FULLER, RICHARD: American Baptist preacher; b. at Beaufort, S. C., Apr. 22, 1804; d. in Baltimore Oct. 20, 1876. He was the son of a prosperous South Carolina cotton-planter, and was brought up as an Episcopalian. In 1820 he entered Harvard, where he took high rank as scholar and debater. Though he was obliged on account of ill health to abandon his studies before the completion of his course, he received his degree in 1824. Returning to South Carolina he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and by 1831 had gained a high reputation in his chosen profession. In Oct., 1831, he was converted under the ministry of Daniel Baker, a Baptist evangelist, and soon after began to preach with remarkable eloquence. As pastor in Beaufort, his home town, he was eminently successful and soon gained a national reputation as preacher and denominational leader. He was one of the most eminent of the Southern representatives in the Triennial Convention at the time of the rupture of the Northern and Southern Baptists on the slavery question, and with Francis Wayland as his chief opponent ably defended, in a literary way, the Southern view of slavery. As pastor of the Eutaw Place Church, Baltimore (1846-76), he came to be recognized as the foremost pulpit orator of the American Baptists, and as a denominational leader he was prominent in the great denominational gatherings. In figure and feature he was impressive and attractive. His Sermons, in three volumes, were published posthumously (Baltimore, 1877).

ALBERT H. NEWMAN.