Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism

Illustrations

Title page of Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1771). The pamphlet was widely distributed to religious and political leaders and royal figures in America and Britain and translated in France. It was read by men like Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Patrick Henry, Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and the Abbé Grégoire. The Reverend Absalom Jones. Jones was born a slave in Sussex, Delaware, and also attended Benezet’s evening school. He became the first priest of African descent in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Along with Richard Allen he was a founder of the Free African Society in 1787. The society was founded in part on the rules and organizational principles of Quaker-inspired abolition societies. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Leon Gardiner Collection. Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson became a leader of the British campaign against slavery. In 1786 he published his Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African, which was his prizewinning Latin dissertation from Cambridge in 1785. Clarkson wrote that he was dismayed at the progress he was making on the essay until he stumbled upon a newspaper in a friend’s house with an advertisement for Benezet’s Some Historical Account of Guinea. He then went to a London bookstore to find the publication and later wrote that “in this precious book I found almost all I wanted.” Courtesy of the Wilberforce House Museum, Hull. Olaudah Equiano. In his Interesting Narrative Equiano wrote, “see Anthony Benezet throughout.” He was referring to Benezet’s Some Historical Account of Guinea, which he used as a reference on the history and geography of parts of West Africa. From Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African (London, 1788). Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Abbé Raynal. Abbé Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal was the author of L’Histoire des deux Indes. Benezet translated and extracted sections of this work and published it with his Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory Remarks to Some Extracts from the Writings of the Abbé Raynal on That Important Subject shortly before his death in 1784. The two men exchanged letters in 1781 and 1782. From Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1770). Courtesy of George Washington University, Gelman Special Collections. Slave-sale advertisement. Benezet was deeply moved as he saw slaves being sold near his home in Philadelphia. From the Pennsylvania Gazette, October 3, 1751. Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia. James Forten. Forten was a free-born black in Philadelphia who studied briefly at Quaker schools before he went to sea. In later years he played an active role in establishing the Negro Convention Movement, worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison against colonization, and became a leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1833. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ...