journalist and a leader of the abolition movement (abolitionism) prior to the American Civil War.

Bailey graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1827; in 1834 he was a lecturer on physiology at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Lane Seminary debates on slavery stirred him to become an ardent abolitionist. In 1836 he joined James G. Birney (Birney, James Gillespie) in editing the Cincinnati Philanthropist, the first antislavery organ in the west. Later, as sole proprietor, he persisted in airing his views even though his printing office was repeatedly wrecked by proslavery mobs. In 1843 he launched a daily paper, the Herald.

In January 1847 Bailey became editor of The National Era, established in Washington, D.C., by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. With its considerable circulation, this paper exerted a strong political and moral influence. Among its contributors were Nathaniel Hawthorne (Hawthorne, Nathaniel), John Greenleaf Whittier (Whittier, John Greenleaf), and Theodore Parker (Parker, Theodore); in its pages Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a serial in 1851–52.

Bailey died while making a voyage to Europe for his health.