The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713-1784): From French Reformation to North American Quaker Antislavery Activism [1 ed.] 9789004315662, 9789004315648

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The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713–1784)

Early American History Series The American Colonies, 1500–1830

Edited by Jaap Jacobs (University of St. Andrews) L.H. Roper (State University of New York—New Paltz) Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Université de Paris VIII—St. Denis and Institut Universitaire de France)

VOLUME 5

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/eahs

The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) From French Reformation to North American Quaker Antislavery Activism

Edited by

Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Parcours d’un réfugié huguenot, by Les Artisans Cartographes (2016, Le Havre) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne, editor. | Van Ruymbeke, Bertrand, 1962-editor. Title: The Atlantic world of Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) : from French  reformation to North American Quaker antislavery activism / edited by  Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke. Description: Leiden : Brill, 2016. | Series: Early American history series :  the American colonies, 1500-1830, ISSN 1877-0216 ; volume 5 | Includes  bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016031162 (print) | LCCN 2016037655 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004315648 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004315662 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004315662 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Benezet, Anthony, 1713-1784. | Antislavery movements—United  States—History—18th century. | Antislavery  movements—France—History—18th century. | Abolitionists—United  States—Biography. | Abolitionists—France—Biography. | Quakers—United  States—Biography. | Huguenots—United States—Biography. | Philadelphia  (Pa.)—Biography. Classification: LCC E446 .A85 2016 (print) | LCC E446 (ebook) | DDC 326/.8092  [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031162

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1877-0216 isbn 978-9004-31564-8 (hardback) isbn 978-9004-31566-2 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Foreword Anthony Benezet and the Dream of Freedom: Then and Now vii Maurice Jackson Acknowledgments xxiii List of Contributors xxiv Introduction Anthony Benezet: A Transatlantic Life and Legacy 1 Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke

Part 1 Anthony Benezet’s French Heritage 1 The Vaunageole and Cévenole Roots of Anthony Benezet 7 Bernard Douzil 2 Being Huguenot in the Vermandois during the 17th and 18th Centuries 23 Didier Boisson 3 Anthony Benezet the Huguenot: A Family Odyssey across the 18th-Century Refuge 34 Bertrand Van Ruymbeke

Part 2 Benezet and the Quaker Community in the British Atlantic World 4 Anthony Benezet: The Emergence of a Weighty Friend 57 J. William Frost 5 On War and Slavery: Benezet’s Peace Testimony and Abolition 70 David L. Crosby 6 Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, and Praise 91 Geoffrey Plank

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Nantucket Quakers and Negotiating the Politics of the Atlantic World 106 Richard C. Allen

Part 3 Benezet’s Writings from an Atlantic Perspective 8

Anthony Benezet as Intermediary between the Transatlantic and Provincial: New Jersey’s Antislavery Campaign on the Eve of the American Revolution 129 Jonathan D. Sassi

9

The Circulation of Early Quaker Antislavery Books: A Transatlantic Passage? 147 Louisiane Ferlier

10

Anthony Benezet’s Antislavery Reputation in France: An Investigation 164 Marie-Jeanne Rossignol

11

“This Precious Book”: Africa and Africans in Anthony Benezet’s Account of Guinea 185 Randy J. Sparks

12

Benezet’s Ghost: Revisiting the Antislavery Culture of Benjamin Rush’s Philadelphia 199 Nina Reid-Maroney

13

From Benezet to Black Founders: Toward a New History of 18th-Century Atlantic Emancipation 221 Richard S. Newman

Bibliography 243 Index of Names and Places 249

Foreword

Anthony Benezet and the Dream of Freedom: Then and Now Maurice Jackson What a joy it was to attend the international academic conference entitled “The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet,” which took place on May 30 and May 31, 2013, in Paris, France, to commemorate the tercentenary of Benezet’s birth. Just a few months after this event, in my home city of Washington, DC, on August 27, hundreds of thousands attended the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr Martin Luther King gave his now immortal speech “I Have A Dream.” Dr. King was joined by more than 200,000 people of all races, nationalities, colors, and creeds, and his speech was heard around the world. That 1963 march was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.1 It was to bring to the fore issues of racism, poverty, injustice, and the lack of voting rights for African Africans, 100 years after Lincoln’s decree. Nine months before the January 1863 proclamation, on April 16, 1862, Lincoln, in a test run, had freed the slaves in Washington, DC, the United States capital. At the time of “DC Emancipation,” Frederick Douglass spoke about his dream: “I trust I am not dreaming, but the events taking place seem like a dream,” and he proclaimed that Lincoln’s acts were a “staggering blow” to slavery.2 One can imagine how Friend Benezet and Dr. King would have felt had they witnessed President Barack Obama, the nation’s 44th and first African American president, deliver his address to the world at a ceremony commemorating the 1963 march. It was held at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial,

1  The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious (slave) states “are, and henceforth shall be free.” In succeeding years the three main “reconstruction amendments “were ratified. The 13th amendment was ratified on December 18, 1865, and abolished slavery in all of the former Confederate states. The 14th amendment ratified in 1868 allowed “due process,” and equal rights and representation in court. It overrode the 1857 decision of Dred Scott vs. Sanford, which stated that blacks were not citizens and had no rights that whites were bound to accept. The 15th amendment ratified in 1870 allowed black men the right to vote and sent in federal troops to prevent the disenfranchisement of blacks. 2  Frederick Douglass to Hon. Charles Sumner, Rochester, April 8, 1862, in Frederick Douglas: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner, abridged and adapted by Yuval Taylor (Chicago, IL, 1999) pp. 493–94.

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within view of the United States Capitol building that was, in large part, built by enslaved Africans.3 The March on Washington in the summer of 2013 was to also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and to keep on bringing to the fore issues of racism, poverty, injustice, and the continued hindrance of voting rights for African Africans. And for those of us who live in Washington, DC, who lack voting representation in the US Congress and daily watch as the black population is priced out of the city, the anniversary events carried special significance.4 Between the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the tercentenary of Benezet, the beloved antislavery activist, I can see a clear connection, and it was thus fitting to celebrate him, in the United States and in France, in 2013. Anthony Benezet was born to Huguenot parents, Judith and Jean-Étienne Benezet, on January 31, 1713, in Saint-Quentin, Picardy, France. The Huguenots had experienced a period of semi-religious freedom, lasting from the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, under Henry IV in 1598, until its revocation by Louis XIV in 1685, leading to renewed persecution by the monarchy.5 The Benezet family fled France for the Netherlands in 1715, went to England, and settled in Philadelphia in 1731.6 In 1735, Anthony was naturalized as a British citizen, and on 13 May 1736 he married Joyce Marriot, whose grandfather was the prominent physician Griffith Owen, a Quaker minister. The year of Benezet’s admittance into the Society of Friends is not known but he was strongly recommended by members of the Quakers. Rejecting his father’s desire to join the family business, Benezet became a schoolteacher. In 1742 he took charge of the Friends’ English School in Philadelphia (later renamed the William Penn Charter School); he also became one of the first educators to found a school for Quaker girls. In The Philadelphia Negro (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois, the first African American to 3  Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History in and Around Washington (Guilford, CT, 2007). 4  Residents in Washington, DC, unlike every other capital city in the world, have no voting representation in the national congress. Maurice Jackson, “In a City with a Rich History, More Must Be Done to Promote Equality,” Washington Post, August 22, 2013; “Pricing the Soul out of Washington, D.C.,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 18, 2012; “Emancipation Day 2012: Now More than Ever,” Washington Post, April 13, 2012. 5  Geoffrey Treasure, The Huguenots (New Haven, CT, 2013), p. 330. Jan McKee and Randolph Vigne, eds., The Huguenots: France, Exile and Diaspora (Brighton, 2013). William Comfort, “Anthony Benezet: Huguenot and Quaker,” The Huguenot Society, 24 (Philadelphia, PA, 1953): 36. 6  More generally, these dimensions of Benezet’s “Atlantic world” are covered in detail in the contributions to this volume by Bernard Douzil, Didier Boisson, and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke.

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earn a PhD at Harvard, in 1895, and a primary organizer of the Pan African Congress movement, which held its first meeting in Paris in 1919, wrote: “on motion of one, probably Benezet, it was decided that the instruction ought to be provided for Negro Children.”7 He was referring to the year 1750, when Benezet began to teach young black children, primarily in his home. Benezet later founded the School for Black People, also known as the African School for Blacks and the Free African School. His students included Absalom Jones, the first priest of African descent in the Protestant Episcopal Church, who attended as an adult.8 James Forten, the sail maker and entrepreneur, also attended Benezet’s school. Around 1774 it became financially too difficult for Forten to continue his studies, and, according to Julie Winch, “apparently it was Anthony Benezet who helped him find work.”9 Benezet also helped Forten’s sister Anne Elizabeth Fortune, who was freeborn and had attained some wealth, by agreeing to serve as the executor of her estate. Winch added: “The choice of Anthony Benezet as executor was logical enough. His championing of the rights of the black community had earned him the affection of slave and free alike.”10 Carter G. Woodson, who in 1912 became the second African American to earn his doctorate at Harvard and is universally known as “the Father of Negro History” (now African American History), like Du Bois, had great admiration for Benezet.11 He wrote in 1917 in the second issue of the magazine he founded, The Journal of Negro History, that Benezet “obtained many of his facts about the sufferings of slaves from the Negroes themselves, moving among them in their homes, at their places where they worked or on the wharves where they

7  W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: a Social Study (New York, NY, 1899, 1st Schocken edition, 1967), p. 83. David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois, Biographer of a Race 1868–1919 (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 3–4. 8  Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York, NY, 2008), pp. 32, 121. 9  Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: the Life of James Forten (New York, NY, 2002), p. 25. 10  Winch, A Gentleman of Color, p. 15. 11  Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, The Early Black History Movement: Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo Greene (Urbana, IL, 2007), chs 1, 2; Dagbovie, “ ‘Most Honorable Mention . . . Belongs to Washington, D.C.’ The Carter G. Woodson Home and the Early Black History Movement in the Nation’s Capital,” The Journal of African American History, 96:3 (Summer 2011): 295– 324. In 1926, Woodson also founded Negro History Month, now African American History Month.

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stopped when traveling.”12 Woodson deeply respected what Benezet had written in A Short Account of the People Called Quakers (1780): having observed the many disadvantages these afflicted people labor under in point of education and otherwise, a tender care has taken place to promote their instruction in school learning, and also their religious and temporal welfare, in order to qualify them for becoming reputable members of society.13 In short, unlike many of his contemporaries, who opposed the slave trade but went little further, Benezet actively fought to end slavery and proclaimed the equality of blacks. His many publications, the many students he educated, and his passionate descriptions of Africa before the onslaught of the slave-traders are full testimony of that.14

Benezet and Africa

Benezet followed a tradition first set by Ralph Sandiford, who applied Quaker principles to the enslaved Africans, including the belief that all people were born equal in God’s sight, the policy of non-violence, and the disapproval of excessive material acquisitions and consumption. Sandiford, a Quaker 12  Carter G. Woodson, “Anthony Benezet,” Journal of Negro History, 2 (1917): 47–48. The magazine is now The Journal of African American History. 13  Anthony Benezet, A Short Account of the People Called Quakers (Philadelphia, PA, 1780). 14  Full titles of Benezet’s key antislavery writings include, in order of publication, and with the date of publication of the first edition, Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, with Some Advice theron, Extracted form [sic] the Yearly Meeting Epistle of London for the Pre‑sent Year (Germantown, PA, 1759); A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes . . .and the Manner by which the Slave‑Trade is Carried on (Philadelphia, 1762); A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from Various Authors, and Submitted to the Serious Considerations of All, and More Especially of Those in Power (Philadelphia, PA, 1766); Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and General Disposition of its Inhabitants, with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, it’s Nature and Lamentable Effects (Philadelphia, PA, 1771); Serious Considerations on Several Important Subjects, viz, on War and its Inconsistency with the Gospel; Observations on Slavery, and Remarks on the Nature and Bad Effects of Spirituous Liquors (Philadelphia, PA, 1778); Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory to Some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbe Raynal on that Important Subject (Philadelphia, PA, 1783).

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i­mmigrant from England and a merchant whose shop overlooked the slavetrading market, like Benezet witnessed slave-trading down the street from his house. In 1729, Benjamin Franklin published Sandiford’s A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times. Benezet’s observations led him to link Europeans, especially the British and French, with “the love of wealth” that he believed was brought on by the Atlantic slave trade. He argued that greed drove men and nations to war, and he contrasted that constant desire for “gain”, in his own society, with an image of African societies that he derived from travel narratives and discussion with enslaved and free Africans. He believed that, prior to the slave trade, Africans had lived in relative peace and freedom with an abundance of the necessities of life. He asserted that the slave trade morally corrupted Europeans as well as some Africans, who became accomplices in the buying and selling of their fellows. Benezet collaborated with the Quaker leader John Woolman, the author of Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754), and each man influenced the other. That same year the Epistle of Caution and Advice, Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves, a key text in the fight against slavery, was issued. Benezet “initiated the composition process and the essay was revised over a period of eight months, incorporating input from a widening circle of Quakers, first in Philadelphia and then in a broad part of southeastern Pennsylvania, and finally at the yearly meeting. An untold number of Friends participated.”15 In 1758 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting seemed poised to defeat a motion requiring Quakers to disavow slavery and free their slaves. Benezet, who had been silent throughout the meeting, solemnly rose. Weeping profusely, he walked to the front of the meeting and recited a well-known passage from the Book of Psalms: 68:31: “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” His message was that the children of Africa were God-fearing, God-loving, and worthy of God’s grace. His message, backed by his life of service, carried the day. Still many Quakers continued to violate the rule against owning slaves. The meeting reminded its members of the “desolating calamities of war and bloodshed,” formed committees to visit the violators, and decided to send John Woolman, John Churchman, John Scarborough, John Sykes, and Daniel Stanton to visit all Quaker slave-holders under the province of the Philadelphia meeting. The purpose of the visits was to weed out all Quakers who bought or sold slaves from any participation in the business affairs of the Church. This showed

15  Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: a Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia, PA, 2013), p. 109.

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the Quakers’ determination not to include slave-holders as members of the community and was a signal event. Benezet published Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, with some Advice thereon, Extracted from the Epistle of the Yearly Meeting of the People Called Quakers, Held at London in the Year 1758. Reprinted in Germantown in 1759 and 1760, this was Benezet’s first published tract and it established him as an antislavery propagandist and activist. His most important works on Africa were A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes (1762) and Some Historical Account of Guinea (1771).16 Both were reprinted in Philadelphia and London. The gentle Quaker’s work greatly influenced the famed African-born abolitionists Quobna Ottabah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano. Both men were kidnapped, as children, from Africa and relied on Benezet’s writings to enhance their knowledge of their homelands.17 In Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), Cugoano referred his readers to “the worthy and judicious” Benezet as giving “some very striking estimations of the exceeding evil occasioned by that wicked diabolical traffic of the African slave trade.”18 Equiano, who wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), depicted his Igbo culture and homeland, in what later became Nigeria, closely following Benezet’s geographical and physical accounts. He relied on Benezet’s descriptions of Africa throughout this narrative and wrote to “see Anthony Benezet throughout” to bolster his own ­description of the Africa of

16  Benezet, A Short Account of that part of Africa; Some Historical Observations of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and General Disposition of its Inhabitants, with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, Its Nature and Lamentable Effects (Philadelphia, PA, 1771). 17  For a discussion concerning Equiano’s age and birthplace, see Vincent Carretta, Equiano, The African: Biography of a Self Made Man (Athens, GA, 2005), especially chs 1, 13, 14; Vincent Carretta, “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vasa”? New Light on an EighteenthCentury Question of Identity,” Slavery and Abolition, 20:3 (December 1999), 96–105; Vincent Carretta, “Questioning the Identify of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity Nussbaum (Baltimore, MA, 2003), pp. 226–35. See also Paul E. Lovejoy, “Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vasa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African,” Slavery and Abolition, 27:3 (2006): 317–47. Paul E. Lovejoy, “Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa: What’s in a Name?,” Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives, 9:2 (2012): 165–84. Paul E. Lovejoy, “Construction of Identity: Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vasa?” Unpublished paper. 18  Quobna Ottabah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, ed. Vincent Carretta, (New York, NY, 1999), p. 75.

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his youth, before the “arrival of the Europeans.”19 Charles Ignatius Sancho wrote in 1788 about “the Christian, the learned author of that most valuable book Some Historical Account of Guinea,” Benezet.20 In Benezet’s library was a copy of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Gronniosaw’s, An African Prince as Related by Himself (1771). In preparing An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African (1786), the British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson wrote of Benezet’s Some Historical Account that, “in this precious book, I found almost all I wanted. I obtained by means of it knowledge of and gained access, to the great authorities of Adanson, Moore, Barbot, Smith, Bosman and others.”21 Benezet analyzed the early travelers’ accounts of Africa (e.g. those of Richard Jobson in 1623, André Brüe in 1685, Jacques Barbot in 1678, and Wilhelm Bosman in 1709) to create his own description of Africa and to refute the proslavery descriptions of Africa and Africans. Some Historical Account became, in some early black schools, one of the first textbooks on Africa.

Enlightenment Philosophy

Like many writers of the time—particularly Dissenters in the English-speaking world—Benezet relied heavily on biblical citations to buttress his arguments. He also used Enlightenment philosophy and practical life. He believed, as did Montesquieu, that “the state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master or to the slave.” Slavery, Montesquieu argued, caused man to become “fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous and cruel.”22 In short, slavery had a destructive effect on both the state and free men therein, and destroyed the white soul as surely as it did the black body. Benezet was deeply influenced by Scottish moral philosophers, agreeing with legal theorist George Wallace, who wrote in System of the Principles of the Law of Scotland (1760) that “Men in their liberty are not ‘in comercia,’ they are not either s­aleable 19  Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vasa, the African, ed. Robert J. Allison (New York, NY, 1995), p. 39. 20  Ignatius Sancho, “Letter LVII to Mr. F[isher] Charles Street, January 27, 1788,” Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho an African, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York, NY, 1989), pp. 111–12. 21  Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishments of the Abolition of the African-Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols, vol. 1 (London, 1808), pp. 208–09. 22  Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge, UK, 1989; 1st edn, Paris, 1748), bk. 15, ch. 1, p. 246.

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or purchasable.”23 In Short Account of that Part of Africa, and A Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, Benezet quoted Scottish philosopher Frances Hutcheson, who in System of Moral Philosophy (1755) declared: “no endowments natural or acquired, can give a perfect right to assume power over others, without their consent.”24 Like Adam Smith, he argued that slavery diminished the productive capacity and corrupted the morals of both races.25 Benezet had a tremendous influence on Benjamin Franklin, who credited his pamphlets and antislavery petition efforts with the decision of the Virginia House of Burgesses to petition the king for an end to the slave trade in 1772. He also brought the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush into the struggle for black freedom. Benezet wrote many hundreds of letters, corresponding with religious leaders such as George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Moses Brown, and secular leaders such as Franklin and Rush, about his views about slavery.26 On receiving one of his pamphlets, Patrick Henry wrote on January 18, 1773: “I take this Opportunity to acknowledge ye receipt of Anthony Benezet’s book against the slave trade. I thank ye for it.” Henry added ruefully: “would anyone believe that I am a Master of Slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by ye general Inconvenience of living without them; I will not, I cannot justify it.”27 John Wesley’s Thoughts Upon Slavery (1774) is based almost entirely on Benezet’s Some Historical Account. He thanked the founder of Methodism for using his work. In 1783, Benezet addressed a letter to Great Britain’s Queen Charlotte, urging her to help end the British slave trade, and he wrote to Queen Sophia of Spain with a similar request.

23  George Wallace, A System of the Principles of the Laws of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1760), p. 90. Benezet first used this quote in Short Account of that Part of Africa. 24  Frances Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1755), bk. II. ch. 5, sec. ii, p. 301. 25  Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. iii, eds. Ronald L. Meek, David D. Raphael, and Peter G. Stein (Oxford, 1978), p. 103. 26  Benezet’s letters and pamphlets, and his personal library, are housed and archived at the Haverford College Quaker Archives. These include letters, epistles, Quaker monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting minutes, Benezet School Records, and pre-1800 documents that were recently transferred from the Arch Street Meeting house in Philadelphia. Pamphlets, books and maps that Benezet read for his research are at the Library Company of Philadelphia. 27  Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773, Haverford College Quaker Collection.

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The Beginning of the Transatlantic Campaign Against Slavery and the Slave Trade

The correspondence between Benezet and the pioneer British abolitionist Granville Sharp proved to be one of the first links to the transnational fight against slavery and the slave trade. Sharp had copies of Benezet’s pamphlets delivered to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and his fellow jurists in 1771, before their ruling in the famous Somerset case. Mansfield decided that James Somerset, a black slave who had been brought to England, could not be forcibly removed from the country and declared him free. To influence the British debates about slavery, on May 14, 1772, Benezet wrote to Sharp that “six hundred Copies had been delivered” of his pamphlet A Caution and A Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies (1767) “to so many Members of both Houses of Parliament.”28 It was Benezet who, through his correspondence, introduced Sharp to Franklin, writing on April 4, 1773: “I am glad to understand from my friend Benjamin Franklin, that you have commenced an acquaintance, and that he expects in future to act in concert with thee in the affair of slavery.”29 Benezet’s descriptions of Africa proved so central that William Wilberforce quoted him at length in the great 1792 British parliamentary debates on ending the slave trade. At that time a motion was forwarded in favor of abolishing slavery—one of the first such actions taken in any parliamentary body in the world. Although it did not win passage, it is credited with having been a milestone in the fight to bring about the beginning of the end of the international slave trade. By then, thousands of Benezet’s pamphlets had been distributed to abolition societies and members of the British parliament. Benezet was known to those men who would, after his death, found the Société des Amis des Noirs (Friends of the Blacks) in Paris. At the meeting of March 11, 1788, Jean-Pierre Brissot, one of the founders of Amis des Noirs, gave a presentation to the group about one of Benezet’s publications, which he referred to as Détails historiques de M. Bénézet, sur la Guinée, et sur le commerce des esclaves.30 He wanted the work to be translated. From the description he gave, this seems to have been Benezet’s popular 1771 Some Historical Account. Among other members of Amis des Noirs at various stages were Nicolas Caritat, 28  Anthony Benezet to Granville Sharp, May 14, 1772, Haverford College Quaker Collection. Charles Stuart, A Memoir of Granville Sharp to Which is Added Sharp’s “Laws of Passive Obedience,” and an Extract from His “Law of Retribution” (New York, NY, 1836), p. 20. 29  Anthony Benezet to Granville Sharp, April 4, 1773, Haverford College Quaker Collection. 30  Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot, La Société des Amis des Noirs (Paris, 1998), pp. 19, 26, 91, 129, 187.

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the marquis de Condorcet, a politician and defender of human rights—one of the few who fought specifically for women and Blacks—Étienne Clavière, a peer of Brissot’s in the Girondist movement, Honoré Gabriel Victor Riqueti, the comte de Mirabeau, and Bishop Henri Grégoire, later the leading antislavery figure during the French Revolution. Grégoire dedicated his An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Facilities, and Literature of Negroes “to all those men who have had the courage to lead the cause of the unhappy blacks and mulattoes, whether by the publication of their works, or by discussion in the national assemblies, &c.”31 He did not list Benezet among the dozen Americans—such as Franklin and Rush—but with the roughly fifty Frenchmen, interestingly stressing his French roots. Here we read Benezet’s name alongside those of the founders of Amis des Noirs, Brissot, Condorcet, and Lafayette. The relationship between Abbé Raynal and Benezet offers an excellent view into the exchange of ideas across the Atlantic.32 Both found ways to incorporate the competing ideas of the day with empirical data collected from a large array of sources.33 Raynal, like Benezet, relied on a variety of sources, including his contemporaries, for his factual information, which underlined the philosophical underpinning of L’Histoire des deux Indes, the anticolonial bestseller of the 1770s.34 In this, Raynal praised the Quakers for setting an example that he considered extraordinary in “the epoch of the history of the religions of humanity.”35 Raynal most likely acquired this anecdote from a letter written by Benjamin Rush (August 30, 1769), later published in Ephémérides du citoyen.36 31  Henri Grégoire, An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Facilities, and Literature of Negroes. This new edition has an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges, trans. David Bailie Warden (Armonk, NY, 1997, reprint of the original 1810 English edition), p. xxv. Among the Englishmen, in addition to Sharp and Wesley, we find those we would associate with America, such as Benjamin Lay and John Woolman. 32  Edoardo Tortarolo, “La réception de l’Histoire des deux Indes aux Etats-Unis,” Lectures de Raynal. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, vol. 286 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 305, 316. 33  Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, vol. 2 (London, 1783). 34  Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Anthony Strugnell, Introduction to L’Histoire des deux Indes: réécriture et polygraphie, vol. 333: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1995), p. 2. 35  Edward Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion in France during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MA, 1937), p. 87. 36  Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion in France, p. 87. The letter incorrectly stated that the Quakers had voted in the assembly for general emancipation. This historical inaccuracy became

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Raynal found a great American admirer in Benezet. Conversely, Benezet saw in Raynal’s oppositional stance to slavery many ideas that reflected his own. He found intellectual support in L’Histoire des deux Indes’ critique of the idea that the supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks justified slavery; Raynal’s philosophical ideas—were purely philosophical because, unlike Benezet, ­ Raynal had no real experience of blacks—thus buttressed Benezet’s own experience of teaching blacks and speaking with their parents.37 In 1781 and 1782, Benezet translated an extract from L’Histoire des deux Indes and published it with his introduction to Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory Remarks to Some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbé Raynal on that Important Subject, his last major work before his death in 1784.38 Finally, through Samuel Powell Griffiths, a letter that Benezet had written on July 16, 1781, reached Raynal. Benezet wrote to “My Friend Abbé Raynal,” and said: Above all, my dear friend, let us represent to our compatriots the abominable iniquity of the Guinea trade . . . Let us rise, and rise with energy against the corruption introduced into the principles and manners of the buyers and owners of slaves, by a conduct so contrary to humanity, reason and religion.39 Benezet had tried many times to contact Raynal, first by sending letters through Benjamin Franklin. Raynal acknowledged such and wrote to Benezet from Brussels, six months later, but Benezet did not receive the letter until June 1782. Raynal thanked him for his letters and pamphlets: all your letters have miscarried; happily, I received that of the sixteenth of July, 1781, with the pamphlets filled with light and sensibility, which accompany it. Never was any present more agreeable to me. My the basis for many French writers’ notations of 1769 as a turning point for antislavery activism in America. 37  Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, vol. 2, pp. 314–15. Louis Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment (Minneapolis, MN, 2006), pp. 123–24. 38  Anthony Benezet, Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory Remarks to Some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbé Raynal on that Important Subject (Philadelphia, PA, 1781), p. 82. 39  Anthony Benezet to Abbé Raynal, July 16, 1781, Haverford College Quaker Collection.

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s­ atisfaction was equal to the respect I have always had for the society of the Quakers. He added: may it please Heaven to cause all nations to adopt their principles; men would then be happy, and the globe not stained with blood. Let us join in our supplications to the Supreme Being, that He may unite us in the bonds of a tender and unalterable charity.40 Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve also held a high opinion of Benezet.41

Conclusion

Benezet fought until the end. When two free black men were charged with being runaway slaves, and were arrested and held in a Philadelphia workhouse, Benezet tried to help to obtain their freedom. When all else failed, in the spirit of their ancestors, the men committed suicide. They had tasted freedom and chose death over slavery. On August 10, 1783, he wrote to his friend John Pemberton a long, personal letter pouring out his feelings about slave kidnappings in the North and the extension of slavery in the South: “The case of the oppressed black people becomes rather more & more weighty.” Blacks are “torn children from parents & parents from children &c to be sold in the Southward where they have reason to expect worse than here.” When all else failed, “the Black people: . . . made away with themselves” by committing suicide.42 Benezet supported the initial founding of the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage on April 14, 1775. In 1784, a few months before Benezet’s death, the organization was reformed as the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery: The Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in 40   Abbé Raynal to Anthony Benezet, December 26, 1781, Haverford Library, Quaker Collection. 41  Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, a radical deputy to the Estates General, the second elected Mayor of Paris, and, eventually, a leader of the Girondins before he fled Paris to escape execution and committed suicide in 1794, wrote admiringly in 1790: “A single man, inspired no doubt by the divinity, undertook to persuade, to convert cupidity, and he succeeded. At the voice of Benezet, all his friends, all his brothers [meaning fellow Quakers] hastened to let fall the irons of their slaves, and to demand of various legislatures the proscription of this commerce.” Jérôme Pétion, Sur la Traite des Noirs (Paris, 1790). 42  Anthony Benezet to John Pemberton, August 10, 1783, Haverford College Quaker Collection.

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Bondage; and for Improving the Conditions of the African Race, and was led by Benjamin Rush. In 1787, Benezet’s old friend Franklin took the helm of the organization. In early 1787, a number of free blacks, including Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and James Forten, met to discuss forming a religious society for blacks. Feeling that their numbers were too small and their religious sensibilities too many, they instead formed in April 1787 the Free African Society at the home of Richard Allen. Gary Nash observed that at first “the society’s articles of incorporation” were “written when the aura of the influential Anthony Benezet still prevailed.”43 In January 1789 the society began to hold its meetings at the “Benezet’s African School House.” It began circulating petitions that were modeled in part on Benezet’s earlier ones, and their opposition to colonialization schemes was similar to his as an early advocate of giving land to free blacks.44 There were many facets to Benezet’s life. As a Quaker educator he developed new ways to teach students to read, publishing An Essay on Grammar (1778) and The Pennsylvania Spelling Book (1778). Near the end of his life he began a study of the plight of the Native Americans, and in 1784 he published Observations on the Situation, Disposition and Character of the Indian Natives of this Continent. He wrote several pamphlets on the Quaker religion and others such as Thoughts on the Nature of War (1759). He wrote Remarks on the Nature and Bad Effects of Spirituous Liquors (1788), as well as several other pamphlets about what he considered the harm done to society by liquor consumption. Summing up the general feeling about the passing of Benezet, Brissot, the French revolutionary, wrote: What author, what great man, will ever be followed to his grave by four hundred Negroes, snatched by his own assiduity, his own generosity, from ignorance, wretchedness, and slavery? Who then has a right to speak haughtily of this benefactor of men . . . Where is the man of all of Europe, of whatever rank or birth who is equal to Benezet. Who is not obliged to respect him? How long will authors suffer themselves to be shackled by the prejudice of society? Will they never perceive that nature 43  Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: the Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720– 1840 (Boston, MA, 1988), pp. 100–01. Margaret Hope Bacon, But One Race: the Life of Robert Purvis (Albany, NY, 2007), p. 19. Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: the Life of James Forten (New York, NY, 2002), pp. 24–25, 123–24, 152–53. 44  Benezet, A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1762), pp. 69–70). Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (1772), pp. 139–40.

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has created all men equal, that wisdom and virtue are the only criteria of ­superiority? Who was more virtuous than Benezet? Who was more useful to mankind?45 In recent years, new information about Benezet, and about his Atlantic dimensions and transnational connections, has been presented and published. This is to be applauded.46 Even old written works, in France, about Benezet, are being rediscovered.47 Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream so eloquently expressed in his immortal “I Have A Dream” speech fifty years ago, Benezet also had a dream. I ended my own book, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet Father of Atlantic Abolitionism, with an epilog entitled “Anthony Benezet’s Dream.”48 Sometimes the greatest tributes come from an adversary, and, on December 24, 1787, the pro-slavery State Gazette of South-Carolina reprinted Benjamin Rush’s ‘Paradise of Negro Slaves—A Dream.’ In his dream, Rush repeated the oft-told story of Benezet, “a little white man”: “in one hand he carried a subscription paper and a petition; in the other he carried a small pamphlet on the unlawfulness of African slave-trade.”49 Rush dreamed of a paradise where Africans would realize their freedom in death if not in life, something akin to the African concept

45  Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Extracts From a Critical Examination of the Marquis De Chasellux’s Travels in North America in a Letter Addressed to the Marquis (Trinity College, Atkinson Library, Hartford, CT, July 1, 1786). 46  Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel, Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808 (New York, NY, 2015); Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, Quakers and Abolition (Urbana, IL, 2014); David Crosby, ed., The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754–1783 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2013); Plank, John Woolman’s Path; Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, CT, 2012); Maurice Jackson, Let this Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009). 47  Gustave Demoulin, “Antoine Bénézet, Promoteur de la suppression de la Traite des Nègres et de l’abolition de l’esclavage en Amérique,” Mémoires de la Société académique des sciences, arts, belles-lettres, agriculture et industrie de Saint-Quentin, 3rd series, vol. 11 (Saint-Quentin, 1874), pp. 219–58. Demoulin was a member of the Saint-Quentin learned society. As a result of his writing, a street was named after Benezet. I am grateful to my colleague James B. Collins for bringing this to my attention. 48  See Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, “Epilogue: Anthony Benezet’s Dream,” pp. 211–30. 49  Rush’s work was first published in the Columbian Magazine; or Monthly Miscellany (Sedden, Spotswood, Cist and Trenchard, Philadelphia, PA, 1787), pp. 235–38. “To the EDITOR of the COLUMBIAN MAGAZINE,’ State Gazette of South-Carolina XLVI: 3573 (December 12, 1787): 1.

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of the Transmigration of the Soul.50 Benezet’s dream was to create a transatlantic antislavery movement to free the enslaved Africans from their misery, and to establish a network to support and educate blacks once freed. His dream was to educate whites both about their complicity with slavery and also about their obligations to blacks and their duty to humankind. Rush wrote to Sharp: “Great events have been brought about by small beginnings. Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago in opposing Negro slavery and now 3/4ths of the province as well as the city cry out against it.”51 In many ways, Dr. King and the youth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee first stood alone, but soon the nation and the world heard their voices. On June 1, 2013, the Deputy Mayor of Saint-Quentin, France, Jean-Claude Natteau, a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now a French citizen, received this author, an African American, in his adopted home. And on November 1, 2013, in Benezet’s adopted home, Philadelphia, “the City of Brotherly Love,” a symposium entitled “Anthony Benezet, Equally Entitled to Freedom: Benezet Then, Benezet Now” was held. Philadelphia mayor Michael A. Nutter, an African American, signed a proclamation, which was presented. In part it read: Benezet’s ideas and devoted work undoubtedly made our City a better place for all who lived during his time and came after. His research, writings, and actions helped shape a better world. It is fitting and appropriate that the City of Philadelphia officially recognize with this tribute, ANTHONY BENEZET. On June 4, 2016, the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission will place a historical marker to honor Benezet at 325 Chestnut Street, his home from 1753 until his death in 1784.52 50  Rush’s dream ended in a remarkable fashion: “The air resounded with the slapping of hands, and I was awakened from my dream by the noise of a loud and general acclamation of—ANTHONY BENEZET!” Paradise of Negro Slaves—A Dream,” Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia, PA, 1806), reprint editions, edited and with introduction by Michael Meranze (Schenectady, NY, 1988), pp. 188–89. 51  In L.H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ, 1951): 80–81. See also Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006). 52  325 Chestnut Street was formerly known as 115 Chestnut Street and was the site of Benezet’s home from 1753 until his death in 1784. John F. Watson, Watson’s Annals

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On his deathbed, after providing for his widow, Benezet left much of his estate to the African Free School. He uttered the words: “I am dying and feel shamed to meet the face of my maker, I have done so little in his cause.” The blacks who followed his funeral procession felt differently. Those who gathered in Paris, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC in 2013 to commemorate his tercentenary felt differently. His cause lives on and his dream of justice and equality endure as African Americans, in the United States, fight to retain and extend the rights they have won thanks in great part to the work that he helped to start so many years ago.

of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time (Philadelphia, PA, 1857), pp. 371–74, including an illustration of Benezet’s house.

Acknowledgments This book could not have been published without the support of University Paris Diderot (UMR LARCA Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Cultures Anglophones 8225) and of University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis (Transferts Critiques et Dynamiques des Savoirs EA 1569).

List of Contributors Richard C. Allen is Reader in Early Modern Cultural History at the University of South Wales. He works on the religious and cultural history of early modern Wales and the north of England, and transatlantic emigration. His major publications include Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: from Resistance to Respectability (2007), and three co-edited volumes: The Religious History of Wales: Religious Life and Practice from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (2013), Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-Reformation England, Ireland and Wales (2009), and Irelands of the Mind: Memory and Identity in Modern Irish Culture (2008). He is currently writing Welsh Quaker Emigrants and Colonial Pennsylvania, 1650–1776: Transatlantic Connections and co-editing The Quakers, 1656–1722: the Evolution of an Alternative Community. Didier Boisson is Professor of Early Modern History at the Université d’Angers and member of the Centre de Recherches Historiques de l’Ouest. His work bears on the French Protestant minority in the 17th century (Les protestants de l’ancien colloque du Berry de la Révocation de l’édit de Nantes à la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1679–1789), ou l’inégale résistance de minorités religieuses, 2000), on the issue of conversion (Consciences en liberté? Itinéraires d’ecclésiastiques convertis au protestantisme, 1631–1760, 2009), and on the institutions of the French Reformed Church (Les actes des synodes provinciaux des Eglises réformées d’Anjou-Touraine-Maine, 1594–1683, 2012). David L. Crosby Professor Emeritus, Alcorn State University, is an independent scholar residing in Jackson, MS. He is the author of “Anthony Benezet’s Transformation of Anti-Slavery Rhetoric,” Slavery and Abolition, 23:3 (December 2002). He has recently edited The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754– 1783: an Annotated Critical Edition (2014), and is currently editing The Complete Writings on Peace and War of Anthony Benezet: an Annotated Critical Edition. He recently presented “Anthony Benezet’s Challenge to Eighteenth Century Depictions of Africa and Africans” at the conference entitled “The Meaning of Blackness/Significance of Being Black,” University of Costa Rica Institute for African and Caribbean Studies, San Jose, February 2014.

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Bernard Douzil is an independent scholar. He holds a doctoral degree in history from the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1). He has been working for several years on the history of Vaunage, a Huguenot micro-area near Nîmes, and particularly on its main town, Calvisson. He has collaborated on several edited volumes. His articles about the Huguenot acquisition of literacy or emigration during the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes are based on family reconstitution. This led him to publish a first article establishing the Vaunageole roots of Anthony Benezet in 2005. Louisiane Ferlier is Research Associate at CELL, University College London. Her research investigates the material and intellectual circulation of ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries. She has written an intellectual biography of schismatic Quaker author George Keith (1639–1716) (forthcoming), and she studies the dissemination of Quaker and anti-Quaker ideas. J. William Frost is the Emeritus Jenkins Professor of Quaker History and Research at Swarthmore College. He is the author of A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (2009), The Quaker Family in Colonial America: a Portrait of the Society of Friends (1975), A History of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim Perspectives on War and Peace (2004), and co-author of The Quakers (1988) and Christianity: a Cultural History (1997). Maurice Jackson teaches at Georgetown University. He is author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (2009). He co-edited AfricanAmericans and the Haitian Revolution (2010) and Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808 (2015). He co-edited a special issue “Jazz in Washington” in Washington History (2014) and is at work on Halfway to Freedom: African Americans and the Struggle for Progress in Washington, D.C. Richard S. Newman is the Edwin Wolf 2nd Director of the Library Company of Philadelphia. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (2002) and Freedom’s Prophet (2009), a biography of African Methodist Episcopal Church founder Richard Allen. His next book American Emancipations is forthcoming.

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Geoffrey Plank is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: a Quaker in the British Empire (University of Pennsylvania Press, PA, 2012), and co-editor, with Brycchan Carey, of Quakers and Abolition (University of Illinois Press, IL, 2014). Nina Reid-Maroney is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Huron University College (London, Canada). She is the author of The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1867–1968 (2013), Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740–1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason (2000), and co-editor of The Promised Land: History and Historiography of Black Experience in ChathamKent’s Settlements and Beyond (2014). Marie-Jeanne Rossignol is Professor of American Studies at University Paris Diderot. She is author of The Nationalist Ferment: the Origins of United States Foreign Policy 1789–1812 (2003). She has been working on North American antislavery from an Atlantic perspective since 2006, publishing articles on Brissot’s interest in North American antislavery in War, Empire and Slavery, 1770–1830 (2010, ed. Richard Bessel) and more specifically on his connection with Crèvecoeur in Quakers and Abolition (2014, eds. Geoffrey Plank and Brycchan Carey). She is currently translating and editing Benezet’s Some Historical Account (1771) with Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and other French scholars. She edits a collection on “slave narratives” with Claire Parfait at the Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre. With Claire Parfait she edited and translated William Wells Brown’s narrative in 2012. Recent volumes in the collection have focused on masters’ trials in Martinique, and Sojourner Truth’s narrative. Jonathan D. Sassi is Professor of History at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York (CUNY), and a faculty member of the PhD Program in History at the CUNY Graduate Center. His publications include A Republic of Righteousness: the Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy (2001), and two articles about Anthony Benezet published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Journal of Early Modern History. The research for his chapter was supported by a PSC-CUNY award, jointly funded by the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York, and by a Gest fellowship from the Haverford College Quaker Collection.

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Randy J. Sparks is Professor of History at Tulane University, where he is a scholar of the US South and the Atlantic World. His publications include The Two Princes of Calabar: an Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (2004), Where the Negroes Are Masters: an African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade (2015), and Africans in the Old South: Mapping Extraordinary Lives Across the Atlantic World (2016). Bertrand Van Ruymbeke is Professor of American Civilization and History at the Université de Paris 8 (Vincennes-Saint-Denis) and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is author of From New Babylon to Eden: the Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (2006) and L’Amérique avant les EtatsUnis. Une histoire de l’Amérique anglaise 1497–1776 (2013, new edition 2016). He also co-edited Memory and Identity: the Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (2003), Protestantisme et autorité (2005), Constructing Early Modern Empires (2007), Les Huguenots et l’Atlantique, 2 vols (2009–12), Réforme et Révolutions (2012), and A Companion to the Huguenots (2016). He is co-founder and co-editor of Journal of Early American History (Brill).

