What the Laodiceans Actually Were
The Brotherhood of Thieves started in 1838 when a group of students at Phillips Andover Academy, led by Stephen Symonds Foster, organized a secret network to free enslaved people and sabotage the institution of slavery. They called themselves Laodiceans, a reference to the biblical passage in Revelation about being neither hot nor cold, but they were anything but neutral. Foster had been influenced by William Lloyd Garrison's radical abolitionism and became so extreme in his views that Andover dismissed him. A few of his allies followed him out and formed the society anyway. The name "Brotherhood of Thieves" was deliberately provocative. They believed that stealing property from slaveholders — whether that meant tools, supplies, or money — was morally justified if it furthered the cause of emancipation. They also made arrangements to help escaped slaves, though most of their recorded activity centered on agitation, petitioning, and press work rather than direct rescue operations. The romantic version of events often overshoots what they actually accomplished. The historical record is mostly letters, meeting minutes, and a handful of newspaper articles, not an extensive underground rail network.
How the Organization Functioned
The structure was built around secrecy because the stakes were genuinely high. In 1838, the South had significant influence over northern institutions, including churches and schools, and open abolitionist activity could trigger violence, expulsion, or worse. The Laodiceans used coded language in their correspondence and held meetings away from prying eyes. Foster kept detailed records that are still referenced by historians today. Their activities fell into a few categories: distributing anti-slavery literature, recruiting members from sympathetic student populations, lobbying institutions to take an anti-slavery stance, and providing assistance to freedom seekers who made their way into New England. Some members later became prominent abolitionists themselves. Foster went on to run for governor of New Hampshire on the Liberty Party ticket and worked closely with Garrison for decades.
Understanding The Brotherhood Of Thieves Stephen Symonds Foster
For anyone trying to study this properly, the primary challenge is that the original organizational documents were never compiled into a single accessible source. Foster's papers are scattered across archives — at Andover, the Boston Athenaeum, and various university collections. There's no comprehensive modern biography that ties it all together cleanly. The best starting point is Foster's own writings collected in Garrison's The Liberator, where he published numerous letters and statements under his own name and sometimes anonymously. What I've found when digging into this is that most secondary sources either treat the Brotherhood as a footnote in Foster's broader career or inflate their operational scope well beyond what the evidence supports. The real picture is more mundane and honestly more interesting. They were a small group of young people who took an extreme position on an issue they cared about, accepted the social and professional consequences, and kept at it for years. That's it. No elaborate schemes, no legendary rescue missions that changed the trajectory of the Civil War. Just consistent, risky activism. One thing that trips up people researching this is the assumption that the Brotherhood operated as a widespread conspiracy. It was really centered at Phillips Andover with connections to a handful of other institutions and individuals. Foster's later political career brought him into wider circles, but that was a separate phase from the original society.
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Key Figures and Their Roles
Beyond Foster, a few names show up consistently in the records. William G. Anthon, who served as president of the Laodicean Society, and Samuel May, a prominent abolitionist pastor who provided ideological and practical support. George Bradburn was another early member who became known for his anti-slavery journalism. These people stayed in the movement long after the original society dissolved, which is one reason the Brotherhood is sometimes conflated with the broader Garrisonian abolitionist network. Foster himself is the hardest figure to pin down in terms of personal motivation. His writings show a mix of genuine religious conviction, moral absolutism, and what modern readers might recognize as political strategic thinking. He understood that naming something provocatively — calling himself and his associates "thieves" — generated attention and forced people to take a position. That wasn't lost on him.
Where to Find Primary Sources
If you're doing actual research and not just looking for a surface-level summary, here is where the documents live and what you should expect: The Phillips Academy in Andover archives hold the largest collection of Laodicean papers, including membership lists, meeting records, and Foster's correspondence. Access typically requires an appointment and some patience — these are not digitized in full. Garrison's The Liberator is searchable online through multiple digital repositories. Foster's letters there are among the most accessible primary materials. You'll find his thinking laid out plainly without later editorial embellishment.
The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester has abolitionist-era newspapers and pamphlets that reference Laodicean activities. Their catalog system is adequate but not intuitive. You'll spend time searching by keyword and author name. There is a 1903 book by Thomas Wentworth Higginson titled The Story of My Crisis with Slavery that includes firsthand accounts from people who knew Foster and the Laodiceans. It's old, sometimes unreliable on details, and worth reading for the primary-source quotations it preserves. Higginson was a friend of the movement, which means he occasionally smoothed over uncomfortable facts.
Common Misconceptions
The biggest one is that the Brotherhood was a large underground railroad operation. It wasn't. It was a student society with abolitionist aims that happened to use the word "thief" intentionally. The Underground Railroad existed and was real, but this group was not a major node in it. Their contribution was ideological and organizational — helping radicalize a generation of northerners and maintaining the pressure that made compromise on slavery increasingly unacceptable. Another misconception is that Foster was a lone actor. He operated within a network that included Garrison, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and various state-level Liberty Party organizations. The Brotherhood was a starting point, not the entirety of his career. Some popular retellings claim that members physically broke into plantations to free enslaved people. There is no credible evidence for this. What they did was agitation, writing, distribution of pamphlets, and occasional practical assistance to people who had already escaped. The distinction matters because it changes how you evaluate their actual impact.
Why This Matters Now
Studying the Laodiceans and Foster's role in them reveals something about how radical movements start and sustain themselves. They begin small, often in institutional settings like schools, with people who are willing to pay a personal price for their convictions. Foster lost his position at Andover. He faced social ostracism. He ran for office and lost repeatedly. Yet he continued. The methods they used — clandestine organizing, provocative naming, direct action within legal boundaries, press engagement — are still recognizable in modern activist movements. Nothing about the basic mechanics of building a underground network or using controversy to draw attention to a cause has changed much in nearly two centuries. For researchers, the takeaway is that the sources exist but require work to assemble. There is no single definitive account. If you want the full picture, you need to read Foster's own words, cross-reference the archival materials, and separate the later mythmaking from what actually happened. It's not hard work, exactly, but it is work that most casual readers skip over.
