Hosea Easton (1798–1837) was an American Congregationalist and Methodist minister, abolitionist activist, and author. He was one of the leaders of the

convention movement The Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these convent ...

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

.''Easton, Hosea'' by Donald Yacovone, Oxford African American Studies Center

Background

Hosea Easton was one of four sons of James Easton of North Bridgewater, who originally was a blacksmith, from

Middleborough, Massachusetts Middleborough (frequently written as Middleboro) is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 24,245 at the 2020 census. History The town was first settled by Europeans in 1661 as Nemasket, later changed to M ...

. The background of his father traces back to a group of slaves freed by

Nicholas Easton Nicholas Easton (1593–1675) was an early colonial President and Governor of Rhode Island. Born in Hampshire, England, he lived in the towns of Lymington and Romsey before immigrating to New England with his two sons in 1634. Once in the N ...

and his brother Peter Easton, in

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

during the seventeenth century. James Easton married Sarah Dunbar, thought to be of "mixed race". Therefore his ancestry was African, Native American ( Narragansett and

Wampanoag The Wampanoag , also rendered Wôpanâak, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island,Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island," p. 1 ...

), and European. Racial classifications meant little for this family, and Hosea Easton was later to write against their meaning anything intrinsic. James Easton became a successful businessman in

ironwork Ironwork is any weapon, artwork, utensil, or architectural feature made of iron, especially one used for decoration. There are two main types of ironwork: wrought iron and cast iron. While the use of iron dates as far back as 4000BC, it was the ...

and was well-connected in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

area. From about 1816 to 1830, he ran a vocational school for persons of color that was attached to his foundry. His son Hosea participated in it, with his brother James who became a

homeopathic Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a dise ...

physician.

Activism in Boston

Hosea Easton married in 1827 and moved to

in 1828, where he was minister in a church on West Centre Street, Beacon Hill (from 1861 Anderson Street). He joined the

Massachusetts General Colored Association The Massachusetts General Colored Association was organized in Boston in 1826 to combat slavery and racism. The Association was an early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. Its influence spread locally and was realized within New England when they ...

that had been set up in 1826. It had the dual aims of agitation for the abolition of slavery, and the welfare of free blacks. He was one of the Boston Committee set up by the convention of June 1831 in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

. It also included Samuel Snowden and Thomas Paul, the only black ministers then in Boston, Robert Roberts (who had married Easton's sister Sarah as his second wife and so become brother-in-law),Stewart, p. 80
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and James G. Barbadoes. Robert Roberts and Easton's brother Joshua had joined with him in a previous venture, a vocational school in

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

that would continue his father's ideas. That project had been made impossible by local racial hostility. They then united with him to oppose the

American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freebor ...

, who were acquiring land in what became Liberia. Some 1831 meetings in Boston on the colonization issue were reported in '' The Liberator'', in March and May.

Pastor in Hartford

Easton moved to Hartford, Connecticut in 1833 with his wife Louisa and family. With local black leaders, he formed the Hartford Literary and Religious Institution and, in January 1834, was appointed its agent. He then toured New England as a fundraiser, but had to cut his plans back because of racial violence. Charles William Calhoun, ''The Human Tradition in America from the Colonial Era through Reconstruction'' (2002), p. 200–1
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Easton was a preacher of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) which he joined in the 1830s, and an influence on the young Amos Beman who was in Hartford teaching. Easton applied to the New York AMEZ conference in 1832; it was in 1834 that he was ordained as

deacon A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Chur ...

and elder, by Christopher Rush.David E. Swift, ''Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy Before the Civil War'' (1989), p. 177
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The dates and details of his associations with churches are not completely clear, however. According to one source, in 1833 there was a split of the congregation in Hartford, resulting in Congregational and

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

churches, and the

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (also known as North Methodist Episcopal Church) is a historic Methodist Episcopal Church at 2051 Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut. This High Victorian Gothic structure was built in ...

, now on Main Street, traces its history back to that year. The Metropolitan Church's official history describes an African Religious Society in Hartford in existence in 1827, owning a church on Talcott Street, and the split occurring about 1835. There resulted the Colored Congregational Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church where Easton was the first pastor. David E. Swift writes that the Talcott Street premises being shared by the Congregational and Methodist groups, Easton persuaded the Methodists to buy land of their own in Elm Street for a new church (which was at a later point identified as the AMEZ church). Hartford was singled out by Edward Strutt Abdy at this period for the virulence of racial hatred he saw. Easton's congregation were involved in the period 1834–36, culminating in the burning of the Methodist church in 1836. (The evidence points to this church though there is no conclusive local report that identifies the burned church explicitly.)

Works

Easton published ''A Treatise On the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; And the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them; With A Sermon on the Duty of the Church To Them'' (1837). In this work Easton wrote against

racial prejudice Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

. He invoked the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

as free from

racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...

; and he challenged the assumption that slaves could be regarded as machines and lacking in morality. Not well received in its time, it is now considered to be a leading work articulating the African-American abolitionist view, with the 1829 ''Appeal'' of David Walker.

William Cooper Nell William Cooper Nell (December 16, 1816 – May 25, 1874) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, publisher, author, and civil servant of Boston, Massachusetts, who worked for the integration of schools and public facilities in the s ...

quoted Easton at length in 1859 on the constitutional point, while speaking against the

Dred Scott Decision ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'', 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, enslaved or free; th ...

. It has been argued that the book shows the influence of

William Apess 300px, Autobiography of William Apess William Apess (1798–1839, Pequot) (also known as William Apes before 1837), was an ordained Methodist minister, writer, and activist of mixed-race descent, who was a political and religious leader in Massach ...

. Easton's outlook was rather pessimistic, informed by what he perceived as a hardening of racial divisions into a polarization in the North-East of his time and experience. He wrote of the racist taunts and caricatures common even in Boston. Further, he argued, the stereotypical denigration based on race was a matter of early indoctrination, had economic ends, and was supported by the way white clergy condoned slavery. Easton argued for

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

as no more intrinsic than any other effect of variegation. He put his case in a way not calculated to offend on all sides, but still risking having that effect. He dealt with stereotypes, attempting to sift those that were artefacts of the institution of slavery from those that represented

human variability Human variability, or human variation, is the range of possible values for any characteristic, physical or mental, of human beings. Frequently debated areas of variability include cognitive ability, personality, physical appearance ( body sh ...

and could be attributed to God.Michael A. Morrison, ''The Human Tradition in Antebellum America'' (2000), p. 157
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Along with

James Forten James Forten (September 2, 1766March 4, 1842) was an African-American abolitionist and wealthy businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born free in the city, he became a sailmaker after the American Revolutionary War. Following an apprentices ...

and William Watkins, Easton queried the "immediatist" assumptions common in white abolitionists. He stated that emancipated slaves would not be capable of self-improvement without help. His message was not what abolitionists, whether black and in many prominent cases escaped slaves, or white, much wanted to hear, and his reputation accordingly suffered. He is now seen as an early Afrocentrist writer, arguing for the cultural inheritance of

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

from Ancient Egypt. He used the scriptural ethnology of

Hamitic Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. T ...

and

Japhetic The term Japhetites (in adjective form Japhethitic or Japhetic) refers to the descendents of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. The term has been adopted in ethnological and linguistic writing from the 18th to the 20th century ...

lineages to argue for the cultural importance of Africa in the ancient Mediterranean world.Allen Dwight Callahan, ''The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible'' (2006), p. 29
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Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Easton, Hosea 1798 births 1837 deaths African-American abolitionists Abolitionists from Boston Afrocentrists American Congregationalists American Methodists Congregationalist abolitionists Methodist abolitionists