Ernest Howard Crosby was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 reformer and author

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the son of Presbyterian minister Howard Crosby, and a relative of prolific hymnwriter and rescue mission worker Fanny Crosby

Fanny Crosby

Frances Jane Crosby , usually known as Fanny Crosby in the United States and by her married name, Frances van Alstyne, in the United Kingdom, was an American Methodist rescue mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. During her lifetime, she was well-known throughout the United States...

.

He was educated at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 and the Columbia Law School

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. While a member of the State Assembly (1887–1889), he introduced three high-license bills, all vetoed by the Governor. From 1889 to 1894 he was judge of the Court of the First Instance at Alexandria, Egypt. He became an exponent of the theories of Count Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, whom he visited before his return to America; his relations with the great Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 later ripened into intimate friendship, and he devoted himself in America largely to promulgating Tolstoy's ideas of universal peace. His book, Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable (1899), was widely commended by such writers as Björnson, Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin

Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...

, and Zangwill

Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill was a British humorist and writer.-Biography:Zangwill was born in London on January 21, 1864 in a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing...

. He was a vegetarian. He wrote:

• Captain Jinks, Hero, illustrated by Daniel Carter Beard
  Daniel Carter Beard
  Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard was an American illustrator, author, youth leader, and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America .-Early life:...
  
  , (1902)
• Swords and Plowshares (1902)
• Tolstoy and his Message (1903; second edition, 1904)
• Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (1904)
• Carpenter
  Edward Carpenter
  Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist....
  
  : Poet and Prophet (second edition, 1905)
• Garrison
  William Lloyd Garrison
  William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
  
  , the Non-Resistant and Abolitionist
  Abolitionism
  Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
  
  (Chicago, 1905)
• Broad-Cast (1905)
• The Meat Fetish : Two Essays on Vegetarianism, (by Ernest Howard Crosby and Elisée Reclus
  Élisée Reclus
  Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
  
  , 1905)
• Labor and Neighbor (1908)

External links

• The Soldier’s Creed, a poem by Ernest Crosby, collected in Liberty and the Great Libertarians (1913) ed. by Charles T. Sprading, p. 54.