Nathaniel Peabody Rogers

A native of the New Hampshire town of Plymouth, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers was the fifth child of Harvard-educated physician and poet, John Rogers (1755–1814), and his wife, Betsy Mulliken. Young Nathaniel entered Dartmouth College in 1811 but, within a few months, suffered severe internal damage while participating in a game of football, and was forced to withdraw for a year of recuperation, with the injuries continuing as a source of pain for the remainder of his life, ultimately contributing to his death at age 52.{{Cite web |url=http://www.crispinsartwell.com/rogerspierpont.htm |title=Pierpont, John (1849). Introduction to Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Miscellaneous Writings |access-date=2010-08-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120307155609/http://www.crispinsartwell.com/rogerspierpont.htm |archive-date=2012-03-07 |url-status=usurped }} Returning to Dartmouth, he graduated in 1816, studied law with Salisbury attorney and future Massachusetts congressman Richard Fletcher until 1819, and was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar that year.{{Cite web |title=Rogers, Nathaniel P. (1794-1846) |url=https://www.nhhistory.org/object/257280/rogers-nathaniel-p-1794-1846 |access-date=2025-02-27 |website=New Hampshire Historical Society}} In 1822, he married Mary Porter Farrand;{{Cite web |title=Painting - Nathaniel P. Rogers |url=https://www.nhhistory.org/object/1596711/painting |access-date=2022-12-14 |website=New Hampshire Historical Society}} they had 8 children.{{Cite web |title=Nathaniel Peabody Rogers collection |url=https://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/repositories/5/resources/675 |access-date=2022-12-14 |website=TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections}}

In 1838, giving up a lucrative 19-year legal practice in his native Plymouth and moving to Concord, he became editor of the abolitionist newspaper Herald of Freedom, to which he had been contributing articles since its 1835 founding by the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. His editorial writings noted for an impulsive, unaffected, witty, sometimes sarcastic, style as well as for poetic descriptions of nature, were widely reprinted in New York Tribune and other anti-slavery newspapers, under the pen name "The Old Man of the Mountain".{{cite web | title=Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Portraits of Legislators On State House Third Floor, New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources | website=NH.gov | url=https://www.nh.gov/nhdhr/publications/legport3/rogers.html}}

In 1840, he represented New Hampshire abolitionists in London at the World Anti-Slavery Convention, but he withdrew in protest when the convention refused to seat American women delegates. He did however appear in the painting that recorded the convention.{{cite web |author=Benjamin Robert Haydon| title=The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840 | website=National Portrait Gallery, London | url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw00028/The-Anti-Slavery-Society-Convention-1840?search=ap&npgno=599&eDate=&lDate= |date=1841}} Given by British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1880

Returning to America and finding himself widely praised for supporting equality of the sexes, as well as equality of color, he received offers to head major newspapers and became known as a public speaker on issues of temperance, women's rights and the abolition of slavery, in the process becoming the subject of Henry David Thoreau's 1844 Dial essay, "Herald of Freedom", which Thoreau revised for its 1846 republication in memoriam of Rogers.{{cite web |url=http://www.geocities.com/unclesamsfarm/rogers.htm |title=Biography of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers |work=New England Music Scrapbook |author=Lewis, Alan |date=2004 |accessdate=February 3, 2017 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091027095007/http://www.geocities.com/unclesamsfarm/rogers.htm |archivedate=2009-10-27 |url-status = dead}} Includes link (within chapter 2 of Parker Pillsbury's Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles) to photograph of Rogers' gravestone in Concord Cemetery

File:Grave of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers.jpg

File:Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers.jpgFour months before his death, sensing failing health, Rogers wrote to his old friend, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier:{{Cite book |last=Whittier |first=John Greenleaf |url=http://archive.org/details/oldportraitsand00whitgoog |title=Old Portraits and Modern Sketches |publisher=Ticknor, Read, and Fields |year=1850 |location=Boston |pages=[https://archive.org/details/oldportraitsand00whitgoog/page/n301/mode/1up 281]–282}}

I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. I have a wife and seven children, every one of them with a whole spirit. I don't want to be separated from any of them, only with a view to come together again. I have a beautiful little retreat in prospect, forty odd miles north, where I imagine I can get potatoes and repose,—a sort of haven or port. I am among the breakers, and 'mad for land.' If I get this home,—it is a mile or two in among the hills from the pretty domicil once visited by yourself and glorious Thompson,—I am this moment indulging the fancy that I may see you at it before we die.

