Background

When modern Americans learn about abolitionism and antislavery thought, the focus typically begins in the 1830s. Covered within the context of the American Civil War as a critical and proximate cause, conversations about abolitionism often bypass the Colonial period. Early proponents of abolitionism such as Samuel Sewall, Benjamin Lay, Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, and even slaveholders like Arthur Lee are excluded from the wider historical discussion. Without these voices, is it truly possible to understand the complete story of abolitionism in the Americas? In his 1968 work that received the prestigious Bancroft Prize, White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812, Winthrop Jordan seems to respond in the affirmative. He argues that: “While there were of course changes during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century, there was a remarkably sudden onset of self-examination among White Americans beginning with the Quakers about 1755 and among others during the gathering crisis which climaxed in the War for Independence."1  From Jordan’s perspective, the Revolutionary Period’s increasing antislavery ideologies were “remarkably sudden.” One conclusion that could be drawn from this is that abolitionism prior to the mid-eighteenth century was relatively inconsequential. With a plethora of other historians expressing opposite thoughts, it begs the question as to whether abolitionist efforts in the Colonial Period hold significance. 

Acclaimed historian Dr. Alan Taylor estimates that from 1518 to 1820, “at least two-thirds of the twelve million emigrants from the Old to the New World were enslaved Africans rather than free Europeans.”2 He further expands on this estimate by stating that: “During the eighteenth century, the British colonies imported 1.5 million slaves—more than three times the number of free immigrants.”3 While these numbers are staggering and also indicate the normalcy of forced immigration, they certainly do not provide proof that the practice was universally accepted. In fact, public documentation from as early as the seventeenth century shows some level of opposition to the English enslavement of Africans in the Americas. In February of 1688, for example, four Quakers petitioned their local meeting in Germantown, Pennsylvania to publicly condemn slavery. While it failed to garner approval from the wider body, the important precedent of public opposition to the institution was solidified.4 The remainder of the Colonial Period would see enslaved Africans, free Black communities, Christians of non-Quaker denominations, many additional Quakers, and a multitude of largely forgotten colonists express moral opposition to slavery. By relegating colonial antislavery ideology to the background of abolitionist history, the historical discipline has overemphasized abolitionist actors from the nineteenth century at the expense of properly exploring consequential actors from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.