James Thome was the son of a Kentucky slaveholder.
But, from early on, he harbored uneasy feelings
about slavery, and in 1834, that uneasiness turned
to unqualified abhorrence when as a theological
student he attended an extended debate on the morality
of slavery. Soon Thome was serving as a traveling
agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and
by 1837, he and a companion, Horace Kimball, were
conducting a study for the society on the results
of slave emancipation in the British West Indies.
In the report on this trip, Emancipation in the
West Indies, Thome and Kimball offered evidence
that firmly refuted the prevailing belief among
abolitionists that slavery could only be eliminated
gradually because most slaves would need to be prepared
for life in freedom. As a result, the American Anti-Slavery
Society shifted from its advocacy of gradual emancipation
to a demand for “unconditional freedom without
delay.”
In late 1839, Thome fled Ohio, where he was teaching,
to avoid arrest for assisting a runaway Kentucky slave
in his escape to freedom. He sought refuge in Fairfield,
Connecticut, and while he was living there, it is thought
that the artist Nathaniel Jocelyn, who was also an abolitionist,
painted this portrait. In the picture, Thome holds the
pamphlet American Slavery As It Is by Theodore
Weld, a tract that electrified the North with its portrayal
of the harshness of slavery and that greatly moved Thome
when he read it.
|
