Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  
  • 5
  •  
  • 6
  •  
  • 7
  •  
  • 8
  •  
  • 9
  •  
  • 10
  •  
  • 11
  •  
  • 12
  •  
  • 13
  •  
  • 14
  •  
  • 15
  •  
  • 16
  •  
  • 17
  •  
  • 18
  •  
  • 19
  •  
  • 20
  •  
  • 21
  •  
  • 22
  •  
  • 23
  •  
  • 24
  •  
  • 25
  •  
  • 26
  •  
  • 27
  •  
  • 28
  •  
  • 29
  •  
  • 30
  •  
  • 31
  •  
  • 32
  •  
  • 33
  •  
  • 34
  •  
  • 35
  •  
  • 36
  •  
  • 37
  •  
  • 38
  •  
  • 39
  •  
  • 40
  •  
  • 41
  •  
  • 42
  •  
  • 43
  •  
  • 44
  •  
  • 45
  •  
  • 46
  •  
  • 47
  •  
  • 48
  •  
  • 49
  •  

edited by

edited by

DONALD J. RATCLIFFE

 

The Autobiography of

Benjamin Tappan

 

 

There are few more fascinating characters in the early history of

Ohio than Benjamin Tappan. A sharp and audacious man, "always

pungent and always ready," he was formidable in argument, and few

people who openly disagreed with him ever forgot his cutting sarcastic

wit. Besides tending to talk through his nose "in a whining, sing-song

sort of style," he was also slightly cross-eyed, which gave him a

somewhat malevolent look. He made no attempt to conceal this defect,

not even when a national magazine published an engraving of his por-

trait in 1840; he insisted only that his sharp black eyes be portrayed

correctly-the left eye turning in, not the right-and that he not be

made to look a fool. No one ever accused this forthright, shrewd,

caustically witty man of that.1

The eldest of six brothers, Tappan has been overshadowed histori-

cally by the two youngest, Arthur and Lewis, the famous abolitionists.2

Although he himself detested slavery and was unusually sympathetic to

freed Negroes, Benjamin disapproved profoundly of the strident agita-

tion of this political sensitive issue by "modern" abolitionists like his

brothers; and, in a fascinating correspondence he maintained with

Lewis for over forty years, he forcefully revealed the philosophical

differences that divided him from these younger evangelical zealots.

Benjamin Tappan was essentially a man of the Enlightenment, a deist

 

 

Mr. Ratcliffe is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Durham, Durham,

England.

 

1. This brief account of Tappan is based on a reading of the Papers of Benjamin

Tappan, in The Ohio Historical Society (OHS) and the Library of Congress (LC). All

manuscripts cited hereafter, unless otherwise stated, are drawn from these collections. A

good brief account of Tappan by Francis P. Weisenburger is in Allen Johnson and Dumas

Malone, eds., Dictionary ofAmerican Biography (New York, 1928-1936), XVIII, 300-301.

The characterizations are taken from Thomas Ewing to A. H. Goodman, May 26, 1868,

The Papers of Charles E. Rice, OHS; and from Henry Howe, Historical Collections of

Ohio, 3 vols. (Columbus, 1889-91), I, 971-2, II, 698.

2. See especially Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War

Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969).