author
James A. (James Armstrong) Thome
1813–1873
A Presbyterian minister turned abolitionist, he was born into a slaveholding Kentucky family and became a forceful critic of slavery. He is best remembered for traveling in the British West Indies after emancipation and writing about what he saw there.
1 Audiobook
Prayer for the oppressed : A premium tract
by James A. (James Armstrong) Thome
About the author
Born in Augusta, Kentucky, in 1813, James A. Thome grew up in a slaveholding family but came to reject slavery while studying for the ministry. He became associated with the antislavery movement around Lane Seminary in Cincinnati and later attended Oberlin, where many abolitionists gathered.
Thome was a Presbyterian minister and public speaker whose work focused on immediate emancipation. In 1837 he traveled with J. Horace Kimball to Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica, and their book Emancipation in the West Indies argued that ending slavery was both morally necessary and practically workable.
He later lived in Ohio and is remembered as both a clergyman and an antislavery activist. His life reflects a striking personal transformation: someone raised close to slavery who chose to spend his career opposing it.