ARTHUR TAPPAN Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan were descendants of Benjamin Franklin (which is perhaps why their father, and another brother, happened to be named Benjamin Tappan). Arthur received a common-school education and then served a 7- year apprenticeship in the hardware business in Boston, before establishing himself in Portland, Maine, and subsequently in Montreal, Canada, where he would remain until the beginning of the war of 1812. In 1814 he would engage with his brother Lewis in importing British dry-goods into New-York City, and after that partnership was dissolved he successfully continued the business alone. He was known for his public spirit and philanthropy. He was a founder of the American tract society, the largest donor for the erection of its 1st building, and was identified with many charitable and religious bodies. He was a founder of Oberlin College, also erecting Tappan Hall there, and endowed Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, and a professorship at Auburn Theological Seminary. With his brother Lewis he founded the New-York Journal of Commerce in 1828, and established The Emancipator in 1833, paying the salary of the editor and all the expenses of its publication. He was an ardent abolitionist, and as the interest in the anti-slavery cause deepened he formed, at his own rooms, the nucleus of the New-York antislavery society, which was publicly organized under his presidency at Clinton Hall on October 2, 1833. He was also president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, to which for several years he contributed $1,000 per month, but withdrew in 1840 on account of the aggressive spirit that many members manifested toward the churches and the Union. During the crisis of 1837 he was forced to suspend payments, and in 1842 he became bankrupt. During his late years he was connected with the mercantile agency that his brother Lewis established. He incurred the hatred of southern slaveholders by his frequent aid to fugitives, and by his rescuing of William Lloyd Garrison from imprisonment at Baltimore. See LIFE by Lewis Tappan (New York, 1871). HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1786 May 22, Monday: Sarah Holmes Tappan, mother of Benjamin Tappan, Jr. and William Tappan, gave birth to Arthur Tappan, who all his life would be tortured by headaches. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1788 May 26, Monday: Sarah Tappan gave birth to Lewis Tappan, the younger brother of Benjamin Tappan, Jr., William Tappan, and Arthur Tappan, with the assistance of midwife “Granny” Allen — who charged mothers $1.00 for this service. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1803 April 27, Wednesday: Emperor Franz II gave assent to the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, a massive reorganization of the German Empire. The number of imperial cities was reduced to six; only three church states remained; the Duke of Salzburg became an elector of the Empire; the Rhineland Palatinate was made part of Bavaria (this was all fueled of course by the gains that larger states were making at the expense of smaller ones). David Tappan, who had been the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College, and the uncle of Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Dr. Henry Ware, Harvard Class of 1785, would not be appointed to succeed him in this chair until May 1805; meanwhile young resident graduates such as Charles Wellington of Waltham, Massachusetts would be obliged to struggle alone with a list of books the professor had recommended for their perusal, and meet together occasionally for reading of their essays and comparison of views). TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1815 00 Arthur Tappan borrowed $12,000. from Lewis Tappan without interest, to start an import firm in New-York. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1821 The lawyer Charles Grandison Finney persuaded himself that he was the beneficiary of a “retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause.” He began a career of helping himself by helping others that would make him into “the father of modern revivalism.” His highly charged preaching often accomplished an emotional catharsis which was then known as the “salvation experience” and which then was considered to need to prove itself through social action. Finney was a close friend of the rich men Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan, who rented the Chatham Street Theater in New-York for his use. Revivalism, Salvation, and Abolitionism — TAPPAN FAMILY enslavement equals sin: When I first went to New York, I had made up my mind on the question of slavery, and was exceedingly anxious to arouse public attention to the subject. I did not, however, turn aside to make it a hobby, or divert the attention of the people from the work of converting souls. It was sin but if it was merely a sin of other persons, then it was a secondary issue to the issue of one’s own personal salvation, and the evil of this sin was to be