Introduction

Anthony Benezet: A Transatlantic Life and Legacy Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, Picardy, France, on January 31, 1713. As Huguenots, the Benezets clandestinely fled the country in 1715. First moving to Rotterdam and then London, the Benezet family finally settled in Pennsylvania in 1731. Anthony Benezet then made his mark in Philadelphia as a devout Quaker and a community leader, a prolific writer of pamphlets, and a progressive educator, opening schools for girls and for African-American children. Most specifically he spearheaded the efforts of North American Quakers to stop the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the British American colonies. Because he was so deft at spreading his ideas and pamphlets, his antislavery convictions and writings made him famous in the Atlantic world in his own time—he was widely read in Great Britain and his name was a by-word in French antislavery circles—and they still do today. He died in Philadelphia in 1784. Benezet’s geo-biographical itinerary from Saint-Quentin to Rotterdam, London and finally to Philadelphia, as well as the circulation of his ideas, from Philadelphia to London and Paris, appear as perfect illustrations of the Atlantic history paradigm. The international conference that Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke organized in 2013 at University Paris Diderot, with the support of research teams from Paris Diderot (LARCA) and Paris 8 (Transferts Critiques et Dynamiques des Savoirs), was meant to celebrate Benezet’s tercentenary and investigate his “Atlantic world” beyond traditional historiography by bringing together French, English, and North American scholars, thus broadening the usual understanding of the “Atlantic world” as usually applied to Benezet. This volume gathers a selection of papers from the conference, mainly those which dealt with the Atlantic dimension of Benezet’s life. It has been a pleasure to edit the contributions of those Benezet specialists, most of whom had recently published key articles and books on Benezet, the Huguenots in France and in the diaspora, antislavery, and 18thcentury France and America, and to work with them in general. We thank them for their expertise, erudition, patience, and willingness to accept suggested changes. As a result of this multi-national endeavor, this volume presents Benezet’s French origins in detail and provides a much more complex view of the religious itinerary that gradually turned a Huguenot child into a pious Quaker. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004315662_002

2

Rossignol and Van Ruymbeke

Although Benezet is well known as an 18th-century Quaker antislavery activist and has recently been the focus of a new biography, his French familial and religious background is little known and, generally speaking, the literature about him and his work is mostly focused on his stature as a Quaker figure. In the same way, Benezet’s real influence on the French antislavery movement is assessed because until now it has been more assumed than proved. The volume also focuses on Benezet as a truly Atlantic figure whose life and work spanned two empires and who had an impact at the local, provincial, and international levels through war and peace. It covers Benezet’s Atlantic itinerary from the South of France to Philadelphia, while incorporating the most recent research on his writings and influence in the British Atlantic world and in France. Key concepts of Atlantic history, such as migration, circulation, trade, and wars, are central to the chapters presented here. However, the volume also explores Benezet’s fascination with, and depiction of, Africa, which gives an even broader “Atlantic” dimension to his writings and action beyond the French and English empires and toward a more global approach to the slave trade. Another major contribution of the volume is the connection which is drawn between Benezet, 18th-century antislavery thinker and activist, and other opponents of slavery, both at the time and later. His writings and actions must indeed be framed within the global rise of resistance against slavery, which included black rebels in the second half of the 18th century. In the same way that the memory of Benezet served as an inspiration for blacks as they fled slavery in the first half of the 19th century, it must be invoked today as Afro-descendents in the United States and elsewhere still have to face discrimination. Since Benezet was a man of faith, a number of contributions also highlight the spiritual inspiration that drove his commitment to antislavery. Although insisting on his Quakerism was not central to our agenda, we are glad that this dimension is incorporated into the volume, reflecting Benezet’s undeniable religious and moral stature. The volume is made up of fourteen contributions. After the Foreword by Maurice Jackson, the most recent Benezet biographer, highlighting the inspirational role of the antislavery activist, Part I is devoted to Benezet’s French heritage and includes contributions by Bernard Douzil, Didier Boisson, and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke. Douzil explores the Benezets’ origins near Nîmes, Languedoc, and investigates why and how this Huguenot family moved to Northern France in the 17th century. Boisson dissects the Saint-Quentin Huguenot community based around the production and commerce of textile. Finally, Van Ruymbeke follows Jean-Étienne and Judith Benezet, Anthony’s parents, in their flight from France all the way to Philadelphia, and he ­investigates

Introduction

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the conditions and motivations of their escape and Atlantic migration, as well as their choice to become Quakers. Part II focuses on Benezet and the Quaker community in the British Atlantic world, with chapters by J. William Frost, David L. Crosby, Geoffrey Plank, and Richard C. Allen. Frost explains how Benezet became such a respected figure in the Quaker community that he could be heard when he pushed for the condemnation of slavery in 1754. Crosby reminds readers that Benezet’s antislavery commitment derived from the peace testimony of his Quaker faith, while Plank compares Benezet with his fellow abolitionist John Woolman: the two men were united in their faith and action but may have differed in their understanding of antislavery politics. Allen frames Benezet’s community in the changing Atlantic world of the 18th century as the wars and revolutions forced many Quakers to review their economic networks and their place in that world. Part III bears on Benezet’s writings from an Atlantic perspective and includes chapters by Jonathan D. Sassi, Louisiane Ferlier, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Randy J. Sparks, Nina Reid-Maroney, and Richard S. Newman. Sassi shows how Benezet’s inspiration and ideas were central to the New Jersey campaign to ban slave imports and ease private manumissions on the eve of the American Revolution. From New Jersey we move to the London Friends, with the contribution by Ferlier, who reconstructs the transatlantic material circulation of the first Quaker antislavery pamphlets to consider in a new light the contested movement toward abolitionism within the Society of Friends. Across the Channel in France, Benezet’s name was well known but were his pamphlets translated into French as bibliographers and historians have contended? After conducting a thorough investigation, Rossignol doubts this was ever the case until 1789. Sparks discusses the originality and impact of Benezet’s views about Africa and Africans, expressed in his A Short Account of that Part of Africa (1762) and Some Historical Account (1771). Reid-Maroney takes us back to Philadelphia, but also to Upper Canada, where African American migrants moved before the American Civil War in order to fulfill a “dream” of liberation which Benezet fueled as early as the late 18th century. Finally, Newman goes one step further, encouraging historians not to dismiss the Quaker contribution to the antislavery struggle but to reconcile it with the specific contribution of black rebels and Black Founders, and to focus on their shared principles, freedom, and equal human rights, irrespective of skin color. It is hoped that this volume will encourage and shape future research on Anthony Benezet and on antislavery in the Atlantic world in the second half of the 18th century.

Part 1 Anthony Benezet’s French Heritage

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Chapter 1

The Vaunageole and Cévenole Roots of Anthony Benezet Bernard Douzil

Ten Years Later

On February 8 and 9, 2003, under the chairmanship of Emmanuel LeroyLadurie, the Maurice Aliger Association organized a symposium in Nîmes entitled “Vaunage in the Eighteenth Century.”1 Archeologist, historian, and President of the Academy of Nîmes in 1984, Maurice Aliger devoted his lifelong research to the Vaunage, a rich valley of nine villages located west of Nîmes, whose “deep secret [. . .] is its indomitable reformed identity.”2 On the initiative of Jean-Marc Roger, who had assembled the documentation on Maurice Aliger, an association of the same name was created on August 25, 1994, with the aim of deepening our understanding of “the economic, social and political history of the micro-region over the long term.”3 It was indeed Jean-Marc Roger who, while preparing the 2003 conference, asked me to answer a question that had long been of concern: was the famous American Quaker Anthony Benezet of Vaunageole origin or not?4 And if so, to which Benezet family was he connected? Aware that I had worked for a long 1  The first volume of these conference proceedings was published in 2003, with a preface by Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie; the second in 2005, with a preface by Philippe Joutard. 2  Maurice Aliger (1913–93) wrote eight books on the Vaunage from prehistory through the French Revolution. Quotation from Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie, preface to La Vaunage au XIX ème siècle (Nîmes, 1996). 3  Jean-Marc Roger, “Pour l’histoire économique, sociale et politique d’une micro-région sur la longue durée,” La Vaunage au XIX ème siècle. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the tireless work of the man who was President, then the Honorary President of the Association, and also the President of the Academy of Nîmes, until September 2011, when illness prematurely wrested him from us. 4  This question was reinforced by his reading of the doctoral thesis written by Edmond Jaulmes, his fellow historian from Congénies. In this 1898 dissertation on French Quakers there is mention “of a Quaker, Jean Bénézet, from Calvisson, whose property was confiscated in 1715 and who had to take refuge in Holland. He was the son of one of those pious men of Vaunage.” E. Jaulmes, Les Quakers Français, étude historique (Nîmes, 1898), p. 24.

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time on Calvisson and especially on family reconstitution, he handed me a folder, a rather thin one in fact, with pages related to Anthony Benezet’s family, written by Roberts Vaux and George S. Brookes. Thus, with the decisive help of curators at the Archives de l’Aisne5 and the Archives du Nord,6 I was able to ascertain Anthony Benezet’s genealogy, linking him to Calvisson and Congénies.7 Ten years later, we must recognize that this new information on Anthony Benezet has had limited accessibility except for English readers of Maurice Jackson in his biography of Anthony Benezet.8 Jackson used documentation from an online source (http://roelly.org) related to Huguenot families of Picardy, a valuable website, which itself is based on my article. On Google, one must go to the sixth page of entries to find the article published in the journal Revue Nord’ by Jeanne-Henriette Louis, “Antoine Bénézet, bâtisseur de ponts transatlantiques,”9 in which she refers to this information. It is therefore useful to return to the discussion. I should also like to take this reflection on genealogy a step further, to complete our knowledge of Anthony Benezet’s origins by tracing his ancestry to the Cévennes through the family of his mother, Judith Méjanelle. I also make a number of assumptions to try to understand how Jean Benezet from Calvisson could settle in Picardy, so far from his native Vaunage.

From Saint-Quentin to Congénies: In Search of Anthony Benezet’s Genealogy

Roberts Vaux and, after him, George S. Brookes,10 give as a source of biographical information an “ancient family record” (R. Vaux)—whereas Brookes refers to a “family memorial” or “family chronicle”—started by Anthony Benezet’s grandfather and continued over several generations. Vaux is very laconic.

5  Frédérique Pilleboue (curator) and Marie-Noëlle Lenglet. 6  Rosine Cleyet Michaud (curator) and Laurence Delsaut. 7  Bernard Douzil, “Anthony Bénézet, un Quaker d’origine vaunageole en Amérique,” La Vaunage au XVIII ème siècle, vol. 2 (Nages-et-Solorgues, France, 2005). 8  Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2010). 9  Revue Nord’, 56 (December 2010). For the online source, see http://www.revue-nord.com/ telechargements/56/P65.pdf. 10  Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (New York, NY, 1817), and George S. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937).

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In his opinion, “a descendant of Armand Crommelin”11—a Huguenot born in Courtrai (Kortrijk), in the Spanish Netherlands, who took refuge in France in the 16th century to escape the persecutions of his religious persuasion—­married in Saint-Quentin a certain Jean Benezet of “Clavison [sic] in Languedoc”, died in 1690 (actually on August 14, 1710 in Abbeville), leaving “seven children” (more accurately, five boys—Jean-Estienne, Jacques, Jean-Jacques, Cyprien, Pierre—and one daughter, Madeleine-Marie). The eldest, Jean-Estienne, was Anthony’s father. Besides the latter’s date of birth, Vaux added that his family left Saint-Quentin in 1715 to freely practice the reformed religion, fleeing first to Rotterdam and then to London. George S. Brookes is more comprehensive. He also uses French sources, such as Alfred Daullé12 and Jacques Pannier.13 The Picardy part of Anthony Benezet’s genealogy is reliably recounted. I have been able to check SaintQuentin’s parish registers to verify the biographical contributions made by Brookes, with the exception of the marriage of Anthony Benezet’s parents and the birth of Jean Benezet’s children in Abbeville. Until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, baptisms, marriages, and burials of Huguenots in and around Saint-Quentin were registered in Lehaucourt. Anthony Benezet was born on January 31, 1713, to Jean-Estienne Benezet and Judith de Méjanelle, according to family tradition maid of honor at the court of Louis XIV, and daughter of Léon, linen merchant of Saint-Quentin, and Judith Lieurard. He was baptized the following day in the parish church of Sainte-Catherine’s in Saint-Quentin. His godfather was “Mr Antoine Bénézet of Artillon, Sub-delegate of the Governor of the city of Dunkerque,” and his godmother was “Charlotte Lieurard, wife of Pierre Vermalette,” both of whom were absent and represented by two strangers.14 His parents were assumed 11  This descendant was Anthony Benezet’s grandmother, Marie-Madeleine Testart, daughter of Rachel Crommelin, who was the great-granddaughter of Armand Crommelin. The presence of Crommelins in Saint-Quentin is documented as of Armand’s son, Jean Crommelin, who married Marie de Sémery in December 1595. 12  Alfred Daullé, La Réforme à Saint-Quentin et aux environs (Le Cateau, 1901). This is a well-documented and significant work. 13  Jacques Pannier, Antoine Bénézet, un Quaker français en Amérique (Toulouse, 1925). On our subject, Pannier adds nothing to Daullé’s work, if not an error regarding the first name of Anthony Benezet’s grandfather, inexplicably transformed into “Jean Antoine.” 14  Brookes gives this baptismal act as cited from the work by A. Daullé and not from the Benezet family chronicle. The exact text as copied from the parish registers is as follows: “Le trente un de Janvier mil sept cent treize est né et le premier du mois de febvrier a été baptisé par le soussigné pretre curé Antoine fils de monsieur Jean Etienne de Bénézet et de damoiselle Judith de la megenelle son espouse le parein a été monsieur pierre ­gretel

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to have been married on October 29, 1709, in the parish of Saint-Eustache in Paris by the famous Pastor Jacques Saurin,15 in the presence of Judith’s parents, who were staying in Paris. Brookes doubts that this celebration actually took place because it was a Catholic Church (while the family book speaks only of a “parish”). It also assumes that Pastor Saurin, in exile in The Hague at the time, was able to secretly return to Paris. The assumption is, however, not impossible, and one can also ask why and how these details could be invented as per the clarifications provided by the family book. Finally, the records of neither the parish of Sainte-Catherine in Saint-Quentin (the married couple’s local parish) nor the other town parishes mention the wedding. Jean-Estienne Benezet was born twenty-six years before, on June 22, 1683, in Abbeville, to Jean Benezet, receiver of traites (bills of exchange), and Marie-Madeleine Testart. This information comes from the family book Jean Benezet claimed to have started on the day of his marriage on August 16, 1682, in Saint-Quentin, to the daughter of Pierre Testart and of the late Rachel Crommelin. This leaves us with Jean Benezet’s ancestry to uncover and understand in terms of this very Mediterranean-sounding name. It is probable that the name of his home town is difficult to read. We have seen that Vaux had read “Clavison.” Brookes makes a serious error of interpretation (and geography), since, according to him, Jean Benezet came from “Carcassonne, near the Cévennes mountains.” Despite these inaccuracies, the idea of situating Jean Benezet’s origin in Calvisson is strengthened in the light of my own information. What about Pastor Jacques Saurin? He was a son of an academician from Nîmes, Jean Saurin, himself the only son of Jean Saurin of Calvisson, captain of the guards of the Duke of Rohan. And what about Artillon, the title Anthony Benezet’s godfather used? This is an area of land within Calvisson. I found that this Anthony Benezet was buried in Dunkerque on December 11, 1713, “in front of the chapel of St. George’s, with the bell of Jesus.” He was about 50 years old and la mareine damoiselle Anne Letuvé au lieu et places de damoiselle charlotte lieurard Epouse de monsieur pierre vermalette et ledit pierre gretel est au lieu et places de monsieur Antoine Bénézet dartillon subdeleguet de l intendant de la ville de dunquerque lesquels avec le pere ont signé JEstienne Bénézet, pierre cretel, la marque de anne letuvé, frassen curé” (Archives Départementales (A.D.) de l’Aisne, 5MI1246, Baptême, Mariages, Sépultures registers (B.M.S.), Sainte-Catherine, 1700–30). 15  “The most brilliant speaker of the Refuge” (“L’orateur le plus brillant du Refuge”), according to Charles Weiss in Histoire des réfugiés protestants de France depuis la révocation de l’édit de Nantes vol. 2 (Paris, 1853), p. 63.

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lived on a street called rue du Molin.16 In addition, on January 18, 1719, “with the help of Jesus”, Jean-Baptiste Benezet, aged 71, also a resident of the rue du Molin, was buried in front of that same chapel and described as “a native of Cobisson in Languedoc.”17 Even if spelled differently, it is “Calvisson” I finally find written on Jean Benezet’s marriage record, as read directly from the Protestant register of Saint-Quentin in Lehaucourt, Today, the sixteenth of August, one thousand six hundred and eighty two, was blessed the marriage between Sieur Jean Bénézet the elder, merchant residing in Abbeville, daughter [sic] of Sieur Estienne Bénézet & Damoiselle Marie Arnault, his father and mother residing in Cauillon [Calvisson], in Languedoc, on the one hand, and Marie Madeleine Testart, daughter of Pierre Testart, merchant of Saint-Quentin and of the late Rachel Crommelin, father and mother, on the other, & the aforesaid husband states being thirty-five years old and the aforesaid wife states being twenty-three years old, and in attendance at their wedding celebration were Sieur Jean Bénézet, younger brother of the groom and his friend Sieur Emmanuel Fabre & on the bride’s side, her father Pierre Testart, her brother Ciprian Testart, and her uncle by marriage to her aunt Damoiselle Madellaine Testart, Sieur Samuel Crommelin. The following attendees signed this marriage record: the Husband and Wife, Piere Testart, Ciprian Testart, Bénézet the elder, Marie Madelaine Testart, E Fabre, Bénézet.18

16   A .D. Nord, Dunkerque/S (1708–17). 17   A .D. Nord, Dunkerque/S (1718–29). 18   A .D. Aisne, 1E1070/3. The original French is as follows: “Ce jourdhuy seizieme daoust mil six [cent] quatre vingt deux a eté beny le mariage d’entre le sieur jean benezét l’ainé marchand demeurant a Abeville fille [sic] du sr Estiene benezét & de damoiselle marie arnault sé pere et mere demeurant a Cauillon en languedoc d’une part et marie madelaine Testart fille de piere Testart marchand a st quentin et de feu rachel crommelin sé pere & mere d’autre part & ledit expoux dit estre agé de trente-cinq ans et ladite expouse dit etre agé de vingt troix ans a la benecdiction duquel mariage ont assisté le sr jean benezét le jeune frère dudit Epoux et le sr Emanuel fabre son amy & de la part de ladite Epouse piere Testart son pere Ciprian testart son frere et le sr samuel Crommelin son oncle a cause de damoiselle madellaine Testart sa femme tante de ladite espouse & ont ledit Epoux expouse & par eux signé Piere Testart Ciprian Testart Benezét l’ainé marie madelaine testart E Fabre Benezet.”

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A Notable of Calvisson Native from Congénies: Estienne Benezet, Great-Grandfather of Anthony

Estienne Benezet led his life mainly concerned with upward mobility for himself and his children. Master craftsman, he was a wheelwright (or a rodier in Occitan). However, from 1665 on, he was more often called a ménager (as he worked his own land) or even a bourgeois at times. He was known to have loaned money to individuals and especially to the community, and people came to him to estimate land values. In 1661 he was elected consul19 after an active career: he was chosen several times as a “nominator” of the consuls, demonstrating his skill in community management, sometimes as a public works contractor, taking care of repairing the public fountain, sometimes as an expert, evaluating the repair needed for the town’s oil mill. He was also active in 1640 during a “plague” as a member of the public health committee organ­ izing the fight against the epidemic. In these difficult times, he showed his concern for the fate of the poor, lending them une demi-saumée de blé (a sack of wheat) without losing sight of his own interests, since he asked for repayment at a later date, at a reasonable price. We note that in 1643 he had become a member of the political council, and rose to become its recteur: he managed the assets of the “poor hospital”—in other words, he managed the charity. In 1647 he became a carreirier with the responsibility of ensuring the good condition of roads and paths. By 1651, two nominators proposed him as consul and later in 1666 as auditeur, an important function, as it was his role to examine the consuls’ accounts at the end of the fiscal year. In this Vaunage area where political, economic, and religious activities went hand in hand, he was quite naturally a member of the religious elite. He was no doubt a permanent member of the consistoire20 as, in December 1653, he was elected to the colloque21 of Nîmes with Pastor Abraham Delarc. In 1665 he was the first ancien22 to sign a deliberation, and in 1685, on the eve of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when he was about 83 years old, he appeared several times as a witness at baptisms or burials. He died at age 86 on July 30, 1688, without being able to escape the presence of the Catholic priest, if one is to believe the burial certificate, which states that he died “after receiving the sacraments of confession and extreme unction.”23 19  Municipal councilor in Southern France. 20  Local Huguenot church council. 21  Assembly of the representatives of several consistoires. 22  Member of the consistoire. 23  Archives Communales (A.C.), Calvisson, GG10.

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Husband by his first marriage to Anne Vally, who died childless after having made her last will and testament before a number of Calvisson’s elite in April 1632,24 Estienne Benezet received a significant inheritance from his wife “for his good and friendly service during her illness.” He remarried in about 1634 to Marie Arnaud, daughter of Sieur Abraham, carder and merchant, and Suzanne Bedos. This marriage brought Estienne into the limited circle of Calvisson’s most eminent families. On her mother’s side, Marie was a niece of Jacques Bedos, a weaver who had become practitioner, consul in 1627, and an ancien (elder). An uncle of Marie, Antoine Arnaud, was a merchant, who was made recteur, then consul in 1616. As for Marie’s brother, we shall return to him a bit further on. Estienne Benezet and Marie Arnaud’s union bore ten children, six of whom survived. The elder Jean was Jean-Étienne’s father and Anthony Benezet’s grandfather. The second, named Jean le Jeune, or “John the Younger”, a witness to his elder brother’s marriage, died named as Jean-Baptiste, unmarried, in Dunkerque. The youngest Antoine was Sieur Antoine d’Artillon, sub-delegate of the intendant of Dunkerque, and husband of Marie-Catherine Jacobs, with whom he had no children.25 Anne and Marie both married in 1682. The former married Sieur Pierre Mazel, a merchant and bourgeois of Calvisson who was a member of the consistoire, and the latter married Sieur Daniel Langlès of Congénies. The only son who remained in Calvisson, Estienne, a member of the consistoire and consul in 1682, married Madeleine Margarot, whose father and two brothers had left the kingdom after the revocation. Estienne died in Calvisson on September 23, 1702, after having made a will with the usual Huguenot provisions, naming his mother as universal heir before his children, and noting that his son Daniel was “absent, his whereabouts unknown, if out of the kingdom, without any news.” His death was an opportunity for his mother to revisit the conflict caused in settling the estate of her husband. Before a notary, on November 16 of that year, she stated that in his will, dated July 16, 1668, her husband, Estienne Benezet, had named her as sole heir, instructing her to then give an inheritance to his children, and first to his eldest son John, but that for many years “she had been solicited by the late Estienne Benezet, his son, to give him the aforementioned inheritance.” Out of convenience, she

24   A .D. Gard, 2E22/38, n° Jacques Melon, Calvisson. 25  Anthony Benezet was above all a merchant. He inherited the role of sub-delegate when his brother-in-law who held the post died childless. Since he had no children either, he sold the title to the town after the death of his wife (Union Faulconnier, Société historique et archéologique de Dunkerque et de la Flandre maritime, Bulletin XVII (1914), pp. 157–58).

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was persuaded to give Estienne 2,000 l,26 thus frustrating “her eldest son residing at Abbeville in Picardy.” However, with Estienne’s death, the inheritance should be returned and, furthermore, “Jean did not lodge any complaint to the contrary.” Marie Arnaud therefore rescinded the donation and returned the inheritance to the absent John, to take possession of it after her death.27 A few years later, an act by a Calvisson notary named Pétras and dated June 11, 1715, stated that two of his son Estienne’s children, “Sieur Jean, a merchant of Calvisson, resident of Nîmes,” and his sister Elisabeth received from their uncle (their great-uncle, in fact), “Sieur Jean-Baptiste Bénézet, merchant of Dunkirk,” a sum of 6,700 l as an installment of their inheritance rights to the estate of their other (great-)uncle, “the late Sieur Anthony Bénézet, former Sub-delegate of the Intendant of Dunkirk.”28 With Jean Benezet’s departure to Nîmes and the death of his brother Daniel, the Benezets’ Calvissonian history comes to an end, at least with regard to Estienne’s male descendants. I have now to return to the genealogy of Anthony Benezet’s great-grandfather. The Benezets are a long-established Calvisson family. I have been able to go back as far as a certain Jacques Benezet, born about 1450, father of an Antoine and great-grandfather of a Claude.29 One Estienne Benezet, son of another Antoine, wrote his will on February 16, 1541, before going on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (St. James’ Way).30 Nonetheless, I was not able to connect Anthony Benezet’s great-grandfather to any of these families. The first certainty in that regard is that he was a native of Congénies. Indeed, on February 15, 1632, the community of Calvisson agreed to receive as a resident one “Estienne Bénézet, of Congénies” in exchange for a payment of 20 l.31 His connections to Congénies are to be found in the names of his chil­ dren’s godparents. Almost all have a godfather or godmother from this village: on November 18, 1635, Jeanne Benezet was Abraham’s godmother; on Novem­ber 21, 1638, Claude Benezet was Catherine’s godfather; on August 9, 1643, Jacquette Huc, Claude Benezet’s wife, was Jacquette’s godmother; at the end of September 1645, Jean Benezet was godfather to Jean, the future grandfather of Anthony; in May 1648, Jeanne Coudougnan was the other Jean’s godmother; on January 14, 1651, Claude Benezet—the same Claude 26  The abbreviation of “l” for livres or “pounds” refers to the currency of the Ancien Régime. 27  A .D. Gard, 2E13/71, n° François Maurel, Aigues-Vives. 28   A .D. Gard, 2E22/55, n° Antoine Pétras, Calvisson. 29   A .D. Gard, 2E36/319, n° Jean Ménard, Nîmes, 02/10/1557. 30   A .D. Gard, 2E22/1, n° Jean Bertrandi, Calvisson. 31   A .C. Calvisson, BB10.

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again—was Marie’s g­ odfather; on February 2, 1656, Anne Roux became Anne’s godmother; and finally, on December 12, 1663, Estienne Benezet became godfather to Antoine, who in turn was Anthony’s future godfather. There are only two apparent exceptions to this: on September 9, 1640, Suzanne had as her recorded godfather Master Gédéon Puget, from Blauzac, married to a Calvisson woman, by virtue of their marriage contract dated March 7, 1632, as per the notary, Jacques Melon of Calvisson, on the advice and consent “of Jean Rabinel of Congénies, his uncle, and Claude and Pierre Benezet, his cousins” (also from Congénies). Similarly, several documents suggest that Sieur Jean Roux, supposedly “of Montpellier”, given the information on Estienne’s baptismal dated October 5, 1653, was actually from Congénies. Finally, let us recall that Mary, one of Estienne Benezet’s two surviving daughters, in 1682 married Sieur Daniel Langlès, the son of a Congénies bourgeois and related, through his sister, to the Jaulmes family.32 Although Estienne Benezet’s geographical origins appear to be clear, there are nevertheless no records indicating unequivocally his lineage. I have not found his two marriage contracts, the baptismal records of his children never mention his relationship to the godparents, and the records of Congénies notaries and registries, as well as any deliberations, have disappeared. For a long time, therefore, I have only been able to speculate. His relationship with Claude Benezet of Congénies seemed very close, especially since it was with his wife Jacquette Huc that he had a daughter, Louise, baptized in Calvisson on March 5, 1634, with the godfather recorded as Master Estienne Benezet.33 But who exactly was Claude Benezet? Was he perhaps Estienne’s brother? Huguenot registers in Congénies retain only a few baptismal and marriage records from the 1590s. I did, however, find a baptismal record dated August 10, 1597, recording the baptism of a Claude Benezet, son of another Claude and Suzanne Vermeil.34 Turning to a useful source, a book by Samuel Small, Jr., published in 1905, I also found a compilation of biographies, among which is what is presented as the transcription of the Benezets’ family book.35 After fanciful considerations of the Benezet family’s distant origins (from southwestern to eastern France, given the vast number of families named Benezet 32  Françoise Langlès was the wife of François Jaulmes, whose forebears in Congénies included members of the Roux and Benezet families. 33   A .C. Calvisson, GG 1. I have found no trace either of the marriage record of Claude Benezet and Jacquette Huc. 34  Archives Nationales, TT 242–2. 35   Genealogical Records of George Small [. . .] Daniel Benezet, Jean Crommelin [. . .] MCMV, compiled by Samuel Small Jr. (Philadelphia, PA, 1905), pp. 190–212.

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in the south), here I found an accurate description of the family coat of arms, as chosen by Anthony’s great-uncle Jean-Baptiste Benezet, a Dunkerque merchant.36 Incidentally, this crest, whose main feature is an olive tree, seems to be directly inspired by that of the Marquis of Calvisson in that it bore a walnut tree. Whether irony or homesickness, it would appear that the Benezets had not forgotten their origins. Small then proceeded to a synthesis of what is contained in Vaux’s work, and, before the fact, of Brookes’ work as well: Jean Benezet of Abbeville, he says, was, on the one hand, “the son of Stephen Bénézet of Cauvisson or Carcassonne, in Languedoc”, stating that “the copies of the Benezet Memorial give this as Cauvisson, but no such name appears in the Gazetteers”, and, on the other, the “grandson of Claude Bénézet.”37 The rest of the document appears to be extremely reliable.38 As a result of these conjectures, I therefore conclude, albeit with a note of caution, that it was quite likely that Estienne Benezet was the son of Claude Benezet and Suzanne Vermeil of Congénies. This hypothesis has been confirmed by a recently discovered Vaunageol notarial deed. The document in question is the marriage contract of the young Demoiselle Marguerite Roux, daughter of the late Sieur Estienne, lieutenant de viguier39 of Congénies, and Jeanne Benezet. On January 17, 1655, she became engaged, with the consent of her mother, of her brother Monsieur Jean Roux, king’s advisor, and of “Masters Claude and Estienne Bénézet, her maternal uncles.” The signatures are without doubt those of the great-grandfather of Anthony Benezet and Claude Benezet, sons of Claude and Suzanne Vermeil.40 36  The legend reads “coat of arms on old Benezet silver” and is reproduced, facing p. 194. The exact description from d’Hozier (published by Borel d’Hauterive in Armorial de Flandre, du Hainaut et du Cambrésis (Paris, 1856), t. 1 p. 60) is as follows: “silver with a fruit-bearing olive tree, sky blue crest, doted with three golden-legged crosses.” 37  Small, Genealogical Records, p. 191. 38   For example, Charlotte Lieurard’s husband, Anthony Benezet’s godfather, called “Vermalette” on the baptismal record, is here correctly denominated as “Valmalette.” Small calls him a “merchant, of Paris,” which I was able to verify. In addition, Small refers to Jean-Étienne Benezet’s godfather as having been “his uncle, Antoine Bénézet, in place of the grandfather, Estienne Bénézet.” Small, Genealogical Records, pp. 192–93, 201. 39  The viguier was a local magistrate. 40   A .D. Gard, 2E 13/26, n° François Huc, Aigues-Vives, 17/01/1655. Marguerite Roux contracted with Sieur Jean Gilly, of Aigues-Vives, a village located close to Congénies and Calvisson. Estienne Benezet attended to the marriage contract with two other notables of Calvisson: Sieur André Jaumeton, notary, and Claude Gilly, bourgeois. This document helps us determine the precise identity of some of the godfathers and godmothers of Estienne Benezet’s children. Regarding Jean Benezet of Congénies, godfather of

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The Cévenole Origins of Anthony Benezet: Saint-Étienne-Vallée Française

Unknowingly, George Brookes was not completely wrong when talking about the Cévennes in connection with Anthony Benezet. However, this concerns his maternal ancestry, for which I have gleaned some clear indications. If biographers, such as Vaux and Brookes, suggest approximate locations for his paternal origins, they are unconcerned about his lineage on his mother’s side. Yet the surname of his mother, Judith of Méjanelle, is no more Picard in origin than that his father’s. It is a common name in the Cévennes, around Gard and Lozère—for example, in Valleraugue, a town near Mont Aigoual, and especially in the Vallée Française, formerly called Valfrancesque. This is a Huguenot region, the very area from which the revolt by the Camisards developed. My attention was drawn to two Huguenot wills found by chance in the notarial (probate) registers from Sommières, a town near Calvisson. The first is dated July 16, 1630,41 whereas the second is dated July 21, 1645.42 In both cases I found the last will and testament of Demoiselle Judith of Méjanelle, wife of Master Jean Vene, salt cellar comptroller of Sommières. I learned that she was born in Saint Estienne de Valfrancesque (today Saint-Étienne-ValléeFrançaise), daughter of the late Claude, Sieur of Doudon. Another act recorded by the aforementioned Judith de la Méjanelle, shortly before her second will, was notarized in the presence of “Monsieur Pierre Valmalette, resident of Sommières.”43 The verification of the Huguenot registers of Saint-ÉtienneVallée-Française thus allows me to reconstruct Anthony Benezet’s maternal ancestry. On February 14, 1652, was baptized “Léon Méjanelle, son of Jean Méjanelle Sieur du Lac and Dame Jeanne of Valmalette, born on November 13, 1651, presented by Sieur Léon Valmalete and Demoiselle Madon Calvin.”44 The maternal uncle, Leon Valmalette, was the son of Henri and Suzanne Donadieu,

Anthony’s grandfather, his marriage contract presents him also as “son of Claude and Suzanne Vermeil.” 41   A .D. Gard, 2E 66/143, n° Estienne Valette, Sommières. This woman left an inheritance in her will to “Sieur Jean Giberne, ordinary secretary of the king’s chamber, her nephew, son of her sister, Jeanne de la Méjanelle.” 42   A .D. Gard, 2E 11/626, n° Jean Durand, Sommières. 43   A .D. Gard, 2E 11/626, n° Jean Durand, Sommières, April 21, 1645. Judith de la Méjanelle was in litigation with her nephew, Sieur François de la Méjanelle, regarding her father’s inheritance. 44   A .D. Lozère, A.C. de Saint-Étienne Vallée Française, GG3, B.M.S.

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and a notary in Saint-Étienne-Vallée-Française.45 Jean de la Méjanelle, Sieur du Lac, was the son of Pierre and Catherine du Bouschet, and grandson of Claude de la Méjanelle, Sieur du Doudon, whom we noted previously in his daughter Judith’s wills. The Méjanelle (which is their real name) and Valmalette families, like other families, were mostly merchants or manufacturers who derived their income from the textile industry. Their connections with Nîmes, the regional capital for this activity, are numerous.46 Thus Léon’s uncle, Pierre de la Méjanelle, began his apprenticeship on September 6, 1623, with Sieur Jacques Dalbiac, a draper merchant from Nîmes.47 Likewise, on April 25, 1681, Sieur Antoine Malplach, a merchant from Saint-Estienne de Valfrancesque, “following an order received from Dame Jeanne Valmalette, widow of Jean Méjanelle, Sieur du Lac of St Estienne”, placed in apprenticeship “Jean Méjanelle, brotherin-law of Sieur Malplach and son of Dame Valmalette, with Master David Lafabrègue, silk and taffeta craftsman,” for five years.48 Given the situation, Léon de la Méjanelle should have had no difficulty in becoming a linen merchant in Saint-Quentin. The distance from the Cévennes was, however, considerable. How did he ever meet his wife, Judith Lieurard, the daughter of the “cloth merchant” Jacques Lieurard, whom he married in about 1688? I know that he was not in Saint-Étienne in the early 1680s because, although he was twice named godfather, he was both times mentioned as “absent”. Did he first go up to Paris to join Pierre Valmalette, the merchant who married Charlotte Lieurard, godmother of Anthony Benezet and Judith’s sister? Did he meet one of these Saint-Quentin merchants who came for business, to get married or to settle there? In fact, on December 14, 1685, when the secretary of state Seignelay, Colbert’s eldest son, summoned Huguenot bankers and merchants of Paris, inviting them to sign a declaration of conversion to the Catholic faith, among these merchants who promised to convert were surnames such as Testart, Crommelin, Foissin, and Seignoret, as well as Rondeau and Burgeat, who are linked to Saint-Quentin through marriages, and in particular to the Crommelin family.49 45  This name appears again in August 1693 on the baptismal act of Léon’s daughter, Madeleine de la Méjanelle, as her godfather was Claude Caplain, who was “substituted in place of the honest bourgeois and bailiff of Saint-Étienne, diocese of Mende in Gevaudan, Léon Valmalette.” 46  See also Line Teisseyre-Sallmann, L’industrie de la soie en Bas-Languedoc (Paris, 1995). 47   A .D. Gard, 2E 37/111, n° Marcellin Bruguier (le Jeune), Nîmes, 1623–24. 48   A .D. Gard, 2E 37/ 215, n° Pierre Arnoux, Nîmes, 1680–82. 49  See, for example, Haag, La France protestante, vol. 2, pp. 363–65, and especially Olivier Douen, La Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes à Paris d’après des documents inédits vol. 2 (Paris, 1894), pp. 172–77.

The Vaunageole And Cévenole Roots Of Anthony Benezet



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Jean Benezet, from Calvisson to Abbeville and Saint-Quentin via the Fiscal-Financial Network

This Crommelin family is an example of geographical dispersion, which reminds us that commercial activities led individuals to travel and see the country, and it may well have served as a link between our southerners and Saint-Quentin. Present in Haarlem, London, Paris, and Rouen, members of the Crommelin family are also found in Lyon, where the fair attracted many merchants from Nîmes. Antoine and Pierre-Étienne Crommelin, born in SaintQuentin to Adrian and Suzanne Doublet, were associated merchants. Antoine was settled there at least from 1668, as he was mentioned as “a merchant residing in Lyon” on a baptismal act recorded in St. Quentin. Pierre Crommelin, also a merchant, followed the opposite path from the one Jean Benezet took, since he went down to Sommières and to Nîmes, where he married a pastor’s daughter in 1647.50 In 1653, she died after leaving her last will and testament in Nîmes in Pastor Ozias Darvieu’s house.51 In around 1657, the latter’s daughter married Henry Ducros, son of the viguier of Calvisson and a distant cousin of Jean Saurin. The Huguenot world was indeed a small one. If Léon de la Méjanelle’s itinerary appears connected to his activities in textiles, this was not true for Jean Benezet, who was nevertheless termed a “merchant” in his marriage certificate but acted soon after in Abbeville as the provincial comptroller of farmland in Picardy, then as king’s advisor and collector of traites, responsible for collecting certain indirect taxes. This type of work assumes a comfortable financial status in that certain sums of money had to be advanced before being collected, and is typical of such family dynasties who were able to mutually support, share, and sub-contract leases.52 It is likely that it was through the Arnaud family from Calvisson that Jean Benezet was introduced to this exclusive world. The first to engage in this type of activity was Antoine Arnaud, cousin of Estienne Benezet’s wife, Marie. While his brothers were merchants and captains, Antoine, the youngest son, born at the beginning of the century, studied law and became a practitioner. In May 1632, while his brother John was consul, the Calvisson community wanted the king to authorize and approve its statement of debt, as verified by the commissioners. It was then decided to send a deputy to Paris, and they chose “Antoine Arnaud practitioner [who] goes on a trip to court for his other business and 50   A .D. Gard, 2E 39/336, n° Paul Barre, Nîmes. 51   A .D. Gard, 2E 1/440, n° Daniel Pépin, Nîmes, 1646–58. 52  For everything concerning the fiscal-financial system under Louis XIV, see Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle (Paris, 1984).

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it would be good to give him the responsibility of all that the community will need at the Court knowing that there he has good friends.”53 He appeared to be rarely, if ever, in Calvisson after that point, as I find only letters from him, or one of his brother’s interventions on his behalf. From 1661, he was named as “Advisor and Secretary of the King, Seigneur of Fontaine Française.”54 An act dated January 1671 informs us that with his brother Isaac and his cousin Jean Arnaud, Estienne Benezet’s brother-in-law, he took an even one-third interest in the governance of aides (indirect taxes) in Poitou and Angoumois, from 1644 to 1647.55 Historian Daniel Dessert confirms and clarifies this portrait: This Protestant made his whole financial career out of farm aid. From 1633 to 1658 he was under-farmer of aides in Poitou, before becoming the general farmer from 1660 to 1662. Quite heavily taxed by the House of Justice, he received a substantial reduction of his tax burden, probably thanks to the influence of Colbert who protected him. He was knighted as king’s secretary in 1651, a title that was canceled in 1664, but for which he obtained his letters of nobility in 1669.56 Regarding Jean Arnaud, son of the Jean Arnaud we have seen associated with Antoine, and therefore Jean Benezet’s cousin, he was to follow the same career but at a higher level. He left Calvisson early on to reside in Paris, where all the leases of the fiscal-financial system were handled. According to acts notarized by his mother, Catherine Bourry, we see him in 1671 described as “Advisor and Secretary to the King,” and then in 1678 as “one of a hundred gentlemen of the King’s house, interested in the united farms of His Majesty.” In 1705 he returned to Calvisson, where he died on November 11, 1706. Without knowing the relationship or the geographical origin of Anthony and Jean Arnaud, Daniel Dessert again completes my information: At first a clerk in the Paris Revol’s farm office, he managed to become a farmer-general in the united farms (1674–1695). But [. . .] in 1695, he suffered a loss of 800,000 l, forcing him to abandon his property to his creditors. Jean Arnaud had married Madeleine Pitan, daughter of a Parisian 53   A .C. Calvisson, BB10. The rest of the register allows us to follow Antoine Arnaud’s activities in Paris; he advanced the money for the trip in exchange for an obligation of 250 l. 54  A village located in Burgundy. The seigneury of Fontaine-Françoise was bought by Antoine Arnaud from the La Rochefoucauld family in 1656. 55   A .D. Gard, 2E41/5, n° Pierre Montbonoux, Calvisson, 1671–75. 56  Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, pp. 521–22.

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goldsmith, who was the widow of A. Blair with whom she had given birth to Melchior Blair, who become a farmer-general like his stepfather.57 Jean Benezet was in close contact with Jean Arnaud. On September 28, 1678, when Catherine Bourry made a donation to his son, he was absent and chose to be represented by Jean Benezet by proxy in Saumur.58 There is therefore every reason to believe that this was the Jean Arnaud who introduced his cousin Jean Benezet into the company of the “well-to-do” establishment and found him a job as tax collector in Abbeville. Perhaps Arnaud also put Benezet in touch with the Testart family, his in-laws. From the Huguenot records in Saint-Quentin-Lehaucourt, I find two baptisms that took place in 1677 where “Sieur Jean Arnaud, one of one hundred gentlemen of the house of the king and the United farms of His Majesty,” was godfather to Jean-Étienne, son of Pierre Testart and his third wife Anne Baullier, then to Jean-Antoine, son of Samuel Crommelin and Madeleine Testart, sister of the aforementioned Pierre and therefore the aunt of Marie-Madeleine, Jean Benezet’s future wife.59 The second baptism is also of interest because in Jean Arnaud’s absence, Emmanuel Fabre, receiver in the salt mill of Saint-Quentin, represented him. In 1674, as director of the aides collected in the city, he was godfather at the same time as Marie Testart was godmother. In 1676 he was witness to the marriage of Marie Crommelin and Sieur Jean de Nogarède, a receiver of traites for the Fins office.60 Finally, he was recorded as present in 1682 at Jean Benezet’s wedding, attending as a friend. This friend, Emmanuel Fabre, was from Vergèze, a village near Calvisson. In 1683, when his brothers and sisters learned of his death on June 7 “in Noyon, Picardy, where he was traveling,” power of attorney was given to one of them “to go forthwith to the city of Paris where the late Emmanuel Fabre had made residence for a few years and also to Saint-Quentin, Noyon and other cities and places as needed” to settle the estate.61 Jean Benezet’s arrival in Picardy might therefore be connected more to his friendship with Emmanuel

57  Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, p. 522. C. Revol was the figurehead in the farm­ ing contract (1660–62) to collect the “Aides.” He gave his name to this contract. 58   A .D. Gard, 2E22/19, n° Pierre Montbounoux, Calvisson, 1676–79. 59  Jean Arnaud may have known the Saint-Quentin Huguenot circle through his Parisian family on his wife’s side, the Pittans. In 1670, Rachel Crommelin, of the late Louis, merchant in Saint-Quentin, married Robert Lalleman, a merchant living in La Ferté au Col. The marriage was celebrated in the presence of Sieur Jean Pittan, his majesty’s jeweler. 60  Fins is a small town in Picardy. 61   A .D. Gard, 2E75/254, n° Jean Chabrier, Vergèze, 1682–85.

