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Lewis Tappan (May 23, 1788 – June 21, 1873) was a prominent American abolitionist, notable for his role in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court (1840-1841). He also created the first viable credit rating agency in the United States, which later became part of Dun & Bradstreet.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Anti-slavery activities 3 Business activities 4 Bibliography

Early years

Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on King Street near today's Trumbull Road, one of the eleven children of Benjamin and Sarah Tappan. In 1804, when Lewis was fifteen, he left home for Boston with eight dollars in his pocket and the small Bible his father had given him. He became a merchant, first in Philadelphia, then in Boston. A strict Calvinist, he insisted on cash transactions, since the Bible warned against lending money and charging interest.

In 1813 Tappan married Susan Aspinwall (died, 1853); after her death, he remarried Mrs. Sarah J. Davis in 1854. One of his grand-daughters by the first marriage, Mary Aspinwall Tappan, would later give the family's Tanglewood estate to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Tappan made money then lost it, going bankrupt from poorly timed investments in woolen and cotton mills. In 1827, he started over, joining his successful brother, Arthur, in New York's silk trade. From 1828-1831 he owned and published the Journal of Commerce in New York City.

Anti-slavery activities

The brothers were evangelically religious, and staunch moralists, contributing profits from their business to moral crusades. They gave away Bibles, blew the whistle on gaming houses, and even entered New York's brothels, "to pluck fallen women from roaring lions who seek to devour them." They connected with other activist Christians who shared reports on immoral activities and aggressively sought to enforce Christian behavior.

In 1830, the Tappans met a young abolitionist agitator named William Lloyd Garrison, whom Arthur offered financial support. Soon, the brothers were part of a nationwide network opposing slavery. Tappan funded anti-slavery journals and helped to form the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Their new crusade made them the hated targets of many merchants and white laborers, who believed ending slavery would destroy the cotton export business and allow freed slaves to take scarce jobs. By 1834, mobs were storming Lewis' home and Arthur's store. Faced with a boycott and lost business, the Tappans were forced to extend credit for the first time. Then, in the Panic of 1837, the business was wiped out. The company owed over $1,100,000. However, by 1839 Arthur had repaid all his creditors and the business was shakily back on its feet.

In 1840 and 1841, Tappan played a role in the famous Amistad case, speaking in favor of the African slaves who had rebelled and killed the men who had illegally purchased them in Cuba. Rejected by Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate, Lewis Tappan "earnestly entreated" former President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) to defend the imprisoned Africans. Tappan's oratory and support was a leading factor in assisting Joseph Cinqué and company to eventually return home to Africa. In 1843 Tappan attended the international antislavery convention in London. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Tappan supported the Underground Railroad, and he fought for black civil rights in the North.

"Slavery is the worm at the root of the tree of Liberty," declared Tappan. "Unless killed, the tree will die."

Business activities

Tappan hated credit, but he realized offering it to customers was becoming the only way to make a sale. He also wondered how a merchant could gauge his customer's trustworthiness, and assess whether he'd ever get paid. Tappan began keeping files on customers, reviewing their characters and their credit-worthiness. Pretty soon, other merchants were turning to Tappan for advice. Exploiting his abolitionist connections across the country, Tappan created a network of correspondents to offer up-to-date and comprehensive credit information about people in their communities.

Some saw the files kept by Tappan's Mercantile Agency, founded in 1841, as an invasion of privacy. But by 1844 the business had 280 clients. It opened branch offices in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Tappan transferred the running of the agency to his chief clerk, Benjamin Douglass, in 1849. By 1851, 2,000 full-time correspondents were reporting from across the nation. Douglass would transfer the company to his brother-in-law, Robert Graham Dun, in 1858, and in 1933 R.G. Dun & Company would merge with its main rival, Bradstreet, forming Dun & Bradstreet, the largest credit reporting entity in the world.

As for Tappan, he retired wealthy to spend all his time opposing slavery. He died in 1873, a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation, in Brooklyn, New York. His papers are collected in the Library of Congress.

Bibliography

• For a critical examination of Tappan's role in founding the credit-rating industry, see Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, by Scott A. Sandage (Harvard University Press, 2005), chapters 4-6.
• Lewis Tappan, Esq., The American missionary, Volume 49, Issue 2, Feb 1895.
• Wyatt-Brown, Bertrand, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery, Case Western Reserve U. Press, 1969; copyright renewed 1997 by author; republished by Louisianna State U. Press.