(Excerpt from Letter to a Member of the General Assembly o...)
Excerpt from Letter to a Member of the General Assembly of Virginia: On the Subject of the Late Conspiracy of the Slaves, With a Proposal for Their Colonization The fervices you have more than once rendered your country; the opinions you are known to entertain on domef'tic flavery; and above all, the facred duty you owe to thofe who appointed you to the Ration you now fill, are the confiderations which induce me to trouble you with this letter. The high importance of the fubjeét, and the lively intereft it excites, are the only apologies I can offer for writing it. By you, I trufi, they will be deemed fuflicient. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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merchant politician industrialis
Israel was born on April 30, 1755 in Beverly, Massachussets. He was the son of Andrew and Anna (Morgan) Thorndike. He was descended from John Thorndike, one of the original settlers of Ipswich, but does not seem to have been born to much in the way of material possessions.
His lack of education is noted by his contemporaries.
He must have gone to sea as a youth, as, on October 30, 1776, he was commissioned commander of the schooner Warren, was later first lieutenant of the brig Tyrannicide, and commander of the ship Resource, all privateers. As the harbor of Salem and Beverly was not controlled by the British during the Revolution, he was able to make valuable captures with these and other ships, and at the close of hostilities to keep vessels in operation at a time when American shipping was practically reduced to the Salem-Beverly fleet.
He became an active partner of the shipping firm of Brown and Thorndike, which his brother-in-law, Moses Brown, had established in 1777, and which he conducted alone after Brown's retirement in 1800. This firm took a very conspicuous part in the trade with China and the Orient that originated in Salem and was later expanded from Boston.
Before he was thirty-five years of age his part in the Revolution, his financial prominence, and his personal influence made him one of the leading men in the state. From 1788 to 1814 he was thirteen times elected to the state legislature, seven times to the lower, and six times to the upper branch; he was member of the constitutional conventions of 1788 and 1820; and a presidential elector in 1812 and 1816. In 1810 he changed his residence from Beverly to Boston, where he was already so well known that he was elected to the state Senate from his new constituency in 1812.
He continued his extensive business with the Orient, invested largely in manufacturing and other business enterprises, and his mansion became a political and social center. One of his dinner-parties in 1812 was renowned because the famous "Gerrymander" drawing that gave a new word to the English language was exhibited at his home soon after its origin. He contributed freely for public purposes sums then considered large, and in 1818 purchased the library of Professor Ebeling of Hamburg, Germany, a valuable collection of Americana, and presented it to Harvard College. This was his largest public gift, although he left an estate of $1, 500, 000, and the outlay was only $6, 500.
He died and was buried in Boston, but his body was transferred to Mount Auburn Cemetery in 1896.
(Excerpt from Letter to a Member of the General Assembly o...)
In 1802, Thorndike was elected to the Massachusetts legislature from Beverly as a member of the Federalist party, and was considered to be a member of its Essex Junto.
Thorndike was a strong opponent of the War of 1812. At a political gathering in the summer of 1812, he stated that he would willingly give all of his wealth to oppose the continuation of the war. Later, he was considered to have been among the men who may have contemplated secession from the Union as a last-ditch option, a charge which he later denied. Radical Federalists like John Lowell supported his selection as a delegate to the Hartford Convention, but he was not chosen.
He cannot be considered a pioneer in philanthropy, but he was a sturdy patriot in the Revolution, and he influenced the economic development and politics of Massachusetts for the first half-century of independence. His oratory was more conspicuous for its substance than its form, but his mastery of fact was often made use of by legislative colleagues of more eloquence for whom he collected material.
Thorndike was married three times; first, to Mercy Trask, who died in 1784; second, to Anna Dodge, who died in 1817; and third to Sarah Dana, who survived him. He had seven sons and two daughters who reached maturity. His great-great-grandson, Augustus Thorndike, later was Chief of Surgery at Harvard University.
(1719–1762)
(1792–1793)
(1790–1854)
(1785–1867)
(1780–1782)
(1778–1853)
(1793–1819)
(1805–1812)
(1801–1802)
(1797–1858)
(1780–1846 (m. 1818))
(1726–1810)
(1765–1817 (m. 1784))
(1756–1783)
