Background
Long was born in New Town, Maryland to John W. Long, a slaveholder and former sea-captain. He credited his mother Sally Laws Henderson Long with inspiring his early antislavery sentiments.
Long was born in New Town, Maryland to John W. Long, a slaveholder and former sea-captain. He credited his mother Sally Laws Henderson Long with inspiring his early antislavery sentiments.
His 1857 book, Pictures of Slavery in Church and State, was influential in abolitionist circles. Health problems forced him to give up his ministerial post in 1848. In October 1856 Long moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was dismayed by the level of support for slavery, although it was not legal in the commonwealth.
This inspired Long to write a treatise on his experience of and views on slavery as it existed in his native state.
Pictures of Slavery in Church and State. Including Personal Reminiscences, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc.
Etc. With an Appendix, Containing the Views of John Wesley and Richard Watson on Slavery was published for $1 in 1857 and was considered a major contribution to the case against slavery by Frederick Douglass and others
In 1857, Review Thomas Quigly, a Methodist Minister from Pennsylvania but at the time serving in Saint Michaels, Maryland, where Long had served in 1853 through 1855, (and which was the likely context of some of Long"s descriptions and examples of slavery), brought charges against Long in the Philadelphia Methodist Episcopal Conference. Long was "tried" at the 1858 Conference Session.
Debate about Methodist complacency on the issue of slavery at this conference, however, was skillfully avoided when proposals were made from the floor that the charges against Long be dropped. John Dixon Long died in Philadelphia in 1894.