Biography of Gamaliel Bailey

Name: Gamaliel Bailey
Birth Date: December 3, 1807
Death Date: June 5, 1859
Place of Birth: Mount Holly, New Jersey, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: political leader, editor, abolitionist

Gamaliel Bailey

An American antislavery editor and a founder of the Republican party, Gamaliel Bailey (1807-1859) helped make the antislavery movement a major force in national politics in the mid-19th century.Gamaliel Bailey was born on Dec. 3, 1807, in Mount Holly, N.J., the son of a Methodist minister. He was raised in Philadelphia, Pa., and graduated in 1827 from Jefferson Medical College. Restless and ill, Bailey shipped out on a trading vessel, which took him to China. He returned home expecting to practice medicine, but instead became the editor of Mutual Rights and Methodist Baptist in Baltimore, Md. When the paper failed, he joined an expedition to Oregon but was stranded in St. Louis, Mo. He walked east to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he settled.In 1834 the great debate over slavery that took place at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati persuaded Bailey of the virtues of abolitionism. He became secretary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery society …showed first 150 words…

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…showed last 150 words…he issued a daily edition of the National Era on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. Bailey interested himself in the Dred Scott case of 1857, which engaged hitherto-neutral northerners in the struggle against slavery extension.Bailey did not live to witness the Republican triumph in 1860, and, indeed, he was superseded by practical Republicans, to whom antislavery was more a political issue than a moral crusade. His health, always delicate, required a trip to Europe in 1853. In 1859 he set out for Europe again; he died aboard ship on June 5. He was buried in Washington. Further Reading Histories of the Republican party pay Bailey scant attention. Theodore Clarke Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897; repr. 1967), recognizes his importance. Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830-1860 (1960), places him in the antislavery movement.Harrold, Stanley, Gamaliel Bailey and antislavery union, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1986.

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