Benjamin Lundy, a friend of freedom seekers and a philanthropist, was born on January 4, 1789 in Hardwick, Warren County, NJ. A Quaker by birth, Lundy learned of the evils of slavery in Wheeling, VA, where he worked as an apprentice from 1808 to 1812. From this moment on Lundy promised to expose the evils of slavery and the slave trade and to devote his life to the anti-slavery cause. Lundy was responsible for a number of anti-slavery publications across the North, including The Philanthropist, and he founded the anti-slavery paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, in Mount Pleasant, OH.

On a number of occasions Lundy was harshly denounced by slaveholders. In January, 1827 he was assaulted and seriously injured by a slave trader, Austin Woolfolk. Lundy fulfilled his promise to denounce slavery, however, and between September of 1829 and March of 1830, he collaborated with famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on editing the paper. Before his death in August of 1839, Lundy visited a number of sites where freedom seekers and emancipated African Americans might be able to settle. Lundy’s last project was the revival of his paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, which he worked on until his death in Illinois.