John Dixon Long (September 26, 1817 – 1894) was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a leading U.S. abolitionist.
He credited his mother Sally Laws Henderson Long with inspiring his early antislavery sentiments.
In October 1856 Long moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was dismayed by the level of support for slavery, although it was not legal in the commonwealth.
[3] Debate about Methodist complacency on the issue of slavery at this conference, however, was skillfully avoided when proposals were made from the floor that the charges against Long be dropped.
However, Bonner documents in her article in the Conference journal cited here that Long's book was deemed THE book by the secular press, which did provide debate and commentary on the issue, breaking silence on what was now openly discussed as hypocrisy and cowardice of the Methodist religious hierarchy, given their founders' adamant prescriptions against slavery in the early doctrines of the Methodist Episcopal Church.