Reverend Joshua Leavitt (1794-1873) was an American Congregationalist minister and former lawyer who became a prominent writer, editor and publisher of abolitionist literature. He was also a spokesman for the Liberty Party and a prominent campaigner for cheap postage. He was ordained as a Congregational clergyman at Stratford, Connecticut. After four years in Stratford, Rev. Leavitt decamped for New York City, where he first became secretary of the American Seamens' Friend Society, where he began his 44-year career as editor of Sailors' Magazine. He served as editor of The Emancipator, The New York Independent and The New York Evangelist, and other periodicals. He was the first secretary of the American Temperance Society and co-founder of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society. One of his major accomplishments was helping to provide the intellectual underpinnings of the abolitionist argument through his writing and publishing. In 1841, for instance, Leavitt published his Financial...