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 45-year long career in Reform touches on every territory of the Benevolent Empire. His writings are strongly argued, but his fame 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. But his every scheduled appearance could lead to rotten eggs and threats of bodily harm - and often did. 

His support of women's rights was well ahead of that 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 well 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, learning farming and starting the 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 Female Academy run by Prudence Crandall, as he assumes editorship of The Unionist in Brooklyn, CT

1835-1837 - Boston and Anti-Slavery Agent in Massachusetts

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

1842-1843 - marriage to Gertrude Kimber and editing role in Vermont

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

1856-1861 - Return to Plainfield - helping with elder care

1861-1878 - Northampton, Massachusetts - leading Free Congregational Association, continued anti-slavery activism, death of Gertrude (1869).

His 1878 death occurred when he was hit by a train; while he lingered for a few days the injuries proved ultimately 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