Moncure Daniel Conway was a Unitarian and freethought minister, abolitionist, historian, and Hegelian. Like his mentors
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Theodore Parker, Conway graduated from Harvard Divinity School (in 1854) and became increasingly dissatisfied with religious orthodoxy and horrified at slavery. He was a prolific writer of articles and books expounding "radical" religious and political views and even inaugurated another Transcendentalist
Dial in 1860 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was also a biographer; among his works are
Emerson at Home and Abroad (1882),
Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1890), and
Life of Thomas Paine (1892).