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
Not to be confused with E. T. Davies.

Ebenezer Davies (1808–1882) was a British missionary, Methodist minister, abolitionist and author. He was missionary minister at the Mission Chapel in New Amsterdam, British Guiana (now Guyana, formerly Berbice).[1] In the 1840s, he traveled to the United States and wrote about his travel experience and the slave trade.[2]

Davies' first book was a letter collection titled American Scenes and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States.[3][4] The letters making up the book were originally published in the London newspaper The Patriot.[5] 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.[6] He depicted economic vitality in the northern free states and backwardness and stagnation in the south.[2] He noted the "terrible din" of slave auctioneers "disposing of God's images to the highest bidders."[7] 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."[8] He decried the "horrid system which makes it a crime to teach a Negro to read the Word of God."[9] 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".[10]

In 1868, he published The Ruins of Bible Cities, which describes archaeological discoveries related to Biblical places.[11]

  1. ^ The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle. 1848. p. 445.
  2. ^ a b Smith, Mark Michael (2004). Hearing History: A Reader. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2583-5.
  3. ^ Conder, Josiah (1851). The Poet of the Sanctuary: A Centenary Commemoration of the Labours and Services Literary and Devotional of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. Preceded by Remarks on the Origin of Psalmody and Christian Hymnology in Earlier Times (book review). John Snow. p. 4.
  4. ^ The British Friend (book review). William and Robert Smeal. 1849.
  5. ^ Berger, Max (1974). The British traveller in America, 1836-1860. Internet Archive. [New York], [AMS Press]. ISBN 978-0-404-51502-7.
  6. ^ The Baptist Magazine. J. Burditt and W. Button. 1849. p. 154.
  7. ^ Smith, Mark M. (December 2015). Listening to Nineteenth-Century America. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-1-4696-2556-0.
  8. ^ Bell, Caryn Cossé (February 1997). Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868. LSU Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-5345-1.
  9. ^ Coffman, Elesha J. (30 January 2024). Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith. Baker Books. ISBN 978-1-4934-4539-4.
  10. ^ "The Athenaeum" (book review). 1849.
  11. ^ "The ruins of Bible cities : their scenes and associations / by Ebenezer Davies". HathiTrust. Retrieved 2024-09-06.