Joshua Leavitt

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rev. Joshua Leavitt (September 8, 1794 – January 16, 1873) was an American Congregationalist minister, a former lawyer, and a prominent writer, editor, and abolitionist. He also campaigned for cheap postage and spoke for the Liberty Party.

Leavitt grew up in Heath, Massachusetts. He went to Yale College and finished while in his early twenties. He studied law for a while in Vermont, then went on to Yale Theological Seminary. He was ordained as a Congregational minister in Stratford, Connecticut. After four years there, he moved to New York City and began a long career as an editor and reformer.

In New York, Leavitt served as secretary of the American Seamen’s Friend Society and began a 44-year run as editor of Sailors’ Magazine. He later edited several major journals, including The Emancipator, The New York Independent, and The New York Evangelist. Leavitt used his writing and publishing to push for the abolition of slavery, temperance, and other social reforms.

Leavitt played a key role in several famous anti-slavery cases. He helped the escape of Basil Dorsey, a enslaved man who fled Maryland to Massachusetts, and members of Leavitt’s family sheltered Dorsey in Massachusetts. He was also involved in the Amistad affair; in 1839 he helped form the Amistad Committee with Lewis Tappan and Simeon Jocelyn to raise funds for the captives’ defense. In 1841 he published Financial Power of Slavery, a work that argued slavery harmed the U.S. economy by draining wealth to the South.

One of Leavitt’s important publishing achievements was The Christian Lyre, published in 1830. It was one of the first tunebooks in America to present hymns with music, and it became widely used during the 1830s revival movement.

Leavitt was the first secretary of the American Temperance Society and co-founded the New York City Anti-Slavery Society. He also supported the Liberty Party and fought for cheap, affordable postage so reform ideas could spread more easily.

Joshua Leavitt died in Brooklyn, New York, in 1873. He came from a family that was deeply involved in religion and abolitionism; his father was Col. Roger Leavitt, and his family included ministers and activists who supported the movement against slavery. The Leavitt family is remembered for its long history of abolitionist work and its connection to important anti-slavery sites.