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  • American History

    Tappan Brothers: Silk and Defiance

    Sep 08, 2020 4 minutes
    By Nancy Tappan

    Manhattan merchant Arthur Tappan disliked conversation. The shy, bad-tempered, headache-prone silk importer hunched at a table writing correspondence while younger brother and partner Lewis, slightly less waspish, supervised their 20 clerks. Arthur Tappan & Co., in the early 1830s one of America’s richest business enterprises, sold fabrics and fashion accessories from Europe. Deeply religious, the brothers bankrolled the abolitionist movement of the 1830s and ’40s against their bankers’ wishes. “You demand that I shall cease my antislavery labors…or make some apology or recantation,” Arthur Tappan declared. “I will be hung first!”

    The Tappans, born in 1786 and 1788 in Northampton, Massachusetts, grew up

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