Garnet, Henry Highland
1815-1882 · Contribution: 1842-1865
Delivered the militant 1843 “Call to Rebellion” speech urging enslaved Americans to rise against their enslavers, later became the first Black American to preach a sermon inside the U.S. House of Representatives in 1865, and served as U.S. Minister to Liberia
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Impact on the world
Born enslaved in Maryland and escaped with his family at age nine, Garnet trained at the African Free School alongside future civil rights leader Alexander Crummell, also profiled in this collection, before Presbyterian ordination in 1842 made him pastor of Troy, New York's Liberty Street Presbyterian Church, where he sheltered fugitives from slavery. At the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, Garnet delivered his “Address to the Slaves of the United States,” known as the “Call to Rebellion,” urging enslaved people to refuse labor and, if necessary, use force to win their freedom — a speech so radical that Frederick Douglass and the convention itself declined to endorse it, though it is credited with influencing John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. On February 12, 1865, days after Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, Garnet became the first Black American to deliver a sermon in the U.S. House of Representatives; he went on to lead New York's Shiloh Presbyterian Church and serve as president of Avery College in Pittsburgh before President James Garfield appointed him U.S. Minister and Consul General to Liberia in 1881, fulfilling his lifelong wish to set foot in Africa shortly before his death there.
Life & background
Born into slavery on December 23, 1815, in Kent County, Maryland, Garnet escaped with his family in 1824 and was educated at New York's African Free School, Noyes Academy, and Oneida Institute. Ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1842, he pastored congregations in Troy and New York City, served as a missionary in Jamaica and lecturer in Britain, and died in Monrovia, Liberia, on February 13, 1882, just months into his appointment as U.S. Minister to that country.
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica; BlackPast.org (via Maryland 400); New York History Rocks
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