Rogers died at his home in Concord in October 1846.{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73079377/died/ |title=Died |newspaper=The Anti-Slavery Bugle |page=2 |date=1846-10-30 |access-date=2021-03-09 |via=Newspapers.com}} He is buried in Concord's Old North Cemetery; his tombstone reads, "Here lies all that could die of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, patriot, lawyer, journalist, friend of the slave."{{Citation |last= |title=Grave of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers in Old North Cemetery |date=2021-01-29 |url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_of_Nathaniel_Peabody_Rogers.jpg |access-date=2022-12-14}}

Rogers was an early advocate for animal rights;{{Cite book|last=Rogers|first=Nathaniel Peabody|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ipYRMQAACAAJ|title=Herald of Freedom: Essays of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, American Transcendentalist and Radical Abolitionist|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform|year=2016|isbn=978-1-5407-6427-0|editor-last=Sartwell|editor-first=Crispin|language=en}} he wrote favourably of William Hamilton Drummond's The Rights of Animals and argued:{{Cite book |last=Rogers |first=Nathaniel Peabody |url=https://archive.org/details/collectionfromne00roge |title=A Collection from the Newspaper Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers |publisher=John R. French |year=1847 |location=Concord |pages=[https://archive.org/details/collectionfromne00roge/page/339/mode/1up 339]–340 |language=en |chapter=The Rights of Animals}}

What is the foundation of human rights, that is not foundation, for animal rights also? A man has rights—and they are important to him because their observance is necessary to his happiness, and their violation hurts him. He has a right to personal liberty. It is pleasant to him—permanently pleasant and good. It is therefore his right. And every creature—or I will call it, rather, every existence, (for whether created or not, they certainly exist, they are) every existence, that is capable of enjoying or suffering, has its rights, and just mankind will regard them. And regard them as rights.

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Bell|first=Charles H.|date=1894|title=The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire}}
• {{cite journal|last=Pillsbury|first=Parker|date=April 1881|title=Nathaniel Peabody Rogers|journal=Granite Monthly|volume=4|number=7}}
• {{cite book|last=Rogers|first=N.P.|date=1847|title=A Collection from the Newspaper Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers|location=Concord, N.H.|publisher=John R. French}}
• {{cite web|last=Sartwell|first=Crispin|date=June 25, 2019|url=https://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2019/06/how-thoreau-became-a-radical.html|title=How Thoreau Became a Radical|website=cheese it, the cops!}}
• {{cite book|last=Stearns|first=Ezra S.|date=1906|title=History of Plymouth, New Hampshire}}

{{Commons category|Nathaniel Peabody Rogers}}

• {{cite web | title=Nathaniel Peabody Rogers | website=Internet Archive | url=https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Rogers%2C+Nathaniel+Peabody%2C+1794-1846%22 }}
• {{cite web | title=Rogers, Nathaniel Peabody, 1794-1846 | website=The Online Books Page | url=https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Rogers%2c%20Nathaniel%20Peabody%2c%201794-1846 }}
• {{cite web | title=Rogers, Nathaniel Peabody, 1794-1846 | website=Digital Commonwealth | url=https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bname_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Rogers%2C+Nathaniel+Peabody%2C+1794-1846 }}
• {{cite web | title=Nathaniel Peabody Rogers collection | website=Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections Archives & Manuscripts | url=https://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/repositories/5/resources/675 }}

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Category:1794 births

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Category:19th-century American essayists

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Category:Abolitionists from New Hampshire

Category:American animal rights activists

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Category:Dartmouth College alumni

Category:People from Plymouth, New Hampshire

Category:Writers from New Hampshire