Who Sends Thee?

Above: A wax maquette of
the proposed life-size bronze sculpture
to be placed near the
Quaker Heritage Center at Wilmington College

Sculptor: Allen Cottrill

http://www.alancottrill.com/

Wilmington Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends is fundraising to make the sculpture a reality, and contribution checks should be made to:

Wilmington College, with the memo "Who Sends Thee?" sculpture Heritage Fund

Please send to:

Wilmington College
Office of College Advancement
Pyle Center Box 1307, 251 Ludovic Street
Wilmington, Ohio 45177-2499

Also see: Wilmington College ~ Wilmington, Ohio

The the visit of Isaac & Sarah Edwards Harvey with
Abraham Lincoln is the inspiration for the above sculpture.

Isaac Harvey had received the typical local common school education of the time but he also was an avid reader and a well-informed man. He was a farmer and owned 200 aces of land in Adams Township, Clinton Co., Ohio. He also owned a sawmill on his property. He was a devout Quaker and was politically a Republican.

The story of Isaac and Sarah’s journey to Washington D.C. to visit Abraham Lincoln is a wonderful example of how the individual “concerns” of a Quaker could lead him or her to put personal conviction into practice, no matter how difficult or seemingly impossible. Isaac, whose farm was near Wilmington, Ohio, had made it a point to go see the horrors of slavery himself. He had traveled by himself through the south to see the situation of the slaves. Consequently, he felt called to visit the president, Abraham Lincoln, to lay before him his belief that the Federal government should compensate southern slave owners for their slaves and then free them.

The story of Isaac and Sarah’s journey to Washington is enshrined in an article that was written by Nellie Blessing-Eyster and printed in the Harpers Monthly Magazine in September 1870. The story is also found in Henry W. Wilbur’s book President Lincoln’s Attitude towards Slavery and Emancipation (Philadelphia, Pa.: Jenkins, 140 on. 15th St., 1914).

The Blessing-Eykster version of the story stresses the simplicity of the Harveys, their somewhat spontaneous decision to go to Washington, and their good fortune of running into Salmon P. Chase, a fellow Ohioan and Secretary of the Treasury, who helped them get to see the president. However, it is evident from papers in the Robert T. Lincoln collection at the Library of Congress, that Isaac Harvey had taken some time to plan his trip and had written to a number of politicians for letters of introduction in his quest to see Abraham Lincoln. There is also some question as to the actual date of their meeting with Lincoln, either in 1861 or 1862. It could be possible that Nellie Blessing-Eyster embellished the story by transferring the Harvey visit of 1861 into 1862 a few days before the proclamation of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Whatever the date, Isaac and Sarah did meet with Abraham Lincoln for about a half-hour and relayed their “concern” and suggestion. They learned that there had already been an attempt by the government to buy the slaves as Isaac suggested but it had not worked. Isaac asked the president to write a “minute” which he would then take back to the meeting to prove that he had seen the president. This, according to the Blessing-Eyster version of the story, all happen two days before the Lincoln issued his proclamation of emancipation of the slaves. Unfortunately, Lincoln's hand written note was destroyed many years ago.

Also see,

History of Clinton Co., Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions by Albert J. Brown (Indianapolis, Ind.: B. F. Bowen Co., Inc, 1915) p. 719-720.

“Ohio Quakers leave special heritage of abolitionist talk with Lincoln”, by Lloyd Ostendorf, Dayton Daily News (Dayton Leisure section), Sunday, February 7th, 1982, p. 6.