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TAPPAN, ARTHUR. 



T 



TAPPAN, ARTHTTR, an eminent American 

 merchant and philanthropist, born in Northamp- 

 ton, Mass., May 22, 1786 ; died at New Haven, 

 Conn., July 23, 1865. While yet an infant he 

 barely escaped death by suffocation from being 

 locked up in one of the folded bedsteads which 

 were in common use in those days. When dis- 

 covered, life was almost extinct. A headache, 

 to which he was subject daily through life, may 

 be ascribed to this accident. He left home at 

 fourteen, and served seven years according to 

 the custom of the times as " apprentice " to a 

 hardware merchant in Boston ; and when he 

 eame of age set up business in Portland, but 

 soon removed to Montreal, as a larger field, 

 where he entered into a general importing line 

 with much success. 



On the breaking out of the war of 1812, all 

 Americans in Canada were required to take the 

 oath of allegiance to the king, or leave the coun- 

 try. Choosing the latter alternative, Mr. Tap- 

 pan withdrew at short notice and at a great 

 pecuniary sacrifice. 



In 1814 he engaged, in company with his 

 brother Lewis then living in Boston who fur- 

 nished the capital, in the business of importing 

 British dry goods in New York. The new firm 

 were successful the first year, but soon after 

 losses came upon them which swept away their 

 profits and most of their capital. The partner- 

 ship having been dissolved, Arthur continued 

 the business at the same place, selling chiefly 

 for cash. His method of conducting his busi- 

 ness was peculiar, and called out many predic- 

 tions of failure. Buying his goods on a credit 

 of from four to six months, he sold them at cost 

 for cash, looking to the interest of the money 

 thus obtained as his source of profit. In spite 

 of all predictions to the contrary, however, he 

 prospered, and gradually went into a credit 

 business, which he continued to carry on with 

 success for twenty years. The great commer- 

 cial storm of 1837 forced him to suspend pay- 

 ment. He made an arrangement with his credit- 

 ors, and paid, within the time agreed upon, the 

 total amount of his debts, $1,100,000, much of 

 it by raising money at great sacrifices, when it 

 was a common thing to hire money at two and 

 a half per cent, per month. The struggle was 

 too much to recover from, and in 1842 he passed 

 through the process of bankruptcy, in which he 

 ordered every thing he had to be sold, even to 

 his wife's gold watch. Some years afterwards 

 he became interested in the "Mercantile 

 Agency," first established by his brother Lewis, 

 and from this was able to acquire the means of 

 a comfortable support for his family. But 

 well known as he was as a merchant, he was 

 far more widely known for hia great benevo- 

 lence, and Cor the generous zeal with which he 

 always advocated and supported any movement 



for the benefit of his fellow-men. He was one 

 of the early abolitionists, and cheerfully took 

 a large share of the obloquy and persecution 

 which was visited upon that despised class in 

 its darkest days. When Garrison was im- 

 prisoned in Baltimore for an article in his paper 

 upon the domestic slave trade, Mr. Tappan 

 paid the fine and released him from jail, and his 

 name, from that time forward, was as notorious 

 and almost as much hated at the South as that 

 of Garrison himself. 



It was after he removed to New York that he 

 first made a public profession of religion, uniting 

 with the church in Murray Street, then under 

 the care of the eminent Dr. John M. Mason. As 

 success in business became assured, he began 

 to practise liberality upon a scale much more 

 elevated than had been common even among 

 Christian merchants. He established the " Jour- 

 nal of Commerce " at a very large expense, in 

 order to have a paper in the city that was in- 

 dependent of the support of the theatres. He 

 was one of the chief founders of the American 

 Tract Society, New York, and the largest donor 

 to the first building of the Society. It was his 

 motion in the Board of Managers, accompanied 

 by an offer of $10,000 for the object, that led 

 the American Bible Society to undertake the 

 grand work of giving a Bible to every family in 

 the United States that would receive it. It was 

 his endowment that set up the Lane Seminary 

 at Cincinnati, and prevailed on Dr. Beecher to 

 leave his church in Boston for a post of labor 

 and sacrifice in the West. And when the trus- 

 tees, in the absence of Dr. Beecher, suppressed 

 the freedom of speech there, his donation 

 erected Tappan Hall at Oberlin as a refuge for 

 the exiled students of Lane. These are but a 

 part of his public gifts. His private charities, 

 for the relief of every sort of wants, were in- 

 cessant and innumerable. Nor did he ever al- 

 low the calls of business or the gifts of money 

 to be a substitute for personal kind offices in 

 visiting the poor, the sick, and the afflicted, in 

 which few men were so exemplary. 



In the spring of the year 1833, feeling the 

 necessity of having an Antislavery paper in 

 New York in aid of the "Liberator," which he 

 also liberally supported, he established the 

 "Emancipator " at his sole expense, paying the 

 salary or the editor and all expenses. As the 

 interest rapidly deepened, he invited a few gen- 

 tlemen to meet at his lodgings, to confer to- 

 gether on what ought to be done for the aboli- 

 tion of slavery by the efforts of Christian wis- 

 dom and benevolence. These meetings were 

 continued weekly for several months, until at 

 length a public meeting was called for the 2d 

 of October, 1833, at Clinton Hall, to form the 

 New York City Antislavery Society. The 

 meeting was prevented by a huge mob, insti- 



