David Nelson (Author)

David Nelson (born September 24, 1793 in Jonesborough , Tennessee , † October 17, 1844 in Quincy , Illinois ) was an American writer, clergyman and representative of abolitionism .

Nelson graduated from the Washington College Academy directed by Samuel Doak , a prominent exponent of abolitionism . At the age of 16 he went to Philadelphia and studied medicine at the Medical College . In the British-American War in 1812 he took part as a military doctor.

In 1825 Nelson was ordained a Presbyterian minister and returned to Tennessee as a minister. In 1828 he went to Danville (Kentucky) , and in 1830 he founded in Palmyra (Missouri) , the Marion College , a theological seminary, he was its president. He repeatedly campaigned publicly against slavery, and after calling on the slaveholders of his community to release their slaves in 1836, he was driven from Missouri by an angry mob.

He went to Quincy / Illinois and founded the Mission Institute here , which trained Christian missionaries for use in Africa and the West Indies. He gave lectures against slavery in Illinois, supported escaped slaves from Missouri and was an agent, at times also vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society . He published several books, the best known of which, Cause and Cure of Infidelity , appeared in 1841. His poem The Shining Shore was set to music by George Frederick Root .

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• Harriet C. Frazier: Runaway and freed Missouri slaves and those who helped them, 1763-1865 , McFarland, 2004, ISBN 9780786418299 , p. 174
• Ezekiel Birdseye, Durwood Dunn: An abolitionist in the Appalachian South: Ezekiel Birdseye on slavery, capitalism, and separate statehood in East Tennessee, 1841-1846 , Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1997, ISBN 9780870499647 , p. 6
• Presbyterian Historical Society - Nelson, David Papers