Author: Branagan, Thomas
Biography:
BRANAGAN, Thomas (1774-1843: Leary)
Born in Dublin to a Roman Catholic family, Branagan went to sea at 14, and when 16 served on a slave ship. He spent four years as an overseer on a sugar plantation in Antigua. He was converted to Methodism and became convinced of the evils of slavery. Finding that his family in Ireland rejected him on account of his conversion to Protestantism, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1798 and became a preacher. He began to write about slavery and continued to write on controversial topics. His first important work, A Preliminary Essay, on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa (1804), is a long analysis of the evils of slavery "preliminary" to his poem Avenia. He died of palsy. (Lewis Leary, Soundings: Some Early American Writers [1975]) HJ