The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition

Textual Appendix

235 textual appendix The holograph manuscripts for all of Benezet’s published works have disappeared. In the absence of manuscripts, all of the works printed in this volume are transcribed from the last printed edition that Benezet saw through the press. Variants in earlier editions that seemed to me interesting or important are mentioned in the endnotes to each work. In transcribing Benezet’s published works, I have corrected obvious typographical errors without comment and modernized the spelling. I have followed modern practice in capitalizing only proper nouns, plus pronouns or common nouns used to refer to God. The printers sometimes used italic typefaces to render proper nouns, such as people’s names and the names of continents, countries, and rivers. I have consistently changed them to roman type. Sometimes Benezet used italic type to emphasize particular words or phrases, and sometimes he used italics in place of quotation marks or in addition to quotation marks, particularly for short quotations. For longer quotes I have generally introduced quotation marks and eliminated the italics. Wherever I believe Benezet meant a word or phrase to be emphatic, I have retained his italics. When Benezet quoted the Bible, he sometimes cited book, chapter, and verse and sometimes did not. In either case I have provided these references in brackets in the text, either creating the citations or converting his various formats to modern citation practice. As for punctuation, eighteenth-century writers and editors loved commas, colons, and semicolons, which make for long and involved sentences . We moderns are more sparing of commas, do not much like colons, and have pretty much given up on semicolons. Most of my punctuation changes involve removing commas to allow the sentences to flow faster and to make clear which clauses are what grammarians call restrictive: that is, they are an essential part of the meaning of the noun they modify. I have substituted periods for commas, colons, and semicolons when I thought it would improve readability without damage to the meaning. I 236 | Textual Appendix have occasionally added parentheses when I thought they were helpful in elucidating the structure of complicated long sentences. Benezet and his printers used long dashes to indicate where he had skipped over sections of his source texts—I have substituted the three or four consecutive points modern editors use to indicate an ellipsis. Benezet’s word forms are most often identical to modern ones, though his spellings vary more than ours. When he is using a dated form of a modern word (e.g., amongst for among, flaed for flayed, and intituled for entitled), I have silently substituted the modern word. When he provided names for his sources that are significantly different from those used in library catalogs, I have left them in the text if it is clear what they are or I have added corrections in brackets. An exception to this modernizing policy involves what might be called “biblical speech,” the archaic verb forms ending in -eth and -est and the pronouns thou, thee, and ye. Benezet did not use them often, but when he used the king James Bible for quotations, he retained these forms. He also used them occasionally to add a fervent energy to his exhortations. I have retained these forms. text 1: AN EPISTLE OF CAUTION AND ADVICE CONCERNING THE BUYING AND KEEPING OF SLAVES This epistle was ordered printed by the 1754 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to be distributed among the “several Quarterly and Monthly Meetings.” The epistle was signed by twelve officers on behalf of the Yearly Meeting , and the identity of its author was deliberately obscured under the corporate responsibility assumed by the Meeting. Modern scholars have begun to agree that Benezet was the principal author. Although Nancy Hornick and Maurice Jackson both claimed partial authorship for John Woolman,1 James Proud, the recent editor of Woolman’s essays, epistles, and ephemera, did not include this epistle among Woolman’s works. According to him, Benezet suggested to the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting that a public statement about owning slaves be issued. A drafting committee worked on the proposal for seven months and then sent it on to the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting. That meeting in turn recommended it to the Yearly Meeting, which approved it.2 Jonathan Sassi adds the information that the committee appointed by the Monthly Meeting to draft the epistle included “Benezet, John Smith, Textual Appendix | 237 and six other men...