author
T. W. (True Worthy) Hoit
b. 1815
A 19th-century American pamphleteer from St. Louis, he is remembered for fiercely argued political writing that reflects the most divisive debates of his time. His surviving works are brief, direct, and revealing snapshots of antebellum public discourse.
1 Audiobook
The Right of American Slavery
by T. W. (True Worthy) Hoit
About the author
Born in 1815, True Worthy Hoit was an American writer whose published work is tied to St. Louis, Missouri. Surviving catalog records identify him as the author of The Right of American Slavery (1860), a short polemical work printed in St. Louis, and of The Model Man: an oration on Washington, another pamphlet-length publication.
Hoit seems to have written in the tradition of 19th-century public argument: compact books and addresses meant to persuade, provoke, and take a clear stand in the political and moral language of the day. His best-known work is explicitly pro-slavery, so modern readers are most likely to encounter him as a historical figure whose writing documents the ideology and rhetoric used to defend slavery before the American Civil War.
Biographical details about his life are scarce in the sources available here. A cemetery record points to his death in 1900 and burial at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, but beyond his publications and those basic dates, little confirmed personal information is easy to trace.