Tappan, Lewis (1788–1873)

US merchant and abolitionist. With his brother Arthur Tappan he helped establish the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 and the American Missionary Association in 1846. In 1841 he set up the first commercial credit-rating agency in the USA.

Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1828 he entered into partnership with Arthur as a silk jobber in New York City, and succeeded him as editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, which he sold in 1831. With Arthur he helped fund and direct antislavery societies, and he actively sought close links with abolitionists abroad. Like his brother he gradually became more radical as an abolitionist, and in 1855 he left the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to become an officer in the Abolition Society, which called for the elimination of slavery in existing slave states.