Ichabod Smith Spencer (February 23, 1798 – November 23, 1854) was a popular 19th-century American Presbyterian preacher and author.J. M. Sherwood, "Sketch of Life and Character", in ''Sermons of Ichabod S. Spencer - Volume 1'' (1864). Spencer was descended from Thomas Spencer, an early settler of

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

, who died in 1687. Around 1786, Spencer's father moved to the

Rupert Rupert may refer to: People * Rupert (name), various people known by the given name or surname "Rupert" Places Canada *Rupert, Quebec, a village *Rupert Bay, a large bay located on the south-east shore of James Bay *Rupert River, Quebec *Rupert' ...

, Bennington, County, Vermont. Spencer was born there, the youngest but one of eleven children. Those who knew Spencer in his youth contended that "he belonged to the class of careless, thoughtless, and gay young men". His father, a farmer, died while Spencer was young, and he thereafter moved to Granville, Washington County,

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, where he engaged in manual labor for something like a year. During this year, a revival of religion visited this town, and Spencer became a Christian. He was encouraged to enter the ministry, and undertook to do so. He entered Union College in 1819, graduating in 1822. He considered a career in law, and spent some time studying for the bar, but ultimately decided to become a minister, and was licensed as such in November, 1826. In May 1828, Spencer married Hannah Magoffin, and in the summer of 1828, he accepted an offer to minister at the

Congregational Church Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...

Northampton, Massachusetts The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of Northampton (including its outer villages, Florence and Leeds) was 29,571. Northampton is known as an acade ...

. There, Spencer gained distinction as a preacher, and in the spring of 1832 he was solicited to move to the Second Presbyterian Congregation of Brooklyn, where he was installed on March 23, 1832. Spencer remained in Brooklyn for the rest of his life, where he wrote extensively, and "published verbatim reports of pastoral conversations that other ministers could use as a guide". Spencer was pro-slavery, and among his most prominent works was ''The Religious Duty of Obedience to the Law'', which specifically called for obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law, contending that resistance to the slave law constituted "positive rebellion against government; and either the resistance must be crushed, or the government be overturned". Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,

Eugene D. Genovese Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and s ...

, ''The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholder's Worldview'' (2005), p. 629.

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Spencer, Ichabod 1798 births 1854 deaths category:People from Rupert, Vermont American Presbyterian ministers 19th-century American clergy Union College (New York) alumni

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