Amos Dresser was a minister and abolitionist who, in 1835, while traveling in the South to raise money for his education, was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, and publicly whipped, not for any violent act, but for the “crime” of possessing abolitionist literature.
Amos Dresser was born on December 17, 1812, in Peru, Massachusetts. Orphaned at a young age, he grew up under challenging circumstances but showed a strong dedication to faith and education. By the 1830s, he was studying at Oneida Institute of Science and Industry in New York, a progressive manual labor school known for its strong anti-slavery convictions. His studies were aimed at preparing him for the ministry, but his convictions about slavery soon placed him in danger.
At Oneida, Dresser became part of a group of fiery young activists under Theodore Weld, who later moved to Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. There, they organized what is regarded as the first major wave of student activism in the United States: the Lane Debates of 1834. These students, later known as the “Lane Rebels,” defied school authorities who tried to silence their discussions on slavery.
At the time, slavery was both a moral crisis and a political powder keg. The 1830s were years of heightened tension: abolitionist societies were growing in the North, their pamphlets and newspapers stirring outrage across the South. Pro-slavery leaders responded with violence, censorship, and “gag rules” that sought to prevent debate.
In the South, even the possession of abolitionist literature was treated as a grave threat, equated with inciting rebellion. The memory of Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion, which left dozens of whites dead and led to the mass killing of Black people in Virginia, still haunted slaveholding society. Any Northerner carrying anti-slavery tracts was seen as a dangerous agitator capable of sparking another revolt. Into this atmosphere stepped Amos Dresser, a young Bible salesman with abolitionist ties.
In the summer of 1835, Dresser traveled south to earn money for his education by selling copies of the Cottage Bible. His journey took him to Nashville, Tennessee, where, by chance, townspeople discovered abolitionist pamphlets among his belongings.
He was immediately seized and brought before a self-appointed “vigilance committee” of some sixty prominent Nashville citizens. This was no legitimate court, but rather a kangaroo tribunal assembled to protect slavery at all costs.
The committee accused Dresser of being an active member of an anti-slavery society, possessing pamphlets they claimed could stir rebellion among enslaved Africans, and displaying those pamphlets in public.
His sentence was swift and brutal: twenty lashes on his bare back, carried out in public. Nashville residents gathered to watch as a young man, guilty only of holding anti-slavery convictions, was whipped like a criminal. The committee even justified their cruelty by claiming they had spared his life; otherwise, they said, he would have been lynched.
Dresser left Nashville in humiliation and pain, abandoning his horse and luggage. But rather than retreat into silence, he turned his ordeal into a weapon against slavery.
Back in the North, Dresser wrote and published his account of the Nashville whipping in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette. The American Anti-Slavery Society soon reprinted it, spreading his story widely. It became a powerful piece of abolitionist testimony, exposing the violence and intolerance of slaveholding society to a Northern audience.
Dresser began lecturing across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Ohio, often sharing his experience as living proof of Southern brutality. His story was not just one of personal suffering, but a warning: if slavery required such violence to silence those who oppose it, then it was incompatible with American ideals of liberty and Christian morality.
Dresser eventually returned to his studies, graduating from Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1839. That same year, he married Adeline Smith, and together they traveled to Jamaica as missionaries, joining fellow abolitionists in preaching to freed Black Jamaicans following Britain’s abolition of slavery.
Over the years, Dresser served as a pastor in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Nebraska. He also taught at Olivet Institute in Michigan, an abolitionist-founded school, and worked alongside Elihu Burritt in the League of Universal Brotherhood, promoting peace and international cooperation. A pacifist at heart, he authored The Bible Against War in 1849, arguing that Christianity opposed violence in all forms.
After the death of his first wife, Dresser remarried Ann Jane Gray, another Oberlin alumna, and continued his ministry. Together they traveled through Europe, lecturing on abolition and temperance, before returning to the United States.
Dresser spent his later years pastoring churches across the Midwest and finally settled in Kansas with family members. He died in Lawrence, Kansas, on February 4, 1904, at the age of 91.
Sources:
https://lawrenceks.gov/lprd/parks/sesquicentennialpoint/steps/1904dresser/
https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelBios/AmosDresser.html
https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll18/id/3263/
