James Miller McKim
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James Miller McKim (November 10, 1810 – June 13, 1874) was a Presbyterian minister and an abolitionist.
McKim was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Soon after the beginnings of the antislavery movement, he left the pulpit to devote himself to the cause of emancipation. He worked for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society as lecturer, organizer, and corresponding secretary. At times, he served as the editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman.
In 1849, he was on the receiving end of an unusual and historic shipment, when Henry "Box" Brown, an innovative and determined escaped slave from Richmond, Virginia, arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a small shipping box and emerged into freedom. McKim was depicted in the The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia, a lithograph by artist Samuel W. Rowse which was widely published to help raise funds for the Underground Railroad. Brown himself wrote his autobiography in 1851.
In 1859, Reverend McKim and his wife Sarah Allibone (née Speakman) McKim attended the execution of abolitionist John Brown at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Afterward, they assisted Mrs. Brown in bringing her husband's body home. As the American Civil War dragged on, and, after President Lincoln announced the emancipation of the slaves in the South in 1863, McKim joined the Freedmen's Aid Commission and provided valuable services to that body.