Redpath, James

Redpath, James

(1833–91) reformer, journalist; born in Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland. His family came to Michigan in the 1850s. Vehemently abolitionist, he wrote for the New York Tribune and defended John Brown's Harper's Ferry Raid in The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860). He reported on the war in the South, and became superintendent of schools in Charleston, S.C. (1865). His clients at his Redpath Lecture Lyceum Bureau included Emerson, Thoreau, and Julia Ward Howe. He was assistant editor of the North American Review in the 1880s, and supported Henry George for mayor of New York (1886). He was run over by a streetcar in New York.