Moorfield Storey

Birth/Death:                             1845 / 1925

League Membership:               Faneuil Hall Meeting, June 15, 1898
                                                The Anti-Imperialist League, 1898-1899
                                                New England Anti-Imperialist League
                                                The Anti-Imperialist League, 1904-1921

Role in League:                       Executive Committee Member 1898-1905
                                                President New England Anti-Imperialist League, 1905-1921

Occupation:                              Lawyer

Brief Biography

A Bostonian, who began his political career as Charles Sumner's personal secretary and adopted much of the Senator's abolitionist ideologies. Moorfield was a civil service reformer, civil rights advocate, and successful lawyer. Storey was asked to be the League's first president, but he believed that a strong republican figure should be the face of the organization, suggesting George Boutwell. When Boutwell died in 1905, Storey became the League's president and held the post until the League disbanded officially in 1921. Moorfield Storey went on to become most famous for founding and leading the NAACP in 1909, but was Boston's foremost anti-imperialist over twenty years, publishing hundreds of pamphlets, broadsides, and books on foreign policy and politics.

Primary:

Storey, Moorfield. Autobiography. Draft Manuscript.

———. Is It Right?: An Address Delivered at the Philadelphia Conference, February 23, 1900 (Chicago: American Anti-Imperialist League, 1900)

Moorfield Storey Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Moorfield Storey Papers. Library of Congress

Secondary:

Beisner, Robert L. Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Blodgett Geoffrey T. 'The Mind of the Boston Mugwump,' The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 4. (March, 1962).

Dementyev, Igor. USA: Imperialists and Anti-Imperialists (Moscow: Progres Publishers, 1979).

Hixson, William B. Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

———. 'Moorfield Storey and the Stuggle for Equality,' The Journal of American History, Vol. 55, No. 3. (December, 1968).

Howe, M. A. De Wolfe. Portrait of an Independent, Moorfield Storey, 1845-1929. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932.

Leger, Ann Louise. Moorfield Storey An Intellectual Biography. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 1968, 1968.

Schirmer, Daniel B. Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing, 1972.

Tompkins, Berkeley E. Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890-1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.

Wood, Gordon S. 'The Massachusetts Mugwumps,' New England Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4. (December, 1960).

M. Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and Anti-Imperialism, May 9, 2008.

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