Samuel Ringgold Ward (October 17, 1817 – c. 1866) was an African American who escaped enslavement to become an abolitionist, newspaper editor and Congregational minister.
He was author of the influential book: Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: his anti-slavery labours in the United States, Canada and England, written after his speeches throughout Britain in 1853. It enabled him to raise funds for the Anti-slavery Society of Canada where many escaped slaves from the USA were arriving in the 1850s.
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Samuel Ringgold Ward was born into slavery in 1817 on Maryland's eastern shore but fled as a child with his parents in 1820 to New Jersey and soon relocated to New York in 1826. Once settled, Ward's parents enrolled him in at the African Free School.
After he left school, Samuel Ward worked as a teacher and developed a keen interest in abolition. In his early 20s, in May 1839, he became licensed to preach the gospel by the New York Congregational Association, assembled at Poughkeepsie. However, in November of the same year, he was appointed the travelling agent of first the American Anti-slavery Society and afterwards the New York Anti-slavery Society, and it was not until 1841 that he first became a pastor. In April of that year he accepted the unanimous invitation of the Congregational Church of South Butler, Wayne Co., New York, to be their pastor; and in September of that year was publicly ordained as its minister (later, in 1853, Butler Congregational Church, appointed Antoinette Louisa Brown - the first woman to be ordained in the USA).
In 1843 Samuel Ward reluctantly relinquished this pastorate, having contracted a disease of the tonsils which impaired his abilities as a public speaker. In December of that year he visited Geneva, where he was able to commence the study of medicine with Doctors Williams and Bell.
His voice improved, and he returned to America, whereupon he was appointed pastor of the Congregational Church in Cortland Village, New York, in 1846. His beliefs in the end of slavery and his oratory skills led him to politics where he joined first the Liberty Party in 1840 and later the Free Soil Party in 1848, become one of the few from the latter party that was interested in the abolitionist aspect of preventing further inclusion of slave states into the union. Other abolitionists both white and black were well aware of Ward's oratory abilities and commended his brilliant efforts in the abolitionist movement. His activities brought him in close contact with fellow orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who said of him, "As an orator and thinker [Ward] was vastly superior to any of us" and that "the splendors of his intellect went directly to the glory of race."
Little progress had been made in America whilst he had been away and he was to record that here I saw more of the foolishness, wickedness, and at the same time the invincibility, of American Negro-hate, than I ever saw elsewhere. Whilst there, his youngest son, William Reynolds Ward, died and was buried; and two of his daughters, Emily and Alice, were born. From Cortland the family moved to Syracuse, New York, in 1851. However the stay was brief, on account of Samuel Ward participating in the "Jerry Rescue" on the first day of October in that year, leading him to emigrate in some haste to Canada, that November.
During the last few years of Samuel Ward's residence in the United States he had become editor and part owner of two newspapers; the Farmer and Northern Star, and Boston's Impartial Citizen. He was a firm believer in the need for anti-slavery labors, organizations, agitation, and newspapers and conscious of the need to keep the papers from being censured, or worse as in the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy, he commenced the study of law.
Samuel Ward's talents were in demand in Canada. He was offered work by the Anti-slavery Society of Canada, who decided he should visit Britain to further their anti-slavery work. He was given the names of contacts in London who would be keen to accommodate his visit, to strengthen their own long-standing anti-slavery work, and might be willing to help organise fund-raising for anti-slavery work in Canada.
Ward's preparation paid off and he was well received in Britain early in 1853; as Samuel Ward records,
At the annual meeting of the Congregational Union, Samuel Ward was formally introduced to the body by the Secretary, Rev. George Smith of Trinity Independent Chapel, in company with Rev. Charles Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe whom he had not met before. A dinner for the Congregational Ministers and delegates was organised at Radley's Hotel, at which Samuel Ward gave his first London anti-slavery speech about the need for financial support in Canada:
Samuel Ward's visit to London was, he considered, at a most fortunate time for his fund-raising endeavour, because: "of the twofold fact that Uncle Tom's Cabin was in every body's hands and heart, and its gifted authoress was the English people's guest. For anti-slavery purposes, a more favourable time could not have been chosen for visiting England". As Samuel Ward further explained, "When Mrs. Stowe arrived in England... the book from the one side of the Atlantic, the address (by James Sherman) from the other side... awakened more attention to the anti-slavery cause in England, in 1853, than had existed since the agitation of the emancipation question in 1832" . Ward, having met Mrs. Stowe at the house of Rev. James Sherman next door to his Surrey Chapel on Blackfriars Road, in May 1853, was invited to stay at the 'Surrey Chapel Parsonage' along with Mrs Stowe's husband, the Rev. Dr. Stowe, and brother Rev. C. Beecher, for three weeks.
On 7 June 1853 Samuel Ward was able to deliver his major London anti-slavery speech, and had secured 'Lord' Shaftesbury to take the chair. Ward's address had a successful impact, for almost immediately - 21 June - it led to the formation of a London Committee to seek financial support for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. The Committee comprised 'Lord' Shaftesbury, Rev. J. Sherman, and S. H. Horman-Fisher, with G. W. Alexander its treasurer. This led to several months of hectic speaking engagements for Samuel Ward. He received invitations to speak at the London Missionary Society, kindred charities, and the pulpits of the most distinguished Dissenting divines in the land. Travelling in these causes took him to almost every county in England, and then on to Scotland. After just ten months, some £1,200 had been donated and it was possible to bring the organising committee to a close. A final, large meeting was held at Crosby Hall on the 20th of March, 1854, chaired by Samuel Gurney, where Samuel Ward was accompanied by many of those who had helped him - Rev. James Sherman, Samuel Horman Horman-Fisher, L. A. Chamerovzow, Esq., Rev. James Hamilton D.D., Rev. John Macfarlane, and Josiah Conder.
Samuel Ward' success enabled the Anti-slavery society of Canada to finance its work in support of escaped slaves from the USA, and in the following year, 1855 Ward published his influential book recounting all that he had achieved. The proceeds enabled him to retire to Jamaica.
Samuel Ringgold Ward died in 1866 after spending his last eleven years of life as a minister and farmer in Jamaica.