16 Facts About Samuel Lucas

Samuel Lucas was a British journalist and abolitionist.

Samuel Lucas was the editor of the Morning Star in London, the only national newspaper in Britain to support the Unionist cause in the American Civil War.

Samuel Lucas died knowing that legal slavery in America had ended.

Samuel Lucas was born in 1811 to a Quaker family in Wandsworth.

Samuel Lucas married his cousin Margaret Bright on 6 September 1839 who was from a well connected family in the Society of Friends.

Samuel Lucas's wife was to become famous in her own right largely after Lucas's death.

Samuel Lucas attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 and he was included in the commemorative painting by Benjamin Haydon.

Samuel Lucas had moved there in 1845 as he took an interest in a cotton mill and he stayed there for five years before returning to London.

Samuel Lucas became active for the Anti-Corn Law League which Cobden and John Bright had founded.

Samuel Lucas wrote a Plan for the Establishment of a General System of Secular Education in the County of Lancaster, By 1860 Lucas and his family had moved to London where he became a supporter of the Society for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge.

Samuel Lucas took a strong interest in running the paper where he was the "managing proprietor".

In 1859 Samuel Lucas became the editor of the newly established Once A Week, a weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury and Evans.

Samuel Lucas died in London on 15 April 1865 of a bronchial illness, and it was noted that he lived long enough to be told of end of the battle of Richmond which marked the end of the American Civil War and slavery in the United States.

Samuel Lucas was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London, where his wife was buried after her death on the 4th February 1890.

Samuel Lucas died before he could see the headlines in the Morning Star that marked the end of slavery.

Samuel Lucas's paper was the only newspaper that supported the Union side from the start of the war.