In an era when many pastors stood on the fence, or worse, used the Bible to justify slavery with verses like “Slaves, obey your masters as you would Jesus”, one man chose to defy both his peers and the law. Reverend John Rankin, a Presbyterian minister from Tennessee who later settled in Ripley, Ohio, became one of the most fearless and influential abolitionists of his time. Guided by conscience and faith, Rankin helped more than two thousand enslaved Africans escape bondage and find freedom through the Underground Railroad.
Born on February 4, 1793, in Dandridge, Tennessee, John Rankin was raised in a devout Presbyterian family. His mother, Jane Steele Rankin, was a fierce opponent of slavery, and her convictions shaped her son’s lifelong sense of moral duty. After studying under abolitionist minister Samuel Doak at Washington College Academy, Rankin graduated in 1816 and began preaching in Tennessee.
It didn’t take long for his sermons to draw attention. While most preachers of the time avoided speaking against slavery, or openly defended it from the pulpit, Rankin boldly condemned it as a sin against God and humanity, even though the same Bible he preached from contained verses that told slaves to obey their masters. His willingness to challenge both the church and society cost him dearly. When elders of his Tennessee congregation warned him to stop preaching against slavery or leave the state, he chose the latter.
Before leaving, Rankin co-founded the Tennessee Manumission Society in 1815 and briefly settled in Kentucky, where he ministered to the Concord Presbyterian Church in Carlisle. There, he opened a school for enslaved Africans, a radical act in a slaveholding state. The school’s existence infuriated local mobs, who repeatedly attacked it until Rankin and his students were driven from one location to another, from a schoolhouse, to an empty home, and finally to a friend’s kitchen, until violence and intimidation drove his students away entirely.
Undeterred, Rankin continued north with his wife and young children, crossing the icy Ohio River into Ripley on New Year’s Eve of 1821. There, he built a new life, and a new mission. He became pastor of Ripley Presbyterian Church and founded a boys’ academy where a young Ulysses S. Grant would later study. But Rankin’s home life became equally important to his ministry.
In 1829, he moved his growing family to a large house atop Liberty Hill, overlooking the Ohio River. From its windows, one could see the slave state of Kentucky on the opposite shore. There, Rankin and his wife, Jean Lowry Rankin, transformed their home into a stop on the Underground Railroad. A lantern in the window, or sometimes raised high on a pole, signaled freedom seekers that it was safe to cross the river. A hidden staircase led up the steep hill to their house, where Africans fleeing slavery could find food, shelter, and guidance northward.
For more than forty years, the Rankin home was a lifeline on the Underground Railroad. John Rankin estimated that he sheltered as many as twelve fugitives at a time, helping more than two thousand in total reach freedom. Entire families passed through his door, including one woman who, in the dead of winter, crossed the frozen Ohio River carrying her baby in her arms. Rankin later recounted her story to Calvin Stowe, whose wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe, used it as inspiration for Eliza’s dramatic escape in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Rankin’s influence also spread through his writing. When he discovered that his brother Thomas in Virginia had purchased slaves, he poured his outrage into a series of letters condemning the practice. Those letters were later published in 1826 under the title Letters on Slavery. The book deeply influenced abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who later called Rankin his “anti-slavery father.”
Despite facing constant threats, his house was attacked, and bounties were placed on his head, Rankin never wavered. When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it a federal crime to assist runaways, he publicly declared, “Disobedience to the enactment is obedience to God.”
Rankin’s activism did not stop at the Underground Railroad. He played a central role in founding the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, and his leadership helped form the Free Presbyterian Church, which rejected any connection to slaveholding.
John Rankin passed away on March 18, 1886, at the age of 93, leaving behind a legacy of faith, courage, and moral conviction.
More than a century later, in 2013, his legacy was formally honored when he was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame in Peterboro, New York. Today, his home still stands on Liberty Hill in Ripley, preserved as a National Historic Landmark. From its windows, visitors can gaze upon the same Ohio River where enslaved Africans once crossed toward freedom, a freedom that Rankin and his family courageously kept alive with unwavering faith and compassion.
Sources:
https://www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org/john-rankin.html
How John Rankin, Ohio’s “father of abolitionism,” helped 2,000 people reach freedom
