Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 – May 9, 1911), who went by the name Wentworth, was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, politician, and soldier. He was active in abolitionism in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown. During the Civil War, from 1862 to 1864, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment. Following the war, he wrote Army Life in a Black Regiment and devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed people, women, and other disfranchised people. He is also remembered as a mentor to poet Emily Dickinson.