John A. Collins (abolitionist)

John Anderson Collins (1810–1890) was an American abolitionist.

John A. Collins, from a daguerreotype

Biography

Collins was born in Manchester, Vermont. He attended Middlebury College, joined the Andover Theological Seminary, and eventually left both to work in the anti-slavery movement. From 1840–1842, Collins served as the General Agent and Vice President of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (MASS, founded 1835), a Boston branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

He helped to mentor Frederick Douglass as Douglass began to become a speaker on the abolitionist circuit.

A Congregationalist at first (eventually turning to atheism[1]) he worked with Quakers and Garrisonian abolitionists in the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, which hoped to reorganize society along Christian non-resistance lines.

Collins was the editor of the abolitionist periodicals The Monthly Offering and Monthly Garland.

He combined abolitionism with communitarianism,[2] and anarchism,[3] and eventually became more interested in Owenite socialism.[4]: 196–197  He became a leader in the Skaneateles Community, an 1841–1846 Fourierist socialist experimental community, and edited The Communitist. Upon the failure of this community, he renounced socialist principles as "false in theory and pernicious in their practical tendencies."[4]: 197 

He left for California in 1849 to follow the gold rush, and became a Whig candidate for the state legislature, also renouncing his earlier abolitionist opinions in the process.[5][4]: 198  He worked as an attorney, and defended Asian immigrants against Chinese Exclusion Act-related persecution, as well as free thinkers.[3]: 77  He would also serve in leadership roles with the National Cooperative Homestead Society and the Society of Progressive Spiritualists.[6]

References
  1. Filler, Louis (1960). The crusade against slavery, 1830-1860. Harper.
  2. Peter Hinks (2007). Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Vol. 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 402. ISBN 9780313331442.
  3. Johnpoll, Bernard K.; Klehr, Harvey, eds. (1986). Biographical dictionary of the American Left. Greenwood Press. p. 76. ISBN 0313242003. LCCN 85-27252.
  4. Johnson, David Alan. Founding the Far West.
  5. Merrill, Walter McIntosh (1963). Against wind and tide, a biography of Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Harvard University Press. p. 217. ISBN 9780674186590.
  6. Trahair, Richard C.S. (1999). Utopias and Utopians: an historical dictionary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 82–83. ISBN 0313294658. LCCN 98-28286.

Further reading
  • Hamm, Thomas D. (1996). God's Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842–1846. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-32903-5.
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