Moncure Daniel Conway (17 March 1832-15 November 1907) is considered one of the major disciples of Hegelian philosophy in nineteenth-century America, and an interpreter of David Friedrich Strauss and Ferdinand Christian Baur. As a spokesman of "Natural Religion," he was among the leading pre-Darwinian advocates of evolutionary theory as it applied to human origins, race, and intellectual development. During his fifty years as minister, public speaker, author, and editor, he was close to the large events and the leading personalities of his times. Outspoken and somewhat erratic, his life was, in his own words, "A pilgrimage from pro-slavery to anti-slavery enthusiasm, from Methodism to Freethought." He was born in Stafford County, Virginia, attended Fredericksburg Academy, and was graduated from Dickinson College, a Methodist school in Pennsylvania. Upon his return to the South he became a Methodist circuit rider in the Rockville, Maryland, district of Baltimore during which time (1850-1852) he...