Haynes, Lemuel

By: Scott A. Miltenberger

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Haynes, Lemuel

Sex:  Male

Born:  West Hartford, Connecticut, United States
18 July 1753

Died:  Granville, New York, United States
28 September 1833

Activity/Profession:  Congregational Clergyperson, Patriot (American Revolution)

(b. 18 July 1753; d. 28 September 1833),
Revolutionary War soldier, Congregational minister, and antislavery advocate.

Scholars have written more about the religious teachings and writings of Lemuel Haynes than about his life, yet his beliefs were born of his life experiences; each shaped the other, with profound consequences. Haynes was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, to an African father and a white mother. His parents deserted him before he was six months old, and Haynes was indentured to David Rose, a deacon at the Middle Granville Congregational Church. Raised as their son, Haynes worked the Roses' farm and attended the district school. While he was still quite young, he experienced an intense religious conversion at the sight of the aurora borealis. For the remainder of his life Haynes devoted himself to theology and the Bible—endeavors that the Roses happily encouraged. With their help and support he immersed himself in religious studies, reading not only the Bible but also the sermons of noted theologians, such as the evangelist George Whitefield. As an adolescent Haynes delivered sermons of his own at the Middle Granville church.

In 1774, with the conclusion of his indenture, Haynes became a minuteman and later joined the Continental army. Two years later he fought with Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys at Ticonderoga. In the army, perhaps inspired by his Revolutionary experiences, Haynes penned “Liberty Further Extended,” an attack on the institution of slavery. “Liberty Further Extended” blended Revolutionary political rhetoric and Calvinist theology to condemn slavery as a sin. It declared that, just like the slaveholders who were fighting for their own freedom, “an African … has an undeniable right to his Liberty.” For nearly a century and a half “Liberty Further Extended” was lost to historians and scholars, who thus did not realize the extent of Haynes's opposition to slavery.

Lemuel Haynes. This portrait was the frontispiece of his biography, Sketches of the Life and Character of the Reverend Lemuel Haynes, A.M. (1833), by Timothy Mather Cooley.

New York Public Library, Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

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After the Revolution, Haynes declined an opportunity to study at Dartmouth College. Instead, he returned to the Rose farm and studied classical languages with the clergymen Daniel Farrand and William Bradford. On 20 November 1780 Haynes passed a rigorous examination and was licensed to preach at the Middle Granville church—possibly becoming the first black person to lead a white church. He married a member of his congregation, a white schoolteacher named Elizabeth Babbitt, with whom he had ten children. In 1785 the conservative New Light Association of Ministers in Litchfield, Connecticut, ordained Haynes a minister.

With his ordination Haynes became pastor to several Congregationalist churches in Connecticut, Vermont, and New York. His first appointment was to the all-white church in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1785. After two years, owing to the prejudice of several members, Haynes left and accepted the pulpit of a largely white church in Rutland, Vermont. Haynes remained at Rutland for the next thirty years, building a reputation as an erudite minister, evangelist, and intellectual. He led numerous revivals at the church and penned fifty-five hundred sermons. In 1801 he published “The Nature and Importance of True Republicanism,” which—until the discovery of “Liberty Further Extended”—historians believed to be his only statement on the subjects of race and slavery. In 1805 he achieved widespread notoriety with the publication of “Universal Salvation,” a sermon that refuted the claims of the Universalist minister Hosea Ballou. The previous year, in recognition of his religious work, Middlebury College had conferred upon Haynes an honorary master of arts degree, the first such honor ever granted to an African American.

Reverend Lemuel Haynes in the pulpit, as shown on an English papier-mâché tray (about 26 by 21 inches), early nineteenth century.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, gift of Lucy Truman Aldrich. Photograph by Erik Gould.

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In 1818 Haynes left Rutland. The parting was ostensibly mutual—an outgrowth of differences over politics: Haynes opposed the War of 1812, but unlike many of his fellow New Englanders he decried the proposed secession of the region from the union. Haynes evidently believed that racism played a role in his departure, telling friends that after thirty years Rutland ultimately found him to be a “nigger.”

For the remainder of his life Haynes ministered to congregations in Manchester, Vermont, and Granville, New York. At Manchester, where he served for four years, Haynes counseled two men, Stephen and Jesse Boorn, convicted in 1820 for the murder of their brother-in-law Russell Colvin, who had disappeared without a trace seven years earlier. He stood beside the men as they maintained their innocence, and thirty-seven days before their scheduled execution, Colvin returned. For his steadfast support of the Boorns, Haynes achieved considerable publicity; indeed, his account of the trials and tribulations of the two men, entitled Mystery Developed, became a decade-long best seller. In 1822 Haynes assumed the pulpit at Granville, where he ministered until his death in 1833.

Haynes's experiences growing up on the Roses' farm and later as a racially mixed, conservative New Light Congregational minister decisively shaped his social outlook. The Roses encouraged Haynes's intellectual endeavors and furnished him with a model of religious devotion. Their upbringing almost certainly directed Haynes toward the ministry—admittedly one of the few occupations available to mulattoes and free blacks in the early Republic. His theological grounding, moreover, was in a reactionary religious movement, New Light Congregationalism. The New Lights, drawing upon seventeenth-century Calvinist theology, encouraged people to recognize their inherent sinfulness. As a New Light minister Haynes extended this belief, arguing that in order for people to realize their spiritual responsibilities, they cannot be enslaved to one another. In this outlook he joined with eighteenth-century black antislavery writers and activists such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano in employing Calvinist theology to critique slavery. These black Calvinists maintained that liberty was essential to one's relationship with God. Haynes's life and career thus reveal some of the motives and ideas that animated many black writers, religious leaders, and activists in early America.

See also American Revolution; Black Church; Congregationalism and African Americans; Equiano, Olaudah; Indentured Servitude; Literature; Marriage, Mixed; Religion; Skin Color; and Wheatley, Phillis.

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