Background
James Bell was born on April 3, 1826, at Gallipolis, Ohio.
James Bell was born on April 3, 1826, at Gallipolis, Ohio.
James lived in Ohio until 1842, when he removed to Cincinnati, where he lived with his brother-in-law, George Knight, and learned the plasterer's trade. Meanwhile his radical feeling against slavery was encouraged by the persecution that he saw visited upon some persons of missionary spirit who taught negroes. In August 1854 he removed with his family to Canada, where he lived until 1860. He became a personal friend of John Brown and assisted in getting men to go on the raid of 1859. In 1860 he went to California, where he worked earnestly against the disabilities that the negroes suffered and where he wrote some of his poems. In 1865 he removed to Toledo, Ohio, bringing his family from Canada.
After the Civil War Bell traveled much in the Eastern states, encouraging the freedmen to make the most of their new opportunities and instructing them in their civic duties. In 1868 he was elected delegate from Lucas County to the state convention and then delegate at large from Ohio to the national Republican convention that nominated Grant for a second term, and he later appeared on the public platform in behalf of Grant's candidacy. Bell was an able speaker and was also well known as a reader of his own poems. "The Day and the War" was inscribed to the memory of John Brown, and "The Progress of Liberty" is suggestive of Byron; but in general the verse is without any distinctive literary quality.
James Bell was one of the most well-known American black poets of the nineteenth century who wrote on the themes of abolition. His most known poems: A Poem (1862); The Day and the War (1864); Poem (about the assassination of Lincoln, 1865); Valedictory on Leaving San Francisco (1866); The Progress of Liberty (1866); Modern Moses (1866); The Triumph of Liberty (1870).
In his twenty-second year James Bell married Louisiana Sanderline, who became the mother of several children.
