Ladd, William

Ladd, William,

1778–1841, American pacifist, b. Exeter, N.H., grad. Harvard, 1797. He commanded sailing vessels until the outbreak of the War of 1812, when he retired to a farm in Maine. In 1820 he began to write and speak against war, and in 1828 he founded the American Peace Society, of which he was president until his death. His Essay on a Congress of Nations (1840; ed. with introduction by J. B. Scott, 1916) proposed a world organization involving both a congress of nations and an international court of arbitration. In popularizing this plan Ladd had the help of Elihu BurrittBurritt, Elihu,
1810–79, American reformer, b. New Britain, Conn. A blacksmith, he studied mathematics, languages, and geography and became known as "the learned blacksmith.
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Bibliography

See M. E. Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1850–1860 (1929); study by G. Schwarzenberger (1935).

Ladd, William

(1778–1841) sea captain, farmer, pacifist; born in Exeter, N.H. A sea captain turned farmer, turned abolitionist, there is no historical record of his transformation to fulltime pacifism (1819). He founded new peace groups, appointing able lieutenants. He lectured and wrote peace propaganda and was one of the first to link the goals of pacifists with those fighting for women's rights. Founding the American Peace Society (1828), he became a Congregational clergyman (1837) as a means of furthering his cause. The same year he forced the American Peace Society to condemn all war, defensive and offensive. Developer of many techniques of pacifist propaganda, he was the first to make pacifism a political issue in America. In his Essay on a Congress of Nations (1840) he was one of the first to predict that there would someday be an international organization like the United Nations.