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Clarkson, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Clarkson, Thomas, 1760–1846, English abolitionist. He devoted most of his life to agitation against slavery, and the voluminous information that he gathered on the slave trade helped to influence Pa...

asylum

(Encyclopedia)asylum əsīˈləm [key], extension of hospitality and protection to a fugitive and the place where such protection is offered. The use of temples and churches for this purpose in ancient and medieval...

Vesey, Denmark

(Encyclopedia)Vesey, Denmark, 1767?–1822, African-American leader. After many years as a slave he won (1800) $1,500 in a lottery and purchased his freedom. Intelligent and energetic, he acquired considerable weal...

Napoleon, Louis

(Encyclopedia)Napoleon, Louis, 1800–1881, African American abolitionist. He lived in a community of free blacks in Staten Island, N.Y., working as a porter and furniture polisher while secretly operating as an �...

Vian, Boris

(Encyclopedia)Vian, Boris bôrēsˈ vyäN [key], 1920–59, French novelist. He patterned his literary style on that of terse American crime fiction. His best-known work is J'irai cracher sur vos tombes [I will spi...

Coffin, Levi

(Encyclopedia)Coffin, Levi, 1798–1877, American abolitionist, b. North Carolina. In 1826 he moved to the Quaker settlement of Newport (now Fountain City), Ind., where he kept a store until 1847. His home became a...

Jókai, Mór

(Encyclopedia)Jókai, Mór mōr yōˈkoi [key], 1825–1904, Hungarian romantic novelist and journalist. Jókai was a fervent nationalist who, after the Hungarian defeat in 1848, became a fugitive from the Austrian...

Baker, Sir Samuel White

(Encyclopedia)Baker, Sir Samuel White, 1821–93, English explorer in Africa. He explored the Nile tributaries in Ethiopia in 1861–62. Going up the Nile from Cairo, he reached Gondokoro in 1863. He continued his ...

Mackenzie

(Encyclopedia)Mackenzie, river, c.1,120 mi (1,800 km) long, issuing from Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, and flowing generally NW to the Arctic Ocean through a great delta. Between Great Slave Lake...

abolitionists

(Encyclopedia)abolitionists, in U.S. history, particularly in the three decades before the Civil War, members of the movement that agitated for the compulsory emancipation of the slaves. Abolitionists are distingui...