author
R. B. (Richard Bowers) Thurston
1819–1895
A 19th-century Congregational minister and writer, he is best known today for his contribution to a prize-winning antislavery volume published in 1857. His life joined preaching, teaching, and reform-minded religious work in New England and beyond.
1 Audiobook
Three Prize Essays on American Slavery
by R. B. (Richard Bowers) Thurston, A. C. (Abraham Chittenden) Baldwin, Timothy Williston
About the author
Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on June 28, 1819, Richard Bowers Thurston spent much of his early life in Maine, including Winterport and Bangor. He studied at Bowdoin College after graduating with Bangor High School's first class, then prepared for the ministry and went on to serve as a Congregational clergyman.
Thurston is chiefly remembered as R. B. Thurston, one of the authors of Liberty or Slavery; the Great National Question: Three Prize Essays on American Slavery (1857), a book that argued against slavery from a Christian perspective. That work places him among the many ministers and religious writers whose published words became part of the moral and political struggle over slavery in the years before the Civil War.
He died on April 14, 1895. While surviving online records are limited, the available sources consistently show a life shaped by education, ministry, and reform writing.