Michigan Anti-Slavery Newspapers
© Courtesy of the Ann Arbor District Library and the Bentley Historical Library
In 1838 or 1839, William and Nicholas Sullivan published the American Freeman,
Michigan’s first abolitionist paper. Within a year of production, Seymour B. Treadwell
took over the paper to stabilize it, but financial troubles led him to dissolve the paper
entirely. Treadwell started another paper called the Michigan Freeman. In 1941, the
Michigan Anti-Slavery Convention elected Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley to create
the Signal of Liberty. Based in Ann Arbor, the Signal of Liberty was the most successful
abolitionist paper in the state.
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Several works credit activist Methodists and brothers William and Nicholas Sullivan
for publishing the first abolitionist paper in Michigan Territory, the American
Freeman, from a small printing office in Jackson around 1838 or 1839 (Landon 63).
Seymour B. Treadwell apparently took over the sporadic paper within a year and
hired Edwin R. Powell as pressman and compositor. Lack of financial support
caused Treadwell to disband the paper after only three months, but he appears to
have restarted another abolitionist paper called the Michigan Freeman soon after he
dissolved the American Freeman. The Michigan Freeman had approximately 800
subscribers (Barnard 43, Quist 331).
Early in 1841, attendees of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Convention decided that they
wanted to produce a more consistent paper to advance the cause of antislavery and
to promote public support for the Liberty Party. Convention members elected
Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley to create a new paper, the Signal of Liberty. Foster
was a well-connected farmer and tanner—his father was a U.S. senator from Rhode
Island. Beckley was an Ann Arbor-based merchant and a Methodist preacher. Under
their direction and with support from the centralized Michigan Anti-Slavery Society,
the Signal began with 500 subscribers but approached 2,000 by the middle of the
decade (Quist 331). The paper rolled off the presses regularly until 1848, when
Beckley died and financial concerns forced Foster to resign.
Using a subscription list and census data, historian John Quist was able to create a
portrait of who read the Signal. A fifth of subscribers lived in Washtenaw County,
but newspaper agents solicited subscriptions throughout the state, particularly the
southern counties that were linked by the new railroad. Ninety-one percent of
Michigan’s subscribers were white men and most of them were farmers. Five
subscribers were white women, and ten were African-American males (Quist 334).
Young men between the ages of 20 and 29 were the most likely to subscribe,
perhaps because they were most influenced by the wave of religious revivals that
swept through Michigan in the 1830s (Quist 343).
The paper covered topics ranging from stories about slave catchers to temperance
and the role of women in the antislavery movement. With the exception of Jane Van
Vleet’s Star of Freedom, published briefly in Niles in 1845, the Signal of Liberty was
Michigan’s only long-standing antislavery paper.
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Works Cited & Further Reading
Barnard, F.A. American Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Michigan
Volume. Cincinnati: Western Biographical Publishing Company, 1878.
Landon, Fred. "Benjamin Lundy in Illinois." Journal of the Illinois State Historical
Society (1908-1984) 33, no. 1 (1940): 57-67.
Quist, John W. "The Great Majority of Our Subscribers Are Farmers": The Michigan
Abolitionist Constituency of the 1840s." Journal of the Early Republic 14, no. 3
(1994): 325-58.
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