Discourses of Slavery, By

Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 - May 10, 1860) was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. Early life, 1810-1829: Theodore Parker was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, the youngest child in a large farming family. His paternal grandfather was John Parker, the leader of the Lexington militia at the Battle of Lexington. Among his colonial Yankee ancestors were Thomas Hastings, who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, and Deacon Thomas Parker, who came from England in 1635 and was one of the founders of Reading. Most of Theodore's family had died by the time he was 27, probably due to tuberculosis. Out of eleven siblings, only five remained: three brothers, including Theodore, and two sisters. His mother, to whom he was emotionally close, died when he was eleven. He responded to these tragedies by refusing to lapse into what he called "the valley of tears," focusing instead on other events and demands, and by affirming "the immortality of the soul," later a benchmark of his theology. Descriptions of Parker as a teenager recall him as "raw" and rough, emotional and poetic, sincere, "arch," "roguish," volatile, witty, and quick. He excelled at academics and gained an early education through country schools and personal study. He studied long and late when farm chores allowed, tutoring himself in math, Latin, and other subjects. At seventeen he began teaching in local schools. He continued tutoring himself and private students in advanced and specialized subjects. He learned Hebrew from Joshua Seixas (son of Gershom Mendes Seixas and Hannah Manuel), whom he may have baptized in a covert conversion to Christianity. He also studied for a time under Convers Francis, who later preached at Parker's ordination. Death: Following a lifetime of overwork, Parker's ill health forced his retirement in 1859. He developed tuberculosis, then without effective treatment, and departed for Florence, Italy, where he died on May 10, 1860. He sought refuge in Florence because of his friendship with Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Isa Blagden and Frances Power Cobbe, but died scarcely a month following his arrival. It was less than a year before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Parker was a patient of William Wesselhoeft, who practiced homeopathy. Wesselhoeft gave the oration at Parker's funeral He is buried in the English Cemetery in Florence. When Frederick Douglass visited Florence, he went first from the railroad station to Parker's tomb. Parker's headstone by Joel Tanner Hart was later replaced by one by William Wetmore Story. Other Unitarians buried in the English Cemetery include Thomas Southwood Smith and Richard Hildreth. The British writer Fanny Trollope, also buried here, wrote the first anti-slavery novel and Hildreth wrote the second. Both books were used by Harriet Beecher Stowe for her antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).