Draft:Ebenezer Davies

  • Comment: His book, American Scenes and Christian Slavery might be more notable than the Davies himself? With newspapers.com down it is hard to know for sure. How would you feel about a WP article about his book (which does has significant coverage)? PigeonChickenFish (talk) 23:28, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: These all appear to be glancing mentions, usually when he's being quoted, rather than sigcov. asilvering (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: I think you forgot to find the answer to the question: "Is this Ebenezer Davies the father of Matthew Henry Davies and John Mark Davies???" included in the article. Ca talk to me! 12:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: Davies should link here

Ebenezer Davies (1808–1882) was a British missionary, Methodist minister, abolitionist and author. He traveled to the United States in the 1840s[1] and wrote about his travel experience and the slave trade, which was written in the form of a series of letters (epistolary), titled American Scenes and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States.[2][3]

Before his book on this trip was published, he published letters about the trip. His account of the trip discusses life in the U.S. during the 1840s in Ohio, the river Mississippi and the cities of New Orleans, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.[4] He depicted economic vitality in the northern free states and backwardness and stagnation in the south.[1] He noted the "terrible din" of slave auctioneers "disposing of God's images to the highest bidders."[5] In writing about New Orleans he stated that Anglo-American influenced "Southerners seem to have no heart— no feeling, except that of love to the almighty dollar."[6] He decried the "horrid system which makes it a crime to teach a Negro to read the Word of God."[7]

The account is noted as being "witty". In 1849 the Athenaeum criticized the manner and emotion in his criticisms calling for reason and while noting it agreed with him on the subject of slavery, "most terrible of con- temporary social evils".[8]

Davies was missionary minister at the Mission Chapel in New Amsterdam, British Guiana (now Guyana, formerly Berbice).[9]

Publications

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  • Davies, Ebenezer (1849). American Scenes and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States. London, England: John Snow. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511703140. ISBN 978-1-108-00387-2.[10]

See also

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References

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