{{Short description|American journalist, poet, and abolitionist (1807–1890)}} '''George Barrell Cheever''' (April 7, 1807 – October 1, 1890) was a well-known and controversial abolitionist minister and writer. Born in Hallowell, Maine, he was an 1825 graduate of Bowdoin College, where he was a classmate of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry W. Longfellow,<ref>{{cite news |title=Dr. George B. Cheever Ill |newspaper=The Sun (New York) |date=September 20, 1890 |page=6 |via=Chronicling America |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1890-09-20/ed-1/seq-6/ |access-date=2021-04-26 |archive-date=2021-04-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426120041/https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1890-09-20/ed-1/seq-6/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and Andover Theological Seminary. In 1832 he became pastor of the Howard Street Congregational Church in Salem, Massachusetts.<ref>{{cite book |title=History of Bowdoin College With Biographical Sketches of Its Graduates |location=Boston |publisher=James Ripley Osgood & Company |year=1882}}</ref> In 1838 he became pastor of the Allen Street Presbyterian Church, in New York City, and in 1846 the new Congregational Church of the Puritans. New York City.<ref>{{cite news |title=Rev. George B. Cheever Dead |newspaper=The Evening World |date=October 1, 1890 |page=1 |via=Chronicling America |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1890-10-01/ed-2/seq-1// |access-date=2021-04-26 |archive-date=2021-04-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426120040/https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1890-10-01/ed-2/seq-1// |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1846 he married Elizabeth Hoppin Wetmore Cheever; they had no children.
He was a leader of the Christian Abolitionist Movement. His best-known works, which went through multiple editions and are held by hundreds of libraries, are:
* {{cite book |title=God against slavery : and the freedom and the duty of the pulpit to rebuke it, as a sin against God |location=New York |publisher=Joseph R. Ladd |year=1857 |url=https://archive.org/details/DKC0202}} * {{cite book |title=The guilt of slavery and the crime of slaveholding, demonstrated from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures |location=Boston |publisher=John P. Jewett |year=1860 |url=https://archive.org/details/guiltofslaverycr00chee/page/n5/mode/2up}} He was also a leader in the American Temperance Society. In 1833, he published:
* "The Temperance Reformation. Fifth Report of the American Temperance Society. Presented at the meeting in Boston, May 1832" in ''The American Quarterly Observer.'' July 1833.
Edgar Allan Poe famously remarked on Cheever: "He is much better known, however, as the editor of ''The Commonplace Book of American Poetry'', a work which has at least the merit of not belying its title, and ''is'' exceedingly commonplace".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Poe |first=Edgar Allan |date=June 1846 |url=http://www.eapoe.org/works/misc/litratb2.htm#cheevegb |title=The Literati of New York City — No. II. |journal=Godey's Lady's Book |volume=32 |pages=266–272}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Zimmerman|first=Brett|title=Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style|year=2005|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|location=Montreal|isbn=0773528997|pages=129–130|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OKxwOqUgNvkC&pg=PA129|edition=[Online-Ausg.]|access-date=2021-04-26|archive-date=2021-04-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426123846/https://books.google.com/books?id=OKxwOqUgNvkC&pg=PA129|url-status=live}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== {{Commonscatinline}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheever, George B.}} Category:1807 births Category:1890 deaths Category:19th-century American Congregationalist ministers Category:19th-century American Presbyterian ministers Category:Abolitionists from New York (state) Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Andover Theological Seminary alumni Category:Bowdoin College alumni Category:Congregationalist abolitionists Category:People from Englewood, New Jersey Category:People from Hallowell, Maine Category:Writers from New York City Category:People from Salem, Massachusetts Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery Category:American book editors Category:Temperance activists from New York (state) Category:Christian abolitionists Category:19th-century American male writers