Samuel Forster Tappan (June 29, 1831 – January 6, 1913) was an American journalist, military officer, abolitionist and a Native American rights activist. Appointed as a member of the Indian Peace Commission in 1867 to reach peace with the Plains Indians, he advocated self-determination for native tribes. He proposed the federal government replace military jurisdiction over tribal matters with a form of civil law on reservations, applied by the tribes themselves. Early life and family Samuel Tappan, a native of Manchester, Massachusetts, near Boston was a member of the prominent New England Tappan family. It included clergymen, politicians, merchants, sea captains, cabinet-makers, inventors, poets, philanthropists, educators, and abolitionists. He was a first cousin once removed of the noted brothers Arthur Tappan (1786–1865) and Lewis Tappan (1788–1873) who were silk merchants in New York; they were known as philanthropists and abolitionists, as well as their eldest brother, Senator Benjamin Tappan (1773–1857) of Ohio, who mentored Edwin M. Stanton, later Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln. Sam Tappan received a common school education and then went to work in the cabinet-making trade in his native town, learning to make chairs from his father. He next worked in Boston at an uncle's clothing store. Abolitionist activity While in Boston, Tappan was disturbed by the fate of fugitive slaves who were caught pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and returned to servile labor. Tappan was encouraged in his abolitionism by family members and prominent men, who included Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and others. In May 1854, the capture of the slave Anthony Burns in Boston and forced return by US Marshals stirred a fierce reaction among Boston's abolitionists. Crowds lined the street to protest his being shipped back to slavery in the South. This event may have inspired Tappan to take personal action following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. At the age of 23, Tappan was one of a group of 29 New England settlers who came to found what later became Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1854 as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Company's "pioneer party". They were trying to arrange for anti-slavery advocates to settle in Kansas before the vote on whether it should be free or a slave state. He staked a claim to land that abutted the claim of the homeopathic physician Dr. John Doy, formerly of Rochester, New York. He was also a