Friend Anthony Benezet

Friend Anthony Benezet
Author: George S. Brookes
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection
Total Pages: 562
Release: 1937
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

A collection of Benezet's letters and minor writings, preceded by an account of his life.

Let This Voice Be Heard

Let This Voice Be Heard
Author: Maurice Jackson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2010-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812202341

Anthony Benezet (1713-84), universally recognized by the leaders of the eighteenth-century antislavery movement as its founder, was born to a Huguenot family in Saint-Quentin, France. As a boy, Benezet moved to Holland, England, and, in 1731, Philadelphia, where he rose to prominence in the Quaker antislavery community. In transforming Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources—Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life, and the Bible—into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, and such future abolitionist leaders as Absalom Jones and James Forten studied at Benezet's school and spread his ideas to broad social groups. At the same time, Benezet's correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbé Raynal, Granville Sharp, and John Wesley, gave his ideas an audience in the highest intellectual and political circles. In this wide-ranging intellectual biography, Maurice Jackson demonstrates how Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, narratives of African life written by slave traders themselves, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique. Benezet's use of travel narratives challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, "primitive" African society. Benezet's empirical evidence, laid on the intellectual scaffolding provided by the writings of Hutcheson, Wallace, and Montesquieu, had a profound influence, from the high-culture writings of the Marquis de Condorcet to the opinions of ordinary citizens. When the great antislavery spokesmen Jacques-Pierre Brissot in France and William Wilberforce in England rose to demand abolition of the slave trade, they read into the record of the French National Assembly and the British Parliament extensive unattributed quotations from Benezet's writings, a fitting tribute to the influence of his work.

From Peace to Freedom

From Peace to Freedom
Author: Brycchan Carey
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300180772

In the first book to investigate in detail the origins of antislavery thought and rhetoric within the Society of Friends, Brycchan Carey shows how the Quakers turned against slavery in the first half of the eighteenth century and became the first organization to take a stand against the slave trade. Through meticulous examination of the earliest writings of the Friends, including journals and letters, Carey reveals the society’s gradual transition from expressing doubt about slavery to adamant opposition. He shows that while progression toward this stance was ongoing, it was slow and uneven and that it was vigorous internal debate and discussion that ultimately led to a call for abolition. His book will be a major contribution to the history of the rhetoric of antislavery and the development of antislavery thought as explicated in early Quaker writing.

Quakers and Abolition

Quakers and Abolition
Author: Brycchan Carey
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014-03-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0252096126

This collection of fifteen insightful essays examines the complexity and diversity of Quaker antislavery attitudes across three centuries, from 1658 to 1890. Contributors from a range of disciplines, nations, and faith backgrounds show Quaker's beliefs to be far from monolithic. They often disagreed with one another and the larger antislavery movement about the morality of slaveholding and the best approach to abolition. Not surprisingly, contributors explain, this complicated and evolving antislavery sensibility left behind an equally complicated legacy. While Quaker antislavery was a powerful contemporary influence in both the United States and Europe, present-day scholars pay little substantive attention to the subject. This volume faithfully seeks to correct that oversight, offering accessible yet provocative new insights on a key chapter of religious, political, and cultural history. Contributors include Dee E. Andrews, Kristen Block, Brycchan Carey, Christopher Densmore, Andrew Diemer, J. William Frost, Thomas D. Hamm, Nancy A. Hewitt, Maurice Jackson, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner, Gary B. Nash, Geoffrey Plank, Ellen M. Ross, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, James Emmett Ryan, and James Walvin.

Warner Mifflin

Warner Mifflin
Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 081229436X

Warner Mifflin—energetic, uncompromising, and reviled—was the key figure connecting the abolitionist movements before and after the American Revolution. A descendant of one of the pioneering families of William Penn's "Holy Experiment," Mifflin upheld the Quaker pacifist doctrine, carrying the peace testimony to Generals Howe and Washington across the blood-soaked Germantown battlefield and traveling several thousand miles by horse up and down the Atlantic seaboard to stiffen the spines of the beleaguered Quakers, harried and exiled for their neutrality during the war for independence. Mifflin was also a pioneer of slave reparations, championing the radical idea that after their liberation, Africans in America were entitled to cash payments and land or shared crop arrangements. Preaching "restitution," Mifflin led the way in making Kent County, Delaware, a center of reparationist doctrine. After the war, Mifflin became the premier legislative lobbyist of his generation, introducing methods of reaching state and national legislators to promote antislavery action. Detesting his repeated exercise of the right of petition and hating his argument that an all-seeing and affronted God would punish Americans for "national sins," many Southerners believed Mifflin was the most dangerous man in America—"a meddling fanatic" who stirred the embers of sectionalism after the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. Yet he inspired those who believed that the United States had betrayed its founding principles of natural and inalienable rights by allowing the cancer of slavery and the dispossession of Indian lands to continue in the 1790s. Writing in beautiful prose and marshaling fascinating evidence, Gary B. Nash constructs a convincing case that Mifflin belongs in the Quaker antislavery pantheon with William Southeby, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet.

Philadelphia Stories

Philadelphia Stories
Author: C. Dallett Hemphill
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812253183

Philadelphia Stories chronicles the rich lives of twelve of its citizens—men and women, Black and white Americans, immigrants and native born—to explore the city's people and places from the colonial era to the years before the Civil War.

Anthony Benezet

Anthony Benezet
Author: Wilson Armistead
Publisher:
Total Pages: 170
Release: 1859
Genre: Abolitionists
ISBN:

The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783

The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783
Author: David L. Crosby
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2014-04-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807154776

Pennsylvanian Quaker Anthony Benezet was one of the most important and prolific abolitionists of the eighteenth century. The first to combine religious and philosophical arguments with extensive documentation of the slave trade based on eyewitness reports from Africa and the colonies, Benezet's antislavery writings served as foundational texts for activists on both sides of the Atlantic. In England, those who incorporated his work into their own writings included Granville Sharp, John Wesley, Thomas Clarkson, and William Dillwyn, while Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, David Cooper, James Forten, Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen drew inspiration from his essays in America. Despite Benezet's pervasive influence during his lifetime, David L. Crosby's annotated edition represents the first time Benezet's antislavery works are available in one book. In addition to assembling Benezet's canon, Crosby chronicles the development of Benezet's antislavery philosophy and places the aboli-tionist's writing in historical context. Each work is preceded by an editor's note that describes the circumstances surrounding its original publication and the significance of the selection. Benezet's writings included in this edition: An Epistle of Caution and Advice Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves (1754)Observations on the Enslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes (1759--1760)A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes (1762)A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies (1766--1767)Some Historical Account of Guinea (1771)Benezet's Notes to John Wesley's Thoughts upon Slavery (1774)Observations on Slavery (1778)Short Observations on Slavery (1783) A valuable tool for scholars and students of African American history, slavery studies, and the Revolutionary era, The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754--1783 demonstrates the prevailing impact of the foremost pioneer in American abolitionism.

Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship

Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship
Author: Donna McDaniel
Publisher: Quakerpress of Fgc
Total Pages: 588
Release: 2009
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781888305807

Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye document three centuries of Quakers who were committed to ending racial injustices yet, with few exceptions, hesitated to invite African Americans into their Society. Addressing racism among Quakers of yesterday and today, the authors believe, is the path toward a racially inclusive community.