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Fabre than his kinship with Jean Arnaud? Is it more likely the result of both? The question remains open. In any case, a kind of Vaunageole chain was formed through which Benezet would be linked to others. There would be more Vaunageols coming to Picardy who would perform the same type of work, as evidenced by a death certificate in the records of the Abbeville parish of St. Nicolas: “On February 12, 1719 Sieur Louis Razoux of Abbeville, traites collector of Cro[toy?], died in the traites collection office of Mr. Bénézet, and was on the 13th buried by myself, vicar of the parish, in the presence of Monsieur François Melon, clerk and tax collector.” The Razoux family were notables from the village of Caveirac in the Vaunage who were connected to the Calvisson family of Pastor Berlié. As for François Melon, he was from Calvisson, son of a notary, consul, and ancien of the consistory. Forty years after Jean Benezet’s arrival in Picardy, his son Jacques remained connected to people in the Vaunage. Was it just to help his compatriots, professionally speaking, or was Picardy seen rather as the last step before emigration when external networks took over from internal networks? We would like to know what became of Calvisson’s François Melon. As for Jacques Benezet, he moved on a short time afterwards since we find him, in 1721, in London, godfather to his nephew Jacques Benezet, Jean-Étienne’s son.62 62  Small, Genealogical Records, p. 200.

Chapter 2

Being Huguenot in the Vermandois during the 17th and 18th Centuries Didier Boisson Antoine Bénézet was born on the thirty-first of January, in the year one thousand seven hundred thirteen, son of Mister Jean Etienne de Bénézet and his wife, Madam Judith de La Megenelle, and on the first day of February, was baptized, by the undersigned priest. The godfather was Pierre Gretel, the godmother, Madam Anne Létuvé, on behalf and in place of Missus Charlotte Lieurard, wife of Mister Pierre Vermalette, and Pierre Grelet, on behalf of and in place of Mister Antoine de Bénézet d’Artillon, sub-delegate of the intendant of the City of Dunkerque, who signed with the father.1 It seems that no sign of belonging to the Calvinist confession appears in this baptismal act, even though Anthony Benezet’s parents were new converts. The priest of Sainte-Catherine’s parish was not, however, known to be particularly sympathetic to the reformed community. In fact, he had been Remigny’s parish priest through 1711 where he had been especially distinguished for his anti-Protestant zeal. If indeed he was entrusted with Sainte-Catherine’s and Saint-Quentin’s parishes, which included numerous new converts, it was no doubt motivated by his previous activities. Jean-Étienne Benezet’s parents (Anthony’s grandparents), Jean-Antoine Benezet and Marie-Madeleine Testart, were married in the temple of Lehaucourt on August 16, 1682. Anthony was thus the fourth child of this couple, who were not married before a priest, so he was not legitimate in the eyes of the law. As illustrated by the Benezet family, the town of Saint-Quentin and the Vermandois region, a portion of the reformed community, resisted forced Catholicism as imposed by Louis XIV. Moreover, setting aside mainly Paris and some towns in Normandy, Calvinism was practiced principally in the north of the Kingdom of France, in rural areas such as Beauce, the Norman Bocage and the Pays de Caux, in Berry,

1  Archives Départementales (A.D.) de l’Aisne, parish of Sainte-Catherine.

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Brie, Thiérache, and the Vermandois.2 By examining the example of Protestant communities in the latter region, the objective is to understand, on the one hand, the various aspects of Protestant resistance in spite of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and, on the other, the characteristics of this particularly rural Protestantism practiced in the town of Saint-Quentin by reformed families such as the Benezets.3 The communities in the Vermandois were primarily batiste linen-makers and fine fabric weavers (mulquiniers), as well as families of linen manufacturers and merchants or traders living in Saint-Quentin. These communities were situated away from the main provinces in which French Protestantism was gradually being reorganized from 1715. This notwithstanding, a colloque (presbytery) was held in 1776 and a provincial synod in 1779.4 Protestants of this region, who belonged to reformed communities without pastors throughout the better part of the 18th century, often behaved differently than their religious counterparts in the South of France.

The Domination of the Saint-Quentin Community in the 17th Century

A Guise Catholic League-abiding land, Picardy’s destiny was determined in 1598 by the secret articles of the Edict of Nantes, which stipulated a draconian restriction on the general regulations relating to the “cult of concession” or Protestant practice. Indeed, Article 6 specified that the Government of Picardy will have only two towns, whose outlying suburbs will be able to have the aforesaid religion practiced, for all the townships, balliwicks, and dependent governments, and where it will be judged as not to establish it in the towns, there will be two balliwicks or appropriate villages to be administered.5

2  Didier Boisson et Hugues Daussy, Les protestants dans la France moderne (Paris, 2006). Patrick Cabanel, Histoire des protestants en France, XVIe–XXIe siècle (Paris, 2012). 3  For the history of Protestantism in Picardy, see, in particular, Alfred Daullé, La Réforme à Saint-Quentin et dans ses environs du XVIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Le Cateau, 1901), and also Louis Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1990). 4  The Huguenots were organized with colloques or presbyteries, at the local level, regional or provincial synods, and national synods. 5  Janine Garrisson, L’édit de Nantes (Biarritz, 1997), pp. 74–75.

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The representatives of the king who were responsible for applying the Edict of Nantes decided in September 1599 that the two places designated for the religious practice would be Desvres in the Boulonnais and the village of Haucourt6 near Saint-Quentin. The latter had not included any reformed community before this date but the lordship belonged to the d’Aumale family, who had converted to Calvinism.7 However, in the north of the Vermandois, in the stronghold of Catelet, the practice of Protestantism was extended, welcoming families from the Vermandois, Thiérache, and Cambrésis. There, Protestantism was diffuse and spread out over the whole, mainly rural area in which the Saint-Quentin community had a concentration of 500–600 followers. Of the hundred or so families, some patronyms were known locally, such as the Crommelins, Joncourts, and Couillettes.8 This organization of the reformed religion was upset by the Thirty Years War and the border situation in this region. The stronghold of Cateau was the ground for many battles, and it changed hands on numerous occasions throughout the long Franco-Spanish War, which interrupted the practice of the Protestant religion. The Spanish armies devastated the Vermandois, including, in particular, in 1636 when the temple of Lehaucourt was destroyed. Given the dire situation in 1641, Marie de Barisy, widow of a Catholic lord, François de Sons, began welcoming Protestants to the Château de Pommery. This continued through 1650.9 It was only in 1659, in peaceful times, that the reformed community “built a grange in the lord of Lehaucourt’s garden adjoining the parish church cemetery and in which barn they made their prayers” as they awaited the construction of a new temple. Nevertheless, the place of worship was rapidly contested by the Catholic Church because the site was in view of the parish church and so close to it that there are no houses between the two and the holy service cannot be celebrated in the said church without hearing what is preached and done in the consistory; without the inhabitants mixing up one and the other religion and without disorder and great scandal arriving to the Church and to the Catholics from the part of the supposedly reformed religion. The conflict was resolved by an order from the Parliament of Paris authorizing the construction of the temple, but stipulating that the services could only 6  Today it is called Lehaucourt. 7  Daullé, La Réforme, p. 45. 8  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 94–105. 9  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 106–15.

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take place after Catholic mass.10 Despite this victory in the face of Catholic pretentions, in the context of the “rigorous” or strict-constructionist application of the Edict of Nantes, persecutions against Protestants were increasing and the reformed populations in Vermandois were not to be spared in the process. Thus, in 1664, the municipal authorities of Saint-Quentin sent a memorandum to the intendant of Amiens with the goal of reducing the number of reformed population in the town, stating that Protestants had “grown in numbers during the war and grow day by day given the freedom they believe ­themselves to enjoy as a result of the edicts of pacification and to settle in any town of the kingdom they like.” According to the circular, the population of the town was 130 families or 800 individuals, and it was furthermore noted that “among these are about 500 persons bearing arms.” The Protestant community therefore represented approximately 10 percent of the population throughout the decade. The municipality asked to be able to expel the reformed community of Saint-Quentin and ban new Protestant families from settling there. Finally, another means of Catholic reconquest was to re-establish the manufacturing that had disappeared during the conflict and readmit only Catholic workers.11 Signs of hostility on the part of the municipal authorities and the Catholic Church increased considerably throughout the 1660s. In a memorandum dating from 1666, many of the reformed complained directly to the intendant of Amiens about the “hatred” and “animosity” expressed toward them and accusations “of wanting to betray the town, of having taken hold of the walls and the river with this intention.” Reformed merchants were unduly taxed and required to house soldiers. The intendant asked the town authorities not to treat Protestants and Catholics differently. As for the Secretary of State for the affairs of the Protestant Reformed Church, concerning the establishment of new reformed families in Saint-Quentin, he recommended: “given that the King suffers from these religious believers making their residence wherever they choose in the kingdom; that it is not appropriate to oppose it openly, only that it is best to prevent it adroitly; in such a way as they cannot make a complaint.”12 This Catholic harassment against Protestants was successful. In fact, many reformed families converted to Catholicism—notably, the Crommelins, even if their conversion seemed less than sincere. They asked, for example, to be able to participate in the “charges and honors” of the city, given that they were now 10  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 128–30. Furthermore, the temple was to have measured no more than 18 ft from the ground to the altar. No bell-tower could be built. 11  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 133–35. 12  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 140–43.

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Catholics. Indeed, the textile industry was mainly in the hands of the Protestants. There were two manufactures: one that made Cambrai (batiste) linen, according to the Dutch tradition, and the other that made silk fabric, according to the English process. The objective of the local authorities was to drive the reformed from the town by taking control of these manufactures, and by requiring that the organization of these two establishments be within the framework of the trades reserved for Catholics. This solution worried the government, and Colbert, in particular, who wrote to the intendant of Amiens in 1681: It would be quite necessary to give special attention to this town (of Saint-Quentin) either to convert the Huguenots there who are numerous or to prevent them from leaving for Holland and to maintain the important manufactures that are established there.13 In any case, the social composition of the reformed community of SaintQuentin, noted for the importance of the merchants, is very different from that of the countryside areas and small towns of the Vermandois where textile workers made up the majority of the population. The marriages celebrated in the temple of Lehaucourt reveal this mercantile presence. For example, on April 24, 1678, the pastor celebrated the marriage of Jean-Henri, mulquinier, son of Antoine Henri, mulquinier, of Heudicourt, and Jeanne Le Grand, daughter of the late Moïse Le Grand, mulquinier, resident of Bohain.14 The importance of the linen industry in and around Saint-Quentin is first and foremost due to the quality of linen production in the Vermandois and the strong internal demand, and then the growth of international demand, throughout 1660–70.15 As for other reformed communities, the avalanche of royal texts in the years preceding the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) was responsible for the increasing number of trials. Among those who were especially targeted was the pastor, Samuel Mettayer, who was accused of holding secret assemblies in his house; of having baptized in the town of Saint-Quentin; of having allowed foreign ministers to preach in the temple of Lehaucourt; of having converted Catholics and, in particular, several secular and regular Catholics; and, finally, of having allowed relapsed Catholics to profess the reformed faith. Each of the above was an infraction of royal law. In December 1683, Mettayer was no longer able to exercise as minister of the reformed religion and was banned from the 13  Daullé, La Réforme, p. 163. 14   A .D. Aisne, Protestant Register of Saint-Quentin. 15  Terrier, Les deux âges, p. 22.

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temple of Lehaucourt. An appeal attenuated his sentence, which was reduced to six months, during which the temple had to remain closed. This exemplifies the embarrassment of the justice system when confronted with Catholics’ accusations. The clergy then demanded that reformed couples baptize their children before Roman Catholic priests for a period of six months, which no family agreed to.16

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 deeply shook the reformed communities of the Vermandois, but to differing degrees. From one community to another, emigration was different and of more or less significance. Like other reformed communities in urban areas, the Huguenots of Saint-Quentin were more affected than those in the surrounding rural areas. At least this is what the memoirs and correspondence of the local and provincial authorities lead us to believe, since they focus mainly on the emigration of the merchants of Saint-Quentin. This concern was present before the Edict of Fontainebleau was even signed. On September 18, 1685, the municipal authorities wrote to the intendant, Chauvelin, that many merchants were preparing for their departure and that this was cause for concern because “our commerce is done, for the most part, by those who are leaving and our town will suffer from it.” A few days later, Chauvelin sent the king a memorandum on the issue of emigration, specifying the names of the reformed of Saint-Quentin who were fleeing and the names of those preparing to leave, despite the royal decree forbidding such departures. He stated, for example, that Jacques Le Serrurier, fabric merchant, having left eight months ago for London to find his son who he had established there, left his wife in Saint-Quentin to gather all their belongings, from whence she departed on the 18th or 19th of this month, having taken with her the aforementioned Serrurier’s brother who is an old man; they had gotten all of their children out.17 These departures began before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and were accentuated by the intimidations and persecutions of Protestants by 16  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 169–82. 17  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 183–84.

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Louis XIV’s emissaries (the dragonnades), who ran rampant throughout the Vermandois in November. The Champagne regiment was sent to forcibly convert Huguenots. According to Jean Descarrière’s journal, “It is pitiful that there is not a single family remaining in the town who has not converted.”18 And he added: “God has abandoned us for those we first abandoned.”19 The Benezet family did not appear on the list of names of converted Huguenots in either of the Saint-Quentin parishes. The Benezet family emigrated later in 1715, but the Saint-Quentin community was already decimated and remained so until the end of Louis XIV’s reign. More so than in the rural areas, there were massive departures and conversions. The authorities continued to be concerned about the departures. For example, in 1697, the intendant of Amiens wrote to the municipality: The King has ordered me to write you recommending that you increase your surveillance of the behavior of the New Converts to prevent them from leaving the kingdom or having their children leave, and to watch that they go to instruction so that they become good Catholics, as His Majesty has been informed that many of his subjects of the RPR who had renounced are going back to it since the peace [. . .] He wishes you to take hold of the execution of his edicts and declarations and imprison those who return and have not abjured.20 This text allows us to recall that even before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, royal legislation attempted to incite fugitives to return to the kingdom by offering them recovery of their possessions confiscated by the king, on the condition, of course, that these returned fugitives convert to Catholicism. A new declaration dated February 10, 1698, was consistent with this policy. The law allowed for some returns, but these, regardless of the community, were few. Those who did return were fugitives or their descendants who had had difficulty integrating as refugees, or members of certain families who had strategically decided to accept a false conversion to revive their business with the Kingdom of France.

18  He further specified that there were “three or four boys and two or three girls and women” who had not yet abjured (taken a solemn oath to convert) since they had remained in hiding and “hungry wolves were looking for them.” 19  Daullé, La Réforme, pp. 195–97. 20  Daullé, La Réforme, p. 230. The acronym RPR, meaning Religion Prétendue Réformée, was a way for the royal administration to refer to the Huguenots.

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For example, it was not surprising to see members of the Crommelin family return to re-establish themselves in Saint-Quentin. Beyond these returns, we also note internal migrations of reformed families with economic or religious objectives. Saint-Quentin welcomed Jacques Dumoustier in 1699, born in Loudun, and Samuel Joly, new convert, in 1704, also originally from Loudun. Both started up in business, commercializing fabric.21

Post-1685 Transformations

The general evolution of the Huguenot population in the Vermandois was a decrease in the number of reformed families in the towns throughout the 18th century with greater resistance being shown in the countryside. The end result of this evolution can be envisioned in light of the registers of the Edict of Tolerance of 1787. This decree, which, it is worth noting, did not establish freedom of religion but did nonetheless allow non-Catholics to declare births, marriages, and deaths before a judge or a priest, considered officers of the “civil status.” Marriages were once again celebrated in the désert22 and the children of these unions were considered legitimate. Throughout Picardy, the geographic imbalance of reformed communities was consequent, between the western area around Amiens and the Beauvaisis, where 22 rehabilitation acts were processed, and the district of Saint-Quentin, for which some 334 acts were recorded.23 We can consider that on the eve of the French Revolution, residual Protestantism existed in Saint-Quentin, given the ten rehabilitated marriage certificates registered. The same, however, was not true of the rural areas and villages of the Vermandois and Thiérache, given the greater number of marriage certificates recorded: 104 in Hargicourt; 88 in Jeancourt and Vendelle; and more than 20 in each of Nauroy, Lemé, La Rue de Bohain, Landouzy-la-Ville, and Flavy-le-Martel. Nevertheless, these rehabilitated marriage certificates 21  Christian Lippold, “L’image de la communauté protestante de Picardie, du Vermandois, de la Thiérache et de la Brie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle à travers les registres de l’édit de Tolérance de 1787,” Master’s thesis (mémoire) (Université de Paris IV, 1995), p. 104. 22  Clandestine Protestant practice during the period after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes to the French Revolution (1685–1789) was referred to as the désert because the Huguenots were obliged to exercise their religion in deserted places to escape persecution. The biblical reference is to the forty years the Hebrews spent in the désert after the exodus from Egypt. 23  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” p. 81.

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are not enough to cover the whole Protestant population of the region. On the one hand, some certificates must have disappeared, and on the other, all couples did not attempt to renew their marriage certificates, since this brought them no change in status. We can take the example of the squire, Baptiste Isaac de Brissac, who owned the garden where Protestants of the city were buried. Although he was a witness to the rehabilitation of the marriage of another local squire, he did not seek to rehabilitate his own.24 Thus, according to other sources, such as marriages celebrated before the pastors of the towns of the Barrière,25 such as Tournai and Namur, we learn of the existence of Protestant families living in Templeux-le-Guérard and Ronsoy.26 Like the couple formed by Anthony Benezet’s parents, many Protestant families living north of the Loire River adopted behaviors opposing Catholic marriage and baptism. First there was a categorical refusal of Catholic marriages: couples often contented themselves with a marriage contract, wed before the notary. Some were then married in secret religious ceremonies by an itinerant clandestine pastor, though this was a rare occurrence before the 1770s in the Vermandois. Some were married on the other side of the French border, since the Vermandois benefited from close proximity to towns on the far side of the Barrière. However, Catholic baptism was instead often accepted throughout the 18th century despite the bans issued by the Protestant synods of the désert forbidding the practice. It was nonetheless not unusual for priests to record next to the baptismal entries that a child was a “bastard” or “illegitimate.” According to the rehabilitation certificates, the socio-professional composition of the rural Protestant communities presented some very particular characteristics. In fact, when professions are recorded, approximately 70 percent of the Huguenots were noted to have an activity in the secondary sector and most were mulquiniers.27 These were the workers employed in the production of the finest linen cloth, called linons, batistes, or cambrics. Although the presence of mulquiniers was nothing exceptional in all parts of the region, the proportion of those Protestants practicing the craft was very high and characteristic of these communities. Around Saint-Quentin, starting in the 16th century, a type of manufacturing developed which depended on the work of the surrounding rural areas. The manufacturers benefited from abundant, low-cost labor and raw materials because linen was the chief agricultural crop of the Vermandois. 24  Daullé, La Réforme, p. 276. 25  These are towns after 1714 in the Austrian Netherlands, hosting a Dutch garrison to monitor the French border. 26  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” pp. 84–85. 27  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” p. 94.

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Most of the production was exported. Thus the Vermandois presented a widereaching proto-industrial scope, thanks to this activity.28 The presence of mulquiniers in the Vermandois countryside was so preponderant that, during the 18th century, this evolution was accompanied by an “ex-urbanization” of the weaving of linen cloth. In 1731–32, the batiste and cambric linen-makers represented only 6 percent of the population of the town of Saint-Quentin.29 Toward the middle of the 18th century, the intendant wrote that the Vermandois was “where one could be sure that half the inhabitants of both sexes and of all ages from ten to twelve leagues (in the surrounding area) subsisted directly from the manufacture of cloth.”30 If the exile of Protestants from Saint-Quentin partially explains such a phenomenon, one must also consider the additional possibility that rural manual workers had of easily exercising two trades and the will of manufacturers to profit from rural workers, who cost less and were more flexible than urban workers who had declared trades and were attached to their privileges. Finally, international competition led manufacturers to orient production toward less-expensive and lesser-quality products that rural workers were able to supply.31 Research on communities of mulquiniers shows a disproportionate number of Protestants represented in the trade compared with Catholics. For example, in Hargicourt at the end of the 18th century, there were 55 Protestant couples identified and 137 Catholic. Although the population had a majority of Catholics, 75 percent of Protestants were designated as mulquiniers whereas only 57 percent of the Catholic population were identified as such. In Jeancourt the proportion of workers active in the industry reached 70 percent for Protestants and 43 percent for Catholics.32 Contemporaries often assimilated the terms mulquiniers and Protestants. In 1731, in a survey on Protestants in the border regions, the Duke de Boufflers described the Protestants “between Péronne and Saint-Quentin” as follows: “You will see that almost all are mulquiniers, which is the name given to the manufacturers of batiste, half-Dutch cloth.” In 1733 the priest of Beauvoir, in the district of Saint-Quentin, complained to the intendant of Amiens that two members of his parish “were perverted, no longer come to church and no longer fulfill any duty of our religion,” and that 28  Didier Terrier, “Mulquiniers et gaziers: les deux phases de la proto-industrie textile dans la région de Saint-Quentin: 1730–1850,” Revue du Nord 3 (1983): 535–53. Didier Terrier, Les deux âges. 29  Terrier, Les deux âges, p. 49. 30  Terrier, Les deux âges, p. 49. 31  Terrier, Les deux âges, p. 51. 32  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” pp. 97–98.

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the reason for this was that they were linen-makers by trade or “mulquiniers de profession.” Their perversion was attributed to keeping company with similarly perverted people going to Saint-Quentin to sell their cloth.33 Saint-Quentin’s few Protestant families, whether they remained in town after 1685 or had recently settled or returned there from the Refuge, were above all specialized in the commerce of fine linen cloth, and experienced a rapid ascension from 1710 on, as did other Protestant families, such as those from Sedan.34 This is the case of the families named Crommelin, Cottin, Dumoustier, Fizeaux, Fromaget, and Joly. Besides the bonds that linked them, these families were also connected with a network of alliances with other trading families and the large Protestant banks of Sedan, such as the Bruyère family, the Pouparts of Paris, and others who had settled in the Refuge in Amsterdam, Geneva, and London.35 Their success appeared quite clearly at the end of the 18th century. In 1788, Pierre Louis Samuel Joly de Bammerville had his marriage to the daughter of a Parisian trader rehabilitated as it had been celebrated at the Swedish Embassy in Paris in 1782. That same year, Pierre Fizeaux, “squire and trader,” rehabilitated his marriage to Marie Dumoustier de Vâtre, as they had been married in Tournai in 1780. In Saint-Quentin, Louis Cottin de Fontaine and Adélaïde Poupart, both from families in Sedan, connected to trading families and Parisian bankers such as the Girardot, had their marriage rehabilitated as it had been celebrated in Tournai in 1777.36 To conclude, it should be emphasized that, as in other northern provinces of the Kingdom of France, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes totally changed French Protestantism. From more urban communities of notables, Protestantism became a more rural and popular practice whereby it generally better resisted the persecutions that followed the Edict of Fontainebleau. In such a context, it is not surprising that the Benezet family left France for the Refuge, even if Huguenots were to return to France during the same period.

33  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” p. 98. 34  Gérard Gayot, Les draps de Sedan, 1646–1870 (Paris, 1998). Marc Scheidecker and Gérard Gayot, Les protestants de Sedan au XVIIIe siècle. Le peuple et les manufacturiers (Paris, 2003). 35  Herbert Lüthy, La banque protestante en France de l’édit de Nantes à la Révolution, 2 vols (Paris, 1959–61). 36  Lippold, “L’image de la communauté,” p. 104.

Chapter 3

Anthony Benezet the Huguenot: A Family Odyssey across the 18th-Century Refuge* Bertrand Van Ruymbeke* The title of this chapter is deliberately assertive. There is no doubt that Anthony Benezet was a Huguenot. That is, he was born a Huguenot and he was raised as a Huguenot. But my point is that he does not seem to have been perceived as such even by French historians of French Protestantism.1 The idea of this contribution therefore derives from a simple observation, with two embedded questions. Benezet is not mentioned, or briefly at best, in studies of the Refuge, as the Huguenot diaspora is known to French historians. The questions are: why, and what does it imply in our perception of Benezet? I would add that this chapter focuses on Benezet’s familial and religious backgrounds, mostly those of Jean-Étienne, his father, because it was his decision to flee France, to settle in Pennsylvania, and to convert to Quakerism that determined Benezet’s life and work itinerary as well as many of his choices.

Profile of an Absence

There are no articles devoted to Anthony Benezet or his work in the Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, the publishing voice of the * I wish to thank Marie-Jeanne Rossignol for her collaboration on this Benezet volume and conference; Ann Upton, special collection librarian at Haverford College, for her warm welcome and assistance; David van der Linden and Elisabeth Heijmans, for helping me gather transcriptions and photographs of archival documents in Rotterdam and Leiden; Lionel Laborie, for guiding me to Jean-Étienne Benezet’s letters to Prosper Marchand; Bernard Douzil and Jean-Paul Chabrol, for sharing offprints of their work; and Owen Stanwood and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, for their comments on this chapter. 1  Conversely, Anthony Benezet and his writings have been the object of fine recent studies and critical editions. See, for instance, Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven: 2012); Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009); Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (eds.), Quakers and Abolition (Champaign, IL 2014); and David L. Crosby (ed.), The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754–1783: an Annotated Critical Edition (Baton Rouge, LA, 2014). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004315662_005

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prestigious French Huguenot Society founded in Paris in 1852. In her anniversary (1685–1985) survey of the Huguenot diaspora, Le Refuge protestant, Myriam Yardeni does not mention him either.2 However, during his lifetime there was interest in France in his work. The Société des Amis des Noirs several times mentioned the wish to have a French translation made of his Short Account of Guinea but nothing came out of it.3 Benezet was, as is well known, also a correspondent of l’abbé Raynal and the marquis de Chastellux, two important figures of the 1780s in France. Well aware of his French Protestant background and familial identity, Benezet maintained ties to the Huguenot community at Saint-Quentin where he was born. In July 1781 he asked Benjamin Franklin to “get intelligence by letter from my kindred as St. Quentin, in Picardie, the place of my nativity” and gave him “a Packet for M. Debrissac, my near kinsman, one of the principal traders there [. . .] requesting thy kind assistance in the conveyance to its destination.”4 Half a century later, Roberts Vaux’s biography was published in England in 1816, the following year in Philadelphia and translated into French in 1824. Vaux’s work appeared in the context of the debate regarding the banning of the slave trade in the wake of the 1815 Congress of Vienna and the terrible story of the wreck of the ship La Méduse off the coast of Mauritania, which symbolized the return of the French to Senegal after it was returned to France by Great Britain. This event was artistically immortalized in French memory by Géricault’s painting Le Radeau de la Méduse (1819), in which the painter places three black men as a denunciation of the slave trade.5 To write a biography of Anthony Benezet at that moment was a timely reminder of his indefatigable

2  Myriam Yardeni, Le refuge protestant (Paris, 1985). 3   Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot (eds.), La Société des Amis des Noirs, 1788–1799: Contribution à l’histoire de l’abolition de l’esclavage (Paris, 1998). See also the contributions to this volume by Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (ch.10) and Randy J. Sparks (ch.11). A translation of this seminal text into French is being prepared under the coordination of Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Elodie Peyrol-Kléber, and me, to be published by the Société française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle. 4  The full letter is in Irv A. Brendlinger (ed.), To be Silent . . . Would Be Criminal. The Antislavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet (Lanham, MD, 2007), p. 67. As Benezet stressed, Isaac De Brissac was an important Huguenot mercantile figure in Saint-Quentin. In his garden, many Huguenots were buried. See Didier Boisson’s contribution to this volume (ch.2). The Benezets were related by marriage to the de Brissacs. Jacques Pannier, Antoine Bénézet (de Saint-Quentin). Un Quaker français en Amérique (Toulouse, 1925), pp. 4–5. 5  Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1817). The French version, indicated as being “abridged from the original,” was published in London. R. Vaux, Mémoires sur la vie d’Antoine Bénézet (London, 1824).

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and exemplary work against the slave trade and slavery. He was still perceived as an antislavery activist. Regarding historians of French Protestantism and the Huguenot dispersion, Charles Weiss, who coined the term ‘le Refuge’ to designate the diaspora, does not mention Benezet in his pioneering 1853 study of the Refuge, although an entire section of his two-volume book is devoted to the United States.6 This can be explained by the fact that Weiss heavily relied on Huguenot documentation produced in the United States where only New York and South Carolina were then studied.7 Silence remained until Jacques Pannier, a historian of French Protestantism who had worked on an edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, published a short biography of Benezet in 1925.8 Pannier’s book, based on a 1923 talk at Saint-Quentin, Picardy (Benezet’s birthplace), is simply a French adaptation of Vaux’s and Armistead’s biographies.9 Around the same time, Gilbert Chinard, a well-known and prolific French literary historian who taught at Johns Hopkins and at Princeton, published his survey of the Huguenot settlement in America in which he makes no mention of the Benezets.10 In the 1920s there was renewed interest in the Huguenots in the United States due to the now forgotten Walloon-Huguenot tercentenary anniversary (1624–1924) that swept New York and South Carolina, two strongholds of ancient Huguenot presence in the United States, and this reverberated in France, as well as in Belgium, but the Benezets were again ignored.11 6  On Huguenot history from the French Reformation to the diaspora, see Raymond A. Mentzer and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (eds.), A Companion to the Huguenots (Leiden, 2016). 7  Weiss briefly mentions Pennsylvania but wrongly makes it part of Catholic James’ proprietorship (which it was no longer by 1685), thereby explaining the reluctance of the refugees to relocate there as the Huguenot refugees massively and decidedly sided with William of Orange in his post-1688 political and military duel with James II. Charles Weiss, Histoire des réfugiés protestants de France depuis la révocation de l’Edit de Nantes jusqu’à nos jours, 2 vols (1853; reprinted Paris, 2007), p. 309. 8  Jacques Pannier, Antoine Bénézet. 9  Wilson Armistead, Anthony Benezet, from the Original Memoir (London, 1859). Armistead’s biography is itself an expanded version of Vaux’s. 10  Chinard generically evoked prominent Pennsylvanians of Huguenot origins (“citoyens les plus distingués”) but gave no names. Gilbert Chinard, Les réfugiés huguenots en Amérique (Paris, 1925), p. 186. 11  On this anniversary, see Caroline-Isabelle Caron, “Une fondation française de New York? Le tricentenaire huguenot-wallon de 1624 in Yves Frenette, Thomas Wien and Cécile Vidal (eds.), De Québec à l’Amérique française: histoire et mémoire (Québec, 2007), pp. 175–91. Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, “The Walloon and Huguenot Elements in New Netherland and

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Ten years later, in his 1935 study of the Quakers in North America, Pierre Brodin only devoted one line, and a brief footnote referring to Vaux and Pannier, to Anthony Benezet, whereas one might think that a French book on Quakers in North America would be interested in such a Franco-American figure.12 And then silence again—at least on this side of the Atlantic—until this volume, except for a brief contribution in the first volume of Les Huguenots et l’Atlantique, published in 2009.13 Clearly Benezet is a forgotten figure of the Refuge (perhaps even of French Protestant history), and one of the objectives of this volume is to precisely restore the Huguenot dimension of Anthony Benezet.14

An Unusual Huguenot Fate

The reasons for this historiographical void are easy to identify, at least for a student of the Huguenot dispersion. First, at the time of the migration, the Benezet family lived in Northern France, a region where Protestantism had nearly vanished in the course of the 17th century except for small enclaves, most often urban, as in the case of Saint-Quentin. Second, the family left France in 1715, thirty years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), long after the mass of the refugees were gone, and ironically the year of Louis XIV’s death.15 Third, not only did the Benezets not remain in Europe like the vast majority of Huguenot refugees, but the family settled in Philadelphia, while Pennsylvania

Seventeenth-Century New York: Identity, History, and Memory,” in Joyce D. Goodfriend (ed.), Revisiting New Netherland. Perspectives on Early Dutch America (Leiden, 2005), pp. 41–54 and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, “Une décennie mémorable: les commémorations huguenotes des années 1920 aux Etats-Unis,” in Mickaël Augeron, John de Bry and Annick Notter (eds.), Floride, un rêve français (1562–1565) (La Rochelle, 2012), pp. 127–32. 12  Pierre Brodin, Les Quakers en Amérique du Nord au XVIIe siècle et au début du XVIIIe siècle (1935; reprinted Paris, 1985), pp. 335–36, 336 n. 1. 13  Anne-Claire Merlin-Faucquez, “Anthony Benezet, un huguenot devenu quaker et abolitionniste de la première heure,” in Mickaël Augeron, Didier Poton, and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (eds.), Les Huguenots et l’Atlantique, vol. 1: Pour Dieu, la Cause ou les Affaires (Paris, 2009), pp. 552–53. In the Anglo-American literature, Maurice Jackson devotes a few pages to Anthony Benezet’s Huguenot familial background in his 2009 biography, M. Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 2–6. 14  Anthony Benezet has a small street in Saint-Quentin named after him. 15  Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, six months after the Benezet flight out of France.

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was a marginal destination for Huguenots who crossed the Atlantic.16 Fourth, they converted to Quakerism, a highly unusual—perhaps unique—religious move for Huguenot refugees. This geo-religious itinerary is atypical of Huguenot refugees. To make things clearer, let us compare it to the standard Huguenot refugee in North America. Typical refugees were born in the 1660s. They left France in the early or mid1680s, arrived in America in the mid- to late 1680s, and settled in New England, New York, or South Carolina.17 Most importantly, twenty years or so after the migration, they conformed to the Church of England. Jacques LeSerrurier, for example, also a textile merchant from Saint-Quentin, Picardy, who most likely knew Jean Bénézet (Anthony’s grandfather), settled in Charleston, South Carolina, in the mid-1680s and was conforming to Anglicanism by 1706.18 On top of all this, Anthony Benezet published most of his tracts between the 1750s and the 1780s—that is, at the tail end of the Refuge (the last collective Atlantic Huguenot migration being of the group led by pastor Jean-Louis Gibert to New Bordeaux in South Carolina in the 1760s).19 Benezet died a few years before the 1787 Edict of Toleration restored the Huguenots’ civil rights in France and made life in France once again legal for Protestants. When Benezet published his various pamphlets, most Huguenots were fully Americanized (or Anglicized, or Germanized). They were three, even four, generations removed from the peak of the original migration out of France. The consequence is that Benezet’s life and works are mostly known through the work of Anglo-American historians specialized in the history of antislavery movements and Quakerism. This is why the French background of his familial and personal history has been little studied. Benezet is therefore primarily known and studied as a Philadelphia Quaker, a man of philanthropy, and as an antislavery activist but not as a Huguenot refugee. This is not a major 16  Little work has been published on the Huguenots in Pennsylvania. G. Elmore Reaman, The Trail of the Huguenots in Europe, the United States, South Africa and Canada (Baltimore, MD, 1983), pp. 128–36 (five lines on A. Benezet, p. 132). 17  Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America. A Refugee People in New World Society (Cambridge, MA, 1983). Paula W. Carlo, Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York. Becoming American in the Hudson Valley (Brighton, UK, 2005). 18  Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden. The Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Columbia, SC, 2006), pp. 88, 90–91. See also the document mentioning Jacques LeSerrurier’s flight from Saint-Quentin in Didier Boisson’s contribution to this volume. 19  Daniel Benoit, Les frères Gibert: pasteurs du Désert puis du Refuge (Paris, 2005 (1889)). Owen Stanwood, “From the Desert to the Refuge: the Saga of New Bordeaux, South Carolina,” French Historical Studies (forthcoming, 2017).

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problem in itself, I must say, but still a piece of the puzzle seems to be ­missing. My point, therefore, is to take each of the four reasons that made his parents’ refugee itinerary atypical, which consequently pushed Anthony Benezet out of the field of Refuge studies, and explore to what extent their choices can be explained in the context of their own life circumstances, and what impact these choices had on Anthony Benezet. I plan to take these reasons from the easiest to explain to the more complex, which is as I presented them earlier: geographic origins, date of flight, migration to Pennsylvania via Rotterdam and London, and finally conversion to Quakerism.

Geographic Origins

Benezet was from Saint-Quentin in Picardy but in fact his family originated in Southern France. As Bernard Douzil stresses (Chapter 1), the Benezets came from the heartland of French Protestantism, the town of Calvisson, near Nîmes, in the Cévennes. In fact Calvisson is even the heart of le protestantisme cévenol.20 And Benezet is a southern patronym: Pont Benezet, for example, is the famous Pont d’Avignon. This geographic origin makes Anthony’s familial pedigree fully and impeccably Huguenot. Why did they move north, though? Jean (John) Benezet, Jean-Étienne’s father and Anthony’s paternal grandfather, moved first to Abbeville, Picardy, and then to Saint-Quentin in 1689. His brother Antoine would become subdélégué at the port town of Dunkerque, an official assisting the province’s intendant, an influential post impossible to obtain without first converting to Catholicism.21 The Benezet family settled in Northern France in the mid-17th century, at a time of relative peace before the Fronde, using familial networks for social mobility.22 Huguenots then could not possibly foresee the severe persecution of the 1680s and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, still almost half a century ahead. In fact the Declaration of Saint-Germain of 1652, which reasserted Huguenot prerogatives in exchange 20  Bernard Douzil, “Anthony Bénézet. Un quaker d’origine vaunageole en Amérique,” La Vaunage au XVIIIe siècle, vol. 2 (Nîmes, 2005), pp. 169–82. For a detailed study of the Benezets’ southern familial origins and the conditions of their northward migration, see Bernard Douzil’s contribution to this volume. 21  As confirmed by the fact that the Benezets in Dunkerque were buried in Catholic cemeteries. Maurice Jackson, Let this Voice Be Heard, p. 3. 22  The Fronde was an unsuccessful but nonetheless destabilizing aristocratic and parliamentary rebellion that took place in France from 1648 to 1653 at a time when the French monarchy were weakened by the youth of Louis XIV, born in 1638 and king at age 5 in 1643 at the death of his father, Louis XIII.

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for their collective loyalty to the monarchy during the Fronde, is often referred to by historians as a second Edict of Nantes.23 The move was most likely ­motivated by personal economic reasons. The Benezets were prominent linen merchants. Saint-Quentin, as Didier Boisson describes (Chapter 2), was a Protestant urban enclave with 10 percent of the population being Huguenots who controlled textile production. Therefore the Benezets’ geographical origins were not typical, since few Huguenots migrated from the south of France to the north, but they are still very much understandable.

A Late Flight

Jean Benezet (born in 1645) married Marie-Madeleine Testart (born in 1659), Pierre and Rachel Crommelin’s daughter, in the temple of Lehaucourt near Saint-Quentin in 1682.24 Three years before the Revocation, it was still possible for Protestants to marry in a temple, as Huguenot churches were known in France. Surnames and marriages are essential to this story because they allow us to delineate familial and regional networks that shaped later migrations. At this point it is important to remember that the Crommelins were originally from Holland, where part of the family still lived. This foreign origin, especially Dutch (but it could also be Scottish or English) was not at all unusual among Huguenots. South Carolina Huguenots, for example, number a Jacques Boyd and an Isaac Mazyck. Huguenot families of foreign extraction often took root in France in the 17th century, and for obvious reasons—the presence of relatives abroad, for example—they were among the first to leave France in the 1680s. Pierre Testart, Jean’s father-in-law, also left for Holland in 1686. The Testarts and the Crommelins eventually settled in New York. Two things of note need to be stressed. First, New York was conquered by the English in 1664, but twenty years later it still enjoyed ties to the United Provinces of the Netherlands, so Huguenots who settled in Holland knew about New York and would naturally settle there if they decided to cross the Atlantic. Second, the Huguenot Atlantic Refuge, like all religious transatlantic migrations, was a family affair. Huguenot 23  The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (October 1685) officially outlawed Protestantism on French soil. On this troubled period of Huguenot history, see Elisabeth Labrousse, La Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes. Une foi, une loi, un roi? (Paris, 1990), Daniel Ligou, Le protestantisme en France de 1598 à 1715 (Paris, 1968) and, more recently, Geoffrey Treasure, The Huguenots (New Haven, 2013). 24  Bernard Douzil, “Anthony Bénézet,” p. 171.

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refugees in America usually had relatives who made the same move. The fact that the Benezets, who eventually crossed the Atlantic, had relatives settled in America since the 1680s is typical of the Refuge. Jean-Étienne (1683–1751), Anthony’s father and the main figure of this story, was born in Saint-Quentin two years before the revocation. In November 1685 a dragonnade—that is, a military occupation of Huguenot towns, neighborhoods, churches, and homes—was launched in the Saint-Quentin area and many Huguenots converted. The Benezets do not appear on the conversion lists but, even without the formal conversion (considering also the possibility of lost records) of his parents, Jean-Étienne clearly spent the first thirty years of his life as a Nouveau Catholique.25 It appears doubtful that he would have never attended mass as some older historians contended. Failing to do so put one’s life at risk, at least through the death of Louis XIV in 1715, as Huguenots who failed to comply with Catholic rituals (mass, feast days, and sacraments) would surely be denounced to religious and civil officials. And, as Didier Boisson reminds us in his contribution (Chapter 2), the priest at Sainte-Catherine, the Benezets’ parish church, which hosted many Nouveaux Catholiques, was precisely appointed there because of his anti-Huguenot zeal. A question in passing: why did Jean (Anthony’s grandfather and JeanÉtienne’s father) not leave France in the wake of the 1685 revocation? Out of a population of 800,000, some 600,000 Huguenots remained in France. Therefore emigration concerned only a minority, even if a large minority. Yet Refuge studies have shown that Huguenots who emigrated tended to live in Northern France, border provinces, or provinces where the Huguenots were few. Statistically the Benezets, who lived in a northern province where Protestants were a minority and located not too far from France’s border, should have left in 1685. The fact is that they did not and one can only surmise that either they were doing well economically and thought they could resist, and/or they felt well rooted and well established in Saint-Quentin. In any case they most certainly benefited from some local protection.26

25  Following the 1685 revocation, all Huguenots had to convert to Catholicism. Protestantism no longer existing, former Huguenots were known as Nouveaux Catholiques (new Catholics) or Nouveaux Convertis (new converts), usually abbreviated to NC in official documents. 26  On this point I fully concur with Nancy S. Hornick’s interpretation. Nancy S. Hornick, “Anthony Benezet: Eighteenth Century Social Critic, Educator and Abolitionist,” unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Maryland, 1974), p. 11.

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Jean-Étienne and Judith (1690–1765), Anthony’s parents, were married in the parish of Saint-Eustache in Paris in October 1709.27 Jean-Étienne was 27 years old, fully in norm with the marriage statistics of early modern France. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Benezet, born January 31, 1713, was baptized by a Catholic priest, “le curé de la paroisse de Sainte-Catherine”—a legal obligation—on February 1, as his older sister Marie-Madeleine had been in November 1710.28 This second point in our study of the Benezet family in the light of the Huguenot dispersion looks fairly typical after all. We have a family who apparently chose to remain in France as most Huguenots or Nouveaux Catholiques did even if resistance would prove harder in Saint-Quentin than in areas or towns where Huguenots were more numerous, although resistance was nowhere easy. But then in February 1715 they left Saint-Quentin for Rotterdam. In his family memorial—actually that of his father that he continued—JeanÉtienne tersely noted about their flight: God having instilled into our heart to leave France [the French term used is tellingly ‘abandoner la France’, ‘abandoner’ being more emotionally connoted than simply ‘quitter’] and to retire to a Protestant country to be able to practice our holy religion, we left Saint-Quentin with our two children on February 3 and arrived in Rotterdam on February 15.29

27  Genealogists and Anthony Benezet’s enthusiastic 19th-century biographers portrayed Judith as having been a “demoiselle d’honneur” at the Versailles court, thereby implying a necessary familial noble status. While this may be true, although very uncertain, one should be aware that the noble origin of Huguenot refugees is a common topos of the Refuge that I have elsewhere termed “Frenchness and noblesse.” See Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, “Cavalier et Puritan. L’ancêtre huguenot au prisme de l’histoire américaine,” Diasporas, Histoire et Société, Généalogies rêvées, 5 (2004): 12–22. This being said, Judith was unquestionably from a wealthy family and brought a significant dowry into the union, as acknowledged by Jean-Étienne in his will (“the fortune she brought me upon our intermarriage”). “Will of John-Stephen Benezet” (May 20, 1751), Genealogical Records of George Small, Philip Albright . . . Daniel Benezet, Jean Crommelin, compiled by Samuel Small, Jr. (Philadelphia: PA, 1905), p. 197. Saint-Eustache was one of the four parishes where Paris Huguenots concentrated. David Garrioch, The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685–1789 (Cambridge, UK, 2014), pp. 96–98. 28  In between Marie-Madelaine and Antoine, the Benezet couple had another daughter in February 1712 but she died in May 1712. 29   “Mémorial commencé le 16 aoust 1682 pour Jean Benezet,” Genealogical Records, pp. 334–40.

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This is a fairly formulaic statement that nonetheless presents motivations that are corroborated by later events. Sadly, Jean-Étienne never imagined that his account would once be studied by historians. We have no information about the way he escaped from France, who helped him escape, how he reached Rotterdam, and if anything happened along the way. Judith, his wife, was at least eight months pregnant when they left France, which seems to indicate that the Benezets left precipitately and under sudden pressure because why leave at the risk of their lives in these conditions if unforced? Let us simply imagine: Jean-Étienne Benezet clandestinely fled with a five-year-old daughter, a two-year-old son, and an eight-month-pregnant wife in 1715, and they reached Rotterdam in thirteen days, 170 miles away. Again, something must have happened that precipitated their flight, otherwise they would surely have waited for their daughter’s birth and better spring weather, unless they decided to flee at the most unexpected moment so as not to raise the suspicion of their Catholic neighbors in a context when denouncing fugitives was financially rewarded. In her 1974 University of Maryland dissertation devoted to Anthony Benezet, Nancy S. Hornick speculated that Jean-Étienne and Judith left France because of a threat of imminent property confiscation. As we will see, a Rotterdam document, unknown to Hornick, shows that the Benezets sold their property as soon as they arrived in Holland. In his American travel diary, Chastellux quotes Anthony Benezet telling him that “[Jean-Étienne] was obliged to seek asylum in England, taking with him his children, the only treasure he could save in his misfortunes [, and that] justice, or what is so called in thy country, ordered him to be hung in effigy, because he explained the gospel differently from thy priests.”30 Our hypothesis is confirmed: Jean-Étienne Benezet, for a reason unknown to historians, lost his protection and had to leave Saint-Quentin.31 This reference, as well as his family account to the Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, also corroborates that Anthony Benezet was well aware of his Huguenot background and of the fate of his relatives under the heavy sword of royal persecution. With “one of his uncles hanged, an aunt sent to a convent, two of [his] cousins dead in the galleys, [his] father, a fugitive, ruined by the confiscation of all his goods,” the Benezets ran the whole gamut of what could happen to Huguenots

30  Howard C. Rice, Jr. (ed.), Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781 and 1782 by the Marquis de Chastellux, 2 vols (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963), pp. 166–67. 31  Let us also recall that the War of the Spanish Succession ended in March 1714 and it was nearly impossible to flee in wartime.

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in post-revocation France: forced conversion, flight abroad, galleys, convents, and financial ruin.32

Rotterdam: The First Refuge

Jean-Étienne and his family first appeared in the Rotterdam probate records of February 1715, as soon as they arrived, evidence that they were materially assisted in their settlement and advised about which notary to see to get various businesses settled. The Benezet family went to Holland, and specifically to Rotterdam, following trade and familial networks. There, where they joined Judith’s mother (Judith Liévard, then widow of Léon de la Méjanelle), the young couple found familial support also in the Testart and Crommelin families. This is typical of the Refuge, at least within the merchant communities who had access to international networks, and to some extent it is common to most migrations. Apart from personal ties, this route also corresponds to migratory frameworks within the Refuge: Huguenots from Northern France tended to leave for the United Provinces.33 This also indicates that Jean-Étienne was a man of means. We now know how merchants got their funds out of France: they simply exported as much as they could and asked to be paid with bills of exchange that could be drawn wherever they intended to settle, in this case Rotterdam, and then left the rest behind in France.34 The first act that the Benezets had a Dutch notary record in French is the selling back in France of their real estate—namely, a house and a garden located on rue Sainte-Catherine, and furniture to remit their debts.35 In other words, they sold what could not be taken along in their flight, provided it had not been confiscated by the provincial authorities since their departure. This act is a sign that no return to France was contemplated. This is typical of the Refuge as it is assumed that Huguenots who left in the 1680s hoped for the restoration of their rights at the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), or even the Treaty 32  Eugene P. Chase (trans. and ed.), Our Revolutionary Forefathers: the Letters of François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois During his Residency in the United States as Secretary to the French Legation 1779–1785 (1969, reprinted New York, 1990), p. 139. 33  On the Huguenot settlement in the United Provinces, see David van der Linden, Experiencing Exile. Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1680–1700 (Farnham, UK, 2015). 34  Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden, p. 60. 35  Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, Notarieel archief [probate records], 1510: Records of notary Gommer van Boxtel (Acte no. 41/fol. 63/ February 15, 1715).

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of Utrecht (1713), under pressure from a Great Britain victorious and sympathetic to the Huguenot cause. However, the Benezets left in early 1715 at a time when these hopes were somewhat fading.36 Through the second act they broke their marriage contract made in France.37 They did so most likely because they married in front of a Catholic priest. Otherwise their children would have been deemed illegitimate by the French authorities. Had they not married in a Catholic church, they could not have lived together as a couple, let alone founded a family, without being rejected by their neighborhood and social environment. It is hard to imagine a priest agreeing to baptize Anthony knowing that Jean-Étienne and Judith were not properly married according to Catholic rites. Interestingly enough, the pair chose to follow the Dutch usage of communal estate within a married couple. When they drew a new marriage contract they went Dutch. This convinces me that one of the reasons for their flight was the Protestant future of their married life and of their children. Jean-Étienne and Judith did not want to have their children raised as Catholics. In fact, Jean-Étienne noted in his memorial about Susanne’s baptism soon after their arrival in Rotterdam: “Praised be God that this infant was baptized in a Protestant Church” (“Loué soit Dieu de ce que cet enfant a esté baptizé dans une Eglise protestante”).38 Jean-Étienne then made what is called a reconnaissance before the consistory, the vestry in the Huguenot Calvinist tradition, at the Rotterdam Walloon church.39 Churches of the Refuge considered all Huguenots who left France after November 1685 (i.e. the revocation) New Catholics, having been forced to attend mass. Therefore, once abroad, refugees had to make amends before the elders of the local Huguenot, or, in the specific Dutch case, Walloon church, where they settled. This procedure was called une reconnaissance, during which a refugee recognized (reconnaissait) their error—that is, conversion to Catholicism. On February 17, Jean-Étienne Benezet admitted unsurprisingly

36  Even if they rose again after Louis XIV’s death in September 1715. 37  Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, Notarieel archief [probate records], 1510: Records of notary Gommer van Boxtel (Acte no. 54) /fol. 90/February 21, 1715). 38  “Mémorial commencé le 16 Aoust 1682,” Genealogical Records, p. 338. 39  The Walloons were French-speaking Protestants who left the Spanish Netherlands in the 16th century, mostly for the northern provinces (i.e. the Netherlands), then fighting for their independence against Spain. Culturally and religiously close to the Huguenots, they welcomed them in their churches in the 1680s, which, considering the inflow of refugees, became for all intents and purposes Huguenot churches in discipline and attendance. Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, Waalse kerk [Walloon Church], 2: Records of the consistory, 1694–1715, February 17, 1715/fol. 436.

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that “he attended mass a few times” [“avoir assisté quelques fois à la messe”].40 Let us recall that he had until then spent all his life in what the Huguenot philosopher Pierre Bayle, who also settled in Rotterdam, called ‘la France toute catholique’, and in the eyes of the consistoire had necessarily complied with Catholic requirements without Huguenot pastors around since they were all forced to leave France in November 1685.41 Because Judith’s pregnancy was close to term (in fact, Susanne was born on February 25, a week later), the vestry gave her a reprieve—an extension, so to speak. She would present herself again before the Rotterdam Huguenot elders after her delivery.42 On March 31, Jean-Étienne was given his reconnaissance and was therefore fully readmitted into the Huguenot communion.43

Life in London

The Benezets left Rotterdam in August 1715, only five months after their arrival, and continued to London. This may indicate that Rotterdam was only a stop, where they could count on familial support, on their migration to England, or that business opportunities appeared better in London. This move, via Greenwich, where the family stayed for a month until Jean-Étienne found his family a home in the English capital, is not in itself surprising considering the ties between coastal Netherlands and England, or between London and the main Dutch ports. In London there was a large Huguenot refugee community of several thousand individuals and several churches, and, obviously, London was a prosperous city, ideal for a linen merchant. We can follow Jean-Étienne and Judith’s London peregrinations through the births and baptisms of their ten children and know what relatives they joined there. On July 7, 1716, at the church of La Savoy, Marie-Madelaine de la Méjanelle, Judith’s sister, was present for Marianne’s baptismal. On July 24, 1717, at the French church of Wandsworth, Susanne de la Méjanelle, another of Judith’s sisters, was there for Susanne’s baptism. On May 1719 at the church of Wandsworth, Susanne de la Méjanelle was again present but this time for 40  The “quelques fois” (a few times) is for Jean-Étienne a way to minimize the impact of his conversion before the consistory. 41  On Pierre Bayle, see Hubert Bost, Pierre Bayle (Paris, 2006), and Elisabeth Labrousse (ed.), Ce que c’est que la France toute catholique (Paris, 1973). 42  Susanne was to die three months later. 43  Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, Waalse kerk [Walloon Church], 2: Records of the Consistory, 1694–1715, March 31, 1715/fol. 438.

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Pierre’s baptism. On August 26, 1721, at the English parish church of Chelsea, Jacques Benezet, Jean-Étienne’s brother and business partner, was present. On November 6, 1722, at the French Church of Le Carré on Berwick Street, Jacques was also present for Philippe’s baptism. In London, Jean-Étienne and Judith therefore reunited with their close kin (brothers and sisters), and this familial presence must have motivated their relocation in the English capital. Church records indicate that the Benezets first settled near Leicester Square, then moved to Wandsworth, then to Chelsea, then back to Leicester Square, and eventually to Shoreditch.44 A word on Judith Benezet, a truly heroic feminine figure who bore fourteen children from 1710 to 1730 in three different and distant places (Saint-Quentin, Rotterdam, and London): seven of her children died in infancy and, as we have seen, she had to flee France clandestinely, inevitably in a difficult material and emotional context, while being, as we saw, eight months pregnant. What can be gathered from Jean-Étienne’s and Judith’s long list of births and baptisms? The striking element is that their ten children born in England were baptized in five different places. This is a clear sign of geographic and, I would suggest, religious instability. At times their children were baptized in French churches; at others in English churches; and at yet other times in the homes of French pastors. At times they were baptized by French ministers and at others by English pastors. Except from 1722 to 1727 when the family was associated with the French church of Le Carré, they did not seem to attend a regular church. Of course, this is also a sign of the period and characteristic of the Refuge. In London, French churches came and went.45 In the 1680s, many were founded but they did not all survive, and if there were no Huguenot pastors around, refugees had to make do with English ministers. But what also seems striking is that the church of the Savoy was a conformist chapel—that is, Anglican. This is a bit odd for somebody who would later convert to Quakerism. 44  “Mémorial commencé le 16 Aoust 1682,” Genealogical Records, pp. 336–40; Registers of the French Church of Le Carre and Berwick Street, London [1685–1788], Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Quarto Series, vol. XXV (London, 1885–2007), p. 15; Registers of the French Church of La Savoye, Spring Gardens, and Les Grecs, London [1684–1900], Quarto Series, vol. 26 (London, 1885–2007), p. 38; Norma Perry, “Voltaire’s London Agents for the Henriade: Simond and Bénézet, Huguenot Merchants,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 102 (1973): 269–70. 45  On Huguenot refugee communities and churches in London, see Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England. Immigration and Settlement c.1550–1700, trans. Peregrine and Adriana Stevenson (Cambridge, UK, 1991 (Paris, 1985)), and Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: the History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (1985, 2nd revised edn, Brighton, UK, 2001).

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All churches seem to indicate that Jean-Étienne was prosperous and therefore lived in the western parts of London, a suggestion corroborated by his successful business ventures.46 The records also tend to show that Jean-Étienne did not become a Quaker in England, at least certainly not in 1727, since until 1730 the family attended Huguenot churches. The conversion most likely happened once in Pennsylvania, but, this being said, the choice of Pennsylvania revealed, if not Quaker, at least pietistic tendencies in Jean-Étienne before he left London. Most certainly, though, he frequented Quaker merchants in London and perhaps crossed the Atlantic with Quaker letters of introduction. On March 29, 1729, Jean-Étienne was naturalized British.47 December 23, 1730 is the last entry in the memorial. Most likely the Benezets left for Philadelphia in 1731.48

Why Pennsylvania and Why Quakerism?

These two questions are interrelated since a typical Huguenot refugee would not settle in Pennsylvania, a phenomenon that Jon Butler has called “the Huguenot rejection of Pennsylvania,” a colony founded and politically controlled by Quakers, without being sympathetic to them.49 He would have relocated, as we pointed out earlier, to South Carolina or New York. Before addressing the difficult issue of Quakerism, let us say from the start that one cannot underestimate the fact that Jean-Étienne, once again, spent the first thirty years of his life as a Huguenot forced to behave as a Catholic without spiritual support from any Calvinist sources. This condition of spiritual alienation, Jean-Étienne being a sort of religious uprooted, necessarily had consequences for his religious choices. Why is this a difficult question? Simply because all sources converge to show that Huguenots held Quakers in contempt, as did Puritans and Anglicans. An illustration of this contempt is found in the records of the Threadneedle Street 46  Unlike his brother Jacques, who went bankrupt. Norma Perry, “Voltaire’s London Agents,” p. 271. 47   Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization in England and Ireland 1701–1800, Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Quarto Series, vol. XXVII (London, 1885–2007), p. 134. 48  In a letter written from Philadelphia, dated November 4, 1732, Jean-Étienne speaks of “a year of residence,” implying that the Benezets most likely arrived in Pennsylvania in late 1731. “Brieven van Jean Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” University Library Leiden, Leiden, Mar 2, letter of November 4, 1732, fol. 1 v. 49  Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America, p. 78.

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church in London, the largest non-conformist Huguenot church in England. In September 1689 a refugee named Jean Serré from Saint-Quentin, like JeanÉtienne, was accused by the consistory of having broken the discipline (“violé la discipline”) by marrying a Quaker against his mother’s consent. Three months later, Serré asked for forgiveness in order to regain access to communion.50 This was before Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques convinced an enlightened French and increasingly anticlerical intellectual elite to admire the Quakers for the authenticity of their spirituality and the simplicity of their religious organization.51 This being said, in his Lettres, Voltaire was still a tad mocking towards the Quakers. Clearly the image of the Quakers in France radically changed between the first decades of the 18th century and Anthony Benezet’s time, in the space of one generation: from Jean-Étienne to Anthony. When Anthony published his pamphlets, Quakers were celebrated in France before again falling into disfavor in the late 18th century.52 Huguenot letters about the Quakers and Pennsylvania in the 1680s and early 1700s were all negative. There was for Huguenot refugees who wished to settle in North America a choice between Carolina and Pennsylvania, as the Carolina proprietors and William Penn actively campaigned to recruit Huguenot wine and silk makers, merchants, noblemen ready to invest in land and infrastructure such as a forge, a windmill, and so on, as well as a variety of artisans for their infant colonies. But the choice was clear: it would be South Carolina. Pastor Jean-Claude, a well-known Refuge figure, in 1684 wrote in his correspondence: “We talked about Pennsylvania and Carolina of which wonders are being said, it is sure that this colony is better in many respects.” Again, a week later: “We are being told here much better things about Carolina than Pennsylvania. This colony’s Quakery [in French la Quaquerie] is not a pleasant thing.”53

50  “Livre des Actes du consistoire, 1679–1692,” ms.7, Archives of the French Protestant Church of London (entries September 29, 1689, and December 29, 1689). Soho Square, London. See also Robin D. Gwynn, (ed.), Minutes of the Consistory of the French Church of London Threadneedle Street, 1679–1692, Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Quarto Series, vol. 58 (London, 1885–2007). 51  Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques. Derniers écrits sur Dieu, presentation by Gerhardt Stenger (Paris, 2006 [1734]). 52  On this evolution, see Denis Lacorne, De la religion en Amérique. Essai d’histoire politique (Paris, 2007), pp. 17–22 (Religion in America: a Political History (New York, 2014)), and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol’s contribution to this volume (Chapter 10). 53  “Jean Claude to Isaac Claude” (June 9 and 16, 1684), in Solange Deyon, “Les relations de famille et d’affaires de Jean Claude d’après sa correspondance à la veille de la Révocation (1683–1685),” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 116 (1970): 159.

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Regarding Quakerism, the question therefore is: what influence or influences led Jean-Étienne to make this very unusual, not to say radical, Huguenot move? One must say, though, that becoming a Quaker in Pennsylvania in the 1730s is almost mainstream as opposed to doing it in London or on the Continent. After all, the Quakers controlled the colony, as the Anglicans did in South Carolina, and the Congregationalists in Massachusetts; and Huguenots, torn apart in France between their loyalty to the monarch and their faith, tended to favor the local dominant Protestant church. Yet it is a difficult riddle to solve because Jean-Étienne left little record of the motivations behind his spiritual and religious choices. Anthony later surmised that his father left for America in part because he “was not much more pleased with [the priests] of England,” had difficulty with the Conformist Church, and wished “to get out of the way of all hierarchy.”54 The standard account is that Jean-Étienne joined, or associated with, the radical Huguenot sect known as the “French Prophets,” which was officially condemned by the elders of the Threadneedle Street church, once in London on account of his regional and familial origins.55 In fact many of the founders of the sect originated from the same area as Jean-Étienne’s father: la vallée de la Vaunage. The problem with this theory is that apart from the few founders, most French Prophets, despite this collective term, were English. Then Jean-Étienne was no radical. He was a successful and prosperous merchant with a solid and socially well-established familial network. He may have wished for simplicity in his religious life but he was no radical or fanatique. And, as we know, the Quakers were often prosperous merchants. As Jean-Paul Chabrol, the foremost French specialist of Huguenot prophetism, states, “tout sépare French Prophets et Quakers” (everything distinguishes the French Prophets from the Quakers).56 Chabrol even reminds us that in 1708 a Quaker who had joined the French Prophets was condemned by his community. Additionally, the emergence of Quakerism in the Cévennes dates back to 1788, long after Jean-Étienne’s days. Finally, as J. William Frost reminds us in his contribution (Chapter 4), Jean-Étienne was a nominal Friend at best. JeanÉtienne more importantly had strong ties to the Moravians, this pietistic and missionary German church well established in Pennsylvania, whom he joined

54  Quoted in Hornick, “Anthony Benezet,” p. 19. 55  Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 7–8. 56  Jean-Paul Chabrol and Jean-Marc Roger, “Mémoire et identité religieuse: la ‘légende’ des couflaïres de la Vaunage,” in La Vaunage au XVIIIe siècle, vol. II (Nîmes, 2003), unpublished version, p. 9.

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in 1743, as did his daughters, Anthony’s sisters.57 To me, this decision confirms his spiritual instability caused by his first thirty years as a forced Catholic. This being said, unfortunately we have no information about Judith’s religious choices. To what extent was she or was she not a factor in Jean-Étienne’s decision to join the Quakers? A series of letters addressed by Jean-Étienne to his Huguenot refugee friend Prosper Marchand, at The Hague, confirms our hypothesis about Jean-Étienne’s religious instability and sheds new light on his spiritual being. This correspondence reveals a cultured and sophisticated man, deeply preoccupied with his spirituality and salvation. Marchand was for a time a bookseller, and also worked as an editor for the Journal Littéraire.58 Jean-Étienne had Marchand send him in Philadelphia, among other titles, volumes of the Journal Historique de la République des Lettres and Locke’s Christianisme Raisonnable (The Reasonnableness of Christianity), published in a French translation in 1731.59 Jean-Étienne’s description of life in America contains the standard “vray pais de Cocagne” (true land of milk and honey), “a land of peace and tranquility,” where one lives “more comfortably [plus grassement]” than “in the outskirts of London” for the same amount of money.60 However, as opposed to most letters written by Huguenot refugees settled in America, it does not stop there as JeanÉtienne reflects on and discusses his spiritual peregrinations (coupled with his successive geographic displacements) and religious choices. Unsurprisingly, he is on the defensive when he justifies his joining the Quakers. He mentions being “mocked, despised and disapproved” through “anonymous letters,” some being addressed to his in-laws. Jean-Étienne also evokes “the errors [égarements] which he recognized being guilty of,” perhaps alluding to his conversion— even if nominal—to Catholicism in France, which led to his ­reconnaissance 57  On the Moravians, also known as the Herrnhuters, and their migration to British North America, see Aaron S. Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys. German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717–1775 (Philadelphia, PA, 1996), pp. 107–25, and Hermann Wellenreuther, “The Herrnhuters in Europe and the British Colonies (1735– 1776),” in Susanne Lachenicht (ed.), Religious Refugees in Europe, Asia and North America (Hamburg, 2007), pp. 173–95. 58  They most likely met while in Rotterdam. In his correspondence, Jean-Étienne mentions their stay in Rotterdam and Marchand’s visit to London. “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of November 11, 1734, fol. 1. 59  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of September 24, 1736, fol. 1. 60  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of November 11, 1734, fol. 1.

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once safely in Rotterdam.61 Once Jean-Étienne became a Moravian in 1743, he justified his “pilgrimatic itinerary and party changes,” explaining that they “were not useless since it is in America that [he] was to find this precious pearl,” meaning salvation, “in comparison to which the largest treasures are only mud.”62 This statement would confirm that he joined the Quakers only in Philadelphia. However, in 1748 he made a sudden spiritual turnaround and left the Moravians to return to his natal French Calvinism. Disillusioned, even angry at the Moravians, he mentioned their “conceited leader” (orgueilleux chef )—Count Zinzendorf—and compared them to “Jesuites protestans”. To him, the Moravians were “a sect of perdition.” Jean-Estienne decided to return “wholeheartedly” to his “former and good Protestantism, true to the [Reformed] churches of France,” but “free of predestination and bigotry,” in an attempt “to reach what you [Prosper Marchand] and Monsieur Lock call le Christianisme raisonnable.” He managed to convince one of his three daughters, who had followed him originally, to leave the Moravians, but he sadly noted that the others remained.63 Therefore Jean-Étienne, a prosperous merchant, a man of means and letters, but having gone through years of real spiritual instability, with pietistic tendencies, moved to Pennsylvania and once there converted to Quakerism, fully independently from his Cévennes familial origins. If one looks closely at his itinerary, it becomes an explicable move even if atypical of most Huguenot refugees. Jean-Étienne, who complained regularly of colds, died while gardening in April 1751. He explained to his correspondent in 1748 that he “gardened vigorously having after [settling] the important matter of salvation nothing else to do.”64 Anthony Benezet was clearly and unmistakably a figure of the Refuge and should be regarded as such. He was a Quaker of strong Huguenot origins, and the geographic and spiritual peregrinations of his parents and his youth as a refugee inevitably shaped his spirituality, his world perception, and his life choices. Huguenot refugees were definitely people on the move and, except for the choice of Pennsylvania, Jean-Étienne’s and Judith’s Atlantic 61  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of November 4, 1732, fol. 1 r. 62  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of May 15 1745, fol. 1. 63  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of December 10, 1748, fol. 2 (written in Germantown). 64  “Brieven van Jean-Estienne Benezet aan Prosper Marchand,” Leiden University Library, Mar 2, Letter of December 10, 1748, fol.2 r.

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experience is typical. Additionally, their migration is symptomatic of the 18th-century Huguenot Refuge: migration had become by then more individual and familial than in the 1680s. In that sense the Benezets’ late flight, stopovers in Europe, and settlement in Pennsylvania may be typical of the 18th-century Refuge. Migrants were then no longer part of a collective wave. Families crossed the Atlantic alone and could settle anywhere.

Part 2 Benezet and the Quaker Community in the British Atlantic World

⸪

Chapter 4

Anthony Benezet: The Emergence of a Weighty Friend* J. William Frost Anthony Benezet arose as a leader in the transatlantic antislavery movement because he already enjoyed a community of support in the Society of Friends in America and Great Britain that gave legitimacy to his many benevolent activities and access to political leaders in Pennsylvania and London. Why he became and remained a Quaker, and how this young man, raised in deferential societies in England and Pennsylvania, became a leader and reformer among Friends, are the subjects of this chapter. Although it would be tempting to assume that Philadelphia Quakers immediately recognized Benezet’s talents and piety on his arrival as an immigrant, that does not seem to have been the case. Anthony did not have many of the advantages of most 18th-century weighty Friends in Philadelphia. He was an immigrant, even if he did anglicize his name, during a period when France and Great Britain were often at war.1 He was an unsuccessful merchant living among Quaker leaders who had become wealthy through trade and land speculation, and whose families had long been influential in Philadelphia Monthly and Yearly Meeting. Speaking in meeting was one way for outsiders who were not wealthy to gain stature in meeting, but Anthony never became a minister. Anthony Benezet arrived in Pennsylvania in 1732 as a boy of 18, but we have little personal information before he emerged as an antislavery advocate twenty-two years later. Even the preserved letters that date after 1755 rarely discuss his wife or family but deal instead with his causes: Quakerism, education, books, gardening, antislavery, and other reform endeavors. These were preserved not because Benezet kept them but because his correspondents did.

* A longer version of this chapter appeared in Quaker History, 102 (Fall, 2014). 1  In the early minutes of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, the name is sometimes spelled with two Benezett and even as Benezette. The father Jean-Étienne became John Stephen Benezet.

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Why a Quaker?

The first mystery of Benezet is why of his entire family only he remained a Quaker. Jean-Étienne Benezet and his eldest son, Anthony, probably began attending meetings in England and, although there are no records of membership for either, were recognized soon after migration as belonging to Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. The father seems to have been a nominal Friend at best, entertaining the Moravian August Gottlieb Spangenberg in 1736 and Count Zinzendorf in 1741, associating with George Whitefield, becoming a trustee of the New Light academy, and serving as treasurer, postmaster, and factor for the Moravian community in Bethlehem.2 Philadelphia Monthly Meeting disowned him in 1743 for becoming a Moravian. It is likely that Philadelphia Friends would not utilize Anthony’s talents until they were sure that he was going to remain a Quaker.3 Anthony’s four sisters, three younger brothers, and mother do not appear to have joined the Society of Friends. The sisters became Moravian. The brothers were Anglican non-pacifists who actively supported the Patriots during the American Revolution. Anthony remained on good terms with his family, all of whom attended his wedding and signed the certificate. Jean-Étienne Benezet was also prosperous, buying 1700 acres of land in Pennsylvania and engaging in trade. His will noted that he had already provided for all his children. Anthony’s mother in her will left Anthony and his brother Charles as executors to provide equally for all the siblings. Anthony was noted for living simply, but he had enough wealth, probably given by his father, that he could build a brick house in Germantown in 1743, own a brick house in Philadelphia, resign his teaching position in 1754 for a few months, build a house in Burlington where he moved for over a year in 1767 without any employment, and, although not well paid for his teaching, still leave an estate valued at over £2000 and a house on his death. The Philadelphia tax list of 1769

2  Samuel Small, Genealogical Records of George Small, Philip Albright . . . Daniel Benezet, Jean Crommelin, Joel Richardson (Philadelphia, PA, 1905), pp. 191–201. For information about Moravians in Pennsylvania, see Linda Gollin, Moravians in Two Worlds: a Study of Changing Communities (New York, 1967), and Katherine C. Engel, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America (Philadelphia, PA, 2011). 3  Benezet left few records of his views of Moravians. He would have approved of the missionaries’ self-sacrifice and devotion to Native Americans, but disliked the emphases on outward preaching, liturgy, music, sacraments, and the authoritarianism of Zinzendorf. George Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937), pp. 210, 308.

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evaluated Anthony Benezet as not wealthy but not poor, and that evaluation may not have included property outside the town.4 So why did Anthony remain a Quaker? There is no certain answer, but one explanation is that in 1736 he married 22-year-old Joyce Marriott. She came from a prominent Burlington Quaker family and was already a recognized Quaker minister, a role she occupied for the rest of her life, even engaging in the traveling ministry. She may also have brought wealth to the family.5 For Anthony to have renounced Quakerism would have disrupted the family, and yet it may be that Joyce’s piety and willingness to lead a plain lifestyle helped make her attractive. Quakerism also provided employment for Anthony. After his unsuccessful attempts at being a merchant in Delaware, he became a schoolteacher in a Quaker school in Germantown and then after 1742 in the English boys school of Penn Charter School. He taught there until 1754, then resigned. After a few months he created a girls’ school as part of the Penn Charter public schools and remained there for many years. As an aged man, he became master of the Quaker school for Negroes that he had helped found. The external reasons for Benezet remaining Quaker do not, however, explain why he became such a devoted Friend, and a reformer attempting to call the Society into deeper Christian obedience. Quakerism was compatible with, and reinforced, Benezet’s religious perspectives. Apart from the 1754 epistle of slavery that will be discussed later, Benezet’s original writings about religion came after 1770. However, he published several tracts of non-Quaker writings, perhaps with the support of the publications committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, of which he became a member in 1752, which indicate his central concerns. These include a treatise by William Law, along with an anti-war sermon (1766), an anonymous tract entitled Christian Piety, Freed from Many Delusions of Modern Enthusiasts (1766), the sayings of Armelle Nicolas (1766), and a “Preface” to The Plain Path to Christian 4  Proprietary, Supply, and State Tax Lists of the City and County of Philadelphia for the Years 1769, 1774, and 1779, ed. William H. Egle (Philadelphia, PA, 1897), pp. 158, 502. Anthony in both lists was evaluated at 18 l. His brother Daniel listed with one horse and three servants as 167 l. By contrast, Israel Pemberton, Jr. was 898 l. and John Pemberton 110 l. In the Mulberry Ward in Philadelphia where Anthony lived, 103 men had higher evaluations, 797 lower. 5  Joyce’s father, Samuel, who died in 1717, left an estate of 1260 l. plus a negro slave to his wife and two daughters, with Quaker Caleb Roper as overseer. Anthony’s mother remarried in 1720, but Friends meetings normally attempted to protect the estate of children of an earlier marriage. William Nelson (ed.), Document Collections of New Jersey, vol. 23, Calender of Wills, vol. 1 (1670–1730 (1901)). Original records, Liber 2: 79, New Jersey State Archives. I am indebted to Maxine Lurie for locating the will.

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Perfection (1758?, 1772).6 By using non-Friends as religious examplars, Benezet could demonstrate that Christian living transcended denominational differences and could be fostered by religious toleration. Benezet’s treatises on slavery often show him as comfortable being an editor invoking the authority of first-person accounts. The same is true of his pre-revolutionary religious publications. These works have themes which have also appeared in Benezet’s letters. Why was he willing to discuss his religious pilgrimage in private correspondence but, unlike his friends John Woolman and John Churchman, not to publish first-person tracts or even to keep a journal designed for publication after his death? To have created a journal would have required Benezet to see his life as a model for others, and that would have required a kind of egotism that he abhorred.7 The religion portrayed in the earlier tracts was compatible with sectarian Quakerism because of an emphasis on an individual’s direct or unmediated religious experience. This knowledge came from within and was not gained or influenced by any natural senses or material objects. Instead, each person had “within” the light and spirit of God. As William Law phrased it, “For though God be everywhere present, yet he is only present to thee in the deepest, and most central part of thy soul.” God gave to Adam the “divine nature within,” and it remained a present “rising in every son of Adam.”8 For Benezet, as for Law, a belief in the seed or light within did not make natural man good. An unredeemed man was a child of sin with no merit, and no amount of ­reading, reason, or natural morality could lead one to God. Christianity was not an intellectual system but a simple way of life. 6  Brookes says that Benezet translated from the French and published The Plain Path in 1758. None of Haverford, Swarthmore, the Philadelphia Library Company, or Evans Early American Imprints has located a copy of the 1758 edition, so it may be ghost. Benezet supposedly published the William Law treatise, and the edition I have used is entitled simply An Extract from a Treatise, but is also entitled Thoughts on the Nature of War . . . with Some Extracts from the Writings of Will Law and Thomas Hartley. The Law excerpts are also published with the sayings of Armelle Nicolas. Christopher Sower published the first American extracts in 1754, and Benezet, who may have been the translator for both editions, combined it with Christian Piety in 1766. It is difficult to know exactly which tracts Benezet published because he raised money by subscription of Friends without the meeting’s sponsorship. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 236, 243, 271. 7  His first published defense of Quakerism was a summary of Friends’ history, beliefs, and practices in Great Britain and Pennsylvania, which was designed for French soldiers living in Philadelphia. A Short Account of the People called Quakers; Their Rise, Religious Principles and Settlement in America, Mostly Collected from Different Authors, for the Information of All Serious Inquirers, Particularly Foreigners (Philadelphia, PA, 1780). 8  William Law, An Extract from a Treatise (Philadelphia, PA, 1766), pp. 11, 13.

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Armelle Nicolas was a 17th-century illiterate French maid who illustrated a “child-like, hearty, and consistent conversing with GOD as her only love, her father, and intimate friend.”9 She rejected an easy life in a nunnery caring for children, returning instead to hard physical work and suffering as a token of her imitation of Christ’s suffering. Benezet, in his Preface to Plain Path, narrated the conversion of an illiterate Indian who underwent an arduous conversion of suffering and then found joy in his personal encounter with God, resulting in a changed heart, and bringing a renunciation of violence and war. The Plain Path was a devotional book of a medieval mystic that emphasized the need for humiliation and renunciation of “all love and solicitude after terrestrial things,” destruction of self-will, contemplation of the life and sufferings of Jesus, the advantages of outward sufferings, culminating in communion in God that resulted in “consistent and sincere charity towards all men.” This charity was not just providing material aid and sympathy but might also involve the duty to tell the neighbor his faults, but only in a spirit of forgiveness, not judgment. The end result is an attachment of the person to God in love because “true religion still remains . . . the power of God to salvation, changing and purifying lives.”10 The tract that Benezet published on enthusiasm dwelt little on the dangers of emotion and stressed the insidious effects of theology and the dangers of clerical power, particularly in an established religion allied with government.11 On several occasions Benezet endorsed the Quaker devotion to divorce of church from state and opposition to religious persecution found in colonial Pennsylvania.12 Finally, there was the Quaker view that Christianity and war were opposites, and that Jesus’ command of loving one’s neighbor meant no service in a militia or army. As Benezet phrased it, there was “no distinction in Christianity between civil and religious matters.”13 An anti-government, New Testament-based, Anabaptist version of pacifism is a consistent theme in his antislavery and religious writings from the 1750s until his death. Benezet’s religious emphases that he described as “practical Christianity” or “meekness, diffidence, and doubt” are best summarized as a Quaker version 9  Daily Conversations with God, Exemply’d in the Holy Life of Armelle Nicolas (Philadelphia, PA, 1767), p. 6. This is based on Jeanne de la Nativité, Le triomphe de l’amour divin dans la vie d’une grande servant de Dieu, nommée Armelle Nicolas . . . (Vennes, 1676). 10   A Plain Path to Christian Perfection (Philadelphia, PA: 1772), pp. v, x. 11   Christian Piety, Freed From the Many Delusions of Modern Enthusiasts of All Denominations with Life of Armelle Nicolas, 3rd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1766), pp. 17–19. 12  Meeting for Sufferings, Minutes: 05/7/1756, 5, 6; 06/02/1756, 12–13; 06/29/1757, 88, 90. 13  Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 225.

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of pietism centering on an individual’s renunciation, an experience of grace, a continuing search for a sense of God’s continuing presence, and a path of mortification and good works.14 He took seriously in his own life and advocated for others an imitation of Christ. Anthony Benezet remained a Friend because he found the themes expressed in these tracts present in a few Quakers who exemplified this kind of intense piety. These men and women, along with Benezet, became the reforming party in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, concerned with the effects of government and wealth on Friends.15 In addition, because he became a member of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, the largest and most influential meeting in the Yearly Meeting, Benezet worked with important laymen in the meeting and in government who shared some, but not all, of his perspectives. These men, sometimes termed “Quaker grandees,” devoted their wealth, time, and energy to Quaker concerns, and worked to tighten discipline. The reformers and “grandees,” at times working together, would institute changes in the 1750s that would transform colonial Quakerism by embracing antislavery, Indian rights, refusing to pay war taxes, and withdrawing from holding political office, a process that would succeed during the American Revolution.

Anthony Benezet Becomes a Weighty Friend

Benezet returned to Philadelphia in 1742 as a schoolteacher. The only task the meeting gave him that first year was to collect the books left to Friends by 14  Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 223. 15  Richard Bauman, For the Reputation of Truth: Politics, Religion, and Conflict among Pennsylvania Quakers 1750–1800 (Baltimore, MD, 1971), pp. 235–45. Benezet’s main complaint about the “grandees” was their pursuit of wealth and the effect of such money on their offspring. Yet, as his letters made clear, he relied on such men in fundraising for charity and publications. The twenty-one men who signed a statement in 1755 opposing payment of a war tax were the reform party, but not all of them agreed. For example, Benjamin Trotter, a Philadelphia minister, was considered by Benezet to be weak on antislavery. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 248. Two of the reformers signed the 1754 epistle on slavery. Jack Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism 1748–1783 (Philadelphia, PA, 1984) remains the best account of this period. For general information about Friends, see Hugh Barbour and J.W. Frost, The Quakers (New York, NY, 1988); Herman Wellenreuther, Glaube und Politik in Pennsylvania 1681–1776: die Wanderlunger der Obrigkeitsdokrin und des Peace Testimony der Quaker (Cologne, 1972); Sunne Juterezernk, Uber Gott und die Welt: Endzeitvisionen, Reformdebtten unde die europaische Quakermission in der Fruhen Neuzet (Göttingen, 2008).

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the renowned minister, Thomas Chalkley. Evidently, the meeting’s library was kept in the schoolhouse and the teacher took charge of lending the books. In 1743, Jean-Étienne Benezet was disowned. Two years later, Anthony received his first appointment: his wife Joyce reported from the women’s meeting that a couple wished to marry. Anthony would investigate the man’s clearness and then, with Joyce, would attend the marriage meeting and report back to the men’s meeting that all was in order.16 Such tasks were meant for other members to take the measure of the young man. Before 1776, Anthony Benezet, always accompanied by another Friend, would investigate hundreds of young men before marriage. In addition, the meeting had Benezet provide funds for the schooling of an orphaned, poor, lame boy. The first formal recognition of Anthony came on August 30, 1747, five years after he had again begun attending Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. He became an overseer. He would occupy that position until 1760, when, with others who had long service, he asked to be relieved.17 He was now an esteemed member, a position solidified in 1748 when he was one of fourteen men named to visit Philadelphia’s Quaker families, a method of making sure that the testimonies were upheld. His advancement from then on was constant: he was recognized as an elder in 1750, named a delegate to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, put on the epistle-writing committees, added to the overseers of the press, and, in 1756, appointed by the Yearly Meeting to be a member of the newly established Meeting for Sufferings. Compared with other Friends, the Meeting’s recognition of Benezet was very rapid. In theory, an overseer watched over the members, informally approached them about infractions of the discipline, and then, if no reformation or expression of sorrow was apparent, brought the matter to the monthly meeting. Elders did the same for ministers, and also made sure that what the ministers said in meeting was acceptable. Elders also met with ministers in a special gathering just before the yearly meeting, and probably decided what topics would be discussed. In actuality, there was no difference in the tasks that Benezet carried out for the monthly meeting during and after his time as overseer. Quakerism rested on the activities of overseers, elders, and ministers working together, and Benezet became one of the most frequently appointed members of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. As an overseer and elder, Benezet needed to enforce the authoritarian nature of 18th-century Quakerism and to impose all the distinctive testimonies on plain dress and speech, abhorrence of fighting and war, and marriage only to a Quaker and under the control of meeting. These outward t­ estimonies 16  Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Minutes: 12/24/1743, 365; 05/26/1745, 5. 17  Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Minutes: 08/30/1747, 3; 02/29/1748, 56; 11/13/1750, 162.

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discovered by early Friends proved that only Quakerism summarized true Christianity. If Benezet ever worried about the inconsistency of valuing the religious writings of Roman Catholic Thomas à Kempis, Congregationalist David Brainerd, Anglican David Hartley, or Puritan John Everard while disowning any Quaker who married an Anglican or Presbyterian or went to a priest to be married, he kept those worries to himself. Overseer Benezet had to deal with the seamy side of life and investigated accusations of unchastity, drunkenness, business fraud, fighting, and bankruptcy. The discipline was to be administered as “Christian and Brotherly Advices,” and violation brought a visit, sometimes repeated visits, seeking repentance. An apology in writing was often delivered in person to the monthly meeting. With no apology, or one deemed unsatisfactory, the person would be disowned, and Benezet in many cases wrote up the disownment and delivered it to the individual, who would be informed that he or she could appeal the decision to the quarterly meeting. Benezet also served on larger committees, writing the proprietors, the legislatures, and mayor to protest allowing theater productions, to the governor against proclaiming fast days, to the proprietors to enforce moral legislation or to complain that the meeting did not approve of actions taken by the Pennsylvania Assembly. When Pennsylvania and London officials negotiated with the Native Americans, Benezet kept records that he later used to provide an account of what had transpired. Each year he composed dozens of certificates because each Quaker who moved or went on a long journey needed a letter confirming their marital status and saying if he or she was in good standing. Benezet was part of monthly meeting committees administering charity, distributing books in German to settlers, visiting families, and reading epistles from London or Philadelphia after a meeting for worship. His experiences of gaining the approbation of Friends in writing certificates, reports, and yearly meeting epistles served also as a kind of apprenticeship that would have given him confidence to become an author of unpopular antislavery tracts.18 His work in distributing funds for distressed Friends in Philadelphia and the frontier prepared him to do the same for the Acadians.19 As a member of committees of Friends, he visited and/or wrote petitions, 18  Benezet was a representative at the quarterly and yearly meeting in 1750 when a paper advocating more schools and better teachers was presented and approved. Benezet probably wrote the paper. 19  The Acadians were French-speaking inhabitants living in a part of what is now Canada that had been conquered by the British. In 1755, suspecting them of aiding the French, the British deported 7000, some of whom were sent to Philadelphia. Benezet raised funds for their relief and became their advocate. Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora: an

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letters, and reports to London Meeting for Sufferings, the mayors and governors of Pennsylvania, and proprietors of the colony. So Benezet learned how Quakers operated in personally lobbying or writing to men of wealth, power, and influence. Because he was a leader of Quakers, Benezet assumed moral authority. All of these skills gained through the meeting he could later use in his antislavery work. In addition to teaching (six-and-a half days in the boys’ school, later halfdays in the girls’ school, and evenings for negroes), Benezet attended meetings. Philadelphia Monthly Meeting had so much business that it met twice monthly during this period. Anthony was also a delegate on occasion to quarterly meeting, and as an elder regularly attended the Yearly Meeting of Ministers and Elders and then the Yearly Meeting. After the Meeting for Sufferings was founded in 1760, he attended it monthly and sometimes more often. All this was in addition to meeting for worship, twice on Sunday and once during the week, and there were special quarterly meetings for youth and Afro-Americans. Benezet’s letter of 1772 complains about “engagement upon engagement, I think four or five evenings last week.”20

Benezet and the 1754 Epistle on the Slave Trade

Benezet’s importance in world history came because of his antislavery writings. His emergence as an antislavery advocate came in January 1754, when he “laid before the meeting . . . A proposal of making that Rule of our Discipline respecting the Importation of Negroes or the purchasing of them after Publick, together with some reasons to discourage that Practice being laid before this Meeting.”21 The meeting appointed a committee of eight to get together with Benezet, and then “to consider it and prepare it” to be laid before the next meeting. I suspect the timing of the proposal was carefully planned. Israel Pemberton, Sr., long-time clerk of the monthly meeting and owner of a slave, an old woman whom he justified keeping as acceding to her wish, died in January.22 Benezet had been appointed to the Yearly Meeting’s Overseers of the Press in 1752, and that committee was now considering publishing John Eighteenth-Century History (New York, NY, 2012), and “Exile on Spruce Street: An Acadian History,” William and Mary Quarterly 67 (2010): 249–78. 20  Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 297. 21  Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Minutes: 01/24/1754, 291. 22   Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: a Biographical Dictionary, Ed. Craig Horle et al. (Philadelphia, PA, 1997), pp. 833–35. Pemberton had also been clerk of the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting of Ministers and Elders and an overseer of the press.

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Woolman’s Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes.23 After Israel Pemberton, Jr. turned down the clerkship, John Smith—a close friend of both Woolman and Benezet—became clerk. The next month, after reading over the epistle, the meeting told the committee that its revisions to the document, now entitled “An Essay of Advice and Caution against the Buying of Negroes and to such Friends Have of Them,” were insufficient and they should meet “to review and make such Alterations and Additions, as they having heard the Sense of this Meeting shall think necessary.” In March the committee reported that they had done something but were not finished. In July, the committee finally presented a draft that was acceptable and was referred to the quarterly meeting. When the revised epistle was presented to the quarterly meeting, Benezet was not a delegate, but three members of the revision committee of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting were. The epistle, now described only as “relating to the purchasing of Negroes,” was sent by the quarterly meeting to another committee, “to revise and add whatever appears necessary before submitted to the yearly meeting.” Even after this was done, the quarterly meeting’s endorsement seems tepid: “that something of this kind should be published.”24 Benezet was a delegate to the yearly meeting but, when the clerk appointed a committee to read over the epistle and revise it if necessary, Benezet was not on it. Apart from John Smith, the twelve appointed were not from Philadelphia Monthly or Quarterly Meeting. The epistle approved by the meeting has those names attached, not Benezet’s. So who should be credited as author of the epistle? In spite of the assertions of Janet Whitney, Thomas Slaughter, and Maurice Jackson that John Woolman was its author and delegated Benezet to present it to the monthly meeting, there is no evidence of this.25 Woolman was on no committee at any level, and no contemporaries attached his name to it, and the epistle’s content does not resemble his Considerations. So was Benezet the author? Only indirectly, in that he submitted the first draft. The published epistle does not read like the earlier letters that Anthony Benezet (and three others) had written between 1750 and 23  Thomas Slaughter, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York, NY, 2008), p. 159. John Woolman, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (Philadelphia, PA, 1754). 24  Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, Minutes: 08/05/1754, 179. 25  Janet Whitney, John Woolman, American Quaker (Boston, MA, 1942), pp. 191–94. Slaughter, Beautiful Soul, p. 159. Historians have been misled by Whitney’s undocumented account. I tried to find evidence for her assertions, concluded that her account was inaccurate, and asked if anyone could provide additional information. No one has. See J.W. Frost, “The Origins of the Quaker Crusade Against Slavery: a Review of Recent Literature,” Quaker History (Spring, 1978): 50.

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1753 for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to Friends in Maryland and Long Island, or his 1759 Observations on Enslaving, Purchasing, and Importing Negroes. So my conclusion is that Benezet originated the first draft but the authors of the final version were three committees of the monthly, quarterly, and yearly meeting. Still, there are parts that are strikingly different from earlier writings by Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, and Woolman, and that prefigure the themes that Benezet would use in his later antislavery writings.26 These were natural rights, war in Africa, and sentimental images of family. These were the original features of this epistle. The epistle is carefully written to make it appear to be a reiteration of earlier teachings: “that none may plead Ignorance of our Principles . . . to avoid . . . the Practice of making Slaves.” There are four themes:

· holding slaves is destructive to “Love, Meekness, and Charity” in the master and his family that are the marks of a “true Christian”; · the horrendous effects of wars in Africa to obtain slaves, graphic images of separation of families; · purchasing slaves in America fosters such violence in Africa; and · negroes in slavery suffer oppressive conditions, particularly the destruction of the sanctity of marriage and the separation of children from their parents.

The epistle recommended that masters hold slaves as a “trust” with an obligation to treat them well and to convert them to Christianity. They should examine whether their underlying motive for keeping slaves was the pursuit of wealth and ease, and, if so, should purge themselves through the “Cleansing Virtue of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.”27 Note that there was no explicit condemnation of slavery, but a clear hint that the motive of most owners was greed, with an implied wish that they should free themselves from sin by freeing their slaves. 26  For an analysis of early antislavery publications, see J.W. Frost, “Quaker Antislavery: from Dissidence to Sense of the Meeting,” Quaker History 101 (Spring, 2012): 12–33. The epistle echoes themes first broached by John Hepburn in 1713, but slighted in later antislavery works. Woolman would later use all the themes in the epistle in Considerations, Part II (Philadelphia, PA, 1762), and in A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours and Christian Experiences of that Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, in The Works of John Woolman (Philadelphia, PA, 1774). 27  The epistle is printed in J.W. Frost, The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, PA, 1980), p. 169.

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The main effect of the epistle, published and read aloud in all meetings for worship, was to emphasize traditional strictures against the slave trade and to make legitimate for the first time an open debate among Friends about slavery. Friends who bought or sold slaves could be labored with by overseers, but there was no mechanism to enforce compliance. The answer to the queries by the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting in August, 1754, to “put our discipline in practice,” at least with regard to the slave trade, was not fulfilled by the Yearly Meeting’s action. The minutes of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting show slave-sellers claiming ignorance of the testimony or motives of kindness, or saying they were sorry and would not do so again.28 The frustration of dealing with such individuals prompted Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1758 to ask for clarification of the 1755 epistle. Benezet was not a delegate to either the quarterly or yearly meeting, but he was in attendance. My guess is that the reform advocates wanted the power to disown for buying or selling a slave, but failed. Instead, a meeting could show its displeasure by forbidding a violator to attend the meeting for business or give money to the meeting. The meeting did appoint five weighty ministers to be assisted by Elders and “Faithful Friends” to visit “all such Friends who have slaves.”29 Now, with the imprimatur of meeting, Woolman and Benezet published tracts that clearly condemned the morality of the slave trade and slavery, even for those who claimed a humanitarian motive. In addition, Benezet continued his anti-slave trade focus in A Short Account of Africa, which went through three editions in Philadelphia in two years, but only one London edition. In 1765 the Meeting for Sufferings printed 2000 copies of Benezet’s A Caution and Warning to Great Britain, and sent money for London to publish an additional edition, to be distributed there.30 With the support of Philadelphia Friends, Benezet in this treatise expanded his anti-slave trade and antislavery agitation beyond Quakers in order to reach the authorities in the British Empire. Now for him the crusade was not just a religious quest to purify Friends but an attempt to create a European moral revolution. 28  Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Minutes: 02/25/1757, 20; 04/29/1757, 22, 32; 07/17/57, 43, 45; 11/25/1757, 60–61. The queries did not change. Friends were asked not to buy or sell slaves and to use well those they owned. 29  Frost, Quaker Origins, p. 170. London Yearly Meeting in 1762 decreed that buying or selling a slave was a disownable offense. 30  Meeting for Sufferings, Minutes: 09/18/1766, 265; 10/17/1766, 266. Some 500 copies were sent to Friends in New England, New York, and the South. London Friends published an edition in 1767, but did not issue a second edition until 1784.

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Conclusions

Without the Society of Friends, Benezet would have been a “voice crying in the wilderness,” with no one paying attention. Except for idealized portraits of William Penn and religious liberty, Quakers in America were obscure. Benezet, far more than Woolman, put American Quakers on the map. For Friends, the value of having Benezet was that he made their local, sectarian anti-slave trade efforts international and expanded their religious grounds for opposition to slavery to natural rights, a romantic sentimentalism, and then added first-­ person accounts and historical background on Africa. In Benezet’s writings, the slave trade was no longer just an abstract evil but became an individual story of suffering. When Benjamin Franklin went to Philadelphia as a young man in 1723, he showed ability, and Philadelphia Quakers, in time, recognized his talents in writing, politics, science, and civic improvements. Young Anthony Benezet followed in 1731 and, in time, Philadelphia Quakers learned to value and rely on his religious sensitivity, gift for teaching, writing ability, benevolent activities, and dedication to antislavery. The two men—similar in age, friends, and living close to each other—presented an interesting contrast. Franklin was devoted to making money, exercising political power, and increasing knowledge. He was fascinated by religion but remained secular—a pillar of the American Enlightenment. Benezet, also an advocate of the Enlightenment, would have preferred to be a Quaker saint, and—so far as we can tell today—came close, though he would have hated the title. He disdained politics, wealth, and fame, and he devoted himself to benevolent activities. Both men sought to improve education and to promote good works to better society. Franklin became identified with scientific progress and the successful new American republic. Monuments and institutions invoking the name of Franklin are common, schoolchildren learn his achievements, and his picture is on the $100 bill. There are no monuments to Benezet and few know who he is. Franklin would think his enduring fame was well deserved. Benezet, from what we know of him, would not mind his obscurity. That his crusades against the African slave trade and slavery triumphed would be more than enough.

Chapter 5

On War and Slavery: Benezet’s Peace Testimony and Abolition David L. Crosby Anthony Benezet, despite his early and effective campaign against slavery and the slave trade, is sometimes faulted by critics for not fully appreciating the inexorable logic of the radical positions he endorsed. David Brion Davis, for example, dismisses him as “a kind of middleman of ideas who was led by antislavery zeal to collect and disseminate a radical, secular philosophy,” but who would not support extending to slaves the right to armed rebellion against their masters. Jonathan D. Sassi claims that Benezet, in his writings about Africa, failed to seize on expressions of Enlightenment cultural relativism that he found in the travel narratives from which he quoted so liberally. Highlighting these expressions might have strengthened his arguments that “African peoples and cultures stood on a level equal with European,” but he “apparently decided that their affirmations and implications were just too radical for him to embrace.”1 These judgments may be correct as far as they go, but they seem to ask that we look at Benezet through a fairly narrow lens, one which confines us to our own expectations of an Enlightenment thinker. A wider look at his writings and actions might lead to a different conclusion: that the basis for his antislavery zeal comes not so much from the progressive ideals of the Enlightenment but more from his radical commitment to the peace testimony of his Quaker religion. He did not weakly apply Enlightenment ideals in his opposition to slavery but faithfully followed the radical call to peace that he believed came from the spirit of God.

1  Davis, “New Sidelights on Early Antislavery Radicalism,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 28:4 (October 1971): 592; Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image: Anthony Benezet, African Travel Narratives, and Revolutionary-Era Antislavery,” Journal of Early Modern History 10:1–2 (2006): 114.

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Benezet’s Commitment to Quaker Peace Positions

Although Benezet practiced and preached peace throughout his lifetime, he published his most succinct peace testimony late in life.2 The year was 1780 and he was writing his Short Account of the People Called Quakers, when he began a section “On War” with this statement: The Quakers absolutely declare against being concerned in the destruction of their fellow men, who equally with themselves are the objects of saving grace; hence [Quakers] can take no part in war, being persuaded that all wars stand in opposition to the intent and nature of the gospel: war being the sad effect of the fall of man; a fall from meekness, purity, and love, into sensuality, pride, revenge, and wrath. Many of his co-religionists were content to “take no part in war”—to preserve the purity of the Society of Friends from laws that would require them to bear arms or to participate directly in military or martial exercises. But Benezet saw a larger obligation. He was convinced that the gospel enjoined “the followers of the meek and peaceable Jesus . . . to labour in the ability received from the blessed mediator to reconcile men unto God and one unto another.” As Christ had died to “restore unto fallen man the first life of purity and love,” those who have heard his spirit must follow him by participating in the great task of restoring the peaceable kingdom.3 Benezet was a perfectly orthodox Quaker in believing that the spirit of God can come to any person as a free gift, but he laid heavy stress on the word 2  The term “peace testimony” has been questioned by J. William Frost (private communication) as not reflecting 18th-century usage, which he says was “war testimony” in the d­ iscipline. I have not found the term “war testimony” in any of the 18th-century Quaker writings on peace that I have read, and it seems to stress the negative aspects of Quaker practice: do not bear arms, do not profit from war, do not pay for another to serve in your place. Two terms closely akin to “peace testimony” do occur in the writing of Benezet and his close associates: we find “peaceable principles” in the 1755 address to the Pennsylvania Assembly protesting the raising of taxes for war, and the phrase “peaceable testimony” in the 1775 “Epistle of Tender Love and Caution” and the 1780 “On War” in A Short Account of the People Called Quakers. So perhaps a better term would be “peaceable testimony,” but “peace testimony” is now instantly recognizable as part of the Quaker sensibility, and for that reason I have decided to use it to describe Benezet’s position. 3  Anthony Benezet, A Short Account of the People Called Quakers (Philadelphia, PA, 1780), pp. 12–13.

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“any.” For Benezet, the spirit could be manifested in “people of every kind and nation, Indians, Negros, and others, even those esteemed of the lowest order.” And he stressed that the coming of the spirit, though a free gift from God, was also an invitation to do the work of redemption. The power of God to bring about salvation “operate[s] through obedience in the minds of the sincerehearted.”4 In an important sense, God has put the work of salvation into the minds, hearts, and hands of men and women, and their life’s purpose is to nurture God’s spirit in themselves and suffuse it throughout the entire human creation. For Benezet, to destroy a man before the work of the spirit has begun in him is to frustrate God’s plan for his salvation and for the redemption of the world. In war it is not only that laws are broken, that property and lives are destroyed, but that those immortal spirits . . . in the earliest dawn of their day of purification, are by the hundreds and thousands driven into eternity in the bitterness of enmity and wrath—some inflamed with drunkenness, some fired with lust, and all stained in blood.5 Based on these principles and on their ancestors’ bitter experiences in the English Civil War of the 17th century, the most fervent Quakers in Benezet’s Philadelphia had developed elaborate codes of conduct and shibboleths to separate themselves from others regarding their relationship to war. First, they would not serve and would not be conscripted into armies or militias. Second, they would not be involved in providing either financial or moral support for wars. They would not, for example, vote for war appropriations or be involved in administering money appropriated for that purpose; many would not pay taxes earmarked to fund war appropriations, and would not sell or rent their property (whether real estate or movables such as wagons and livestock) to support military actions. Further, they would not comply with government orders to observe days of fast and repentance in preparation for war nor days of thanksgiving at so-called successes in war. They were willing to undergo suffering at the hands of the government rather than compromise these principles, but they were not willing to rebel against a legitimate government that sought to abridge their religious and civil rights. They depended on God in his wisdom to order the governments of men for his own purposes, because gov4  Benezet, The Plainness and Innocent Simplicity of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA, 1782), pp. 4–5. 5  [Benezet,] Thoughts on the Nature of War (Philadelphia, PA, 1766), p. 7.

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ernments were necessary to preserve the civil order that alone offered the opportunity for peace.6

Benezet’s Early Peace Activism

Throughout his long career as teacher, writer, and activist, Anthony Benezet embraced and professed these Quaker positions on peace. The first strong test of his convictions came with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, the British American colonists’ name for their portion of the larger Seven Years’ War between the British and French empires. Both colonial powers 6  There is a vast and growing scholarly commentary on the Society of Friends’ peace testimony in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most scholars agree that there was considerable variability and latitude about pacifism among early Quakers by time, place, and individual. I am particularly indebted to Jack D. Marietta’s The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia, PA, 1984), and Meredith Baldwin Weddle’s Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford; New York, NY, 2001) for helping to form my understanding of the issues. When I refer to Quaker peace testimony in this chapter, I have tried to make it clear that I am describing the principles and practice of the Philadelphia Quaker leadership as expressed in their epistles and in the minutes of their meetings. Always there were dissenting voices, sometimes resulting in schism.  For a comprehensive look at the scholarship on Quakers in early modern Atlantic his­tory, see John Smolenski’s article on Quakers at Oxford Bibliographies/Atlantic His­ tory, which can be found online at http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/docu ment/obo-­9 780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0092.xml?rskey=MdJy1S&result=141. For a treasure chest of Quaker writings against war from 1659 to 1900, see American Quaker Tax Resistance, 2nd edn, edited by David M. Gross (self-published: https://www .createspace.com/3710737, 2011). Brycchan Carey’s From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, CT, 2012) traces how Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic forged their rhetoric against war into powerful arguments against slavery. Geoffrey Plank lays out John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia, PA, 2012) to show how this man of principle put into action his convictions about the clear call of conscience toward peace. To show another of the many sides of Quakerism in 18th-century America, William C. Kashatus III highlights the stories of Quakers who understood their obligations regarding war differently, choosing to fight a defensive war against the English government, in his book Conflict of Conviction: a Reappraisal of Quaker Involvement in the American Revolution (Lanham, MD, 1990). And John Smolenski, in Friends and Strangers: the Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), presents a more complex picture of how Quaker settlers exerted their influence in Pennsylvania politics by incorporating ideas, practices, and customs from other European, Native American, and African nations, and, in the process changed themselves.

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were eager to claim rights to trade and settle in the American backcountry, with the British pushing westward from the Atlantic coast and the French southward from Canada. In 1754, several events threatened the uneasy status quo that had prevailed previously. First, the French began constructing a series of forts stretching south from Lake Erie through western New York and Pennsylvania, including Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio (the future site of Pittsburg). Second, the colony of Virginia sent Col. George Washington and a force of colonial militia to dislodge the French from the Forks and take their fort for the British side, but he was forced to surrender to a superior force and retreat to Virginia. Third, the proprietors of Pennsylvania purchased from the Iroquois Confederation a huge tract of land stretching from the west bank of the Susquehanna River to the Allegheny Mountains. In the process they deeply offended and alienated the Shawnee and Delaware people whose villages were settled on that land. So while the Iroquois remained friendly with the British settlers in Pennsylvania, the Shawnee and Delaware gravitated toward the French, who were penetrating into Indian country from the north. These events precipitated a crisis the following year when Britain dispatched regular troops under Gen. Edward Braddock to accomplish what Washington’s colonial militia had failed to do: drive the French from the valley of the Ohio. His utter defeat in July emboldened the Shawnees and Delawares, who had taken no part in the battle, to side with the victorious French, and by October they were launching attacks on English settlers throughout the Susquehanna River valley, trying to roll back the effects of Pennsylvania’s purchase the year before. As reports of these small but violent and bloody massacres reached Philadelphia, public outrage flared and the governor urged a reluctant Pennsylvania General Assembly to enact measures that would allow him to secure and defend the threatened settlements.7 At this time of crisis, the Assembly considered a bill to provide the king with £60,000 for military action in response to Indian and French attacks and to have Assembly committees responsible for spending the money. This put Pennsylvania Quakers in a double bind: the speaker of the Assembly and many of its members were Quakers, who knew they would be reviled by the general population of the colony if they were seen as obstructing efforts to respond to the Indian attacks, and knew that their brothers in the London Yearly Meeting were wary that any refusal on the part of the Assembly of 7  For the chronology of these events leading to the French and Indian War, I have followed C. Hale Sipe, Indian Wars of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA, 1929), pp. 152–254, 723. Though dated and freighted with cultural bias, Sipe’s reliance on public documents for descriptions of events gives his work continued utility.

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“Quaker” Pennsylvania to support British action against the Indians would offend the Crown, redound to the discredit of London Quakers, and endanger their privileges.8 On the other hand, reforming elements within the Society of Friends wanted to press forward with pledges to resist any taxation for war. Anthony Benezet, along with John Churchman and others, appeared before the Assembly on November 7, 1755, to deliver a written address protesting that the proposed act was “inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess.” The address, signed by twenty leading Quakers, expressed the opinion that “many among us will be under the necessity of suffering rather than consenting thereto by the payment of a tax for such purposes.” It also complained that the appropriation would violate the liberty of conscience guaranteed to Pennsylvanians under their constitution.9 The resistance of this little band of Quakers had little effect on the outcome of the legislation, which passed on November 26. In the end it was not the ethics of peace and war that decided the question. The Assembly was insisting that the Proprietaries’ large estates be taxed along with other property to fund the appropriation. The Penn family, who owned the estates, held title to them from the British Crown and were not prepared to submit to taxation by a colonial assembly. When the Penns compromised by offering a £5000 grant in lieu of the tax, the Assembly fell into line and voted funds for war.10 At the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting in September, Quakers had seen the turmoil about war coming, and readied themselves to take action when the time came. They appointed two standing committees that could act for them during adjournment: a large one to visit with and counsel all the quarterly and monthly meetings, keeping in touch with the grass roots of the Society of Friends, and a smaller committee to correspond with the London Yearly Meeting and its Meeting for Sufferings, anticipating that “various occasions of difficulty may present which may make it necessary to request the assistance of our brethren

8  For a detailed discussion of the tension between the Philadelphia Quakers and their counterparts in London, and how close parliament was to stripping Quakers of their right to serve in the Philadelphia Assembly, see Marietta, The Reformation, pp. 158–62. 9  The text of the address with the names of signees can be found in Pennsylvania Archives, First series, 2 (November [7], 1755): 487–88. For a description of how the address came to be written and presented, see The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (New York, NY, 1971; reprinted Richmond, IN, 2001), pp. 81–83. Woolman was quoting from John Churchman’s account, later published in An Account of the Gospel Labors and Christian Experience of . . . John Churchman (Philadelphia, PA, 1779), pp. 170–71. 10  Sipe, Indian Wars, p. 252.

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in England.”11 The two committees met together in Philadelphia in December amid the preparations for military engagements against the Shawnee and Delaware Indians. John Woolman reported that “while these committees sat, the corpse of one so slain [by the Indians] was brought in a wagon and taken through the streets of the city in his bloody garments to alarm the people and rouse them to war.”12 In this heightened atmosphere, the Quaker committees met and debated whether or not members ought to pay the tax to fund the appropriation for war, and they could not come to agreement. After several days of “weighty” discussion, some “who were easy to pay the tax” withdrew, but some of those who remained felt, as Churchman recalled, “they could not be clear as faithful watchmen without communicating to their brethren their mind and judgment concerning the payment of such a tax.” They drafted “An Epistle of Tender Love and Caution to Friends in Pennsylvania,” asserting that as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the said Act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal, which we hope to be enabled to bear with patience. After further discussion and perhaps amendments, this draft was “signed by such as were free to sign it.”13 Among the twenty-one signers were Churchman, Woolman, John Pemberton, and Benezet. By his actions, Benezet clearly put himself among the strict interpreters of the gospel injunction against war. Two years later, in 1757, under the new threat of a bill for compulsory militia service, Benezet helped to draft an official address from the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, asserting to the Assembly that Quakers could not be “concerned in military services nor in paying an equivalent or compensation for such service without violating that liberty of conscience which we believe it to be our duty to prefer to every temporal consideration.”14 Later that year, Benezet, following instructions from the Meeting for Sufferings, incorporated 11  Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting, Minutes, 1755 as quoted in Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Minutes: 05/07/1756, [1]. See also Woolman, The Journal, p. 77, and Churchman, An Account, p. 172. 12  Woolman, The Journal, p. 84. 13  Woolman, The Journal, pp. 85–86. 14  Benezet was the first named of four members appointed to draft the address. The others were William Callender, Israel Pemberton, and Mordecai Yarnall. Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Minutes: 01/13/1757, 53–54. On March 30 the committee brought the meeting its draft, “which was several times read and deliberately considered and being with some alterations and additions agreed upon and transcribed was signed by the clerk on

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much of the language of that address into a wider essay entitled An Apology for the People Called Quakers, directed to non-Quakers, which was printed and distributed throughout the province. In it he reminded the people that Pennsylvania had been settled largely by Quakers who had suffered in their native land “for their faithful, conscientious testimony against complying with human institutions and injunctions in matters of faith and worship,” and how in coming to the new colony they had been given promises of liberty of conscience by the Crown and William Penn’s charters. He explained that the Quakers’ refusal to “hold our doors, windows and shops close, for conscience sake, upon such days as fasts and prayers were appointed, for to desire a blessing upon and success for the arms of the kingdom or commonwealth under which we live,” would necessarily involve Quakers in a contradiction if, say, Quakers in the opposing country were also praying for success. Instead he pleaded for a fast abstaining from, among other things, pride and strife, broils and blood, luxury and wantonness, deceit and fraud, and “all manner of evil,” so that the Lord might lift the scourge of war, and return peace and tranquility to the province. The Society of Friends asserted their perceived right to dissent from warlike sentiments and actions, but they also tried to deflect criticism that made them seem unpatriotic and, as it were, unfeeling about the sufferings of the settlers.15 Two years later, the king proclaimed that November 29, 1759, should be observed as a public day of thanksgiving throughout the empire for “successes obtained in the late war,” including the fall of Quebec to British forces. At least sixteen sermons of thanksgiving were delivered in London that day and later printed, and the American colonies followed suit. Benezet, however, took advantage of the occasion to preach a sermon against thanksgivings for success in war.16 War, he flatly declared, “is the premeditated and determined behalf of the Meeting,” Minutes: 03/30/1757, 73–78. This is the standard language to indicate that very few, if any, changes were made to the committee’s draft. 15  [Benezet,] An Apology for the People Called Quakers, Containing Some Reasons for Their not Complying with Human Injunctions and Institutions in Matters Relative to the Worship of God (Philadelphia, PA, 1757), pp. 1–3. Benezet borrowed the quotation cited from p. 2, with acknowledgement, from Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (London, 1678, 4th edn, London, 1701), p. 565. Nineteen years later, in 1776, the Meeting for Sufferings arranged to have Benezet’s apology reprinted and 2500 copies distributed when agitation for aggressive action against England swelled in the city. See Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings Minutes: 04/27/1776, II, 80 and 05/9/1776, II, 83. 16  I have not found any contemporary record of where this sermon was delivered, or even if Benezet was the one who delivered it. The title page of Benezet’s Thoughts on the Nature of War states that it is extracted from a sermon preached on the 1759 day of Thanksgiving,

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destruction of human beings, of creatures originally ‘formed after the image of God’ and whose preservation . . . is secured by heaven.” and though the effects of sin have tarnished that godly image, “it is most graciously renewed by the incarnation of the son of God and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.” Preserving the lives of all people who can benefit from God’s grace is not just the responsibility of individual Christians. A Christian nation differs no otherwise from a Christian person than as the whole differs from one of the parts . . ., and is only the aggregated body of those single persons on whom universally such duties are enjoined, from whom universally such perfection is required. Warfare can thus have no part in the policies of Christian nations.17

Connecting Slavery with War and Violence

When Benezet first publicly turned his attention, in 1754, to deploring Quaker involvement in the slave trade, he focused on it through the lens of his peace testimony. He asserted that the captured slaves are called to “become heirs with us in glory and rejoice in the liberty of the sons of God,” thus declaring their radical equality with Christians and all other men. And since Quakers in particular “publish the gospel of universal love and peace among mankind,” they could not pretend to have the right to purchase prisoners of war. This insight turned on its head a common justification for the slave trade—that buyers are preserving the lives of war prisoners by “ransoming” them from their captors. For Quakers to purchase prisoners and “live in ease and plenty by the toil of those whom violence and cruelty have put in our power, is neither consistent with Christianity nor common justice,” and it encourages new wars for the sole purpose of taking prisoners to sell. The resulting “scenes of murder and cruelty,” Benezet proclaimed, “are too obvious to mention.”18

but Benezet did not publish it until 1766, and then republished it in 1776 with changes occasioned by the American Revolution. He reissued the revised version in 1778, along with some other tracts, including his “Observations on Slavery.” 17  [Benezet,] Thoughts on the Nature of War (1766), pp. 6, 14. 18   An Epistle of Caution and Advice, Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves (Philadelphia, 1754), pp. 2–4. For a compelling case to attribute this publication of the Quakers to Anthony Benezet, see John Woolman and the Affairs of Truth, ed. James

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By the time he wrote Observations on the Inslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes in 1759, Benezet no longer believed these scenes were obvious to everyone. So he changed his tactics, perhaps because of resistance he met among fellow Quakers to giving up their slaves and the various justifications they offered for continuing the trade. Or perhaps it was the impact of information he acquired from reading about Africa in Thomas Astley’s New General Collection of Voyages, from listening to African slaves he met on the docks and in the streets of Philadelphia, and from talking to a ship’s surgeon who had sailed on a slaving voyage to the coast of Africa. In any event, Benezet was no longer content to assume that his readers knew that the Europeans, to extract slaves from Africa, “encourage wars, and promote the practice of stealing men, women and children, which they purchase without regard to justice, equity, or any of the tender ties of nature.” He gave them eyewitness accounts from merchants and adventurers such as Willem Bosman, Jean Barbot, and Andre Brüe, “whose situation and office in the factories will not admit any to question the truth of what they relate.” These eyewitnesses described how Europeans would give the native inhabitants goods to take as much as 200 miles into the interior to trade for slaves where “markets of men were kept in the same manner as those of beasts with us,” and how treacherous traders would trick their own countrymen, hiring them to work as porters, carrying goods down to the sea, and then sell them onto the ships when they arrived. They would seize not only prisoners and not only adults: “Abundance of little blacks of both sexes [were] also stolen away by their neighbors when found abroad on the roads or in the woods or else in the cornfields.” The taking of slaves creates all the devastations of war, as when a king sends soldiers to surround a village and seize the number for which they have orders and take them down to the sea, where they are branded with hot irons by the various factors who buy them, and then put on board ship where “they are heard from no more.” Quoting the ship’s surgeon, Benezet emphasized the sheer loss of life and the destruction of families that came about when a king, responding to the captain’s willingness to buy slaves, fought a three-day battle with his enemies that was “ ‘so bloody that 4,500 were slain on the spot. Think,’ says the [surgeon], ‘what a pitiable sight it was to see the widows weeping over their lost husbands and orphans deploring the loss of their fathers.’ ” Benezet blamed the slaughter not only on the cruel king but on “those who for the sake of gain instigated him to it.”19 Proud (San Francisco, 2010), pp. 226–27, and Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 108–09. 19  [Benezet,] Observations on the Inslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes (Philadelphia, PA, 1759), pp. 3–7.

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The connection between slavery and war is relatively easy to see when we are talking about the violence and cruelty that accompanied the capture of slaves. But Benezet saw an even stronger and more profound connection. The attacks of the French and Indians on Pennsylvania settlements could be read as God’s vengeance on the colony for their complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. Benezet urged his fellow colonists to see the parallels, asking rhetorically: “In the present war, how many of our poor countrymen are dragged to bondage and sold for slaves? How many mourn a husband, a wife, a child, a parent or some near relation taken from them?” If we feel for these, he suggests, should we not feel similar sympathy and sorrow for the African families who suffer the same fate in the transatlantic trade?20

The Invention of a New Antislavery Rhetoric

There may be a more practical connection between Benezet’s experience of the French and Indian War and his campaign against slavery. He could hardly have failed to be impressed by the way images of death and suffering had stirred the colonists to hatred of the Indians and their French allies. Bloody bodies paraded through the streets of Philadelphia were a far more powerful incentive to action than mere words, but words that described bloody deeds in detail also had more power than theological or philosophical arguments about peace or the natural rights of human beings. The first reports of the atrocities committed by the Delawares and Shawnees came in letters from frontiersmen to Governor Morris in Philadelphia, and these were subsequently published in newspapers and avidly devoured by the citizenry. Perhaps the most ­compelling 20  In the introduction to her detailed and careful study, Quakers and Slavery: a Divided Spirit (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1985), Jean Soderlund listed a number of ways historians such as Thomas Drake, Sydney James, David Brion Davis, and Gary B. Nash have tried to connect the Seven Years War with the flowering of antislavery activity among Quakers in the 1750s: 1) antislavery leaders such as Benezet and John Churchman treated the Indian attacks as God’s punishment for Quaker participation in the slave trade; 2) Quakers who were forced to retreat from serving in the Assembly saw the antislavery campaign as a way of retrieving their sense of identity and their status as a people uniquely dedicated to serving God’s kingdom; 3) when Quakers became a persecuted sect because of their opposition to the war, “they expressed their newly acquired peculiarity by supporting a controversial reform”; 4) war decreased the number of European laborers available and increased the importation of Africans, heightening the prominence of slavery in the city and prompting greater efforts to stop it. See Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, pp. 9–10, quotation from p. 9.

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descriptions came from a letter written by one Adam Hoops to Morris on November 3, 1755, relating the results of the attack on the Great Cove settlement west of the Susquehanna: The cries of the widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children . . . are enough to pierce the hardest of hearts . . . [T]hose that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had [was] consumed into ashes. Hoops went on to couple his descriptions of the bloodshed to a plea that the governor would take cognizance of and grant what shall seem most meet, for it is really very shocking, it must be, for the husband to see the wife of his bosom, her head cut off, and the children’s blood drank like water by these bloody and cruel savages.21 I have argued elsewhere that Benezet’s important innovation in antislavery rhetoric was his shift from rational and theological arguments to empirical ones based on the facts of human experience.22 By citing eyewitness accounts of the inhumanity that was at the core of slavery, he created arguments that appealed to the hearts as well as the minds of his readers. This new rhetoric caught the tenor of the times, and the cause of antislavery very quickly leaped in popularity in England and the Americas. It is entirely possible that living through the turmoil of the French and Indian War near the frontier where the British and French empires collided, and experiencing the outrage engendered in average people by hearing the narratives of their fellow settlers’ sufferings, spurred Benezet’s imagination and he saw how he could adapt the same rhetorical strategy to attack the slave trade. For Benezet, war and slavery come from the same root: the lust for power that represents the exact opposite of the gospel message of peace and justice. In our sinful lives it is only God’s merciful power that holds back the evil effects

21  Adam Hoops, “Letter to Governor Robert Morris” (November 3, 1755), Pennsylvania Archives, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 462–63. Portions of this letter were published in the Pennsylvania Gazette on November 13. 22  See David L. Crosby, “Anthony Benezet’s Transformation of Antislavery Rhetoric,” Slavery and Abolition, 23:3 (December 2002): 39–58.

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of sin, and, when we knowingly do wrong, we should expect to be visited by God’s punishments. Evils do not arise out of the dust, nor does the almighty willingly afflict the children of men; but when a people offend as a nation, or in a public capacity, the justice of His moral government requires that as a nation they be punished, which is generally done by war, famine, or pestilence. Exploiting the slavery of Africans to serve European and American desires for worldly gain creates a moral imbalance in God’s creation because it denies the capacity of Africans to participate in the work of Christ’s saving spirit, and it is only that saving spirit which spares Christians from the evil effects of their sin.23

The Role of European Empires in Fostering Slavery

As Benezet rapidly came to realize, to attack the slave trade he had to address his arguments not only to his fellow Quakers, or even his fellow colonists, but also to the imperial forces at work throughout the Atlantic region. The end of the French and Indian War, welcome as it was, put England and its colonies in a much better position to exploit the triangular trade with Africa. After the war, he saw slave importations in Pennsylvania and other northern colonies increase. Only three months after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763, he wrote to fellow Quakers in England that importations were “likely still more to increase by the new acquisitions the English have lately made of the factories on the great River Senegal.”24 He had read the travel narratives of the French 23  [Benezet,] Observations on the Inslaving, pp. 3–4. Another Quaker spokesman who saw the connection between the slaughter of the settlers and the transatlantic slave trade was John Churchman. He described an incident from 1756 when the bodies of settlers were displayed in the streets, and he became convinced that God was punishing Pennsylvania for its sins, but wondered what sin could have deserved such punishment. He concluded: “but as it were, in a moment, mine eyes turned to the case of the poor enslaved Negroes: and . . . it then appeared to me that such [who purchased, sold, or kept slaves] were partakers in iniquity, encouragers of war and the shedding of innocent blood, which is often the case where those unhappy people are . . . brought away for slaves.” Churchman, An Account, pp. 175–76. 24  Benezet to Joseph Phipps, a Norfolk Quaker who wrote religious tracts, May 28, 1763. Benezet appears to have copied it to the highly regarded London Quaker physician John Fothergill. The letter to Phipps is reproduced in Roger Bruns, Am I Not a Man and a Brother (New York, NY, 1977), and Irv A. Brendlinger, To Be Silent . . . Would Be Criminal: the

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factor Andre Brüe, and he was well aware that the European forts established far inland along the Senegal existed primarily to foster the slave trade.25 He had no illusions that English traders would have more scruples about fomenting wars and purchasing captives than the French they displaced, or that English settlers in the Caribbean and North American colonies would be able to prevent future importation of slaves in defiance of imperial policy. So he immediately began a campaign that resulted in his writing and arranging to distribute a new polemic, entitled A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from Various Authors, and Submitted to the Serious Consideration of All, more Especially of Those in Power (Philadelphia, 1766). This frontal assault on the elements in the British Empire that furthered the slave trade for their own gain sought to drive a wedge between traditional English society (as he viewed it), with its love and respect for individual human rights and the rule of law, and the merchants, ship’s captains, and planters who put aside these values in favor of greed for profit. Benezet tried to paint a picture of slavery that would make the general public, and their representatives and rulers, turn from slavery in disgust at its injustice. In this new tract, violence and cruelty are the defining characteristics of slavery. War provides its origin, and at every point its practice echoes that origin. To take possession of human beings is to dehumanize and brutalize them, to treat them worse even than animals. Benezet recounted not only the warfare required to bring them to captivity but the cruel practices necessary to maintain them in subjugation. He followed their journey from inland sites of capture down to the slave pens on the riverbanks and seashores of Africa where they were examined, purchased, and stowed in ships to await the long Middle Passage to the mines, plantations, and sugar refineries of the Americas. At every step they were subject to extremes of violence. On land they endured forced marches, then were “stripped naked and strictly examined by the European surgeons, both men and women, without the least distinction or modesty . . ., marked with a red-hot iron with the ship’s mark,” and “put on

Antislavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet (Plymouth, UK, 2006). Jonathan D. Sassi uses the same quote to make a similar point in his essay, “With a Little Help from the Friends: the Quaker and Tactical Contexts of Anthony Benezet’s Abolitionist Publishing,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 135:1 (January 2011): 46. 25  Benezet read Brüe’s narratives and many others in the English anthology A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1744–47), also known as Astley’s Collection from the name of its publisher.

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board the vessels, the men being shackled with irons two and two together.”26 On board ship, where masters were deathly afraid of slave revolts, the cruelest measures were applied to prevent any kind of resistance. One anonymous ship’s captain described how he dealt with a hunger strike among his captives: he required his sailors to lay hold upon one of the most obstinate, and chopped the poor creature into small pieces, forcing some of the others to eat a part of the mangled body; withal swearing to the survivors that he would use them all, one after the other, in the same manner, if they did not consent to eat. In revenge for an uprising that involved several men and a woman, Capt. Harding of the slave ship Robert sentenced the perpetrators “to cruel death, making them first eat the heart and liver of one of those he killed. The woman he hoisted by the thumbs, whipped and slashed with knives before the other slaves till she died.”27 Similar brutalization awaited those who survived the Middle Passage only to find themselves forced to labor on the sugar plantations of Jamaica. The punishments used there were first described by Hans Sloane in 1707. If masters discovered a slave plotting to regain his liberty, they condemned him to the flames, [so that] being chained flat on his belly . . . and his arms and legs extended, fire is then set to his feet and he is burned gradually up to his head. They starve others to death with a loaf hanging before their mouths, so that some gnaw the very flesh off their own shoulders. For lesser crimes they geld the offender and chop off half of his foot with an ax; for negligence only they whip him till his back is raw, and then scatter pepper and salt

26  Benezet, A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1767), pp. 24–25. Benezet is quoting Willem Bosman’s A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1721), p. 340. 27  Benezet, A Caution and Warning, p. 27. Harding’s story was related by John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies in His Majesty’s Ships, the Swallow and the Weymouth . . . by John Atkins, Surgeon in the Royal Navy (London, 1735), p. 73, and quoted in A New General Collection (London, 1745–47), II, p. 449.

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on his wounds to heighten the smart; and some planters will drop melted wax on their skins.28 Benezet did not retell these stories of gruesome punishments merely to appeal to his readers’ sympathy and compassion; much less did he see them as aberrations in an otherwise paternalistic effort to civilize and lift up a savage race. These atrocities were the very foundation of slavery wherever practiced, and Benezet described instances in Dutch, French, and English colonies. He quoted from the English physician Edward Bancroft evidence that in Surinam there is no medium: either the minds of the slaves must be depressed by abject slavery or the lives of the masters are in imminent danger. For this reason they have been oppressed by many humiliating penalties and distinctions . . . Their masters or overseer have not only the power of inflicting corporal punishment, but are in some measure allowed to exercise a right over their lives. The fear of slave insurrections was a spur to cruel punishments designed to “annihilat[e] every hope of liberty and [render] the slaves content with the enjoyment of slavery.”29 Benezet also quoted a French writer, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who described similarly brutal punishments on the Island of Mauritius: For the least neglect [the field hands] are bound hand and feet on a ladder; their commander armed with a postilion’s whip stands over them and gives them on their naked posteriors fifty, an hundred, or two hundred lashes. Every lash brings off the skin. The poor wretch, covered with blood, is let loose and dragged back to his work.30 28  [Benezet,] A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1762), pp. 53–54. Benezet found the quotation from Sloane’s A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica vol. I (London, 1707), p. lvii, in an anonymous pamphlet, Two Dialogues on the Man-Trade (London, 1760), pp. 48–49. That author was quoting it from Emanuel Bowen’s A Complete System of Geography vol. I (London, 1747), p. 708. 29  From Benezet’s afterword to John Wesley’s Thoughts on Slavery (Philadelphia, PA, 1774), pp. 59–60. 30  Benezet’s afterword to Wesley’s Thoughts on Slavery, p. 64, quoting from an abridged translation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Letter XII, “Of the Blacks,” Voyage à l’Île de France, à l’île Bourbon et au Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1773). Benezet’s quotations are identical to translated extracts from Bernardin’s book published in both The Scots Magazine

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Benezet drew what appears to be the inevitable conclusion: “Wherever slavery is practiced and an unlawful desire of gain prevails, it will have its natural effect: it will harden the heart and induce to the use of hard and cruel measures to obtain the end proposed.”31 Perhaps it is this hardening of hearts that Benezet found most dangerous about slavery. It works directly against the spirit of God’s grace, which, as the prophet Ezekiel proclaimed, takes away the stony hearts of men and gives them hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Benezet believed he had seen the working of this grace among neighboring Indians in Pennsylvania, some of whom had refused to join other Indians in fighting the English “even if,” they said, “the fighting Indians should make slaves,” or, as they expressed it, “Negroes of them.”32 This pacifism did not come naturally to this group; it was not until their religious leader became convinced of the folly and wickedness of the world, and of the hardness of his own heart, that he called out for help to the being who created him, “and after a long time of sorrow and perseverance in seeking for help, God was pleased to reveal himself to his mind and to put his goodness in his heart.” Only then did he discover that the spirit of religion was a spirit of love, which led those who obeyed it into a love of all men; but that man not keeping to his spirit, an opposite spirit got entrance in their hearts; it was from hence that arose all those disorders which so much prevail among men.33 35 (1773): 700–04, and The Monthly Review 49 (1773): 516–24. There is no evidence that Benezet ever saw Bernardin’s original French text; he did not identify Bernardin by name, referring to him only as “the French officer.” Benezet did have regular access to The Scot’s Magazine and The Monthly Review through booksellers in Philadelphia. 31  Benezet’s afterword to Wesley’s Thoughts on Slavery, p. 68. 32  Benezet’s preface to Johannes Tauler’s The Plain Path to Christian Perfection (Philadelphia, PA, 1772), p. v. 33  Benezet’s preface to Tauler’s The Plain Path, pp. vi–viii. Benezet intentionally concealed the identity of this Indian spiritual leader, but from Benezet’s earlier writings we can say with assurance that the leader was Papunahung (also known as Papoonahal), a chief of the Munising band of the Delawares, settled in the village of Wyalusing on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. He brought a delegation of Indians to Philadelphia in July 1760 to visit the Quakers and the Governor of Pennsylvania. Benezet was present for these meetings and a later one at Easton, Pennsylvania, and he left a manuscript record titled “An Account of the Behaviour and Sentiments of a Number of Well-Disposed Indians Mostly of the Minusing Tribe” and “An Account of Papunahung’s Second Visit to Friends the 4th of the 8th Month, 1761.” These accounts were printed in George S. Brookes’ Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937), pp. 479–92. John Woolman met Papunahung on one of these visits and was so impressed that he undertook a missionary

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Slavery is an embodiment of the opposite spirit: one that works on man’s heart to set him against his fellow men in a spirit of selfish greed for power and wealth. Slavery promotes war and militates against peace in its every aspect. It begins in African wars that kill many thousands and destroy the peaceful and productive societies where it flourishes; it continues in kidnappings and forced marches, in the pens, shackles, and branding irons of the factories, and in the stench and dysentery, the starvation and sexual abuse of the Middle Passage; it provokes the violence and murder that accompany slave insurrections and the brutality with which they are put down and punished; its heavy weight presses people down to despair and self-destruction; the harsh conditions in the mines and plantations of the Americas slaughter more thousands; the separation of husbands from wives and parents from children encourages promiscuousness and debauchery among both masters and slaves; it hardens the hearts of merchants, ship’s captains, surgeons, and overseers, who must devise and administer cruel punishments to enforce the loss of liberty and the appropriation of another person’s labor. Benezet clearly saw, as he wrote in the midst of the American Revolution, “The slavery which now so largely subsists in the American Colonies is another mighty evil which proceeds from the same corrupt root as war . . .; it sprang from an unwarrantable desire of gain, a lust for amassing wealth.”34 Conclusion One commonly received piece of historical wisdom about the American Revolution and its public rationale, which asserted the essential equality of all men and their right to self-government, is that it developed logically from the British colonies’ appreciation of the love of liberty as expressed in the restraints placed on arbitrary power throughout British history from the Magna Carta, through the English Civil War, and on to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The failure of the patriots to extend the same equality and liberty to the African and African American slaves in their midst (the received wisdom would suggest) was a kind of oversight, a failure of adequate vision on the part of a Southern minority, that would be remedied in the fullness of time. Thus trip to meet with him in Wyalusing in the summer of 1763. See Woolman, The Journal, pp. 122–37. 34  Benezet, “Observations on Slavery” (1778), The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754–1783, ed. David L. Crosby (Baton Rouge, LA, 2014), pp. 220–25. Quotation on p. 222.

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the doctrine of individual rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence inspired the development of an abolitionist movement that would eventually lead to the emancipation proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement, the election of an identifiably African American president, and the realization of a post-racial egalitarian society.35 There is another narrative, however, that posits a different origin for the idea of radical equality that became enshrined in the declaration. Twenty years before the American Revolution, a group of dedicated Philadelphia Quakers, led by Anthony Benezet, began a campaign to assert the humanity of African slaves and to persuade their fellow citizens and the rulers of the British Empire that these so-called slaves were free men whose lives and property were taken from them in wars and kidnappings, and they were held in bondage only through unspeakable violence and cruelty. These Quakers came to this insight largely because of their “peace testimony,” in which their ­members 35  This is a caricature, of course, of a position that I reject. It depicts a straw historian, if you will. But there are many manifestations of this attitude in popular historical presentations. More responsible academic historians also come uncomfortably close to enshrining this Enlightenment-inspired wisdom as fact. Just two examples: “The rhetoric of American independence transformed rights from specific, social, and limited in scope to universal, inherent, and inalienable. Although instigated by political grievances, the American Revolution had major implications for the institution of slavery. How, in a land looking to enshrine a new era of human liberty, could one explain that the natural rights of one group of people were suspended? This question forced the Revolutionaries to confront both slavery and bondspersons as no generation before them. What was for centuries the reality of slavery was turning ineluctably into the problem of slavery. (Paul J. Polgar, “To Raise Them to an Equal Participation: Early National Abolitionism, Gradual Emancipation, and the Promise of African American Citizenship,” Journal of the Early American Republic, 31 (Summer 2011): 234.)  The American Revolution spawned the first consistent secular challenge to slavery in the Western world, reversing, in essence, the institution’s centuries-long normative standing among philosophers and statesmen. By focusing attention on natural rights theory and self-determination, the Revolution unleashed a utopian vision of human freedom and possibility. Utilizing the works of European philosophers, from JeanJacques Rousseau to Adam Smith, American colonists battling Britain began rigorously defining the meaning of freedom, liberty, and equality in human society. These libertarian trends soon affected slavery, as guilt-ridden American masters manumitted thousands of slaves following the Revolution. A transatlantic spirit had clearly taken shape by the 1770s, making slavery anathema to emerging republican governmental systems. Indeed, slavery became one of the dirtiest words in the English language. (Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), p. 20.”

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renounced war and its effects and agreed to submit to suffering rather than support war by actively participating or passively complying with a government that waged war. Nancy S. Hornick, in her excellent unpublished dissertation from 1974, explained how, over the next twenty years, this antislavery campaign organized petition drives and distributed antislavery arguments on both sides of the Atlantic, asserting the slaves’ inherent right to freedom from violent exploitation. When American patriots began to fear that the king and parliament were trying to make them “slaves” to arbitrary imperial power, they discovered the utility of the natural rights rhetoric that Benezet had employed in his writings and began to incorporate the same language into their protests of British actions like the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts. The rhetoric of resistance to enslaving Africans fueled the resistance to the encroachments of British power on the rights of colonial settlers.36 In this way the growing movement toward abolition and emancipation was sidelined by the American Revolution. Far from being a harbinger of changing laws and attitudes about slavery, its libertarian rhetoric became cover for the institutionalization of chattel slavery in the newly emergent United States, and a new campaign for justice had to begin. Benezet remained faithful to his peace testimony. He and his fellow Quakers in the Meeting for Sufferings issued epistles and testimonies urging members of the Society of Friends to resist becoming involved in the committees and organizations fomenting rebellion. Governments were instituted among men, he believed, not by the consent of the governed but by God’s benevolent will. A government’s role was to insure, by the exercise of its power through magistrates, that peace was kept among men. If it strayed from that function and inflicted injustices on its citizens, they must resist peacefully, act courageously to reduce the sufferings of victims, accept the sufferings brought upon themselves for refusing to take up arms, and wait for God’s providential mercy to deliver them. Killing to prevent injustice was to increase the violence, risk more innocent lives, and corrupt the spirit of the faithful. It is not surprising that Benezet disdained what he saw as the hypocritical rhetoric of the American patriots, “among whom the establishment of religious as well as civil liberty are the present great object of consideration and debate.” They declared themselves to be the champions of personal liberty while they or many in their midst held African people in a bondage far more severe than any restrictions England laid upon them. Such language merely made them “a witness against 36  Nancy S. Hornick, “Anthony Benezet: Eighteenth Century Social Critic, Educator, and Abolitionist,” unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Maryland, 1974), particularly Chapter 11, “Antislavery and Revolution,” pp. 373–410.

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themselves so long as they continue to keep their fellow inhabitants in such grievous circumstances, whereby they are not only deprived of their liberty, but of all property and indeed of every right whatsoever.”37 Addendum The following is a short-title list of Philadelphia Quaker publications on war and peace that Benezet had a hand in as author, editor, distributor, or anthologizer: An Address of Some of the Quakers to the Assembly (1755) An Epistle of Tender Love and Caution (1755) An Address of the Meeting for Sufferings (1757) An Apology for the People Called Quakers (1757) Thoughts on the Nature of War (1766) An Epistle to Friends in London (1769) An Epistle of Advice and Caution (1769) Preface to The Plain Path to Christian Perfection (1772) An Epistle from the Meeting for Sufferings (1775) The Testimony of the People Called Quakers (1775) The Ancient Testimony and Principles of the People Called Quakers (1776) Thoughts on the Nature of War, revised 2nd edn (1776) Preface to Serious Considerations on Several Important Subjects (1778) “On War” from A Short Account of those People Called Quakers (1780) The Plainness and Innocent Simplicity of the Christian Religion (1782)

37  [Benezet,] “Observations on Slavery,” in Serious Considerations on Several Important Subjects (Philadelphia, PA, 1778), pp. [27]–28 (added emphasis).

Chapter 6

Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, and Praise Geoffrey Plank When the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman died, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s committee on publications appointed Anthony Benezet to a team charged with editing his journal.1 After months of work, which included tracking down testimonials from meetings Woolman had attended, Benezet declared that he was weary of the praise Woolman was receiving. Indeed, he was weary of all mortal praise. He wrote to a friend: “I care nothing about testimonies. I beg thou wilt spare complimenting me about the importance of my engagements.” Such flattery only reminded him of his failings. “I am rather fearful, much of my work has been nothing, indeed less than nothing.” “Nothing” might have been a depressing self-assessment, but in his next sentence Benezet turned it into an aspiration. “O! that true gospel nothingness may prevail in my heart.”2 Woolman would have approved of this goal. Throughout his career he had admonished Quaker ministers to strive toward a state of self-denial in which they could truthfully say, adopting the language of Paul: “It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.”3 Since the earliest days of Quakerism there had been tensions within the Society of Friends stemming from the Quakers’ validation of individual inspiration and their communal commitment to the Christian message contained in the Bible.4 In colonial America these tensions erupted into a schism at the beginning of the 18th century, and in the early decades of the 19th-century controversy over the primacy of scripture would permanently divide America’s

1  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Meeting for Sufferings, Minutes, 1756–1775, April 15, 1773, p. 379, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. 2  Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, July 16, 1774, George S. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937), p. 313. See also Robert Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1817), p. 137. 3  John Woolman, An Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends (Burlington, NJ, 1772), p. 2. See Galatians 2:20. 4  See Rosemary Moore, The Light of their Consciences: the Early Quakers in Britain, 1646–1666 (University Park, PA, 2000).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004315662_008

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Quakers.5 Benezet and Woolman lived in the interim period when the country’s Quaker meetings, with considerable difficulty, managed to maintain unity. The meetings survived intact by imposing discipline on their members. Those Quakers who felt moved by divine inspiration were expected to share and test their experiences, consulting others to make sure that their ministry remained consistent with God’s purposes.6 In the 18th century the Quakers’ understanding of inspiration emphasized the suppression of ego. Benezet explained this with another quotation from Paul: the Quakers’ “knowledge, worship and religious services” should not “stand in the will of man, but in ‘the power of an endless life.’ ”7 He and Woolman shared this ideal, but, in their careers as Quaker leaders and abolitionists, they pursued it in different ways. Benezet’s ambivalent response to the experience of editing Woolman’s journal reflected a long-standing contrast between the two men. Benezet’s antislavery tracts from the 1750s forward had gained persuasive power in part by eliminating the first-person narrative voice. To document the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, he had turned travelers’ stories into apparently objective accounts of the slave trade. He cited the writings of European and colonial adventurers, including John Barbot, William Bosman, and “a person of candor and undoubted credit now living in Philadelphia,” whom David Crosby has recently identified as William Chancellor.8 In Chancellor’s case, Benezet self-consciously concealed the identity of his witness. He named his other sources, but he recontextualized their work. Taking excerpts from their journals, he placed their descriptions of slave-trading outside the frame of the travel narratives that had originally contained them, and thereby transformed them into something resembling raw data. The genius of this part of Benezet’s editorial work was its apparent suppression of any idiosyncratic personal perspective.9 Woolman, by contrast, wrote confessionally, not just in his ­posthumously published journal but in many of the pieces he saw printed in 5  Jon Butler, “ ‘Gospel Order Improved’: the Keithian Schism and the Exercise of Ministerial Authority in Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 31 (1974): 431–52. On the periodization of American Quaker history, see J. William Frost, “Why Quakers and Slavery? Why Not More Quakers,” Quakers and Abolition, eds. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 2014), pp. 29–40. 6  See Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia, PA, 1984). 7  Anthony Benezet, A Short Account of the People Called Quakers (Philadelphia, PA, 1780), p. 4. See Hebrews 7:16. 8  David L. Crosby, “The Surgeon and the Abolitionist: William Chancellor and Anthony Benezet,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 137:2 (2013): 125–45. 9  On Benezet’s rhetorical strategy, see David L. Crosby, “Anthony Benezet’s Transformation of Anti-Slavery Rhetoric,” Slavery and Abolition 23 (2002): 39–58; Srividhya Swaminathan,

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his lifetime. He analyzed the problem of slavery in personal terms, and set himself up as a model for others to follow. Woolman condemned perpetual slavery categorically in his first antislavery pamphlet, published in February 1754, and beginning in 1758 he traveled from house to house for hundreds of miles seeking to convince Quaker slave-­holders to manumit their slaves. He also, through his own conduct, helped inspire Quaker boycotts of slave-produced sugar and rum. Benezet, on the other hand, reached out beyond Quaker communities, forging alliances with non-Quaker opponents of slavery, including lawyers, politicians, and free blacks, and he attacked the problem of slavery on a global scale. Benezet paid more attention than Woolman to legislation, and he concentrated much of his early energy on the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. With these contrasts in mind, it is not difficult to comprehend the divergent trajectories of the two men’s historical legacies and reputations. Benezet’s arguments were more effective in the 18th century, but Woolman’s consumer-oriented approach to the problem of slavery resonated with greater power in the 19th, and ultimately transformed him into a hero of abolitionism far more famous than Benezet.10 From the early 1750s until Woolman’s death in 1772, Benezet and Woolman sometimes worked together, but our understanding of their relationship has been hobbled by two interrelated impulses. Historians have too often assumed that the Quaker opponents of slavery were unified. Many have also given far too much credit to Woolman, especially since 1942, when Janet Whitney mistakenly attributed the first draft of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s 1754 Epistle of Caution and Advice Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves to Woolman. The records of the Philadelphia monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings make it clear that that essay originated in Benezet’s home meeting, Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, in January 1754, and that it passed through several possible revisions before it was finally approved by the yearly meeting the following September. The Epistle of Caution and Advice did not quite call upon all Quaker slave-holders to free their slaves, but it was the strongest antislavery statement yet issued by the yearly meeting, and its adoption represented a turning point. In support of her claim that Woolman contributed, early on, to the composition of the epistle, Whitney cited an epistle that Benezet and Woolman drafted “Anthony Benezet’s Depictions of African Oppression: ‘That Creature of Propaganda’,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (2006): 115–30; Jonathan Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image: Anthony Benezet, African Travel Narratives, and Revolutionary-Era Anti-Slavery,” Journal of Early Modern History 10 (2006): 95–130. 10  See, generally, Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: a Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia, PA, 2012); Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009).

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jointly on behalf of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to Quakers in Virginia. Inexplicably, Whitney asserted that that letter “lifted passages” not only from Woolman’s 1754 antislavery pamphlet but also from his second major antislavery piece, which would not appear in print until 1762. Those passages, in turn, according to Whitney, appeared “verbatim” in the epistle to Virginia, which served, in effect, as the initial draft of the Epistle of Caution and Advice.11 The scholarly response to Whitney’s assertion would have seemed ironic to both Woolman and Benezet if they had had any sense of irony. Most scholars rushed to give Woolman full credit.12 Only a few, most notably Jerry Frost, pointed out that Whitney had misdated the jointly authored epistle to Virginia, that it contained no explicit reference to slavery, that it drew no language from Woolman’s antislavery tracts, and that it bore no resemblance to the Epistle of Caution and Advice.13 There is more at stake in our reconstruction of the drafting of the Epistle of Caution and Advice than deciding whether Woolman or Benezet deserves the greatest praise. Nonetheless, despite the significance that has been placed on the epistle that Woolman and Benezet sent to Virginia, it has never appeared in print. So here it is:

Benezet and Woolman’s 1754 Epistle to Virginia From our Yearly Meeting held at Burlington for Pennsylvania and New Jersey from the 14th 9th mo 1754 to the 19th of the same. To Friends at their next Yearly Meeting in Virginia Dear Friends, The fountain of divine love which replenished the hearts of our ancestors and enabled them to forsake the vanities and corruptions of the world,

11  Janet Whitney, John Woolman: American Quaker (Boston, MA, 1942), pp. 193–94. 12  See, for example, Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (New Haven, CT, 1950), p. 56; Sydney V. James, A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, MA, 1963), p. 137; Edwin H. Cady, John Woolman: the Mind of the Quaker Saint (New York, NY, 1966), p. 79 n. 7; Thomas P. Slaughter, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York, NY, 2008), pp. 159, 414, n. 8; Jackson, Let This Voice be Heard, pp. 53, 244. 13  See chapter 4, and Frost, “The Origins of the Quaker Crusade Against Slavery: a Review of Recent Literature,” Quaker History 67:1 (1978): 42–58, 50, n. 20. See also David Crosby, ed., The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754–1783 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2014), pp. 236–67.

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we have with thankfulness to acknowledge hath been opened in the several sittings of this our annual assembly whereby a lively concern hath been renewed in us that the streams thereof may so effectually reach the hearts of the rising generation, that the purity and spirituality of our holy profession may be maintained. By accounts from our several quarterly meetings we understand that love and unity generally subsists amongst Friends, meetings are kept up, and a care rests on the minds of faithful Friends that our discipline may be put in practice as occasion requires. Your epistle of the present year was read here to our satisfaction, ours of the last was forwarded by us, though it seems at your meeting you had not received it. The concern you express for requiring good order amongst you affords us some satisfaction, though we cannot but sympathize with you under a sense of the backsliding of many under our profession. The divine power is the same invariably and though the state of the true church in some past ages hath been such that the faithful were not only few but despised reviled and persecuted, yet to our encouragement we may comment that the great and merciful God whose spirit moved on their souls made way by his power and the interposition of his Providence, so that they saw the travail of their souls and were satisfied. His ways are equal let not then the faithful though few in number be dismayed. Our minds at this time are deeply bowed before the Lord that we the offspring and successors of this chosen people may with simplicity and uprightness of heart abide steadfastly through the whole course of our conduct to those principles which our worthy elders believed in and suffered deeply for and that we may not fail nor be discouraged if we should be made to taste of those bitter cups of which God’s people in many preceding generations have largely partaken. Truth is a treasure of the greatest worth that no earthly consideration can be too great to purchase it, and if we through a steady adhering to it advance so far as to be heirs of the promise of God to dwell in us and walk in us, if he be our God and we his people our fruits will be such as become his family, meekness and goodness and a calm resignation to his will. If from an evidence so certain we find our building is on the sure foundation though we may be tried with sore afflictions and sufferings, yet he who is the God of our life is omnipotent and with safety we may commit our cause to him. For as we believe from the strongest evidence that his tender mercies extend to all his works and that his providence is continually over us, that

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he administers to each individual in such sort as is agreeable to his wisdom and goodness and answerable to the depth of his judgment which to us are unsearchable, as he is all powerful and needs not the help of man our most ardent supplications are that we may ever be preserved from seeking to helps whose foundation is on weakness, but in the steady performance of our respective duties look unto the Lord and lean on that arm which is able to support us. In the true love of Christ Jesus we salute you and remain your Friends and brethren.14 Despite Whitney’s claim, it should be apparent at a glance that this document provides no evidence that Woolman contributed to the initial drafting of the Epistle of Caution and Advice. The best evidence we have of Woolman’s position on slavery in the early months of 1754 is his own antislavery pamphlet, and its approach to the issue differs greatly from that eventually taken by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Woolman’s analysis of slavery in his 1754 pamphlet is at once biblical and intimately domestic. In his aspirational passages he cites the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles in support of the proposition that God created the world in a spirit of universal love. He invokes the grand course of providential history and declares that we should strive now to bring back that original, comprehensive spirit of love: The state of mankind was harmonious in the beginning, and tho sin hath introduced discord, yet, through the wonderful love of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, the way is open for our redemption, and means appointed to restore us to primitive harmony.15 Slavery was an obstacle to that objective, and, when Woolman explained why, he focused squarely on the household. Slave-holding made men and women lazy, selfish, and arrogant, and its effects were particularly insidious on children.

14  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, miscellaneous papers, 1754, fol. 22, Special Collections, Haverford College Library. I should like to thank John Anderies for sending me a photograph of the original. For Woolman and Benezet’s joint authorship of this epistle, see Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Minutes, 1747–1779, 45, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. 15  John Woolman, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (Philadelphia, PA, 1754), p. 21.

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In the title to his pamphlet, Woolman identified his problem as “the keeping of Negroes,” but in the Epistle of Caution and Advice the yearly meeting defined its topic much more ambiguously as “the buying and keeping” of slaves. Within the body of its epistle the meeting called on good slave-holders to treat their slaves well, even as it condemned the process that led to enslavement. Maintaining a focus on the market and “the practice of making slaves of our fellow creatures,” the meeting turned its attention away from local households and out to the wider world. In a passage that foreshadowed Benezet’s future concerns as well as the direction of Quaker antislavery generally, the Epistle of Caution and Advice expressed alarm and sorrow about the impact of the slave trade on Africa.16 Paying attention to the differences between these antislavery statements reminds us of the process of negotiation that surrounded the slow and painful development of Quaker antislavery in the 1750s. The Quakers’ position against slavery did not evolve in a linear progression. Some reformers, such as Woolman, started out with categorical denunciations of slave-holding and proceeded to accept much more moderate corporate statements in the interest of securing incremental progress.17 Jean Soderlund and Gary Nash have reconstructed this process in detail.18 We cannot begin to understand this story if we assume that the Quaker opponents of slavery and the slave trade always spoke with one voice. If we assume, as everyone did before 1942, that Benezet was responsible for the initial draft of the Epistle of Caution and Advice, the differences between it and Woolman’s pamphlet help us to mark out the evolving relationship between the two men. One can imagine Woolman and Benezet passionately advocating for their various tactical and moral positions, but when they faced each other their discussions were never simply adversarial. They did not wish to engage in a contest of wills. Instead they listened closely to each other. Woolman’s second antislavery pamphlet, published in 1762, reflects Benezet’s influence and pays attention to Africa.19 Eventually, Woolman found a way to incorporate his b­ urgeoning 16  Anthony Benezet, Epistle of Caution and Advice Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves (Philadelphia, PA, 1754), pp. 2–3. 17  See Phillips P. Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (Richmond, IN, 1971), pp. 66–67. 18  Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: a Divided Spirit (Princeton, NJ, 1985); Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and its Aftermath (New York, NY, 1991). 19   See Anthony Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes (Germantown, PA, 1759); John Woolman, Considerations on Keeping Negroes,

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concern for Africa into a profoundly personal rejection of s­ lavery—one that combined Benezet’s global perspective with his own focus on the household. Like other antislavery Quakers in the middle decades of the 18th century, Woolman gradually adopted a boycott strategy, but he did so only in fits and starts. He stopped selling Caribbean-produced sugar and rum in November 1754, shortly after the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting called on local Quakers “to guard, as much as possible, against, being in any respect, concerned in promoting the bondage” of “Negroes and other slaves.”20 Nonetheless, by his own account his decision reflected his opposition to indulgence and drunkenness rather than any particular opposition to slavery. It was not until later, after he had been “further informed” about the condition of slaves’ lives in the Caribbean, that his refusal to sell rum and sugar became a self-conscious protest against slavery.21 It is likely that Woolman started to hear disturbing accounts of Caribbean slavery in 1758, and he learned more about the West Indies and the African slave trade over the next several years.22 Benezet was one of his principal informants. In 1766, Benezet’s essay A Caution and a Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies was published.23 In several ways it was his most ambitious antislavery publication. Benezet relayed accounts of slaving operations in Africa, the Middle Passage, and the conditions of slavery in the Caribbean. He advanced religious arguments against slavery, and made a quick reference to the recent colonial protests against alleged British tyranny. With help from some Quakers in London, he arranged to have the essay delivered to every sitting member of parliament.24 Woolman may not have read A Caution and a Warning closely until 1769, but when he did his response was characteristically personal. He copied out long passages, interspersing them with comments derived from his own experience and stories he had heard in his travels. In the midst of his notes he wrote this, for example: “I was told by a person eye witness to the fact that a negro woman in Carolina was severely whipped for being slack in b­ usiness Recommended to the Professors of Christianity, of Every Denomination, Part Second (Philadelphia, PA, 1762). 20  Benezet, Epistle of Caution and Advice, pp. 2–3. 21  Moulton, ed., The Journal, p. 156. 22  Plank, John Woolman’s Path, pp. 150–51. 23  Anthony Benezet, A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies (Philadelphia, PA, 1766). 24  Jonathan Sassi, “With a Little Help from the Friends: the Quaker and Tactical Contexts of Anthony Benezet’s Abolitionist Publishing,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 135 (2011); 33–71, 47–48.

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in the field, and before the next morning was delivered of a living child.”25 Woolman made no effort to publish his response to A Caution and a Warning, and we have no way of knowing what he intended to do with these notes. As far as the historical record shows, his first public statement on Benezet’s essay came later when he cited it in justification of his decision to abandon his plan to travel to the Caribbean.26 Woolman’s explanation for that decision was extremely elaborate, and it constituted the most extended effort he ever made to articulate the reasoning behind his boycott efforts and the peculiar course of life he pursued in the late 1760s and early 1770s. He would not pay for his passage because he knew where his money would be going, and he did want to engage in any expenditure that might promote cruelty or injustice. He eventually applied this line of reasoning to the clothes he wore, the food he ate, his tableware, and his mode of transport. Woolman was painfully aware of one possible flaw in his moral calculus. His desire to separate himself from evil kept him from traveling in 1769, and in effect distanced him from the people he was most concerned about and wanted to reach—the slave-holders and enslaved people of the West Indies. He was wracked by guilt after the cancelation of this journey, and he would be troubled by the dilemma of traveling for the rest of his life.27 He believed that he had a message for the world, but for very good reasons he associated 18th-century ocean-going commerce with acquisitiveness, exploitation, warfare, and enslavement. Therefore he did not want to hire the services of ships. In 1772 he agonized again over whether he could board a vessel. He did so and embarked for England, but the decision pained him, and his uneasiness with participating in England’s transatlantic commerce made him gloomy on board and after he arrived. Benezet and Woolman differed greatly in their manner of interaction with the English, and the contrast reveals much about their divergent approaches to politics. Benezet never traveled far after his arrival in Philadelphia in 1731. Nonetheless, through reading books and pamphlets, exchanging letters with distant correspondents, and consulting with travelers, including merchants and newly arrived slaves, he gathered knowledge about England and many other countries around the ocean. For this reason he is justly remembered as a cosmopolitan, “Atlantic” man. Benezet knew English politics better than 25  John Woolman’s Journal, Manuscript A, back page 12, Case 20, #737, Box 2, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 26  See Moulton, ed., The Journal, p. 157. 27  See Geoffrey Plank, “Sailing with John Woolman: the Millennium and Maritime Trade,” Early American Studies 7 (2009): 46–81.

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Woolman, and he was more conventionally political in his way of addressing the English on questions related to slavery. Benezet sought to move members of parliament. He engaged in a long-distance debate with leaders of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, seeking to turn that Anglican missionary organization into a potentially powerful opponent of slavery. He sent abolitionist literature to the antislavery attorney Granville Sharp and the Methodist leader John Wesley.28 While Benezet was communicating from a distance with powerful men in England, Woolman visited the country in 1772 and made a show of humility, rejecting the norms of politeness that might have made it possible for him to navigate channels of power in London. Woolman wore a hand-made suit of undyed woollen cloth, and he refused to ride in carriages. To avoid the sin of using a transport system that exploited horses, he walked from London to York. Woolman’s peculiarity (“singularity,” his Quaker critics called it) attracted attention. It was only in England that he ever drew gawking crowds. England was also the first place where Woolman was ecstatically revered as a saint. His admirers in York recorded his dying words, and English Quakers circulated them along with poems that sometimes compared him to Jesus. This initial outpouring of praise made little or no reference to his opposition to slavery.29 Toward the end of his life, Woolman was remarkably oblivious to the actions of other abolitionists. Despite his intense engagement with the problem of injustice, he never became political in the style of Benezet. Two weeks after his arrival in London, Lord Mansfield delivered his judgment in the case of Somerset v. Stewart, a legal opinion that was widely understood to have declared that all the slaves in England were free.30 Woolman never commented on this event in his journal, and it is quite possible that he was unaware of it. In November 1772, seeking to widen the transatlantic network of antislavery, Benezet wrote from Philadelphia to Granville Sharp, the plaintiffs’ counsel in the Somerset case, and notified him of Woolman’s existence. Benezet told Sharp that Woolman was a “truly pious man . . . now on a religious visit in some parts of England.” He enclosed with his letter Woolman’s two antislavery pamphlets, which Benezet 28  Jackson, Let this Voice be Heard, 138–60. 29  Geoffrey Plank, “The First Person in Antislavery Literature: John Woolman, his Clothes and his Journal,” Slavery and Abolition 30 (2009): 67–91, 74–76. 30  On the Somerset case, see William R. Cotter, “The Somerset Case and the Abolition of Slavery in England,” History 79 (1994): 31–56; James Oldham, “New Light on Mansfield and Slavery,” Journal of British Studies 27 (1988): 45–68. On the reaction to the Somerset case, see Vincent Carretta, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens, GA, 2005), pp. 206–09.

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hoped would reinforce Sharp’s “thoughts on the inconsistency of the Gospel with slavery.”31 We can only guess at what might have ensued if Sharp had sought out Woolman and the two men had met. When Benezet composed this letter he did not know that Woolman had died. Though Benezet and Woolman shared a deep-seated opposition to slavery, they differed from one another in the ways in which they addressed the issue, substantively in their writings, and tactically in their interactions with others. They adopted contrasting approaches to politics. Nonetheless, they admired each other. After Benezet joined the committee to review Woolman’s journal, he wrote to another prominent Quaker: Oh! the advantage, the inexpressible advantage to labour honestly, sincerely and diligently, to get rid of selfishness and carnality of every kind; this is the true criterion, not this or the other principle—this lays only in the heart—it’s the heart God calls for, the reading John Woolman’s journal gives me a prospect of it.32 Benezet recognized the power of Woolman’s exemplary life, and he expressed wonder at Woolman’s apparent ability to devote himself wholly to his divine calling. Benezet would later write that the “work of redemption” began for all people when they experienced “a feeling sense of our natural corruption.” This awareness could then inspire “a sincere desire of being delivered from the power of evil.” The process of redemption could be completed, or “perfected,” as Benezet put it, only by renouncing evil and living in “obedience to the teaching of the spirit of grace.”33 Like Woolman, he strove to “labor honestly, sincerely and diligently, to get rid of selfishness and carnality of every kind.” But, unlike Woolman, he pursued this project in a retiring fashion. Benezet did not travel, rarely spoke in public, and did not publish any account of his life. We can detail Benezet’s influence on Woolman in large part because Woolman wrote about himself. Benezet was less inclined toward autobiography, which makes it more difficult to identify his spiritual and intellectual guides. As a member of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Overseers of the Press, Benezet was familiar with Woolman’s antislavery writings; we know 31  Henry J. Cadbury, John Woolman in England: a Documentary Supplement (London, 1971), p. 67. 32  Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, 14 December 1773, Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 310. 33  Anthony Benezet, The Plainness and Innocent Simplicity of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA, 1782), p. 4.

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that he reviewed Woolman’s second antislavery pamphlet before it went to press.34 With that in mind, it is noteworthy that Benezet borrowed language from Woolman only twice, in both instances emphasizing the importance of maintaining moral consistency. In 1760 he began the second edition of his Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing Negroes with this passage from Woolman’s 1754 antislavery pamphlet: Customs generally approved, and opinions received by youth from their superiors, become like the natural produce of the soil, especially when they are suited to favourite inclinations; but as the judgements of God are without partiality, by which the state of the soul must be tried, it would be the highest wisdom to forego customs and popular opinions and try our deeds by the infallible standard of truth, even the pure spirit of grace which leads all those who in sincerity obey its dictates into a conduct consistent with their Christian profession.35 In 1771, Benezet reprinted an extended passage from Woolman’s second antislavery pamphlet. This second excerpt referred specifically to slaveholding and ended with this apocalyptic warning: wherever gain is preferred to equity, and wrong things publicly encouraged, to the degree that wickedness takes root and spreads wide amongst the inhabitants of a country, there is a real case for sorrow, to all such whose love to mankind stands on a true principle, and wisely consider the end and event of things.36 It is clear from the whole extent of Benezet’s published work that he and Woolman shared a sense of millenarian foreboding, and both men insisted that we should devote ourselves entirely to God’s cause. Perhaps the clearest statement of the two men’s shared convictions is the epistle they wrote together in 1754 to Quakers in Virginia. It is the only piece in existence written by them as a pair, unrevised by any larger committee. Those 34  See John Woolman to Israel Pemberton, 1761, Pemberton Papers, vol. 15, fol. 111, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 35  Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, p. 2, quoting Woolman, Some Considerations (1754), Introduction. 36  Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (Philadelphia, PA, 1771; reprinted London, 1772), pp. 74–75 n., quoting John Woolman, Considerations on Keeping Negroes . . . Part Second (1762), p. 50.

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looking for explicit antislavery statements in it will be disappointed, but there is still much we can learn from its contents. It calls on all people to resign themselves to God’s will. Writing to fellow Quakers, Woolman and Benezet declared that we should place our faith in providence, “forsake the vanities and corruptions of the world,” and “abide steadfastly through the whole course of our conduct to those principles which our worthy elders believed in and suffered deeply for.”37 Quakers should lose themselves in a spirit of universal love. Woolman expressed this aspiration repeatedly through his career. In his first antislavery pamphlet he had declared that “the earthly ties of relationship, are, comparatively, inconsiderable to such who, thru a steady course of obedience, have come to the happy experience of the spirit of God.”38 Toward the end of his life he derived a similar message from a terrifying dream. Looking down from on high on “a mass of a dull gloomy colour,” he was told that it was “human beings in as great misery as they could be and live, and that I was mixed in with them and henceforth might not consider myself a distinct or separate being.” Then he heard an angel chanting: “John Woolman is dead.” He believed that this was a good message to hear, and Benezet, who reviewed Woolman’s account of that dream for inclusion in the published journal, agreed.39 In 1780, Benezet produced A Short Account of the Quakers: Their Rise, Religious Principles and Settlement in America. This pamphlet contained a synopsis of his religious beliefs, but with characteristic modesty he insisted on the title page that it was “mostly collected from different authors.”40 Describing the early teaching of the Quaker founder George Fox, he told his readers that Fox had admonished those around him to “cease from all self-­ performances.” This call for Quakers to give themselves up entirely to “universal love” animates the text.41 Using much more prosaic language but deploying the concept of “death” in the same two senses as Woolman had, Benezet summed up the founding ethical principles of Quakerism in the following terms: according to scripture testimony and the correspondent evidence of Gospel Light . . . while men’s affections are engrossed by the pleasures and delights of this world, they are dead to a sense of the Divine Life in 37  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, miscellaneous papers, 1754, fol. 22, Special Collections, Haverford College Library. 38  Woolman, Some Considerations (1754), Introduction. 39  See John Woolman, The Works of John Woolman, in Two Parts (Philadelphia, PA, 1774), pp. 233–36. 40  Benezet, A Short Account, title page. 41  Benezet, A Short Account, p. 1.

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them; the absolute necessity of regeneration and the power by which this great work is effected, are both included in that doctrine of the apostle, if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye thro’ the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live: For as many are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God.42 Like Woolman, Benezet strove to attain thoroughgoing selflessness, a state he once described as “true gospel nothingness.” After Benezet died in 1784, his burial was preceded by a ceremonial procession that probably would have embarrassed him, had he witnessed it. Crowds of Philadelphians, white and black, escorted his coffin through the streets to the Friends Burial Ground. The march seemed to encapsulate Benezet’s project and mission, drawing together rich and poor, powerful and meek, Quakers and non-Quakers alike. Most noteworthy were the “hundreds of Negroes testifying by their attendance, and by their tears, the grateful sense they entertained of his pious efforts on their behalf.”43 This was a tribute that defined him even in death with his dedication to abolition and the education of free blacks. But not everyone understood Benezet on those terms. In the collections at the Friends House Library in London there is a poem, “To the memory of my valiant Friend Anthony Benezet who died in Philadelphia the 3d of 5 mo 1784.” It was written, according to the person who transcribed it, “by a female hand.” The poet was confident that Benezet had entered heavenly bliss, and, describing that state, she used language that in effect merged the dead man with everything good, almost overwhelming his distinctiveness. Now that Benezet’s earthly life was over, no frailty remained to divide “the soul from God”: Hail favoured spirit now immortal rise! And join the exalted worship of the skies Where bliss perfected flows one boundless tide In other passages, though, Benezet did appear in the poem as an individual. The poet referred to some of his worldly activities as a reformer. She mentioned, for example, that Benezet had been “fixed in his principles,” and a “patron of the poor,” but she made no reference to the slavery issue or any of the other searing controversies that had troubled Benezet in his lifetime. The poet instead

42  Benezet, A Short Account, pp. 5–6, citing Romans 8:13. 43  Vaux, Memoirs, p. 134. See Jackson, Let this Voice be Heard, pp. 226–30.

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asserted that Benezet had always remained “generous and humane” toward those who disagreed with him, and that his charity was “diffused.”44 This tribute was unusual in omitting any explicit reference to slavery in its assessment of Benezet’s service and virtue. There is no way to be certain who wrote the piece, but the closing lines may provide a clue. They were addressed to Anthony’s widow, Joyce Benezet, and pleaded with her to find consolation in the prospect of her own death, and the promise that after her “few fleeting moments here be o’er,” she might experience “life immortal” with Anthony, their “union sealed by ties divine.”45 If these lines were in fact written by a female friend or religious counselor of the Benezets, they may provide another indication of the religious values that animated the couple, or, at the very least, the priorities of their religious community. Many Quakers, like Benezet, were drawn to self-effacement. In their most visionary, passionate statements they described losing their sense of self completely and getting subsumed within the divine. From the perspective of Woolman, Benezet, and many early Quaker abolitionists, this erasure of individual qualities had profoundly egalitarian implications because it wiped away all the pernicious distinctions dividing the various peoples of the world. This vision of heaven helped inspire their testimony against slavery, and it was one of the principal reasons they dreaded receiving individual praise.

44  “To the Memory of my Valiant Friend Anthony Benezet,” Row MSS, Box G2/6/1, pp. 61–63, Friends House Library, London. 45  “To the Memory of my Valiant Friend,” pp. 62–63.

Chapter 7

Nantucket Quakers and Negotiating the Politics of the Atlantic World Richard C. Allen As with many of the other critiques in this volume, the significance of Anthony Benezet in the Atlantic world looms large, and the subtleties and vagaries of the changing political and social culture of the 18th century are admirably considered. This study nevertheless seeks to provide a further but different vantage point, in that it connects the social problems that Benezet encountered in his lifetime and his determination to defend what he regarded as non-negotiable principles (related to personal liberty, pacifism, and humanitarianism) with those experienced by those Quaker communities caught up in revolutionary upheavals of the late 18th century. The brief history of the Nantucket Quakerwhalers at this time offers a case study which exemplifies the continuing struggles between the Religious Society of Friends and the authorities in various European settings and in America, and their means of survival. The primary reason why Benezet is such an important figure is his attitude towards the basic liberties of the individual and the challenge he posed to the operation of 18th-century trade based on slavery,1 while, on another level, the Nantucketers sought to defend their own belief system and access to global markets unfettered by the relevant State policies.2 Their negotiations with the British, French and American governments for an unhindered continuance of their transatlantic trade can be contrasted with that of Benezet, initially as an apprentice in a mercantile house in London, then briefly alongside his brothers in their importation business in Philadelphia and his own unsuccessful mercantile business 1  For details of the slave trade and Quaker opposition to it, see Jean Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: a Divided Spirit (Princeton, NJ, 1985); Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and its Aftermath (New York, NY; Oxford, 1991); James Walvin, Black Ivory: a History of British Slavery (London, 1992); Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York, NY, 1997); Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih, eds., Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760– 1838 (London, 2004); Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1658–1761 (New Haven, CT, 2012). 2  Edouard A. Stackpole, Whales and Destiny: the Rivalry between America, France and Britain for the Control of the Southern Whale Fishery 1785–1825 (Boston, MA, 1972).

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in Delaware.3 As such, this investigation provides a wider background to the changing Atlantic world of the late 18th century and explores the economic networks that Quakers established, or, more significantly, had to re-establish, as well as the severe testing of their long-held principles and business interests. In this context, the activities of the Nantucket Quaker-whalers and their adherence to pacifism, subsequent neutrality, and confiscation of their goods during the American Revolution would have been appreciated by Benezet.4 As Huguenots in Northern France, his family fled from the country in 1715. Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Chapter 3) clearly draws attention to the hostility directed at the Huguenots, who were heavily persecuted and suffered serious loss of wealth and status in post-revocation France. Indeed, Benezet’s family, including his father, Jean-Étienne, paid a heavy price for their religious beliefs.5 At the time of his exile, Anthony was just an infant, but he would grow up learning about his family history, and the maltreatment that Protestant communities, including Quakers, endured in periods of heightened political and religious anxieties. In connection with his own attempts to help settle and provide for Acadians who had been expelled from Nova Scotia and sought refuge in Philadelphia in the mid-1750s,6 he would have recognized the level of dislocation felt by the Nantucketers as emigrants or exiles, and their efforts to find solace in unfamiliar lands while others sought to negotiate the realpolitik of 18th-century state diplomacy and trade. Above all, he would have comprehended their minority position, standing their ground for their beliefs in a period of great upheaval, and their efforts to expose injustice and overcome inequality.

3  His early life and family background is discussed in George Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937), pp. 13–28; Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), pp. 2–8. The background is reviewed in greater detail in the contributions to this volume by Maurice Jackson (Foreword), Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Chapter 3), and J. William Frost (Chapter 4). 4  His position as “Weighty Friend” in Philadelphia also meant that he would have counselled Friends who were increasingly becoming involved in the heated political exchanges or joined the militias of the 1760s. See Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 334–35. 5  For a wider discussion, see Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, eds., Memory and Identity: the Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia, SC, 2003); Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: the Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Columbia, SC, 2006); Patrick Cabanel, Histoire des Protestants en France:— XVIe–XXIe siècle (Paris, 2012). 6  Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 25–27. See also Christopher Holdson, The Acadian Diaspora: an Eighteenth-Century History (New York, NY; Oxford, 2012).

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Nantucket Quaker Testimony Against Slavery

As part of their religious testimony, the Nantucket Friends increasingly articulated their views concerning the slave trade. Between November 1716 and April 1717 they had argued against the purchasing of slaves,7 and this was further endorsed in an address sent to Philadelphia Friends in 1729. Four years later, Elihu Coleman, one of the co-writers of the Philadelphia address, published a tract against the “anti-Christian practice of making slaves of men” and called for an end to this pernicious activity.8 Anthony Benezet’s 1754 statement before the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting concerning the importation and purchasing of slaves, and the subsequent watering down of his remarks (which did not bear Benezet’s name),9 might have influenced the 1758 declaration by the New England Yearly Meeting prohibiting Friends from engaging in the slave trade.10 Despite John Woolman’s assertion in 1760 that he had to “encourage” the Nantucketers to adhere to these sentiments,11 other Quakers on the island fully accepted this declaration. They included William Swain who, in 1751, gave Absalom Boston, a black seafarer, his freedom, and from 1760 to 1773 gradually liberated his wife and children.12 It was during his period that William Rotch fundamentally challenged the prevailing culture of slave-holding. In 1769 he insisted that the black whaleman, Prince Boston, should be paid for his work while on his ship rather than the money being given to the slaveowner, John Swain. In an ensuing legal encounter in the Court of Common 7  Alexander Starbuck, The History of Nantucket: County, Island and Town (Boston, MA, 1924; reprinted Rutland, VT; Hemel Hempstead, 1969), p. 533. 8  Elihu Coleman, A Testimony against that Antichristian Practice of Making Slaves of Men . . . (Boston, MA, s.n., 1733). See also Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 48–49. 9  Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Minutes: 24/01/1754, 291. This is fully outlined in the contributions by David L. Crosby (Chapter 5) and Geoffery Plank (Chapter 6) in this volume, and the wider application of Benezet’s subsequent work is provided in those by Jonathan D. Sassi, Louisiane Ferlier, and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol. For a further discussion, see J.W. Frost, The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, PA, 1980). 10  John Greenleaf Whittier, “Appreciation,” The Journal of John Woolman (Boston, MA, 1879), p. 9. 11  Phillips P. Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (New York, NY, 1971), p. 115. This is despite the wealth of information from Quaker authors on the subject. The dissemination of Quaker publications against slavery in the transatlantic world, especially in France, is discussed in the contributions to this volume by Louisiane Ferlier (Chapter 9) and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (Chapter 10). 12  Frances Ruley Karttunen, The Other Islanders: People who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars (New Bedford, MA, 2005), p. 63.

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Pleas, the judges found in favor of Rotch, and Prince was given his liberty and the financial rewards for his work. This landmark trial subsequently led to the abolition of slavery in Nantucket and Massachusetts.13 Freedoms such as this were clearly hard earned, and Friends were at the forefront of these momentous social reform programs. International political and economic pressures, and particularly the wider issues of liberty, nevertheless increasingly took centre stage, and many Friends became victims of the machinations of European power-brokers and those who sought to break away from colonial hegemony.14

Growing Tensions, Neutrality, and Trade

The tension prior to and during the American Revolution not only saw a shift in mid-Atlantic politics but also occasioned a transformation in the economic networks that had existed from the opening up of the American colonies in the 17th century. For the Nantucket Quaker-whalers there was a steely determination to carry on their trade while attempting to maintain neutrality, but this had serious consequences, notably the sequestration of their goods and ships, the occupation of their homes, and ultimately a repositioning of their industry.15 This study exposes the deep levels of negotiation between the American, British, and French governments, and the Nantucketers, especially the Rotch family, who relocated to Dunkerque in France, while other Quakerwhalers removed to Claverack on the Hudson River, Dartmouth in Nova Scotia, or Milford Haven in West Wales. As such, it explains the reasons for their migration, the protracted negotiations with the various government ministers, and the eventual settlement of a number of the Quaker-whalers in Canada, France, 13  George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, NY, 1866), p. 117; Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick L. McKissack, Black Hands, White Sails (New York, NY, 1999), pp. 18–19. 14  In his contribution to this volume, David Crosby has noted the work of Nancy S. Hornick and her observations concerning American colonists who were increasingly vociferous in their demands for natural rights, and drawing on the writings of Benezet. See Nancy S. Hornick, “Anthony Benezet: Eighteenth Century Social Critic, Educator, and Abolitionist,” unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Maryland, 1974). 15  Wider reading on the American Revolution is extensive. For some modern assessments, see Stephen Conway, The War of American Independence, 1775–1783 (London, 1995), and his The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford, 2000); Sarah Knott, “Sensibility and the American War for Independence,” American Historical Review 109:1 (February 2004): 19–40; John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: the American Victory in the War of Independence (Oxford, 2007).

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and Great Britain. It also explores the central roles of Thomas Jefferson and William Rotch, Sr. (1734–1828), an extremely wealthy and influential Quaker, and his decision and that of other Friends to temporarily relocate their business interests. Yet who were these Nantucket Quaker-whalers and what drove them to relocate? What were their experiences during the revolutionary wars, and what role did the Nantucket Friends play in the changing political and economic landscape of Western Europe and America? Quakers who had settled in New England in the mid-17th century had, as a result of persecution, relocated to the island of Nantucket. The Quaker families, led by Nathaniel and Edward Starbuck, purchased considerable land from the native population,16 and they quickly established the town of Sherborn, a whaling industry,17 and a meeting house. For well over a century these Quakerwhalers were able to make a substantial living as the Southern Whaling Fishery,18 but the introduction of the New England Trade and Fisheries Act (Restraining Act, February 1775) was intended to severely restrict trade between the New England merchants and Great Britain, and prohibited the Nantucketers and others from fishing off Newfoundland and elsewhere in the North Atlantic. The growing conflict between the colonies and Great Britain intensified, and it caused considerable consternation and divided loyalties for the North American Quaker community, particularly the Nantucket Quaker-whalers,

16  Edward Starbuck, who came from Derbyshire, had purchased 5 percent of the island from Saskan, an Indian chief. Among the settlers were members of the Barney, Coleman, Gayer, Hussey, and Mayhew families, all of whom had some experience of whaling. See Douglas William Trider, The History of the Dartmouth Quakers (Nova Scotia, 1985), pp. 8–13. 17  It is suggested that before the war more than 53,000 barrels of whale oil was brought into the American ports. See Eric J. Dolin, Leviathan: the History of Whaling in America (London and New York, 2007), p. 171. 18  They fished for the most part around the South American coast to the Falklands, along the west coast of Africa, and to the Cape of Good Hope. For details of the activities of the Nantucket whalers, see Obed Macy, The History of Nantucket (Boston, MA, 1835), pp. 35–40; Daniel Vickers, ‘The First Whalemen of Nantucket,’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 40 (1983) pp. 560–83, and his ‘Nantucket Whalemen in the Deep-Sea Fishery: The Changing Anatomy of an Early American Labor Force,’ Journal of American History, 72 (1985): 277–96; Edward Byers, The Nation of Nantucket: Society and Politics in an Early American Commercial Center, 1660–1829 (Boston, MA, 1987); Henry C. Forman, Nantucket (Nantucket, MA, 1966); Nathaniel Philbrick, Away off Shore: Nantucket Island and its People, 1601–1890 (Nantucket, MA, 1994); Robert Leach and Peter Gow, Quaker Nantucket (Nantucket, MA, 1997); Dolin, Leviathan, particularly ch. 8.

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who, as pacifists, were acutely aware of the consequences of war.19 As Benezet had observed, the implications of war, when impartially examined, will be found big, not only with outward and temporal distress, but also with an evil that extends itself even into the regions of eternity. That property is confounded, scattered and destroyed; that laws are trampled under foot, government despised, and the ties of all civil and domestic order broken into pieces; that fruitful countries are made deserts, and stately cities a heap of ruins; that matrons and virgins are violated; and neither the innocence of unoffending infancy, nor the impotence of decrepit age, afford protection from the rage and thirst for blood; this is but the mortal progeny of this teeming womb of mischief.20 The majority of the Nantucket Quakers would have recognized and upheld these sentiments, and were thereby unwilling to declare their support for the American or British cause. As William Rotch, Sr. noted later in his memoirs, the only line of conduct to be pursued by us, the Inhabitants of the Island of Nantucket was to take no part in the contest, and to endeavor to give no occasion of offence to either of the contending Powers.21 19  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 5–9; Dolin, Leviathan, pp. 177–80. For further details of the economic impact of the conflict, trade negotiations, and post-war treaties, see Patrick Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade, 1689–1815 (Folkstone, 1977); Richard Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Peace and the Peacemakers: the Treaty of 1783 (Charlottesville, VA, 1986); Mary M. Schweitzer, ‘The Economic and Demographic Consequences of the American Revolution,’ eds. Jack Greene and Jack Pole, Companion to the American Revolution (Oxford, 2000), pp. 559–80; Andrew Stockley, Britain and France at the Birth of America: the European Powers and the Peace Negotiations of 1782–1783 (Exeter, 2011); David Armitage, “The American Revolution in Atlantic Perspective,” eds. Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 1450–1850 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 516–32; Richard Middleton, The War of American Independence, 1775–1783 (London, 2012), especially pp. 90–96, 314–15. 20  Anthony Benezet, Serious Considerations on Several Important Subjects; viz. On War and its Inconsistency with the Gospel; Observations on Slavery. And Remarks on the Nature and Bad Effects of Spirituous Liquors . . . (Philadelphia, PA, 1778), p. 8. See also his earlier publication, Thoughts on the Nature of War, and its Repugnancy to the Christian Life . . . (Philadelphia, PA, 1766), while David L. Crosby’s contribution to this volume outlines Benezet’s attitude to the peace testimony. 21  His memoirs also noted his refusal to hand over bayonets that he had in his possession; instead he threw them into the sea. Summoned before the Provincial Congress in August 1775, he explained that his pacifist principles would not allow them to be used. See William

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Subsequently they had their vessels and goods seized by both sides. There were considerable misgivings expressed by members of the Provincial Congress that the Nantucketers were secretly supplying the British with oil and other goods, particularly as the Restraining Act expressly exempted the Nantucketers. In May 1775 the Continental Congress imposed its own trade sanctions on the islanders.22 For Rotch, who was deputed to act as a go-between for the whalers, the Americans, and the British, there was a serious risk that his and other Nantucket businesses might collapse. They petitioned the Provincial Congress in July, reiterated their pacifist credentials, and refuted allegations that they had been supplying the British but hoped for reconciliation between the combatants.23 Additional restrictions were nevertheless placed on the whalemen by the General Court of Massachusetts in August 1775, which meant that they had to seek permission to set sail, supply a bond of £2000, and agree to offload their cargoes at ports other than Boston and Nantucket.24 Rotch agreed to these terms, but this was not without danger because several of his ships were quickly seized by the British navy. Rotch pleaded for their release, citing that the fleet would be “considered British or not American” and that he would supply the British with whale products. His granddaughter, Eliza Rotch Farrar, later recalled that his life was often in jeopardy; but his courage and presence of mind were always equal to the occasion, and he saved the island from utter devastation, though not from heavy losses of property. Two hundred vessels were captured by the English, and he lost to the amount of sixty thousand dollars.25 For other Nantucketers the situation was equally perilous and there seemed no way out of their precarious situation. Jonathan Jenkins summed this up when

Rotch, Sr., Memorandum Written by William Rotch in the Eightieth Year of his Age (Boston, MA and New York, NY, 1916), pp. 1–5. See also Jeanne-Henriette Louis, “Separation from the World as a Source of Creativity, then of Sterility, for Nantucket Quakers in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” ed. Jeanne-Henriette Louis, Separation from the World for American Peace Churches: Asset or Handicap (York, 1997), pp. 12–13. 22  Edward Byers, The Nation of Nantucket (Boston, MA, 1987), p. 203; Dolin, Leviathan, pp. 182–84. 23  Alexander Starbuck, “Nantucket in the Revolution,” Nantucket Inquirer, July 18, 1874, and noted in Dolin, Leviathan, p. 184. 24  Details are provided in Dolin, Leviathan, p. 187. 25  Mrs John Farrar (Eliza Ware Rotch Farrar), Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston, MA, 1865), pp. 1–2.

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he admitted in the fall of 1775 that they had to consider abandoning the island as “we are in no way capable of defending ourselves.”26 As Eliza observed, the inhabitants of Nantucket found themselves in a ruinous condition; their commerce and their fishery were destroyed, and many left the island to seek their fortunes on the mainland; others preferred to continue in the whale-fishery if they could find a place where it could be pursued to advantage.27 In April 1779 the Quaker community, unable to make a living, sent a deputation to plead their case before Commodore Sir George Collier, commander of the navy, and Sir Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British army, in New York.28 They were initially successful and the British representatives allowed the Nantucketers to carry on with future voyages without being subjected to “molesting, ravaging or plundering.” Their independent actions were nevertheless condemned by Gen. Horatio Gates, the commander of the American forces in New England, who criticized their negotiations with the enemy as “traitorous,” and this was followed by the impeachment of four Friends, including Rotch, Sr.29 The General Court of Massachusetts thereafter imposed further restrictions on the Nantucketers,30 while the occupation of the island and 26  Jonathan Jenkins to Dr Nathaniel Freeman, September 1, 1775, and cited in William Bell Clark, ed., Naval Documents of the Revolution, vol. 3: 1775–1776 (Washington, DC, 1968), pp. 1283–84. This is also partially quoted in Dolin, Leviathan, p. 185. 27  Farrar, Recollections of Seventy Years, p. 2. Other details are provided in Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 1–14; Trider, The History of the Dartmouth Quakers, pp. 14–27; Dolin, Leviathan, pp. 187–93. 28  Nantucket Historical Association Library Collection (NHA), MS. 278, folder 3. Letter from Batchelor Hussey, Nantucket, to Sir Henry Clinton, New York, 12 April 1779. See also Pembrokeshire Record Office, Haverfordwest (PROH), D/BT/51; Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 14–25. 29  Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 16–17, 82–9 (copy of Thomas Jenkins’ Complaint). For more information about Rotch and his family, see Joseph L. McDevitt, “The House of Rotch: Whaling Merchants of Massachusetts, 1734–1828,” unpublished PhD thesis (The Ameri­ can University, 1978); Barbara Kathleen Wittman, “A Community of Letters: a Quaker Woman’s Correspondence and the Making of the American Frontier, 1791–1824,” unpublished PhD thesis (University of Akron, OH, August 2008). For late-18th- and 19th-century records concerning William Rotch, Sr., see Sturgis Library, Barnstable, MA. Henry Crocker Kittredge Collection. MS. 4 (William Rotch Papers). This includes correspondence, shipping papers, and accounts books, 1793–1833. 30  This is fully discussed in Macy, The History of Nantucket, pp. 92–105. See also Office of the Town Clerk, Nantucket Town and County Building, Nantucket Town Meeting Records, July 7, 1779; Dolin, Leviathan, pp. 187–92.

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the looting of the Quakers’ oil supplies and other goods continued. One Friend, William Hussey, lost £350 worth of produce, and the Quakers were once again suffering maltreatment because of their long-held convictions against warfare. Between 1779 and 1783, in spite of several appeals to the American authorities explaining their religious principles,31 they continued to endure adversity. It is, however, not surprising that they received little response because although the Quakers professed neutrality, they had supplied the British navy with oil at Sherborn at a time when all other ports were closed to them. It ought to be pointed out here that the Friends saw a distinction between assisting the war effort by supplying weaponry, and selling oil to anyone who would buy it, which in their opinion was an economic necessity for the survival of their community. Nevertheless, in 1780, when captured by the French navy on board a ship which bore a British flag, Timothy Folger refused to give assurances of his loyalty to America. Furthermore, he asserted that he was prepared to suffer further indignities and deprivation.32 One Nantucketer commented a year earlier that many of the whalers had relocated to the London fisheries to find work, and this had a very noticeable effect on the town of Sherborn, which was described as “a deserted village rather than a flourishing seaport.”33 By 1783 the Nantucket Quaker community was facing ruin as the once thriving whale fleet of nearly 150 ships was reduced to fewer than thirty,34 yet they continued to ply their trade. Moreover, on 6 February 1783 the Nantucketregistered Bedford whaleship became the first American ship to enter a British port, and, as Eric Dolin has argued, the Nantucketers believed that “commercial connections with Great Britain, so vibrant and lucrative before the war, could be revived and perhaps even strengthened now that the war was over.”35 The distress of the Nantucketers continued in spite of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally ended the war between Great Britain and America. There was a prevailing belief that the British could expand their own whaling fleet, and consequently the government classified the Quaker-whalers as foreign traders and their cargo as taxable. Subsequently they placed an £18.3s. per ton import tariff on Nantucket oil which, along with increased competition in whaling, 31  For example, see PROH, D/BT/53. Printed representation on behalf of the Quakers to the President and Executive Council, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania and others . . ., December 6, 1781. 32  Thomas M. Rees, A History of the Quakers in Wales and their Emigration to North America (Carmarthen, 1925), p. 265. 33  Macy, The History of Nantucket, p. 120. 34  Macy, The History of Nantucket, p. 122. See also Dolin, Leviathan, p. 448 n. 45. 35   Gentleman’s Magazine 53 (1783): 173; Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 10–12.

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particularly from the London Southern Whale Fisheries,36 and a glut in the sperm oil market, crippled their already ailing economy, both on and offshore.37 As Barbara Wittman has observed, Britain’s determination to regain its dominant position in trade and the willingness of its merchants to extend easy credit exacerbated the flight . . . abroad, draining the new nation of hard currency (gold and silver). Without manufactured produce or surplus of agricultural goods, hard currency all but disappeared . . . forcing cash strapped merchants to barter for goods and services or pay their employees in commodities.38 The divisiveness of the war between Great Britain and America had led to a separate community developing 100 miles north of the Hudson River. In the summer of 1783, eighteen Nantucketers who remained patriotic to America (the “Continental faction”) purchased land at Claverack (later renamed “Hudson”).39 Here they successfully practiced their trade until the early years of the 19th century. Their efforts can be contrasted to other Nantucketers whose “primary motive was not to America but to their business interests.”40 Indeed, as they saw it, to survive they had to sell oil and could ill afford the luxury of time to explore their political status. Although the whalers received no assistance from the General Court of Massachusetts in an appeal for a state of neutrality,41 John Parr, the Governor of Nova Scotia, who had recognized the importance of the whale industry, offered the Nantucketers a lifeline. In the summer of 1785, these “loyalist” Quaker-whalers petitioned Parr to settle in Nova Scotia and he invited them to establish a new base at Dartmouth,42 accept British citizenship, and obtain a

36  Led by Samuel Enderby in 1776, who sent a fleet to the southern oceans. 37  See National Archives, P[rivy] C[ouncil] 2/131, p. 258. This is further discussed in Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 1–2, 4, 13; Dolin, Leviathan, pp. 199–201. 38  Wittman, “A Community of Letters,” p. 36. 39  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 29–31; Dolin, Leviathan, p. 203. 40  Dolin, Leviathan, p. 203. 41  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 27–8. 42  For a wider treatment of the Loyalists, see Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, The Loyalist Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era (Toronto, 2011); Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York, NY, 2011); Edward Larkin, “Loyalism,’ The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, eds. Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky (Oxford, 2013), pp. 291–310.

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reduction in import tax.43 More than forty families took advantage of the offer.44 In recognition of their personal sacrifices, Timothy Folger, Samuel Starbuck, and their wives were given a £169 pension each by the Nova Scotia Assembly, while a further sum of £1500 was distributed among the other Quaker families. By 1786 there were 164 settlers, 150 whalemen, and 6 ships.45 In spite of considerable opposition from London merchants, great efforts were made to induce the Nantucketers to look at Milford Haven as a possible base for their whaling activities.46 Apart from the natural harbour, Milford would hardly have enticed businessmen to develop a new commercial venture and establish a town. So why did the Quakers settle there? The credit for attracting the Nantucketers to Wales must go largely to two men, Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803)47 and Sir Charles Greville (1749–1809), the member of parliament for Warwick who had held various senior posts, including Lord of Trade (c.1774–80), Lord of Admiralty (c.1780–82), and Treasurer of the Household in the coalition government of 1783.48 Both men saw the potential for a large port, and made great efforts to secure government approval and investment for the building of a town and new port. Quakers, such as Thomas Owen who wrote from Waterford to the American whalers, also assisted these two men in their endeavors to persuade the Friends to settle at Milford. Owen wrote:

43  They were to pay 15s. per ton compared with the previous £18.3d. For details of the negotiations, see Trider, The History of the Dartmouth Quakers, pp. 28–33. 44  For a description of the passage to Dartmouth, see NHA, MS. 335, folder 487 (Edouard A. Stackpole Papers). A copy of a letter from Daniel Starbuck to Daniel Howland, Nantucket, February 1, 1786. See also Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 32–35. 45  Trider, The History of the Dartmouth Quakers, ch. 4–7. 46  Details are provided in Ken McKay, A Vision of Greatness: the History of Milford Haven 1790–1990 (Haverfordwest, 1989); Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 21–6, 197–226; Richard C. Allen, “Nantucket Quakers and the Milford Haven Whaling Industry, c.1791– 1821,” Quaker Studies 15:1 (September 2010): 6–31. For useful comparisons, see Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea (London, 2000); Tony Barrow, The Whaling Trade of NorthEast England (Sunderland, 2001); Dolin, Leviathan; and for a wider study of Quakerism in Wales, see Richard C. Allen, Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: from Resistance to Respectability (Cardiff, 2007). 47  For Hamilton’s life and career, see A. Brian Fothergill, Sir William Hamilton Envoy Extraordinary (London, 1969); David Constantine, Fields of Fire: a Life of Sir William Hamilton (London, 2001). 48  The second son of Francis, the Earl of Warwick. A brief biography is provided in Michael P. Cooper, “Greville, Charles Francis (1749–1809),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004); online edn, Jan 2007, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40496, accessed January 2014.

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Meeting of Friends. A small one in Haverfordwest People of Pembrokeshire rather comfortable in themselves, civil to strangers and hospitable in their houses having little or no propensity to trade farther than the verge of their respective farms; coal mines, slate or limestone quarry, great number of hardy watermen employed at herring fishing carrying lime coal and culm round the coast dragging for oisters etc. wages small. Manufactory stockings coarse and fine all yarn made of wool made in the Country, great quantity of coarse woollen Cloth made in a neighbouring County Merioneth sent to the London Market undyed for clothing the Army, use of Slobb Shops etc. etc. Centrical situation of Milford Haven, about 18 hours sail to Bristol, same to Cork and Dublin, 10 to Waterford and about 24 to Liverpool. The first mentioned but more especially the last carry on a very extensive trade to the interior parts of the kingdom by the long rivers and canells, great advantage arising by getting to her mooring immediately from the sea . . . its also well worth observing the contiguity of Milford with Ireland where the Newfoundland Fishermen come from all parts of Eng­land to victual or man. Disadvantages. Little or no oil. Bone etc. can be disposed of in Milford Haven.49

Negotiations

Throughout the 1780s, Greville had promoted the Quaker-whalers’ cause with the Board of Trade, arguing that the trade in rice, tobacco, timber, and tar could be extended with the building of a new port.50 He was nevertheless thwarted in his initial efforts. In his correspondence with the London Whaling Merchants there were signs of earlier frustration with members of the Board. In 1785 the Board had blocked an earlier approach made to William Rotch, Sr. who had suggested that he could bring thirty manned whaling ships, craftsmen and their families to a British port.51 Greville suggested that Charles Jenkinson (Lord Hawkesbury),52 Samuel Enderby, and other members of the 49  Flora Thomas, The Builders of Milford (Haverfordwest, 1920), p. 17. 50  National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, MS. 14005C. 51  Rotch, Memorandum, p. 43. For fuller details of the attempts to settle, see Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 15–21, 37–58. 52  The Head of the Board of Trade.

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Board, had “tended to limit the liberality and justice of this country to the Nantucketeers . . . [and] . . . deprived me of a chance of settling Mr Rotch and his family at Milford.”53 One reason for the prevarication of the government was the anxiety of London merchants who acted as defenders of British maritime trade, and had lobbied the Board.54 Furthermore, it is worth considering the initial resentment of the authorities in Nova Scotia to any proposed relocation of the whaling industry. The Governor and Speaker of the House of Assembly complained bitterly to the provincial agent in London that such an action would be a “fatal blow, aimed against the Province and if pursued will be universally considered as an Act of highest injustice.”55 Their attitude changed once they realized that the weight of the London merchants was behind the Milford venture, and thus the Colonial Whale Fishery would not be able to compete.56 During the American Revolution and after the Peace of Paris, Rotch had sought to preserve the spiritual and financial integrity of the Quaker community at Nantucket.57 This is indicated in two letters. The first to his son Thomas, written in London in February 1785, suggested that he needed to be careful in all business dealings and to “keep out of all unprofitable company.”58 The second, written to his son William, and son-in-law Samuel Rodman, on November 2, 1785, noted that his intention to secure the neutrality of the Nantucket whalers under the protective arm of the British mercantile fleet may well have led to the long-term prosperity of the islanders, but the perception of the Nantucket Quaker-whalers as American citizens led to their exclusion.59 By 1786, because of the war and the impositions of the American courts, Rotch and his family faced ruin. He had lost $60,000 during the conflict and had appealed to the British government at the time for help. In the previous November he had had an interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, and in 1786 he had two meetings with Hawkesbury but failed to gain a quick response 53  Letter to London merchants, July 7, 1792, and cited in McKay, A Vision of Greatness, p. 35. 54  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 59–89. 55  Cited in Trider, The History of the Dartmouth Quakers (Nova Scotia, 1985), p. 97. 56  Thomas, The Builders of Milford, pp. 15–16. 57  Rotch was influential as a successful merchant and also sitting on the New England Meeting for Sufferings. Between 1775 and 1776, along with other Friends, he dispensed funds for the relief of Quakers and non-Quakers, as well as to those Nantucket Friends who were given assistance until 1783. For details, see McDevitt, “The House of Rotch,” 65–76. 58  William Rotch, Sr. letter to Thomas Rotch, 08/02/1785. Massillon Public Library, Massillon, OH (MPL), Box B-163-1. The Rotch correspondence is also available online at http://www .massillonmemory.org/cocoon/kendal/rotch-wales.xml, accessed December 2013. 59  The letter is provided in John M. Bullard’s The Rotches (Milford, NH, 1847), pp. 209–21.

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or reasonable terms for settlement.60 A third meeting was arranged but, with his patience exhausted, Rotch declined the offer. In September he was again approached by the government, and the Treasury Secretary informed him that the Prime Minister accepted that he could specify his “own terms”.61 At this time the Nantucket Quakers had been invited to establish their business in Dunkerque by François Coffyn.62 Rotch later wrote: I told him [George Rose, one of William Pitt’s secretaries] it was too late—“I made my very moderate proposals to you, but could not obtain anything worth my notice—I went to France, sent forward my proposals, which were doubly advantageous to what I had offered your Government—They considered them but a short time, and on my arrival in Paris were ready to act. I had separate interviews with all the Ministers of State necessary to the subject (five in number) who all agreed to and granted my demands. This was effected in five hours, when I waited to be called by your Privy Council more than four months.”63 In all, nine families and thirty-three people emigrated to Dunkerque,64 and in 1787, Rotch sent his son Benjamin to “superintend” the business there, while he 60   Further details of Rotch’s negotiations in England and France between 1785 and 1786 are available at NHA, MS. 144 (Starbuck Family Papers), folder 23. See also Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 38–45; Farrar, Recollections of Seventy Years, pp. 3–6; Jeanne-Henriette Louis, “La révolution atlantique en contre-point,” Confluences (Bulletin du Centre d’études des origines de la modernité dans les pays anglo-saxons, Université de Paris X), IV (1991): 41–49. 61  Rotch, Memorandum, p. 50. 62   N HA, MS. 335, folder 935. A copy of a letter from Coffyn to Shubael Gardner, Dunkerque, March 10, 1786. Later proclamations (c.September 1790–July 1791) from the French Revolutionary Government guaranteed assistance to the Nantucket whalemen. See NHA, MS. 366, folders 4 and 5. Proclamation du roi, Sur le décret de l’Assemblée Nationale du 16 septembre 1790, portent que la créance des Nantuckois sera exceptée de l’arrière. Du 21 septembre 1790. Paris; Loi Relative aux Nantucquois établis en France, & à ceux qui désiroient y venir dans la suite . . . le 25 juillet 1791. Paris.  These negotiations are discussed further in Farrar, Recollections of Seventy Years, pp. 7–20; Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 97–104, 108; Ken McKay, The Rotches of Castle Hall (Milford Haven, 1996), pp. 33–42. 63  Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 50–1. For details of the negotiations, see pp. 45–48. 64  See “Jefferson’s Memoranda Concerning the American, British, and French Fisheries,” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville, VA, 2008), http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-14-020064-0003, accessed 12 February 2013. See also “Lafayette’s Inquiries of Francis Rotch,” Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Oberg and Looney, http://rotunda.upress

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returned to New Bedford. This activity and the formalizing of agreements with the French government helped to salvage the Nantucket industry and slow the pace of migration. This is indicated by the increase in the number of vessels registered by “Les Nantuckois”—from two in 1786 to twenty by 1789, and which would steadily grow thereafter.65 Thomas Jefferson’s Observations on the Whale-Fishery published in 1788, a series of letters written between 1788 and 1791, and William Rotch, Sr.’s later recollections of these events, which have already been alluded to, provide ­further insights into the protracted, and often fractious, negotiations between the British, French, and American governments and the Nantucketers during the 1780s. Moreover, this evidence throws considerable light on the arrêt of September 28, 1788, in which the French government sought to prohibit the importation of foreign oil, and the efforts of Jefferson to have this withdrawn.66 In his Observations, although drawn together quickly, Jefferson had certainly been methodical in accumulating information regarding the whaling industry,67 while his notes on natural history, private conservations, correspondence with leading merchants and other specialists, and travel journals reflect the delicate nature of the meetings between the representatives vying for the lucrative business of the Nantucket whalers and the determination to understand (and to maximize) their commercial instincts. Jefferson also referred to earlier notes he had made in 1775 when the Nantucketers were the subject of scrutiny before the House of Commons as well as to the assessments of the French controller

.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-14-02-0064-0004, accessed 12 February 2013, where in the late 1780s Francis Rotch indicated that the migration of the Nantucketers would depend on “actual advantages of a good system, and the direction of good guides they might be conducted to France.” 65  In his examination of Francis Rotch c.1788–9, Lafayette provided more detail about the nature of these vessels, who they belonged to, and where they were sailing. See “Lafayette’s Inquiries of Francis Rotch”; Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 110–11. 66  For brief details of this period and diplomatic negotiations, see Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Bloomington, IN; London, 1961); Peter P. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic: 1783–1793 (Philadelphia, PA, 1988), particularly pp. 76–78. 67  This is fully outlined in “Jefferson’s Memoranda Concerning the American, British, and French Fisheries,” and further developed in his “Report on the American Fisheries by the Secretary of State,” February 1, 1791, and quoted in full in Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Oberg and Looney, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-19 -02-0013-0014, accessed 12 February 2013.

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general.68 Significant in his assessments were the views of the “Les Nantuckois” of Dunkerque, particularly those of the Rotch family, which he had become aware of.69 As strong supporters of the September 1788 arrêt, the Rotches and Count de la Luzerne, minister of marine, had not supplied the information willingly, and Jefferson was deeply suspicious of the intentions of Benjamin Rotch and Luzerne. The limited number of copies of Observations also reflects Jefferson’s desire that this document was to be circulated privately among the French ministers and trusted American officials. Indeed, these were “precisely aimed missiles, and the targets were much more extensive than the mere question of tariffs affecting whale oils and the number of vessels profitably engaged in the whale fishery.” The intention, apart from the commercial nature of this undertaking, was to increase the presence of the Americans as a naval force. The arrêt of 7 December 1788, limiting tobacco and whale oil exports to French and American vessels, seemed to justify this as Jefferson noted that this would substantially delimit the number of British seamen (approximately 2000 fewer) and correspondingly strengthen the French and American seafarers by the same number. It was suggested that this would ultimately result in 100 fewer British whale vessels in the short term and probably 150 in the course of the next few years.70 In his Observations, Jefferson was clearly weighing up the power struggles in Europe, and, despite the professed neutrality of the Americans in the political machinations of the European powers, he “endeavoured to throw the whale fishery into the scales on the side of the French.”71 But what of the Quakerwhalers? It is evident that their intention was to maximize the profits from extracting whale oil and selling it on. It has been argued that the whale fishery was certainly not “burdened with political philosophies and presuppositions 68  The examination of Seth Jenkins before the House of Commons, 1775, is referred to in Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 5–6. See also “Documents Concerning the Whale Fishery. Editorial Note,” Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Oberg and Looney, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-14-02-0064-0003, accessed February 12, 2013.They also note that Jefferson conducted “controlled experiments“ intended “determine the luminosity, viscosity, and other properties of whale oils of various kinds.” 69  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 108–9, and particularly pp. 133–4, where he discusses Jefferson’s reactions to the arrêt. 70  This is discussed fully in “Documents Concerning the Whale Fishery. Editorial Note.” See also Eliga H. Gould, “The Empire that Britain Kept,’ Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, eds. Gray and Kamensky, pp. 470–71. The arrêt is also discussed in Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, p. 113. 71  “Documents Concerning the Whale Fishery. Editorial Note.”

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about the ideas of liberty” and could register its vessels under various national flags of convenience. These sentiments were in sharp contrast to the views held by Jefferson, and consequently the whalers were able to tolerate with amiable indifference the theoretical absolutism of France, the constitutional monarchism of England, or the nascent republicanism of America. It could embrace one after the other, or simultaneously, as and when the doing so served to promote the one dominant purpose of taking fortunes from the sea. The American whale fishery was conducted by a clannish, inter-related, resourceful, self-reliant, competitive people who were single-minded in their pursuit of the whale. The Rotches, the Starbucks, the Coffins, and others who engaged in the whale fishery were a sort of Atlantic cartel, devoted to commerce and rising above the political storms of the day.72 Indeed, in a much later letter to Horatio Gates Spafford on March 17, 1817, Jefferson wrote that these merchants had no country: “the mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”73 Yet, as explained earlier, the Quaker-whalers, with their pacifist sentiments, had been severely punished for the neutral position they held during the American Revolution. They were merchants with a conscience, but that conscience did not mean that they would willingly sacrifice any commercial advantage for the sake of a new political entity. At a conference held in Paris in November 1788 between various French ministers, including the marquis de Lafayette and Jefferson, as well as Benjamin Rotch, who had been invited to attend, it is clear that there was disagreement, particularly as Jefferson believed that Benjamin, and the Rotch family more generally, had sought to undermine American interests in favor of the Nantucketers. Jefferson wrote to John Jay, American Secretary of Foreign Affairs, that he had attempted to persuade Necker, the French Director-General of Finance, of the consequences of supporting the Nantucketers who had provided “partial information”.74 William Rotch, Sr. strongly denied these allegations, suggesting that Benjamin had attempted to secure duty-free American

72  “Documents Concerning the Whale Fishery. Editorial Note.” 73  “Documents Concerning the Whale Fishery. Editorial Note.” 74  Jefferson to Jay, Paris, November 19, 1788, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd (Princeton, NJ, 1958), p. 213. These events are further discussed in Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 134–35.

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oil, but de la Luzerne had “dashed out” this clause in the petition.75 The situation remained unresolved. In a letter to Jefferson in August 1790 from Joseph Fenwick (1762–1849), formerly a Maryland wine merchant but then acting as the United States Consul to France (1790–1801), this sentiment was further exemplified: Now from the manner in which that Company carry’s on the business, it is obvious (at least to me) that the expected advantages cannot result from it to the French nation. If they go on to give that company the exclusive right of supplying oil, it will tend to enhanse the price not only to the loss of the nation, but to the great injury of the commerce of these States . . . The profits of the business will centre in this Country as all the friends and connexions of the Company live here and they themselves mean no doubt ultimately to return. In this point of view it will prove injurious to this Country only as a monopoly.76 Jefferson thereby sought to influence the French minister with a “secret” petition, but this was covertly relayed to Benjamin’s lodgings, possibly with the intention of causing a further rift between the Rotch family and the American government. The petition was nevertheless quickly dropped.77 What is clear at this point is the high level of intrigue in the French court, the attempts by Jefferson to overturn the favorable conditions afforded only to the Nantucketers, the desire of the British to lure these whalers to their shores, and the Rotch family trying to maintain their privileges and uphold their principles at Dunkerque. William Rotch joined the émigrés in September 1790 along with his wife, two daughters, daughter-in-law, and grandchild.78 While in France he tried to persuade the French revolutionary government to avoid entanglement in any future conflict between Great Britain and the United States, and also to uphold the protection afforded to the Nantuketers. Moreover, on February 10, 1791, William and Benjamin, along with Jean de Marcillac, a member of the

75  William Rotch to Samuel Rodman, Dunkerque, October 12, 1790, and cited in Bullard, The Rotches, pp. 230–31. 76  Joseph Fenwick to Thomas Jefferson, Portland, Maine, August 2, 1790, and provided in Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Oberg and Looney, http://rotunda.upress .virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-17-02-0066, accessed 12 February 2013. 77  Rotch to Rodman, October 12, 1790; Bullard, Rotches, pp. 230–32. 78  Rotch, Memorandum, p. 52.

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Couflaïres (French Quakers) at Congénies,79 lobbied the Assemblée Nationale to avoid war with the British at all costs.80 Prior to the submission of the Quaker petition, de Marcillac had already established relations with the Girondins and with other interested parties, most notably Michel Guillaume Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813).81 The petition reiterated the Friends’ standpoint on the use of violence, suggesting to the Assemblée that you have decreed never to defile your hands with blood in pursuit of conquest. This measure brings you—it brings the whole world—a step closer towards universal peace . . . You cannot therefore behold with an unfriendly eye men who accelerate it by their example.82 By the summer of 1791, William Rotch, Sr. had written to his son Thomas that he was hoping to return to America as soon as possible,83 and in early 1792 he expressed his fears about becoming entangled in another revolution: I never expected to be in the midst of another revolution . . . if things should continue in this agitated state, & the Government too weak to prevent lawless intrusion, I hope we shall opportunity to shift our quarters to some place of tranquillity.84

79  For details of the history of the French Quakers, see Henry van Etten, Chronique de la vie Quaker franc̜aise de 1750 à 1938: ouvrage orné de quarante-trois illustrations (Société Religieuse des Amis (Quakers), Paris, 1938); Pierre Poivre, “Congénies en Vaunage, Notes pour servir à l’histoire des quakers de Congénies,” Bulletin du Comité d’étude et de sauvegarde du patrimoine de Congénies 2 (1975): 45–52, 3 (1976), 55–72; Jeanne-Henriette Louis, La Société Religieuse des Amis (Quakers) (Turnhout, 2005). 80   This was, of course, a sentiment that echoed Benezet’s earlier pronouncements about the effects of war on 18th-century society, and that of many Friends before and after. See Anthony Benezet, The Plainness and Innocent Simplicity of the Christian Religion . . . Compared to the Corrupting Nature and Dreadful Effects of War (Philadelphia, PA, 1783). 81  For details of Marcillac’s connection, see Norman Penney, “Life and Letters of Jean de Marsillac,” Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society 16:1 (1919): 18–19. 82   The Respectful Petition of the Christian Society of Friends Called Quakers, 1791. See Rotch, Memorandum, pp. 52–9, 70–77, 78–81 for the favorable reply of President Mirabeau; Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, pp. 163–68. 83   M PL, B-163-16. William Rotch, Sr. to Thomas Rotch, London, 6 mo 18th 1791. 84  William Rotch, Sr. to Samuel Rodman, February, 18 1792, and cited in Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, p. 170.

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He was nevertheless still there in September 1792, but once again described the unsafe conditions: the Stream of Blood that lately has been opend; dreadfull indeed in the Extremes; as the National convention meets about this time, I wish they may strike out some mode to restore the Nation from its present agitated State, and the cool deliberation may take place to produce ­tranquillity . . . we are at present quiet here, and have no reason to expect this place will be besieg’d, unless the City of Lil[l]e (about 48 miles from us) which is very strong, should be attackd & taken; it is not yet invaded, though there are apprehentions for its safety; if that should be subdued, its not improbable but we may have a visit, if it should be the case its likely we may remove, but we are unwilling to flee without real danger . . . at present I believe [our] family are favour’d with a degree of calmness, that I hope will not desert us.85 In early 1793 he had left Dunkerque for England, but expressed severe doubts about the continuation of the whaling business while Great Britain was at war with France.86 With more favorable conditions in America, Rotch eventually returned once more to Nantucket in 1794 and spent the remaining years of his life at New Bedford.87 This is not surprising because New Bedford, which had been burned down in 1778, had been rebuilt and by 1794 it was full of activity as the major whaling port of New England. The Rotch family were central to its success and by the turn of the 19th century they clearly owned many whaling vessels, associated properties, banks, and vast areas of land.88 The actions taken by Anthony Benezet and his promotion of civil liberties for slaves and pacifism were clearly important in the development of the modern world, while the activities of the Nantucket Quaker-whalers, who in their efforts to secure their trade became entangled in the revolutionary upheavals of the late 18th century, indicates the level to which the Friends were ­determined 85   M PL, B-163-22. William Rotch, Sr. to Thomas Rotch, Dunkerque, 9 mo 30th 1792. 86   M PL, B-164-24. William Rotch, Sr. to Thomas Rotch, London, 2nd mo 26th 1793; B-163-25. William Rotch, Sr. to Thomas Rotch, Bristol, 6mo 27th 1793; B-163-26. William Rotch, Sr. to Thomas Rotch, London, 9th mo 7th 1793. 87  Rotch, Memorandum, pp. vii–viii. 88  Wittman, “A community of letters,” p. 96. She points out that in 1800 there were only a limited number of people in New Bedford who paid more than $10 in taxes, and yet William Rotch, Sr. paid $552.50, William Rotch, Jr. $778, and Thomas Rotch $402. Moreover, William Rotch, Sr. and William Rotch, Jr. had a net worth of approximately $100,000 each.

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to uphold their values in unsettled times. Significantly, the measures they put in place, notably relocating their mercantile business to European ports, demonstrates their willingness to negotiate the realpolitik of the period and not, as is often suggested, to shun the world and its shortcomings. Much of the credit for their endeavor was down to the sheer determination of the Rotches and other Nantucket families to rise above the political intrigues of European ministers and American representatives. Moreover, William Rotch, Sr.’s plan to relocate to Dunkerque was a progressive vision for international trade. As such, he considered the peaceable Nantucket whaling industry as “a world public utility . . . and held that it should not be the prerogative of any one nation.”89 89  Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, p. 106.

