Joshua Atherton
Joshua Atherton (June 20, 1737 – April 3, 1809),[1] was a lawyer and early anti-slavery campaigner[2] in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
[8] At the age of 21, Atherton went on to study law under James Putnam at Harvard College, graduating in 1762, alongside Francis Dana and Elbridge Gerry.
[9] His younger brother Israel (1741-1822), did not share his passion for politics, choosing to study medicine at Harvard College and graduated that same year.
He witnessed what he perceived to be treasonous acts and chose not to participate in patriotic plans for fear of a breakdown in the rule of law.
He was disarmed, his beloved rifle confiscated, and on a number of occasions he was detained by the committee of safety due to his opposing views.
At times out of tune with many of his neighbors, since he was resistant to change, and controversial enough for arsonists to torch his barns and burn his effigy in the town.
[9][18] In February 1788, Atherton delivered a major speech in opposition to Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, of the proposed constitution.
Atherton asserted that the southern states had made him a "partaker in the sin and guilt of this abominable" traffic in the buying and selling of slaves, and that the "clause has not secured its abolition".
[9] Atherton continued on with a vivid description of the conditions of slavery, proclaiming: Parents are taken, and children left; or possibly they may be so fortunate as to have a whole family taken and carried off together by these relentless robbers.
Broken with every distress that human nature can feel, and bedewed with tears of anguish, they are dragged into the last stage of depression and slavery, never, never to behold the faces of one another again!
John Langdon immediately wrote to George Washington to inform him that New Hampshire had become the ninth state which he described as the “Key Stone in the Great Arch.
In 1791, Atherton was once again elected as justice of the peace, and was a member of the convention in Concord that drafted the new state constitution, revising the previous one of 1783.
His father, Col. Peter Atherton served in the Massachusetts Colonial Militia, then seen as a political position, rising to the rank of Colonel.
However the militia was also mustered to fight alongside the British soldiers engaging the threats resulting from the French and Indian War during the mid-1700s.
His daughter Catherine [27] married David MacGregor Means (1841-1931), a lawyer and former assistant editor of The Nation.
After his retirement, he helped establish the Franklin Society in Amherst, a library dedicated to historical events that changed the state.
[2] His great-grandfather James Atherton had arrived from England in the 1630s, and went on to serve under Captain John Whiting's Company, eventually becoming one of the founders of Lancaster.
[7] His great-grandfather on his maternal line was Samuel Wardwell, a carpenter, who was charged with witchcraft in 1692, and was hung at Witch Hill, in Andover, Massachusetts.
