![]() However, when the paper began an attack on the American Colonization Society, with which members of the Princeton Seminary faculty as well as prominent Princeton townsfolk were involved, this began to cause problems. At first Samuel Miller and others associated with the Seminary became subscribers. During his middler year at Princeton Seminary, Wright became a subscription agent for the Freedom’s Journal, an early African American newspaper edited by Samuel Cornish, the pastor of the First Colored Presbyterian Church in New York City. He is reported to have attended the Free African School in New York City, which had been set up by the New York Manumission Society, of which Samuel Miller had been a founding member. Wright was named for Theodore Sedgwick (1746-1813), a Massachusetts attorney who successfully argued a 1781 case concerning two escaped slaves who gained their freedom in Massachusetts by claiming that the state’s 1780 constitution had declared that “all men are born free and equal.” This name thus gives some idea of the sentiments of the family into which Theodore Sedgwick Wright was born. Records seem to indicate that he was among the very first African Americans to receive any kind of formal higher education in North America. ![]() It contains an excellent transcription of the publications of Theodore Wright as well as transcriptions of published obituaries and accounts of his funeral. Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797- 1847) Early Princeton Theological Seminary Black Abolitionist.” A copy of the typescript of this work is located in the Special Collections Department, Princeton Theological Seminary Library. The most complete study of the life and ministry of Theodore Wright to date is Daniel Paul Morrison, “Rev. Whereupon, resolved that his color shall form no obstacle in the way of his reception.” 43 “Board of Directors Minute Book,” Princeton Theological Seminary, May 16, 1825. McAuley, on behalf of the Presbytery of Albany, applied to the Board to have Theodore Wright, a fine young man of color, admitted into the Seminary. The Board of Director’s Minute Book specifically stipulates that his race should be no bar to his admission to the Seminary (he had already been turned down by a number of institutions to which he had applied): “Dr. Theodore Sedgwick Wright (Class of 1828) claims a special place in Princeton Seminary history as the first African American to attend and graduate from the Seminary. Perhaps the best known stories of Seminary alumni regarding the slavery issue are those of two of its graduates connected to the abolitionist cause. The range of opinion held and action taken by these graduates on the slavery issue was varied. In addition, as the century moved on, more students would move into the newer areas in the West as these areas were settled, not only the old Northwest Territory, which was at least legally supposed to be free of slavery, but also areas such as Missouri where slavery was permitted. However a smaller proportion of the students had come from the South or the border states (20 percent) and a significant number of graduates would go on to serve some portion of their ministry in these areas (27 percent). As Daved Anthony Schmidt has documented, the largest number of students in the period 1812-1865 had come from the mid-Atlantic area (53 percent) and gone on to serve in the mid-Atlantic for much of their careers. The issue of slavery was important enough in the first half of the 19th century in the United States that the Seminary’s alumni would have had to confront it, no matter where they served. ![]() Another facet of the Seminary’s historical relationship to slavery is the attitudes and actions of those who studied at Princeton Seminary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |