He was one of the "law and order" leaders during the "Dorr Rebellion" of 1842, and was called "the first citizen of Rhode Island."
Among his portrait busts are those of David D. Porter, James G. Blaine, Francis Wayland, and Ulysses S. Grant (1886).
He first studied with Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, and became an active member and student of religion at the Meetinghouse Street Church, organized as a Baptist Church and at that time led by Rev. Jeremiah Ashur, then the African Union Meeting and Schoolhouse.
The issue of slavery forced antislavery theologians, including William Ellery Channing, Francis Wayland, and Horace Bushnell, to reconcile what they perceived as contradictory loyalties to the Bible and to antislavery reform.
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Though the school died in 1883, the town streets still bear the names of several well-known 19th-century Baptists: Judson and Hasseltine (after Adoniram Judson and his wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson), Wayland (after Francis Wayland, president of Brown University in Rhode Island), Wade (after missionary Jonathan Wade) and Boardman (after missionary George Boardman, whose widow, Sarah Hall Boardman became Judson's second wife).