Elihu Burritt was born on December 8, 1810.  At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, yet managed to teach himself Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and German. He became known as the “learned blacksmith.”  Gradually he came to see that “there was something to live for beside the mere gratification of a desire to learn – that there were words to be spoken with the living tongue and earnest heart for great principles of truth and righteousness.”

In 1846, Burritt began to publish leaflets called Olive Leaves.  They were sent out to 1500 American newspapers and “scattered in trains, railway stations and other public places and circulated in every other conceivable way. “  His Olive Leaves contained statistics about the cost of war, quotations about peace and anecdotes that illustrated the absurdity of war.