author
John F. (John Ferguson) Hume
b. 1830
Best known for a vivid firsthand history of American abolitionism, this writer brought together politics, finance, and journalism in a life shaped by public debate. His work has the feel of someone who had watched major events up close and wanted to explain them clearly to later readers.
1 Audiobook
The Abolitionists Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864
by John F. (John Ferguson) Hume
About the author
Born in 1830 and dying in 1909, John F. Hume—John Ferguson Hume—was an American banker, broker, politician, newspaper editor, and author. Surviving reference records consistently describe him as a public-facing figure whose career crossed business, politics, and publishing rather than fitting neatly into a single profession.
His best-known book today is The Abolitionists: Together with Personal Memories of the Struggle for Human Rights, 1830–1864, published in 1905. The title itself hints at what makes his writing distinctive: he was not only recounting the antislavery movement, but also presenting it through personal memory, giving the book a direct and lived-in quality.
Other works attributed to him include Five Hundred Majority; or, The Days of Tammany, Are We a Nation of Rascals?, and The Art of Investing. Taken together, they suggest an author interested in public life from several angles—reform, politics, civic ethics, and money—and able to write for general readers about all of them.