Henry Chapman (1771-1846)
Merchant, of Boston & a Leader of the Anti-Slavery Movement
He was orphaned when still a boy and became a self-made businessman in Boston for over 50-years, marrying into the Brahmin elite. It was said of him: "Great energy, a spirit of enterprise, which tempted fortune in many channels, a fertility of resource, which no difficulties exhausted, made him a successful merchant". He was one of the earliest supporters of William Lloyd Garrison and the Anti-Slavery enterprise. He and his wife, Sarah, joined the abolitionists in 1834, despite the objections of William Ellery Channing and the condemnation of their closest friends. Garrison's sons wrote, "the elder Chapman was the only one of those then reckoned the Boston merchants par excellence to make the anti-slavery cause his own". Henry and his son were, "almost the only, if not the only, mercantile houses in the country which sacrificed a profitable Southern business to their deep conviction of the sin of slavery" (The Liberator, 1846).