Charles Calistus Burleigh: An Unkempt but Powerful Force for Abolition

I. Overview of a Remarkable Life

Charles Calistus Burleigh deserves a book-length study. His forty-five years of activity in Reform touched on every corner of the Benevolent Empire. His writings are strongly argued, reflecting his training in law, but his renown came from his powers as an orator and editor. He made substantial contributions to the Abolitionist movement in four different states - Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Pennsylvania - with speaking tours taking him to many more.

His principles of non-violence and non-resistance were dramatically tested, seemingly every year. He was present at such famous incidents of violence as the ending of the Canterbury Female Academy, the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison, and the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall. Indeed, his every scheduled appearance carried the possibility of rotten eggs  and threats of bodily harm. 

His support of women's rights was well ahead of most men, in both practical and philosophic terms. His marriage to Gertrude Kimber was a true love match, and his respect for women activist/thinkers like Lucretia Mott and Abby Kelley Foster comes through in his reports on their orations. His ability to work cooperatively with his African-American colleagues, in particular Robert Purvis, Charles Remond, and Stephen Gloucester, will be recounted in detail on this website. 

A tentative division of the periods of Charles Calistus Burleigh's life is presented here, subject to further research and refinement:

1810-1831 - youth, education, farming and commencing his study of law, all in Plainfield, Connecticut area

1831-1832 - studying law in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and getting first taste of editing with Anti-Masonic newspaper We the People

1833-1834 - major involvement in Canterbury Academy for Black Women, run by Prudence Crandall; he edited The Unionist in Brooklyn, CT

1835-1837 - Based in Massachusetts, worked with William Lloyd Garrison & assisted in editing The Liberator; became an Anti-Slavery Agent

1837-1842 - Philadelphia - assisting Benjamin Lundy, travel to Haiti, Pennsylvania Hall, editing The Pennsylvania Freeman, courting Gertrude Kimber

1842-1843 - Marriage and Vermont - wedded Gertrude Kimber, and took a one-year stint editing an anti-slavery paper in Vermont

1843-1856 - Philadelphia - helping edit The Pennsylvania Freeman, anti-slavery lecturing and leadership

1856-1861 - Return to Plainfield - helping with elder care and farm, as well as continuing anti-slavery activism

1861-1878 - Northampton, Massachusetts - leading Free Congregational Association, continued anti-slavery activism, involvement in Woman's Rights and Black suffrage; death of Gertrude (1869) - spent one year in central Illinois

His 1878 death occurred when he was hit by a train; he lingered for a few days until the injuries proved fatal. 

II. The Notable Appearance of Charles Calistus Burleigh

He wore his hair long, with ringlets in it. His clothes were often disheveled. He wore a beard regardless of the fashion of the day. And both friends and enemies commented constantly on his appearance, tsk-tsk-ing him for his oddities.

Here is one example of how is appearance was handled by the press:

Charles C. Burleigh, of the family of natural poets and orators, arose, his long flowing sandy beard and hair, and plain attire giving him a very unfashionable appearance and causing people unacquainted with him to open their mouths and eyes in ridicule and astonishment, but when he opened his mouth they generally closed theirs, for he is a most eloquent and logical speaker, and most perfectly at home on the question of non-resistance. For about half an hour he poured forth a torrent of eloquence and logic, which, in theory, looked most beautiful and sublime, but through all this beauty there was a feeling pervading the audience that this perverse generation was not perfect, angelic, and holy enough to carry on a principle which evidently belongs so far down in the unmeasured and unmeasurable distance of "the good time coming."

An opponent of Immediate Abolition, writing in the Cincinnati Times in April 1852, described how Charles Burleigh:

with locks like Absalom, and a beard that would awake the envy of a buried patriarch, spoke in a voice rendered husky by too much hallooing and singing of Anti-Slavery anthems. He is a fanatic by nature, and an abolitionist by trade and occupation, with all of Douglass' exaggeration of sentiment, and without its mitigating reason, in causes personal to himself.

