In 1834, he left to study at Andover Theological Seminary, but departed in 1836 after the college rejected agents from the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Blanchard joined the group as one of Theodore Dwight Weld's "seventy" and preached in favor of abolition in southern Pennsylvania.

Blanchard graduated from Lane Seminary in 1838 and was soon ordained to preach at Sixth Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Following the Civil War, Blanchard focused on fighting secret societies through his National Christian Association (NCA).

He was the eleventh of fifteen children born to Polly (Lovell) and Jonathan Blanchard, Sr.[1] When he was three years old, he heard his brother discuss the recent Battle of Plattsburgh, an engagement of the War of 1812.

While there, the school denounced the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) and demanded that students reject abolitionist views.

Blanchard left the school in 1836 to join the society, which assigned him to preach in southern Pennsylvania as one of Theodore Dwight Weld's "seventy".

In early October 1845, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Blanchard debated the morality of slavery with fellow Presbyterian minister Nathan Lewis Rice (December 29, 1807 - June 11, 1877).

[1] Blanchard's first opposition to Freemasonry came in 1845, when he condemned a Covington, Kentucky, lodge that refused aid to a widow of a long-time member.

[4] The school was deeply in debt but, thanks to donations by Charles E. Phelps and J. P. Williston, Blanchard was able to secure financial stability.

When Senator Stephen A. Douglas assisted with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Blanchard harshly criticized him in a newspaper article.

In 1855, Blanchard went on a lecture circuit of Kentucky with fellow abolitionists Cassius Marcellus Clay and John Gregg Fee.

[10] Blanchard believed that morality and Christian beliefs were innately experienced by man; this put him in line with most Scottish Common Sense Realists.

[12] After a spell of poor health, Blanchard traveled with his son to the Montana Territory in 1864, ostensibly to explore on behalf of the American Missionary Association.

[13] After the Civil War, during which the slaves were liberated, Blanchard turned his attention to fighting secret societies like the Freemasons.

[1] The platform of the anti-Masonic Party was very brief, and espoused Christianity, temperance, the abolition of secret societies, and a direct vote for President and Vice-President of the United States instead of an electoral college.

Bent left her family home of Middlebury, Vermont in 1835 for Pennsylvania, where she became principal of the Girls' High School in Harrisburg.