Charles Turner Torrey (November 21, 1813 – May 9, 1846) was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves. Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.
Education and early career
Torrey was born November 21, 1813, in Scituate, Massachusetts. By the time he was 4 years old, his mother, father, and baby sister had all died from tuberculosis, so he went to live with his maternal grandparents in a part of Scituate that later became Norwell. His maternal grandfather, once a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, remained active in local affairs, and introduced his grandson to political issues.
Torrey attended Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and was then admitted to Yale College, predecessor of Yale University, at age 16. While at Yale, Torrey attended a revival meeting, pledged his life to Jesus Christ, and thereafter took his vow very seriously. Following graduation in 1833, Torrey tried teaching secondary school for a year, but after a year decided to become a Congregational minister instead.
Early work as an abolitionist
In 1834, Torrey enrolled at the Andover Theological Seminary, where slavery's abolition was a major topic of discussion. Torrey adopted the cause as his own and although tuberculosis caused him to suspend his studies for a year, he became an active worker for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, which was headed by William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison believed that slavery could best be abolished by "moral suasion," i.e., changing the way people thought about it through lectures and pamphlets.
After graduation, Torrey served Congregational pastorates in Providence, Rhode Island, and Salem, Massachusetts. However, he relinquished his professional duties to devote himself to anti-slavery activism in Maryland, having come to believe in a much more activist approach than his mentor. Torrey and Garrison disagreed on other issues as well. For example, Garrison and his female abolitionist followers wished to incorporate women's rights into the anti-slavery movement, whereas Torrey and the majority of other abolitionists thought such mixture of issues unwise.
In January 1839, Torrey and colleagues Amos Phelps, Henry Stanton, and Alanson St. Clair, challenged Garrison's leadership at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's Annual meeting. Garrison had packed the meeting with his followers, and easily beat back the challenge in a dramatic confrontation. Torrey and his allies responded by establishing a new abolitionist association, commonly referred to as the New Organization, to distinguish it from Garrison's Old Organization. This split became known as the great schism in the abolitionist movement.
The New Organization immediately adopted a more activist, and overtly political, approach to the abolition of slavery. In July 1839, almost 500 delegates met in Albany to discuss the formation of a political party devoted exclusively to abolitionism. Finally, on April 1, 1840, at another meeting in Albany, the Liberty Party was formed. Torrey was one of the vice-presidents of the organizing meeting. Following the meeting, he became the Liberty Party organizer for Massachusetts.
Torrey was one of the original founders of the Boston Vigilance Committee in 1841, and served briefly as its secretary.
Freeing slaves
By the end of 1841, Torrey had tired of the slow pace of political abolitionism and went to Washington, D.C., as a reporter for several abolitionist newspapers. It seems likely that he had already formulated a plan to free slaves. He immediately began attending black churches and befriending abolitionist members of Congress, especially Joshua Giddings of Ohio. In January 1842, Torrey, as a reporter, attended a convention of Maryland slaveholders in Annapolis, where he was arrested, charged with writing "incendiary" material, and jailed for four days.