explored, Finney’s attitude was, only if it “can be made an appendage of a general revival.” Finney was as alienated by radical anti-slavery talk as he was by slavery itself. Although he would not allow slavemasters to join his church, he also was hostile to the idea of blacks and whites sitting together in church. As a matter of fact, he was even hostile to the idea of two choirs, one black and one white, being permitted to sing the same hymns at the same time. The slave Johann Samuel died poor and marginalized in the white Moravian religious community which in HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1771 had accepted him. At first his white coreligionists has been able to accept him more or less as a peer, albeit enslaved, but over the years there had been a dwindling commitment among Moravians to the equality of all true believers in their faith. His black children would be acceptable only within a new black church sponsored by the Moravians. For more on this, consult Jon F. Sensbach’s A SEPARATE CANAAN: THE MAKING OF AN AFRO-MORAVIAN WORLD IN NORTH CAROLINA, 1763-1840 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998). A rump group of Northern congressmen nominated John Caldwell Calhoun for president. –Three times this man would see a chance to get himself made president, and three times there would be an autobiographical campaign biography produced (anonymous of course and written in the third person). LET US CONQUER SPACE. Sam Houston resigned from the office of Attorney General of the Nashville District in Tennessee to return to private law practice. HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1825 May 11, Wednesday: In New-York City, Arthur Tappan helped create the American Tract Society. TAPPAN FAMILY In Rochester, New York, Austin Steward, a man of substance and property, was able to marry: As time passed on I found myself progressing in a profitable business. I had paid for my house and lot, and purchased another adjoining, on which I had erected a valuable brick building. The Lord prospered all my undertakings and I felt grateful for my good fortune. I kept all kinds of groceries and grain, which met a ready sale; and now I began to look about me for a partner in life, to share my joys and sorrows, and to assist me on through the tempestuous scenes of a life-long voyage. Such a companion I found in the intelligent and amiable Miss B-----, to whom I was married on the eleventh of May, 1825. She was the youngest daughter of a particular friend, who had traveled extensively and was noted for his honesty and intelligence. About this time, too, “Sam Patch” made his last and fatal leap from a scaffold twenty five feet above the falls of Genesee, which are ninety-six feet in height. From thence he plunged into the foaming river to rise no more in life. The following spring the body of the foolish man was found and buried, after having lain several months in the turbulent waters of the Genesee. This year was also rendered memorable by the efficient labors of Professor Finney, through whose faithful preaching of the HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN gospel, many were brought to a saving knowledge of the truth. HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN 1827 Mid-August: Lewis Tappan was asked to come from his home in Brookline to New-York to help his brother Arthur Tappan, “Saint Arthur the Silk Jobber,” cope with the fall business rush at his store at 122 Pearl Street. This was a fashionable location near Hanover Square, a three-story granite structure with great iron shutters to protect the trade windows on the ground floor, and with a wooden sidewalk to protect the skirts of the shoppers from the mud and slop of the city pavement. Once his brother had him safely under his thumb in New-York, he began to work on his unfortunate susceptibility to liberal causes. Arthur’s weapons, in the struggle against Unitarian heresy, would prove to be not only intellectual and emotional but also the threat of pecuniary punishment and the promise of pecuniary reward. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX ARTHUR TAPPAN ARTHUR TAPPAN October 8, Monday: In New-York, Lewis Tappan was beginning to feel the heat of his brother Arthur Tappan’s resistance to the Unitarian heresy: TAPPAN FAMILY He should be sorry to have me come here to be very active as a Unitarian, in religious matters — building churches, etc. I replied that for sometime I had felt that I might be under some temptation to swerve from my religious opinions from secular or pecuniary considerations; that he must be sensible it was my duty scrupulously to keep my mind unbiased by pecuniary considerations; that I should endeavour to act conscientiously; that I was free to acknowledge that my mind had undergone some change & that I should not be active in propagating Unitarian sentiments, with my present views; and that if my mind should alter, on this subject, and I should feel it my duty to make such efforts I should be willing to dissolve any connexion in business, I might form, if he wished it.