Vincent Colyer (1824–1888) Controversial American Humanitarian

Vincent Colyer (1824–1888) was an American Quaker who undertook humanitarian work in the 1860s and 1870s, which proved controversial. Colyer was born in New York to English Quaker emigré parents and trained as an artist there. His humanitarian work during and after the Civil War is not widely known.

Colyer became active in the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association. When the Civil War began he visited troops and helped to distribute relief supplies and give spiritual support. In 1861 he was instrumental in urging YMCAs across the northern states to work together to create a new relief agency tasked with providing medical and nursing care and food, spiritual care and reading matter to soldiers. The United States Christian Commission was the result.

Following a serious race riot in New York City in 1863 prompted by Lincoln’s first conscription law, Colyer was appointed by a group of businessmen to administer financial relief and practical help to poor black families made homeless by the riot. He was appointed the Century Club’s agent to raise and equip three infantry regiments of the United States Colored Troops, who included former slaves and freed men and were led by white officers. Colyer worked on other relief initiatives at New Bern and elsewhere.

Colyer resumed his humanitarian activities in 1867, turning his attention to the plight of Native Americans. He worked with the inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper (founder of the Cooper Union) in the US Indian Commission, seeking to resolve the increasingly hostile relationship between many Native Americans, the army and the white civilian population. Colyer’s interventions in this sphere and during the war were not always welcome and led to controversies; some of the claims he made for his own work were challenged.

Vincent Colyer grew up in a Quaker family: his English parents had emigrated from Kent to America in 1822 and he was born in New York City two years later in 1824.¹ His father died in the 1832 cholera outbreak there when Vincent was eight years old. Accurate information about his English roots and his early life is very sparse.² According to one relatively recent biographical sketch, the family was left impoverished as a result of his father’s death and Colyer spent much of his youth “…working as an errand boy” to help support them.³ A much earlier biographical sketch, which Colyer may have approved as it was published in 1885 when he was sixty-one and a member of the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, added that he was:

… educated at the pdublic schools, New York Medical College, Read’s Academy, College of Pharmacy, and National Academy of Design, New York. He at first inclined to the Medical Profession, but afterward chose the occupation of an artist. …⁴

By the 1840s Colyer was studying drawing with John Rubens Smith⁵ and trained for four years (1846-50) at the National Academy of Design, which was then the principal professional body for the fine arts in America. Alongside building his career Colyer became closely involved with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in New York.

YMCA

The YMCA had come into being in London in 1844, where George Williams (1821–1905), a draper and evangelical Christian, and his supporters sought to provide spiritual and educational opportunities for young men who, like them, had come to London to work. They organized prayer, bible study, public lectures and education classes. This strongly proselytizing dissenting protestant initiative was quickly picked up in many other towns and cities in Britain, Europe and North America. By 1854 there were 35 YMCAs in America and 4 in Canada representing 14,000 members; 42 in the British Isles with 8,500 members; 100 in Germany; 39 in France; 21 in Switzerland; 4 in Holland, with 7,860 members in continental Europe as a whole; 2 YMCAs in Turkey and 3 in Australia and New Zealand.⁶ The first international meeting of YMCAs was convened in Paris in 1855, partly through the efforts of Henri Dunant (1828-1910), founder of the YMCA in Geneva...