17 Facts About James Redpath

James Redpath was an American journalist and anti-slavery activist.

In 1855, James Redpath moved to the Kansas-Missouri border and reported for a Free Soil newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, on the dispute over slavery in Kansas Territory.

In 1858, Brown encouraged James Redpath to move to Boston to help rally support for his plan for a Southern slave insurrection.

In 1860, James Redpath toured Haiti as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, which he secured within two years.

James Redpath simultaneously served as director of Haiti's campaign to attract free black emigrants from the United States and Canada.

James Redpath's Guide to Hayti, available on the Internet Archive, is an anthology of articles by various authors on a wide range of Haitian subjects.

James Redpath hoped that the immigration of skilled blacks to Haiti would elevate conditions there and dispel racial prejudice in the United States.

James Redpath soon had more than 100 instructors at work teaching 3,500 African-American and white students.

In May 1865 in Charleston, James Redpath organized what has been called the first-ever Memorial Day service, to honor buried Union Army dead there.

James Redpath's reputation as a radical abolitionist and his tentative steps toward integrating South Carolina's schools caused worried military officials to replace Redpath and remove an irritation to Southern-born president Andrew Johnson.

In 1868, James Redpath started one of the first professional lecturing bureaus in the country, the Boston Lyceum Bureau.

The James Redpath Bureau became the most prominent and successful agency of its kind.

James Redpath sold his interest in the Bureau in 1875 and lived alternately in Washington, DC, and New York, when not traveling.

James Redpath was deeply affected by the extreme poverty of much of rural Ireland and he convinced his friend and fellow-abolitionist David Ross Locke to support Irish nationalism by taking him up the Galtee Mountains to show him the condition of smallholding mountain tenants.

James Redpath became an outspoken advocate of the cause of the Land League and Charles Stewart Parnell; pro-landlord commentators accused him of incitement to murder.

James Redpath became editor of the North American Review in 1886.

James Redpath died in 1891, shortly after being run over by a horse-drawn trolley in New York.