A prophet without honor in his own country was Moncure Daniel Conway because, a Fredericksburger and a Southerner, he opposed slavery. But his genius won him world praise, and later, honer in his own country.
Born in 1832, near Falmouth, to which village his people moved later, the child of Walker Peyton Conway and Marguerite Daniel Conway he inherited from a long line of ancestry, a brilliant intellect and fearlessness to tread the paths of freedom.
The difficult studious child was too much for his teacher, Miss Gaskins, of Falmouth, so he was sent, at the age of ten, to Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, originally John Marye’s famous school, and made rapid progress.
His hero was his great uncle, Judge R. C. L. Moncure, of Glencairne, and his early memoirs are full of loving gratitude for the great man’s toleration and help. The Methodism of his parents did not hold him, for he several times attended the services at St. George’s Church.
The wrongs of slavery he saw, and after he entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in his fifteenth year, he found an anti-slavery professor, McClintock, who influenced him and encouraged his dawning agnosticism. His cousin, John M. Daniel, editor of the Richmond Examiner, became, in 1848, a leading factor in Conway’s life, encouraging his literary efforts and publishing many of his contributions.
All beauty, all art appealed to him. Music was always a passion, and we also find constant and quaint references to beautiful women and girls. It seemed the superlative compliment, though he valued feminine brains and ability.
His great spiritual awakening came with his finding an article by Emerson and at the age of twenty, to the delight of his family, he became a Methodist minister.
His career as such was not a success. After one of his sermons, in which he ignored Heaven and Hell, his father said: “One thing is certain, Monk, should the Devil aim at a Methodist preacher, you’d be safe.”
He moved to Cambridge. The prominence of his Southern family, and his own social and intellectual charms gave him entre to the best homes and chiefest among them, that of his adored Emerson, where he met and knew all the great lights of the day. His slavery opinions, valuable as a Southern slave owner’s son, made him an asset in the anti-slavery propaganda of the time.
Conway’s Famous Friends