"Forget Their Color": J. Peter Lesley on Slavery and the South

Abstract

AMONG the dedicated opponents of slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War was the well-known American geologist J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903). Born in Philadelphia and educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Theological Seminary, Lesley was a man of sensitive conscience, deeply rooted altruism, and strongly committed convictions about human dignity. Although he entered the ministry, Lesley forsook the cloth geological work. Nevertheless, he remained a caustic critic of human bondage, and his correspondence reveals the tenacity of his views on black people, Southern culture and politicians, and the role of a republic in guaranteeing equality and justice.l Although Lesley was never formally associated with any abolitionist movement, he supported the cause in his own way. Claiming that since the age of twelve he had longed for emancipation of slaves, Lesley was writing fervidly about human bondage by the 1850's.2 After the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, he wrote his father about the real horror ... [of] this new and dreadful law returning the slaves.3 A minister of a small congregation in Milton, Massachusetts, Lesley wrote to a friend, I had to write a sermon against the Fugitive Slave Law last Sunday, and then had to allow it to be published in