Seth M. Gates House

Seth M. Gates's outspoken criticism of slavery marked his two terms in the House of Representatives from 1839 to 1843. After he used his congressional position to mail out the proceedings of the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, a Savannah planter put a $500 bounty on his head, dead or alive. Warsaw residents had formed an antislavery society in 1833, and the Liberty Party, the first antislavery political party, began there in 1839. Gates moved to Warsaw in 1844 and joined its active antislavery community, becoming one of the town's seven Underground Railroad conductors. A eulogy at his funeral in 1877 said that he believed duty to God bade him to strike as best he could against the fetters on the limbs of his brothers.

Warsaw, New York · United States