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A marked impulse came to the anti-slavery movement through the Finney revivals.

Finney himself, while opposed to slavery, placed his chief emphasis on evangelism, but from his converts issued much of the leadership of the anti-slavery campaign.

Theodore Dwight Weld ( 1803-1895 ) was especially active.

Weld was the son and grandson of New England Congregational ministers.

As a youth he became one of Finney's band of evangelists and gave himself to winning young men.

A strong temperance advocate, through the influence of a favorite teacher, Charles Stewart, another Finney convert, he devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause.

A group of young men influenced by him enrolled in Lane Theological Seminary and had to leave because of their open anti-slavery position.

The majority then went to the infant Oberlin.

They and others employed some of Finney's techniques as they sought to win adherents to the cause.

Weld contributed to the anti-slavery convictions of such men as Joshua R. Giddings and Edwin M. Stanton, enlisted John Quincy Adams, and helped provide ideas which underlay Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

He shunned publicity for himself and sought to avoid fame.