Abolitionist, Social Reformer. He was one of the most influential abolitionists of the Civil War era but he was so intent on avoiding personal publicity that he never became as well known as some of his contemporaries. Born in Hampton, Connecticut, he moved to upstate New York as a young man and there joined the revivalist movement of Charles Finney. He began to study for the ministry and first made his reputation speaking out for temperance, but by 1830 he had taken up the cause of abolition of slavery. He was affiliated with the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and when he went West to help organize a new seminary in Cincinnati, he came to influence Harriet and Henry Beecher, children of the seminary's president. By 1834, his anti-slavery activities had become so pervasive at the school that he was dismissed, but most of the students left with him and became agents for the anti-slavery movement. Many of his "converts", such as Edwin Stanton, would play important roles in public life. He himself maried one of his agents, Angelina Grimke, a South Carolinian who with her sister had early embraced abolitionism. He gave so many speeches that he injured his voice, but that only led him to writing a steady stream of articles and pamphlets. From 1836 to 1840 he was based in New York City where he edited the anti-slavery paper, the Emancipator, but he thereafter centered his activities in Washington D.C. where he took the lead in the campaign to introduce anti-slavery petitions in Congress. His society's periodical, the National Era would publish Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and she was the first to acknowledge that she had drawn a great deal from one of his books, American Slavery As It Is. In 1844 he withdrew from his public activities on behalf of abolitionism to run his own school in New Jersey, but during the Civil War he was persuaded to speak out for the Union and for Republican candidates. Because he avoided holding all offices, spoke mainly in smaller towns, and refused to publish any of his writings under his own name, he long went unrecognized by people who knew of such Abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips, but all the leaders of the anti-slavery movement knew of his crucial role. After the Civil War he continued to champion the cause of Civil Rights for former slaves and the women's rights movement, which he became passionate about from his wife, until his death.