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Other authors named Lewis:
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Popularity: 0
Vote: | After conversing awhile through the interpreter with the men, who are in three different rooms, and with the four children, who are in a room by themselves, we went to the door of the room where Joseph Cinquez is confined. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | But we shall try the question in our courts, & see if a man, although he is black, cannot have justice done him here. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Cinquez is about 5 feet 8 inches high, of fine proportions, with a noble air. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Col. Stanton Pendleton, at whose house I stop, is the jailer, and is kind and attentive to the prisoners. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I arrived here last Friday evening, with three men who are natives of Africa... to act as interpreters in conversing with Joseph Cinquez and his comrades. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I blush to tell you that the U. S. District Attorney appeared as counsel for the Spanish minister by order of this government!! |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I distributed some religious tracts, in the morning, to the convicts, and attempted to instruct the African prisoners, especially the children. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | If any fall by the hand of violence, others will continue the blessed work. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | If you wish to draw off the people from a bad or wicked custom, you must beat up for a march; you must make an excitement, do something that everybody will notice. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Indeed, the whole company, although thin in flesh, and generally of slight forms, and limbs, especially, are as good looking and intelligent a body of men as we usually meet with. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Jingua appeared to be highly gratified to be taken from his cell, and to have the opportunity to look at the public buildings and the beautiful park, for the first time, from the windows of the chamber. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Jingua repeated that he left his father, mother, wife and three children in Africa, and Bowle said he left his mother, three brothers and two sisters and his native place, Badebou. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Most of the prisoners told the interpreter that they are from Mandingo. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Mr. Leavitt went to Hartford to attend the trial of the Africans for the Amistad, & a large number of persons attended the court. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | One of the men attached to the prison was the occasion of great amusement on the part of the prisoners, as well as the spectators, by taking a large lump of ice to show these strangers from the tropics. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | The action of this government is decidedly against these Africans and they will send them to Cuba if they dare. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The African prisoners are orderly and peaceable among themselves. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The Anti-Slavery public have generously responded to our appeal, and sent the means to enable us to fit them out well, to pay their passages, supply them with many useful articles and give the Missionaries money to sustain themselves for a while. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The curiosity to see the prisoners appears to be unabated. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The district of Mandingo, in the Senegambia country, is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and is directly north of Liberia. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The event of the landing of these brethren upon our shores is to be, not without its beneficial effect, as well to the colored population of this country, as it promises to be to ill-fated Africa. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The Mandingos are described in books as being a very gentle race, cheerful in their dispositions, inquisitive, credulous, simple hearted, and much given to trading propensities. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The one at the Tabernacle on Wednesday, we regarded as a consuming fire to prejudice. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The prisoners eyed the clothes some time, and laughed a good deal among themselves before they put them on. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The pro-slavery press, and the Southern slaveholders now here, are greatly exasperated & I doubt not it will exasperate the tyrants & their abettors throughout the country. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The Rev. H. G. Ludlow prayed for the poor Africans this forenoon, very feelingly, at the service in his church. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | There is too much theology in the Church now, and too little of the Gospel. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | These meetings all have excited great attention, and have been of an exceedingly interesting character. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | They are entitled to their freedom here. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | They have a fine breeze and are now we hope, well on their way. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | They said their sufferings were great on the passage, and several of their number had died. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Towards evening we made a visit to Shinquau, and conversed with him a considerable time. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Two or three of the men, besides one of the little girls, are natives of Congo, which is on the coast just south of the equator. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | We do not believe that any went away with the same views, and the same feelings in relation to any one in whose veins courses African blood. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | We endeavored to impress upon their minds, in the first place, that we were their friends, and that they must speak the truth. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | We found Cinquez stretched upon his bedding on the floor, wholly unclothed, with a single blanket partly wrapped around him. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | We will persevere, come life or death. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | With suitable instruction these intelligent and docile Africans would soon learn to read and speak our language, and I cannot but hope that some of the benevolent inhabitants of this city will diligently continue to improve the opportunity to impart instruction to these pagans, brought by the providence of God to their very doors. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Yesterday we had Ruiz and Montez, the two Spaniards of the Amistad arrested, and not choosing to give bail they are now in prison. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | You may imagine the joy manifested by these poor Africans, when they heard one of their own color address them in a friendly manner, and in a language they could comprehend! |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | You will see in our Emancipator of April 30th & May 7th a report of the proceedings in the Circuit Court at New Haven, in the case of the Africans of the Amistad. |
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Biography
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Lewis Tappan (1788 - 1873) created the first viable credit reporting service in America. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts and became a merchant, first in Philadelphia, then in Boston.
A strict Calvinist, he insisted on cash transactions, since the Bible warned against lending money and charging interest. Lewis made money then lost it, going bankrupt from poorly timed investments in woolen and cotton mills. In 1827, he started over, joining his successful brother, Arthur, in New York's silk trade.
The brothers were evangelically religious, and staunch moralists, contributing profits from their business to moral crusades. They gave away Bibles, blew the whistle on gaming houses, and even entered New York's brothels, "to pluck fallen women from roaring lions who seek to devour them." They connected with other activist Christians who shared reports on immoral activities and aggressively sought to enforce Christian behavior.
In 1830, the Tappans met a young abolitionist agitator named William Lloyd Garrison, whom Arthur offered financial support. Soon, the brothers were part of a nationwide network opposing slavery. Their new crusade made them the hated targets of many merchants and white laborers, who believed ending slavery would destroy the cotton export business and allow freed slaves to take scarce jobs. By 1834, mobs were storming Lewis' home and Arthur's store. Faced with a boycott and lost business, the Tappans were forced to extend credit for the first time. Then, in the panic of 1837, the business was wiped out. By 1839, Arthur had repaid all his creditors and the business was shakily back on its feet.
In 1840 and 1841, Tappan played a role in the famous Amistad case, speaking in favor of the African slaves who had rebelled and killed the men who had illegally purchased them in Cuba. Tappan's fierce oratory and support was a leading factor in assisting Joseph Cinqué and company to eventually return home to Africa.
Lewis hated credit, but he realized offering it to customers was becoming the only way to make a sale. He also wondered how a merchant could gauge his customer's trustworthiness, and assess whether he'd ever get paid. Tappan began keeping files on customers, reviewing their characters and their credit-worthiness. Pretty soon, other merchants were turning to Tappan for advice. Exploiting his abolitionist connections across the country, Tappan created a network of correspondents to offer up-to-date and comprehensive credit information about people in their communities.
Some saw the files kept by Tappan's Mercantile Agency, founded in 1841, as an invasion of privacy. But by 1844 the business had 280 clients. It opened branch offices in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Tappan transferred the running of the agency to his chief clerk, Benjamin Douglass, in 1849. By 1851, 2000 full-time correspondents were reporting from across the nation. Douglass would transfer the company to his brother-in-law, Robert Graham Dun, in 1858, and in 1933 R.G. Dun & Company would merge with its main rival, Bradstreet, forming Dun & Bradstreet, the largest credit reporting entity in the world. As for Tappan, he retired wealthy to spend all his time opposing slavery. He died in 1873, a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation, in Brooklyn, New York.
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lewis Tappan".
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