We at the Burleigh project have a file on this issue, and will soon digest, annotate, and upload it. But for now, these two quotes say all you need to know:

FINISH UP THE WORK.—At an early stage of the anti-Slavery agitation, sundry of those more prominent on the Abolition platform concurred in leaving their hair and beards to grow as nature dictated. In due season, one of these—(Charles C. Burleigh,)—was waited on by a committee or remonstrance against this invocation of new prejudice and odium upon the already overladen cause. He heard the remonstrants patiently to the end, and then announced that he should not abate one hair. “For,” said he, “I have devoted my future efforts to the over-throw and extinction of all Slavery; and, if I am to be controlled by others’ tastes inn the matter of my own hair and beard there will be at least one slave left, though all the negroes on earth should be freed; and I cannot work for aught less than complete and universal freedom.”

This piece may seem quaint and amusing, but there is an emphasis on bodily autonomy that speaks to our own age - as well as to the universality of Charles C. Burleigh's understanding of freedom.

The most important assessment of any one's appearance, though, should come from their spouse, and Gertrude's opinion silences all other complainers when she says that Charles:

is the best man that ever was, & spite of what Old Mr. Stowe says, as reported in Harper, is so good looking that my modesty will not permit me to tell all I think about that!

References

“Finish up the Work,” The Recorder (Greenfield, Massachusetts), March 1, 1869, p. 1

Gertrude Kimber Burleigh, letter to Samuel May Jr., November 14, 1857 -  online from the Boston Public Library Abolitionist collections"

"Non-Resistance," The Providence Mirror, quoted in Frederick Douglass' Paper,  November 20, 1851

"Spirit of the Press in Regard to the Cincinnati Convention," Frederick Douglass' Paper, May 13, 1852 - an extensive reprint from the Cincinnati

III. Charles Calistus Burleigh in the 1830s: Canterbury, Boston, Philadelphia, Haiti & New York City

John Jay Chapman wrote of Charles C. Burleigh that he "was turned from the career of a brilliant advocate and was transformed for life into an evangelist of liberty, through the courage" of Prudence Crandall. 

References

John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison. Second Editon. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921.

IV. Charles Calistus Burleigh in the 1840s: Schism, Romance, and the Struggle for Universal Freedom

The schism of the Abolitionist movement in 1840 was traumatic, and led to destructive horizontal rhetoric among Abolitionists who were turning against each other - patterns all too typical of the history of progressive movements. While, in retrospect, we can see that attacking slavery along separate moral and political lines was likely beneficial to the ultimate success of that movement, it didn't feel that way to the participants. Charles C. Burleigh was a key figure in the schismatic struggles, present at many of the key meetings that led to the "Old" and "New" organizations (American Anti-Slavery Society, and American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, respectively). 

While there is much more research needed to determine precisely where Charles C. Burleigh stood at the key moment in 1840, it seems that he wanted to avoid a schism, by suggesting that the AA-SS could hold both political abolitionists and moral suasion abolitionists, but that the organization as an organization would not undertake political work or endorse candidates. However, once the schism occurred, Charles was, and always remained, a staunch Garrisonian moral suasionist. 

But not everyone in the Burleigh family was in the same camp. Charles and William, the two most prominent Burleigh family siblings at the time, stood firmly in opposite camps, with William embracing political Abolition. There are hints though, that the two brothers still respected each other - they advertised each others' books in their respective papers, and William's poetry volume was given as a gift from Charles and Gertrude Burleigh to a friend of theirs.

V. Charles Calistus Burleigh in the 1850s: The Growing Crisis, Loss and Return to Plainfield

Death of mother, return to Plainfield in the latter years of the decade

VI. The 1860s - War and Peace, A New Spiritual Vision, Gertrude's Death

There are not yet sufficient materials from the years of the Civil War to determine how a pacifist like Charles dealt with this wholescale abandonment of the ideal of moral suasion. But the founding of the Free Congregational Society suggests one response. Far from a retreat into personal spirituality, the Free Congregational Society combined total freedom of religious belief with a commitment to radical social change. The speakers list is studded with names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and their ilk. The list will be included in a later page on the Free Congregational Society. 

Gertrude's death 

VII. The Final Decade and Its Sudden End - Legacy

The last years of Charles Calistus Burleigh's life are still coming together. He spent a year in Illinois, for instance, but returned to Northampton. More research will be necessary to determine what he did in the Prairie State.