Middlebury College granted Haynes an honorary master of arts in 1804, the first Master of Arts ever bestowed upon an African American. In contrast, Haynes continued to passionately argue along Calvinist lines that God's providential plan would defeat slavery and lead to the harmonious integration of the races as equals.Īs the first black person in America to serve as pastor of a white congregation, Haynes ministered to Rutland's West Parish for thirty years starting in 1783. Included among its supporters were people such as James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The American Colonization Society (founded in 1817) was one such group. His contemporary white republican and abolitionist thinkers saw slavery as a liability to the new country, but most argued for eventual slave expatriation to Africa. Haynes' last home, in South Granville, now a National Historic Landmarkīy the 1780s, Haynes became a leading Calvinist minister in Vermont. Paralleling the recent American experience with oppression to the slave experience, Haynes wrote: "Liberty is equally as precious to a black man, as it is to a white one, and bondage as equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other". Haynes argued that slavery denied black people their natural rights to " Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The Scripture, abolitionism, and republicanism impacted his published writings. He also began to prepare sermons for family prayers and write theologically about life. He returned to his previous labors in Granville after the northern campaign of the American War of Independence.Īfter the American Revolution, Haynes began to write extensively, criticizing the slave trade and slavery. In 1776, he accompanied them in the garrisoning of the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga. In 1775, he marched with his militia company to Roxbury, Massachusetts, following the news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
At about twenty years of age, he saw the Aurora Borealis, and, fearing the approach of the Day of Judgment as a result, he soon accepted Christianity.įreed in 1774 when his indenture expired, Haynes joined the minutemen of Granville. Through accompanying his masters to church, he became exposed to Calvinistic thought. Although serving as an agricultural worker, part of the agreement required educating him. According to the African American National Biography, his birth date is 18 July 1753 and he died the 28 September 1833.Īt the age of five months, Lemuel Haynes was given over to indentured servitude in Granville, Massachusetts. He was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, to a reportedly Caucasian mother of some status and a man named Haynes, who was said to be "of some form of African extraction".
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