Thomas Branagan was an Irish slave trader, privateer, and plantation overseer who, touched by Christ and American rhetoric, dedicated his life at the beginning of the nineteenth century to alleviating the physical and spiritual plight of the new nation's poor and unfortunate. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, he preached relentlessly against oppression and immorality and published prolifically--broadsides, newspaper verse, and more than twenty books--advocating abolition, women's rights, benevolent and relief societies, educational reform, patriotism, and, most broadly, the love of God and man. He wrote in numerous forms and genres, including epic poetry, political and religious tracts, juvenile works, and compendiums of useful knowledge. His checkered life and manifold writings add a fascinating chapter to the history of American literature.

Branagan claimed a "native diffidence" which forbade him "to relate any particulars respecting himself, further than to depict the goodness of God, and his own...