phi Beta Kappa, but he left in May 1823, when members of his class were dismissed for resistance to college discipline. Later he studied law and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1827.
Career
In 1827 Loring began a successful career at the bar. Troubled by the existence of slavery, he was "one of the little band who assembled, on the evening of January 1st, 1831, to consider the expediency of organizing a New England Anti-Slavery Society". These twelve zealots were of divided counsel. Loring favored "gradualism" as opposed to Garrison's "immediateism. " The constitution called for "immediate freedom, " and Loring withheld his signature. But by January 1833 he was holding office in the society.
There were many aspects to Loring's support of the abolition movement. Unlike Garrison, he had social prominence to lose: the movement cost him many clients and the friendly intercourse of leading Boston families. He became a member of the financial committee that supported the abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator and he gave decisive financial support, without which the newspaper could not have continued. He made his home a center for anti-slavery workers, to whom other doors were closed. Here Harriet Martineau visited and observed the movement at close range. Loring opened his house to fugitive slaves as well and was perhaps the first lawyer to take a colored boy into his office to train him for the bar. More widely known abolitionists, as Dr. Channing, drew strength from his counsel. From his hand Wendell Phillips received his first anti-slavery pamphlet. Though he shrank from speaking in public, Loring could on occasion argue to good purpose, notably in the hearing before the legislative committee considering Governor Edward Everett's suggestion that the abolitionists be repressed.
In his profession he was rather a chamber counsel than an advocate. His best-known argument was for the slave Med, brought to Massachusetts by her mistress. On habeas corpus proceedings Loring won against Benjamin R. Curtis. The case established the principle that a slave brought voluntarily by his owner into Massachusetts could not be removed from the state against his will. Justice Story wrote: "I have rarely seen so thorough and exact arguments as those made by Mr. B. R. Curtis, and yourself. They exhibit learning, research, and ability, of which any man may be proud" . In his petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland, convicted of blasphemy, he made a splendid defense of free speech.
For some years prior to his death he had withdrawn from public observation, being content that others should assume prominence in the movement he had helped to launch. He has sometimes been confused with his distant kinsman, Edward Greely Loring, United States commissioner, who was attacked by the abolitionists for the rendition of Burns, a fugitive slave.
Achievements
Views
In anti-slavery matters, Loring was of liberal but moderate views. He opposed third-party sentiment in the American Anti-Slavery Society and also Wendell Phillips' view that abolition must be sought either in blood or over the ruins of the church and the Union. In An Address to the Abolitionists of Massachusetts on the Subject of Political Action, printed about 1838, he sketched the tactics by which agitation should be conducted: by petitioning legislative bodies, by interrogating candidates publicly, and by using the suffrage.
Connections
On October 29, 1827, Loring married Louisa Gilman.