Part 3 Benezet’s Writings from an Atlantic Perspective

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Chapter 8

Anthony Benezet as Intermediary between the Transatlantic and Provincial: New Jersey’s Antislavery Campaign on the Eve of the American Revolution Jonathan D. Sassi On May 10, 1774, Samuel Allinson of Burlington, New Jersey, wrote to introduce himself to Granville Sharp of London, England, and enclosed a couple of pamphlets with his letter. Allinson was one of his colony’s most prominent attorneys and clerk of the Burlington Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends, and he may have felt somewhat awkward in writing to Sharp, a leading figure in England’s nascent antislavery movement. Allinson had some explaining to do because one of the pamphlets that he sent, An Essay on Slavery, Proving from Scripture its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion, had been written by Sharp but published without Sharp’s knowledge. “I hope thou wilt not be displeased at the Liberty I took with this piece,” Allinson wrote to Sharp, “as my sole Motive was to advance the benevolent intention of its author, and I had A. Benezet[’]s permission for my Justification.” Sharp had originally sent his manuscript to Benezet, the Philadelphia Quaker and pioneering antislavery activist, who then shared it with Allinson. The latter penned a long preface to Sharp’s essay and arranged with the Burlington printer Isaac Collins to publish the twenty-eight page pamphlet in late 1773. Allinson had gone ahead and published it without first consulting Sharp, “in order to help the cause it was designed to aid, and promote a bill which was then likely to & did soon after originate in our [New Jersey] assembly ‘for the more equitable manumission of Slaves’.”1

1  Samuel Allinson to Granville Sharp, May 10, 1774, Haverford, PA, Haverford College Quaker Collection, Allinson Family Papers, box 3, folder 30A; Granville Sharp, An Essay on Slavery, Proving from Scripture its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion; in Answer to a late Publication, Entitled, “The African Trade for Negro Slaves Shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion” (Burlington, NJ, 1773). Joseph J. Felcone notes that the pamphlet was advertised as “Just published” in the Pennsylvania Gazette of

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A second enclosed pamphlet bore the short title of Brief Considerations on Slavery, and the Expediency of its Abolition. Allinson explained that it had been written by his fellow Burlington resident, William Dillwyn, who would also probably be carrying the letter on his impending voyage to England. Both pamphlets, Allinson elaborated, had been “given to our assemblymen with design to recommend the above mentioned bill, and secure its passing into a Law.” The proposed manumission bill, however, had “only obtain’d a place in the Printed Minutes of the House of Representatives, for general Consideration, and we fear will go no further, as many powerful enemies rise up against it thinking it strikes at their interest.” Allinson closed his letter with the hope that the friends of the poor Negroes will equally avoid a Neglect of their cause and an intemperate Zeal for their assistance as both may retard their relief, which is I believe advancing in many places and will be effected by the omnipotent friend of Mankind in due time.2 Allinson’s May 1774 letter to Sharp opens a window onto a moment on the eve of the American Revolution when an extensive antislavery campaign was reaching its peak in New Jersey. It reveals that the effort to change the manumission laws in this one colony concerned leading figures in Philadelphia and London, not just in provincial locales such as Burlington. It connects Allinson, Sharp, Dillwyn, and Benezet, and it suggests the latter’s role as a key intermediary in the transatlantic network of abolitionists. Not only was he an indispensable publicist and intellectual, but he was also, in coordination with his associates, a shrewd political operator. Allinson’s letter, finally, points to the determined opposition that early abolitionists encountered, even as they sought gradual changes to the slave system. To the extent that historians have noted this New Jersey antislavery campaign at all, they have tended to write it off as a relatively minor, predominantly Quaker affair that quickly came to naught.3 Such a characterization, December 22, 1773 (Printing in New Jersey, 1754–1800: a Descriptive Bibliography [Worcester, MA, 2012], p. 62). 2  Allinson to Sharp, May 10, 1774; [William Dillwyn], Brief Considerations on Slavery, and the Expediency of its Abolition. With Some Hints on the Means whereby it may be Gradually Effected. Recommended to the Serious Attention of All, and Especially of Those Entrusted with the Powers of Legislation (Burlington, NJ, 1773). 3  Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: the Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago, IL, 1967), pp. 91–93; Larry R. Gerlach, Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ, 1976), pp. 240–42; James J. Gigantino II, The Ragged

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however, misses the full dimensions of what was a coordinated political campaign of pamphlets, petitions, and lobbying that went beyond the Society of Friends. Moreover, while historians of 18th-century antislavery have recognized its transatlantic scope, at least since the publication of David Brion Davis’s seminal works half a century ago,4 they have not grounded that to activities at the local level. Provincial figures such as Samuel Allinson, however, were in close contact with movement leaders such as Sharp and Benezet, who both shaped the New Jersey campaign and sought to leverage its progress to advance the cause elsewhere. In short, it is no exaggeration to say that New Jersey was at the cutting edge of the transatlantic antislavery movement on the eve of the American Revolution, and this chapter aims to call attention to the intertwining of the provincial and transatlantic levels at which activists waged their struggle. In the end, the American Revolution cut short this first antislavery push in New Jersey, but the campaign left a lasting legacy. Not only did the arguments put forth by opponents and defenders of slavery continue to frame the terms of debate in the state for decades to come, but antislavery activists would extend their paradigmatic strategies of political mobilization and ­coalition-building first deployed in the early 1770s.

Benezet’s Instigation

The idea to wage a campaign against slavery in New Jersey grew out of Anthony Benezet’s efforts to spur action across the British Empire following the 1771 publication of his magnum opus, Some Historical Account of Guinea. In the latter part of that year, Benezet started shipping copies of his book far and wide. As he updated one correspondent in December, “Seven hundred of my Negro Books are gone or engaged, tho’ I have not yet received answers to several parcels sent to different places.”5 He continued to send letters and distribute copies of his book throughout the first half of 1772. First and foremost, Benezet wrote to Quakers in Great Britain and Ireland and urged them to act. He had in the previous decade employed this strategy without results, but nonetheless decided to try again. He wrote “to some of the most weighty of Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775–1865 (Philadelphia, PA, 2015), pp. 24–26. 4  See especially David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, NY, 1966), and Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY, 1975). 5  Anthony Benezet to George Dillwyn, December 23, 1771, in George S. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937), p. 283.

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our Friends in London” and elsewhere in England and Ireland, and implored them “to consider whether it might not be the duty of our Friends, either as a body or some particulars joining,” to call upon the British government to abolish the slave trade.6 He also recommended excerpting abolitionist works in English newspapers so as to raise public awareness. In several of these letters, Benezet mentioned that he had been informed by John Hunt, a Quaker who had recently visited the Chesapeake region, that “ten or twenty thousand people” from Virginia and Maryland “would join in a petition” to parliament against further slave imports, and he sought to build on this seeming groundswell of opposition.7 Some of the recipients of Benezet’s epistles were previously known to him, while others had been suggested by mutual friends. For example, he wrote to Richard Shackleton, a Quaker from Ballitore, Ireland, after he had spoken with Samuel Neale, an Irish Quaker who had recently visited Friends in North America. Neale told Benezet that Shackleton was old friends with Edmund Burke, a member of parliament, and Benezet floated the idea of Burke’s launching a parliamentary inquiry into the slave trade.8 Benezet also reached out beyond the circle of Friends, writing similarly to Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania’s agent in London, and Granville Sharp. Benezet did not know Sharp personally but he had published an excerpt of one of Sharp’s pamphlets with Some Historical Account of Guinea. He summarized his attempts to encourage leading Quakers in Great Britain and Ireland to make “a representation to the King and both Houses of Parliament,” and pleaded with Sharp “that this matter . . . may be weighty with you.” He added deferentially: “The mode of such a representation you may much better judge of than we can pretend to point out.”9 In sum, Anthony Benezet was searching in 1771–72. He was casting about for the right strategy to pursue petitions to the king, parliament, or both; a newspaper publicity campaign; a parliamentary inquiry; or some combina-

6  Anthony Benezet to Benjamin Franklin, April 27, 1772, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 287–88. 7  Anthony Benezet to John and Henry Gurney, January 10, 1772, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 286. 8  Anthony Benezet to Richard Shackleton, June 6, 1772, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 293–96. Likewise, Benezet wrote to the Gurneys with the “encouragement” of Joseph Oxley, another Quaker minister who was traveling with Neale. Both Oxley and the Gurneys hailed from Norwich, England. See Benezet to John and Henry Gurney, January 10, 1772, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 283–84. 9  Anthony Benezet to Granville Sharp, May 14, 1772, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 291–92.

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tion thereof, and he was hoping to find people willing to get involved, be they Quakers or not. Sharp replied to Benezet with the requested strategic counsel, and his response reoriented Benezet’s focus from London back to the colonies. Sharp approved of the idea of a petition drive, but he advised Benezet that the colonial legislatures, rather than the British parliament, were the proper bodies to ban slave imports. “I think our brethren of the Colonies can’t be too much upon their Guard with respect to the dignity & independence of their own assemblies,” he cautioned. Benezet received Sharp’s letter in October 1772 and revised his strategy in light of it. As he explained to Sharp, “upon consulting with some thoughtful people, we agreed, that such Petitions ought first to be made to the respective Assemblies praying they may lay the expediency of preventing any farther trade for Slaves before the King and Parliament.”10 Benezet moved quickly to put this new strategy into effect in Pennsylvania. On January 15, 1773, a petition was presented to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, signed not just by Quakers but by people from a variety of Protestant denominations, requesting that it “would petition the King and Parliament, that an end might be put to that most iniquitous commerce,” the slave trade.11 At the same time, Benezet and his collaborators published a pamphlet by Benjamin Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping. As Benezet explained, Rush’s pamphlet was “written at the time we presented the petition, in order to lay the weight of the matter briefly before the members of the session, and other active members of the government, in this and the neighbouring provinces.”12 The Pennsylvania General Assembly responded by granting Benezet and his fellow abolitionists a partial victory. Rather than addressing the king and parliament as the 10  Granville Sharp to Anthony Benezet, August 21, 1772, Allinson Family Papers, box 10, folder 142; Anthony Benezet to Granville Sharp, March 29, 1773, Am I Not a Man and a Brother: the Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688–1788, ed. Roger Bruns (New York, NY, 1977), p. 266. In a letter to Samuel Allinson dated October 30, 1772, Benezet mentioned his receipt of “a long intelligent letter” from Sharp (see Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 296). For a recent, concise account of the early cooperation between Benezet and Sharp, see Peter Stamatov, The Origins of Global Humanitarianism: Religion, Empires, and Advocacy (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 129–33. 11  Darold D. Wax, “Negro Import Duties in Colonial Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 97 (1973): 37–38; Benezet to Sharp, March 29, 1773, in Bruns, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, p. 263. 12  [Benjamin Rush], An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping (Philadelphia, PA, 1773); Anthony Benezet to John Fothergill, April 28, 1773, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 303.

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­ etitioners had requested, it instead doubled the import duty on slaves, p “which duty,” Benezet judged, “is thought will amount to a tacit prohibition of the trade.”13 This brief and productive drive to cut off slave imports to Pennsylvania served as a prototype for the kind of political action that Benezet hoped to see undertaken in other colonies, including New Jersey. As soon as Rush’s pamphlet came off the press, Benezet sent a dozen copies to Samuel Allinson at Burlington. “I shall be glad,” he wrote to Allinson in January 1773, that these & more of the same may be handed to the Members of Your Assembly, & such others in your Province with whom they may be likely to promote a Representation being made to King and Parliament against the Slave Trade. By April he could inform Virginia Quaker Robert Pleasants that “We expect our neighbours of the Jerseys will also petition their Assembly” to halt imports of slaves from Africa.14 Thus in New Jersey, among other colonies, Benezet had brought to fruition his goal of generating abolitionist politics in the aftermath of the publication of Some Historical Account of Guinea. In New Jersey, Benezet worked with a small coterie of Burlington Friends that included Samuel Allinson and the Dillwyn brothers, George and William. Benezet knew Burlington and its people well. His wife, the former Joyce Marriott, had grown up there, and the couple resided in the city for about nine months in 1766–67. Both Samuel Allinson and George Dillwyn frequently corresponded with Benezet, and they provided him with editorial assistance as he was preparing Some Historical Account of Guinea.15 He knew William Dillwyn as “my friend and old pupil,” and regarded him as “a valuable, religiously minded person.” Just as important as these personal ties, Benezet and the Burlington Friends were used to working together in the context of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. For example, both Benezet and Allinson represented their respective quarterly meetings, Philadelphia and Burlington, at the 1772 yearly meeting, 13  Benezet to Sharp, March 29, 1773, in Bruns, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, p. 263; Wax, “Negro Import Duties,” pp. 37–38. 14  Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, January 22, 1773, Allinson Family Papers, box 11A (Samuel Allinson letterbook), p. 77; Anthony Benezet to Robert Pleasants, April 8, 1773, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 300. 15  Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, pp. 23–24, 43–44; Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, November 5, 1770, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 280; Anthony Benezet to George Dillwyn, May 2, 1771, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 279.

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and again in 1774.16 It is easy to imagine them conferring about abolitionist issues during their time together. In short, Benezet was especially close to the New Jerseyans who would be at the forefront of the colony’s abolition movement. He had genuine partners there, with whom he kept in frequent contact, shared ideas, and collaborated in furthering the cause.

Goals and Strategies of the New Jersey Campaign

The campaign that took shape in New Jersey in 1773 had two goals. As in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, one was a prohibition on slave imports. The second sought to make emancipation less burdensome by eliminating the require­ment that a master who wanted to free a slave had to post a £200 bond.17 In pursuit of these goals, activists implemented the three-pronged strategy of publishing, petitioning, and lobbying that Benezet and associates had successfully employed in Pennsylvania. It would become standard operating procedure for post-war abolitionists in both Great Britain and the United States. The two Burlington pamphlets laid out the campaign’s legislative agenda and its ideological justifications. As Benezet explained to his Rhode Island correspondent, the Quaker Moses Brown, they were published in order to influence “the Assembly of New Jersey who have now under their consideration the preventing any farther import & making the manumission of those already amongst us easier.”18 Although Anthony Benezet authored neither work, both bore his influence. Granville Sharp’s An Essay on Slavery was a refutation of an English pamphlet published the year before by the Anglican cleric, Thomas Thompson, entitled, The African Trade for Negro Slaves, shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion. As mentioned above, Sharp had sent his essay in manuscript to Benezet, who liked what he read. “The answer to Parson Thompson I received and read with peculiar satisfaction,” Benezet replied to Sharp in March 1773. “It is the most effectual 16  Anthony Benezet to John Wesley, May 23, 1774, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 318; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Minutes, 1747–79, September 26, 1772 to October 1, 1772, 282–83, and September 26, 1774 to October 1, 1774, 303. 17  For the requirement of a £200 bond, see Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665–1865 (Madison, WI, 1997), pp. 24–25. 18   Anthony Benezet to Moses Brown, December 28, 1773, Haverford College Quaker Collection, Anthony Benezet Letters.

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plea I have met with in answer to those who plead the Jewish practice [that is, the Old Testament] in support of Slavery.”19 Thompson’s pamphlet had drawn Benezet’s particular ire. His personal copy, now held at the Special Collections and University Archives at Rutgers University, is riddled with scornful comments that Benezet wrote in the margins. To take one example, Thompson had admitted that since the slave trade had been “encouraged and promoted by acts of parliament,” “it must be deemed a national sin” if abolitionists were correct that it was “contrary to religion.” However, Thompson contended that the slave trade was “as vindicable as any species of trade whatever.” Benezet’s comment practically exploded in the margin when he wrote, “certainly a national Sin! so that we have great reason to dread the consequences[.] The Author does not seem to consider the weight of this part of his own argument;—which cannot be ballanced [sic] by all his subsequent sophistry.”20 Citing particular biblical examples, Sharp likewise contradicted Thompson’s central contention that the Old Testament laws all accorded with the laws of nature. Moreover, he argued that the New Testament and its ethic of the Golden Rule had superseded, and he concluded, like Benezet, with an affirmation that slavery was, indeed, a national sin. “May God give us grace to repent of this abominable national oppression, before it is too late!”21 The 1773 Burlington publication of Sharp’s An Essay on Slavery demonstrates that activists such as Benezet and Allinson considered it necessary to refute biblical justifications for slavery when they launched the New Jersey campaign. In addition to calling for pragmatic steps, such as cutting off slave imports or loosening the colony’s manumission laws, they appreciated that they had to knock loose slavery’s theological underpinnings. Allinson added to Sharp’s essay a preface that was longer than the essay itself. Citing such diverse sources as William Blackstone, James Otis, and the Golden Rule, Allinson linked antislavery with current discussions of American rights. He also referenced the recent Somerset decision in England, hoping that its precedent would apply to the colonies. Sounding the common refrain of 19  Benezet to Sharp, March 29, 1773, in Bruns, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, p. 266. Thomas Thompson’s essay was The African Trade for Negro Slaves, Shewn to Be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion (Canterbury, England, 1772). 20  Thompson, The African Trade for Negro Slaves, Rutgers University Special Collections copy, pp. 11–12. Two pages of Benezet’s marginalia are reproduced in facsimile in Larry E. Tise’s Proslavery: a History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (Athens, GA, 1987), pp. 26–27. However, I disagree with Tise’s judgment (p. 378 n. 22) that “Anthony Benezet, in his marginal annotations, apparently did not take Thompson’s arguments very seriously.” 21  Sharp, An Essay on Slavery, pp. 18–24, quote on p. 24.

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the New Jersey campaign, Allinson pointed out that “the mode of manumitting negroes in New-Jersey is such as appears terrific, and amounts almost to a prohibition, because of its encumbering consequences, which few prudent people choose to leave their families liable to.” He closed with an expression of hope that the legislature would chart “a middle course” between unrestricted emancipation and too high a barrier to it.22 William Dillwyn’s Brief Considerations on Slavery advanced a similar argument for relaxing New Jersey’s manumission laws and pursuing a moderate path toward ending slavery in the colony. The pamphlet reveals a substantial intellectual debt to Benezet, which is not surprising, coming from one of his former students. For example, part of Dillwyn’s subtitle addressed the pamphlet “to the serious Attention of All, and especially those entrusted with the Powers of Legislation,” which paralleled Benezet’s subtitle in A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, which was “submitted to the Serious Consideration of All, more especially of Those in Power.”23 Dillwyn quoted the same passage from Montesquieu as Benezet had that “nothing more assimilates a man to a beast, than living among freemen, himself a slave,” and he highlighted the hypocrisy of slave-holding Americans’ “professions of an inviolable attachment to liberty” in language similar to Benezet’s. His depictions of slavery’s “cruel and oppressive” nature, the deaths of slaves during African wars and the Middle Passage, and their subsequent “seasoning” in the New World all echoed Benezet’s publications.24 Dillwyn offered two specific policy ideas for legislators to act on. First, he urged them “absolutely to prohibit any further importations [of slaves] into these colonies.” He added that “if by royal instructions, our governors are prevented the exercise of their own judgments; provincial addresses to the crown, would be likely to remove the difficulty.” This was exactly the approach that Sharp had advised in his correspondence with Benezet. Second, Dillwyn called on legislators to establish a legal mechanism whereby owners could emancipate their slaves in certain circumstances. Similar to a point that Allinson 22  Sharp, An Essay on Slavery, pp. vi–xv, quote on p. xv. 23  Anthony Benezet, A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from Various Authors, and Submitted to the Serious Consideration of All, more Especially of Those in Power (Philadelphia, PA, 1766). 24  For the common Montesquieu quote, see Dillwyn, Brief Considerations, p. 7, and Benezet, A Caution and Warning, p. 24. Dillwyn’s remark about Americans’ professed “attachment to liberty” in Brief Considerations, p. 16, was similar to Benezet’s statement in A Caution and Warning, p. 3. Likewise, Dillwyn’s portrayal of the horrors of slavery in Brief Considerations, p. 6, reads like a condensation of A Caution and Warning.

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had made in his preface to Sharp’s essay, Dillwyn observed: “As the laws stand at present in several of our northern governments, the act of manumission is clogged with difficulties that almost amount to a prohibition.”25 He outlined a plan by which manumissions would be free of charge at age 21 with increasing payments due up to age 50, so that communities would be indemnified against the freed person becoming a dependent on the public welfare. He concluded: “the object I have proposed, has an undoubted claim to the most serious consideration of people of all ranks, and of every denomination; for justice is ­confessedly alike obligatory on all.”26 People of diverse ranks and denominations would have a chance to express their support for Dillwyn’s ideas by petitioning the New Jersey General Assembly, which was the second prong of abolitionists’ assault. The pamphlets by Dillwyn and Sharp/Allinson provided the intellectual rationale for the petitions that abolition supporters were submitting at the same time. The New Jersey General Assembly’s Votes and Proceedings record a total of nineteen petitions calling for revision of the manumission laws and a ban on slave imports submitted by citizens from nine different counties between November 1773 and February 1774.27 Although the document is not dated, “The Petition of Sundry Inhabitants of the County of Salem” is probably one of the three read in the New Jersey General Assembly on February 8, 1774.28 The petition had been printed on a single sheet with room for signatures at the bottom and on the back.29 Printing the petitions facilitated their circulation and the uniformity of the message, which echoed the points in Dillwyn’s pamphlet. The text of the petition stated that liberty was “the inherent and universal Right of Man” 25  Dillwyn, Brief Considerations, pp. 10–11. 26  Dillwyn, Brief Considerations, pp. 12–15, quote on p. 15. 27   Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New-Jersey. At a Session Began at Burlington, Wednesday, November 10, 1773, and Continued until the 11th Day of March Following. Being the Second Session of the Twenty-Second Assembly of New-Jersey (Burlington, NJ, 1774), pp. 19, 22–26, 29, 59, 69–70, 73, 123. Gerlach also discusses these petitions and the New Jersey General Assembly’s subsequent handling of the proposed manumission bill in Prologue to Independence, pp. 240–42. 28  “A Petition was presented to the House from the County of Salem, another from the County of Essex, and a third from the County of Somerset, all setting forth the Mischiefs arising from the Toleration of personal Slavery, and praying a Prohibition to the Importation of Negro Slaves, and a Repeal or Alteration of the Laws restricting the Manumission of them; the same were read, and ordered to be read a second Time” (Votes and Proceedings . . . 1773, p. 123). 29  The petition is available via the “Quakers and Slavery” website, http://triptych.brynmawr .edu/cdm/ref/collection/HC_QuakSlav/id/10007.

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according to the “Laws of God and Nature,” and that slavery was “greatly pernicious to the Morals of the People among whom it prevails, and utterly inconsistent with the Spirit and whole Tenor of the Christian Religion.” The petitioners accordingly called for “prohibiting the further Importation of the Natives of Africa into this Province” and an “Alteration of the Laws” with regard to manumission. The similarities in content between the pamphlets and the petitions indicate clearly that they formed part of a coordinated campaign that aimed to influence the legislature to pass the abolitionist and emancipationist agenda. An analysis of who signed the petition offers an insight into the antislavery coalition in one locality. Not surprisingly, roughly half of the individuals who could be identified were Quakers, the sect most troubled in its conscience over slavery. These included weighty Friends such as William Goodwin and ­Samuel Nicholson, an overseer and treasurer, respectively, of the Salem Monthly ­Meeting.30 Some of the Quaker signers had particularly personal and urgent reasons for petitioning for an easing of the colony’s restrictive manumission laws: they were slave-holders themselves. Goodwin, for example, would sign papers in 1777 to manumit four slave children when they came of age.31 ­However, the petition was not solely a product of the Quaker network. The signers also included locally prominent figures of other denominations, perhaps none more so than Edward Keasbey, a Baptist who had represented Salem in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1763 to 1768.32 Leading Anglican signers from St. John’s Church, Salem, included merchant Thomas Sinnickson and his brother Andrew, a Salem County justice; judge Robert Johnson; and George Trenchard, who held multiple offices in the county, including that of justice.33 A 19th-century historian identified Trenchard as one of n ­ eighboring 30  Quaker signers of the petition can be identified in the minutes of the Salem Monthly Meeting, which I read on microfilm at Swarthmore, PA, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Goodwin was listed as an overseer in the minutes of April 29, 1776, and Nicholson as treasurer on July 27, 1772. 31  At least eight of the petition signers would sign manumission papers in 1777 that freed their slaves either immediately or when they came of age; see Collection of Manumissions, 1776–1832, Friends Historical Library. (This collection of manumission papers of Salem Monthly Meeting consists of copies of originals at Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.) My sense is that these Quakers decided to go ahead and guarantee the freedom of their slaves, regardless of the fact that the laws governing manumissions had not yet been changed. 32  Gerlach, Prologue to Independence, p. 369; Thomas Cushing and Charles E. Sheppard, History of the Counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland, New Jersey, with Biographical Sketches of Their Prominent Citizens (1883; reprinted Woodbury, NJ, 1974), pp. 394, 579. 33  Cushing and Sheppard, History of the Counties, pp. 323, 350, 383, 393, 403; Nelson R. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia, PA, 1954), p. 532.

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Cumberland County’s “principal attorneys from 1765 to the Revolution,” along with Samuel Allinson, which suggests a possible avenue for the petition’s ­circulation.34 Although direct documentary evidence is lacking, it is not hard to imagine Allinson reaching out to his longtime acquaintances of the bench and bar for their endorsement of the petition. And getting reputable Anglicans and Baptists to sign the petition was an important prophylactic against the charge that the antislavery campaign was just another Quaker peculiarity. Thus the petition campaign extended the reach of Benezet and his principal New Jersey collaborators in Burlington down to the grassroots level in multiple counties. An important facet of Benezet’s importance to early antislavery campaigns was this ability simultaneously to engage with activists both across the Atlantic and in provincial towns such as Burlington and Salem, New Jersey. The direct lobbying of legislators, both personally and in writing, formed a third aspect of the New Jersey campaign of 1773–74. In late December 1773, Allinson wrote a four-page memorandum in defense of revising the colony’s manumission laws along the lines of what William Dillwyn had proposed in Brief Considerations on Slavery. Apparently a draft bill was already in the works and had run into criticism. Allinson argued that the proposed law offered better financial security for the public purse, but most of what he wrote focused on the problems that would allegedly be caused by free blacks. “Give them freedom (which we enjoy),” Allinson countered, and we may more justly and easily bind them by wholesom[e] laws, and may command their conduct much better than is possible in a state of Slavery; then they will be subject to law, to reason and to conscience, now only to their masters, except in cases of gross enormity.35 The intended audience for Allinson’s memorandum and how widely it circulated are not known, but it did end up in the hands of Assemblyman Stephen Crane from Elizabethtown in Essex County. Crane forwarded it to the Revd Thomas Bradbury Chandler, rector of St. John’s Anglican Church in Elizabethtown, who wrote a scathing rebuttal the following month. Chandler contended that the current manumission laws were just fine and appropriately shielded the public from financial liability, 34  Cushing and Sheppard, History of the Counties, p. 546. 35  Samuel Allinson, “Reasons in Favor of a Law, ‘for the more Equitable Manumission of Slaves in N Jersey &c’ ” and “Some objections to the Law ‘for the more Equitable Manumission of Slaves &c’ with answers thereto,” December 24, 1773, Burlington, NJ, Burlington County Historical Society, Abolition Collection, box 1, file 8.

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but he paid special attention to painting the nightmarish scene that would result from emancipation. He characterized African Americans in general as “unprincipled and vicious,” and cautioned Crane against leaving them to their own devices. “Supposing now that 4000 such blacks were freed from the restraint of Masters—that they were at once let loose—and left unprovided for; there is no kind of licentiousness, or iniquity, or mischief, which would not be the speedy consequence.” If that was not enough to turn Crane against the proposed law, Chandler at least advised the legislature to proceed slowly and “not to enter hastily into so unprecedented a measure.”36 Chandler sought the maintenance of the status quo, or at least more time to work for its defense. Chandler’s words seemed to be on Crane’s mind when, two days later, he went to speak with Elias Boudinot. Boudinot was a prominent Elizabethtown attorney and a longtime associate of Allinson in the colony’s legal circles.37 In January 1774, he circulated an antislavery petition on Allinson’s behalf, and he spoke with Crane about the proposed emancipation bill. Boudinot reported to Allinson that Crane’s “Objections appear altogether founded on the ill consequences of having free Negroes in a Neighbourhood where there are Slaves, as he supposes they would greatly corrupt them.” In the end, Crane told Boudinot that he would support the bill, insofar as the New Jersey General Assembly would publish the text “in their Minutes for the inspection of the Publick, but not sent up to the Council, till next Session.”38 That plan would presumably give Crane a chance to see which way the political winds were blowing or buy time for the opposition to rally. Chandler’s letter to Crane, in turn, also began to circulate in manuscript, and William Dillwyn took up his pen to write a long rejoinder. Dillwyn addressed his letter to another member of the New Jersey General Assembly, John Mehelm, from the Hunterdon County town of Tewksbury. Dillwyn picked apart Chandler’s reasoning and reiterated the defects with the colony’s current manumission laws.39 How many other assemblymen beyond Crane and Mehelm read these competing texts is unknown. While there is no evidence to show that these rival documents traveled any further, there is also n ­ othing 36  T.B. Chandler to Stephen Crane, January 27, 1774, Abolition Collection, box 1, file 8. 37  Both Allinson and Boudinot are listed on the document, “Judges Fees of May Term 1763,” in the Allinson Family Papers, box 9, folder 110. 38  Elias Boudinot to Samuel Allinson, January 29, 1774, Allinson Family Papers, box 6, folder 47. 39  William Dillwyn to John Mehelm, February 16, 1774, New York, New-York Historical Society, American Historical Manuscripts Collection, Dillwyn, W.; Mehelm is identified in Gerlach, Prologue to Independence, p. 368.

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to suggest that Crane and Mehelm were singled out for special attention. Furthermore, one can easily imagine Crane or Mehelm discussing the matter with their legislative colleagues. At a minimum, these documents reveal that Allinson and Dillwyn regarded the individual lobbying of legislators as an essential ingredient, along with pamphlets and petitions, in their campaign to revise New Jersey’s laws of slavery and emancipation.

Backlash and Delay

Chandler’s letter to Crane represented just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as the campaign to loosen the colony’s manumission laws quickly aroused a wellorganized countermovement. New Jersey owners mobilized to secure their slave property and petitioned their representatives in the New Jersey General Assembly as antislavery campaigners had done. The anti-emancipation petitions that the New Jersey General Assembly received in early 1774 articulated the same points as Chandler had made to Crane, which reveals a coordinated opposition. For example, a petition from Perth Amboy in Middlesex County echoed Chandler’s belief that the emancipation law needed no alteration. “Wee humbly apprehend,” they wrote, “the Law now in force is full as easy to those ownors who have A mind to set thair Slaves free as the circumstance and cituation of our Province will admit of with safety at Preasent and therefore needs no Amendmendment.” Again like Chandler, they urged delay, praying that the legislature “would not rush hastily into a Law which may be of the most Dismal Consequance.” The Perth Amboy petitioners also appealed to their “Long Experiance” with “Negros both in slavery and freedom” to warn “that they are A Very Daingerous People to have general freedom,” and they raised the specter of a slave uprising that would result in the subjugation of whites.40 Another petition, from the Monmouth County town of Shrewsbury, likewise pleaded for caution as the legislature considered a change in the manumission law. The petitioners from Shrewsbury too cited their own experience with slaves and free blacks, complaining of “Great Number of Negroes, Men Women and Children Being Slaves and [who] are Daily Increasing in Number, and Impudince.” They felt particularly vexed by the slaves’ “Run[n]ing about all Times of the Night Stealing and Taking and Riding People[’]s Horses and 40   “Petition of Citizens of Perth Amboy to the General Assembly Opposing Slave Manumission, Jan. 12, 1774,” Trenton, New Jersey State Archives, Manuscript Collection, 1680s–1970s, BAH: Legislative Records, 1770–81, box 1–4, folder 16.

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Other Mischiefs in a Great Degree Owing to Haveing a Correspondence and Recourse to the Houses of Them Already Freed.”41 Clearly, word of the antislavery campaign had quickly spread, and many New Jerseyans reacted with fear at the prospect of a wave of manumissions that would swell the ranks of free blacks in their communities. Their arguments proved William Dillwyn prescient for having written: “The prejudices of custom are strong—those imbibed from interest, yet stronger.” Analysis of the Shrewsbury petitioners confirms the observation of historian Thomas L. Purvis that “the gentry dominated petitioning.”42 Among the thirty-nine signers were at least seven slave-owners and other men of substantial property. In terms of religion, they belonged primarily to the Dutch Reformed and Anglican churches. The text of the handwritten petition appears to match that of its first signer, Daniel Hendrickson, who would soon emerge as a leading Monmouth County Whig.43 The draft bill that emerged in February 1774 from the legislative committee charged with taking the various petitions under consideration bore the scars of this opposition. The proposed “Act for the more equitable Manumission of Slaves, and other Purposes concerning them,” adopted something close to what William Dillwyn’s pamphlet had proposed—namely, that manumission be cost-free for slaves aged 21 with fees rising for every year over that. However, the act also contained provisions that hemmed in the lives of those emancipated. Echoing the Shrewsbury petition, for example, the law stipulated That if any free Negro or Mulatto shall harbour or entertain in his or her House any white Servant or Slave without the License and Consent of his or her respective Master or Mistress, he or she shall forfeit and pay the Sum of Five Shillings for the first Hour, and One Shilling for every Hour afterwards.

41  “Petition of Inhabitants of [Shrewsbury,] Monmouth County to the General Assembly Opposing Slave Manumissions, Feb. 2, 1774,” Trenton, New Jersey State Archives, Manuscript Collection, 1680s–1970s, BAH: Legislative Records, 1770–81, box 1–4, folder 18. 42  Dillwyn, Brief Considerations, p. 10; Thomas L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), p. 181. 43  In identifying the Shrewsbury petition signers, I principally relied on the following sources: Franklin Ellis, History of Monmouth County, New Jersey (1885; reprinted Cottonport, LA, 1974); Gerlach, Prologue to Independence; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North; E. Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of New Jersey: Their Memorials, Petitions, Claims, Etc. from English Records (1927; reprinted Westminster, MD, 2008); James Steen, History of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, New Jersey, from 1702 to 1903 (n.p., 1972); Kenn Stryker-Rodda, “New Jersey Rateables, 1778–1780,” Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey 50 (1975): 28–38.

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Other clauses in the law levied a £100 fine on any magistrate or minister who performed an interracial marriage; authorized that free blacks could be sold into indentured servitude in payment of their debts; made whipping the punishment for “any Negro or Mulatto” convicted of “Assault and Battery upon any white Person”; and prohibited “any Negro, Indian, or Mulatto now free” or freed thereafter from voting, holding office, or testifying against whites. The New Jersey General Assembly voted that the proposed act be printed in its Votes and Proceedings . . . 1773 and “referred to the next Session,” and it also postponed action on a law to cut off slave imports. These actions fulfilled the wishes of Chandler and the anti-emancipation petitioners for a delay.44 Regardless of this limited progress, Benezet seized on the gains made in New Jersey and tried to use them to advance the movement elsewhere. As William Dillwyn had foretold, “our example will most probably have a happy influence on the conduct of others more remote.” Benezet distributed the two pamphlets published in Burlington to correspondents in North Carolina and Virginia, where he thought they might be of use.45 He also asked Allinson for “one or more of the best worded amongst the several petitions, presented to your Assembly” so that he could forward them to Sharp, who had asked Benezet to send him some petitions that he could show to Lord Dartmouth and other persons of influence in London.46 “What an extensive prospect is every where opening into the iniquity of the practice” of slavery, Benezet exulted to Virginian Robert Pleasants in May 1774. All the Colonies to the northward, of yours, have more or less instructed their representatives to endeavour that an end may be put to any further import. The assembly of New Jersey have a bill now under their consideration. Spain, Portugal & of late France have entered Seriously into the matter.47 That quote perfectly captures the central place of New Jersey’s antislavery campaign within the broader, transatlantic movement of the early 1770s. However, 44   Votes and Proceedings . . . 1773, pp. 155, 211–15. 45  Dillwyn, Brief Considerations, p. 10; Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, December 14, 1773, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 309; Anthony Benezet to Robert Pleasants, May 5, 1774, Anthony Benezet Letters. 46  Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, March 30, 1774, Allinson Family Papers, box 6, folder 41; Granville Sharp to Anthony Benezet, January 7, 1774, in Bruns, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, p. 304. 47  Benezet to Pleasants, May 5, 1774.

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“as powerful as that 1770’s antislavery wave seemed at the moment,” observed historian Robert G. Parkinson, “it would crest in 1774 and then recede rapidly.”48 The stalling tactics of Chandler and other opponents of abolition paid off. The New Jersey General Assembly again delayed action on the proposed laws at its next session, despite receiving another round of petitions “praying a Revival of the Bill ordered to be printed with the Votes of the House last Year, entitled, An Act for the more equitable Manumission of Slaves, &c.”49 Meanwhile, in September 1774, Benezet’s attention shifted to the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia. He spoke with delegates and urged them to halt slave imports, which the Congress did as part of a broader non-­importation protest.50 In November 1775, a petition from the town of Chesterfield in the Quaker stronghold of Burlington County tried to jumpstart antislavery in New Jersey. The petitioners called on the New Jersey General Assembly to “pass an Act of freedom for them, that are now with us, as in your wisdom you shall think fit And for those unborn or that may hereafter be born amongst us to be free Males at Twenty-one and Females at Eighteen Years of Age.”51 Once again, it kicked the issue along to its next session but, as Arthur Zilversmit summarized the antislavery campaign’s denouement, “the colonial assembly never met again; following the recommendations of Congress, New Jersey established an independent government. Although the manumission bill was dutifully carried over to the first session of the new state legislature, it was soon lost in the turmoil of transition politics.”52 The outbreak of the American Revolution signaled the death-knell for this first campaign of New Jersey’s abolition movement. New Jersey’s pre-revolution antislavery campaign clearly illuminates Anthony Benezet’s indispensable role as an inspiration and coordinator 48  Robert G. Parkinson, “ ‘Manifest Signs of Passion’: the First Federal Congress, Antislavery, and Legacies of the Revolutionary War,” in Contesting Slavery: the Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation, eds. John Craig Hammond and Matthew Mason (Charlottesville, VA, 2011), p. 54. 49  Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, 92; Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New-Jersey. At a Session began at Perth-Amboy, Wednesday, January 11, 1775, and continued until the 13th Day of February following. Being the Third Session of the Twenty-second Assembly of New-Jersey (Burlington, NJ, 1775), p. 14. 50  Anthony Benezet to Samuel Allinson, October 23, 1774, in Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet, p. 321; Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, p. 98. 51  The Chesterfield petition is reprinted in Freedom Not Far Distant: a Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey, ed. Clement Alexander Price (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society) 16 (Newark, NJ, 1980): 56. 52  Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, pp. 92–93.

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among activists both transatlantic and provincial. During the early 1770s he forged connections with Great Britain that would be resumed after American independence and that protégés such as William Dillwyn would carry on. At the same time, Benezet and fellow activists such as Samuel Allinson pioneered techniques for coordinating political influence that they would implement successfully in the post-war period. The goals of ending slave importation and making manumission easier in New Jersey would subsequently be achieved in legislation of 1786, but the backlash revealed during the pre-revolution campaign would keep the emancipation movement in the state on a gradualist track.53 What began as part of a transatlantic vision of ending the slave trade became an intensely local struggle to mobilize coalitions on both sides of an issue that was so contentious because it piqued both deeply held convictions and vested interests. As Benezet and his New Jersey allies knew at the end of this pre-revolution campaign, the greater struggle for liberty and justice had only just begun. 53  The 1786 legislation is reprinted in Price, Freedom Not Far Distant, pp. 73–75.

Chapter 9

The Circulation of Early Quaker Antislavery Books: A Transatlantic Passage? Louisiane Ferlier Transatlantic exchanges structured the early modern Quaker community. They gave coherence to its intellectual, social, demographical, financial, and commercial networks. After 1760, the production and circulation of Quaker abolitionist writings illustrate the intensity of transatlantic exchanges and highlight the differences between colonial and metropolitan Quaker print cultures. Transatlantic collaborations are essential to understand the nature of Anthony Benezet’s abolitionism.1 Already his first antislavery publication— Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes of 1759— was structured to mirror the transatlantic passage.2 The pamphlet joined in a single volume his reflections and observations on the effects of slavery in the American colonies to the directions given some ten years before by the London Yearly Meeting. It was published after six other Quaker treatises against slavery had been printed in colonial America. In contrast, by 1760, no document explicitly devoted to the abolitionist cause had been distributed publicly by English Quakers in England.3 This situation appears to be a reversal of the established scholarly view that “English Friends published much more than their American cousins.”4 This exceptional situation at a time when the Quaker 1  Maurice Jackson conclusively establishes this. See Maurice Jackson, Let this Voice be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism. (Philadelphia, PA, 2009). 2  Anthony Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, with Some Advice thereon Extracted Form [sic] the Yearly Meeting Epistle of London for the Present Year: also Some Remarks on the Absolute Necessity of Self-Denial, Renouncing the World, and True Charity for All such as Sincerely Desire to Be Our Blessed Saviour’s Disciples (Germantown, PA, printed for Christopher Sower, 1st edn, 1759). 3  This chapter focuses on the printed defenses of abolitionism as it questions how Quaker discourse shifted in the public sphere. Decisions by yearly meetings, and manuscript documents such as the Germantown petition or Fox’s letter to “Friends beyond sea” and appeal in Barbados, indicate clearly that discussion within the community preceded printed appeals, but we will restrict ourselves to the discussion’s public and published form. 4  J. William Frost, “Quaker Books in Colonial Pennsylvania,” Quaker History 80:1 (1991): 1–23, at 3.

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community was truly an Atlantic one points at the problematic relation of Friends with public campaigns. This chapter presents Benezet’s pamphlet as the first to publicly call for a truly transatlantic abolitionism and shows how previous texts contributed to a slow progression of Quaker abolitionism from a marginalized colonial voice to a shared cause. Benezet’s publication acknowledged—at least implicitly—the importance of the six abolitionist pamphlets published previously in the American colonies and it inscribed itself in a larger tradition of Quaker condemnation of slavery. The first abolitionist tract to be published on American soil had been An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes, printed anonymously in 1693 on William Bradford’s press in New York. This provenance explains its attribution to either George Keith or a group of his supporters because it corresponds with the culminating point of the controversy that opposed Keith to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and by then Bradford only published defenses of Keith.5 In 1715 a New Jersey author, John Hepburn, published in New York, again on Bradford’s press, his The American Defence of the Christian Golden Rule, or an Essay to Prove the Unlawfulness of Making Slaves of Men.6 From the 1720s onwards, publications become more regular: in 1729, Ralph Sandiford published A Brief Examination of the Practices of the Times in Philadelphia;7 in 1733, Elihu Coleman of Nantucket published in Boston his Testimony against the Antichristian Practice of Making Slaves of Men;8 this was followed only three years later by Benjamin Lay’s warning to All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, published in Philadelphia;9

5  George Keith [attribution first formulated by Charles Evans in his American Bibliography], An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes (New York, NY, printed by William Bradford, 1693). On the attribution of the pamphlet to Keith or on its collective authorship, see Katharine Gerbner, “Antislavery in Print: the Germantown Protest, the ‘Exhortation,’ and the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Debate on Slavery”, Early American Studies: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 9:3 (2011) 552–75, at 553. 6  John Hepburn, The American Defence of the Christian Golden Rule, or an Essay to Prove the Unlawfulness of Making Slaves of Men (New York NY, printed by William Bradford (attribution by the author of this article), 1715). 7  Ralph Sandiford, A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times (printed by Benjamin Franklin and Hugh Meredith for the author, Philadelphia, PA, 1729). 8  Elihu Coleman, A Testimony against that Antichristian Practice of Making Slaves of Men (Boston, MA, 1733). 9  Benjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure & Holy Christian Religion (printed by Benjamin Franklin for the author, Philadelphia, PA, 1733).

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and finally, John Woolman published his better-known Some Considerations in 1753, again in Philadelphia.10 Although it was episodic in its publicized form, recent scholarship has presented the antislavery debate as a continuous trend within the Society of Friends.11 As a result of the Quaker emphasis on individual conscience, antislavery arguments mainly took the form of personal reflections in diaries and private correspondences intended for a restricted circulation among Quaker colonists.12 As a direct consequence of the structure of the Society of Friends, it was also a persistent topic of discussion in the quarterly and yearly meetings. Despite this persistence, antislavery publications were considered unfit to supplement collective conversation and were even frowned upon by the Quaker community for the first sixty years of the debate. The few printed texts discussed here are therefore even more significant in that they constituted material points of interaction that externalized a debate initially perceived as internal by the rest of the community. The first point of interaction that permitted the diffusion of the pamphlets was that between authors and printers. The process of publication of abolitionist texts has never been discussed as a point of contention, whereas their material coming into existence was as problematic as their intellectual fostering. It is important to remember that in the context of early colonial America, publishing a book was a risky commercial venture. Moreover, the period between 1693 and 1759 corresponds to the complete legal redefinition of the relationships between authors and printers. The 1662 Licensing Act lapsed in 1695 and the Statute of Anne, or Copyright Act, was voted in, in 1710. This change in legislation means that between the publication of the first pamphlet and the last one, the intellectual property of texts was transferred from publishers affiliated to the Stationers’ Company to the authors. The effects of the Copyright Act on the colonial press were delayed and downplayed because of the scarcity of presses and of the resulting low competition between printerpublishers. As opposed to London, finding a printing house remained a critical issue for authors and therefore the five printer-publishers that agreed to print 10  John Woolman, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination (printed and sold by James Chattin, in Church-Alley, Philadelphia, PA, 1754). 11  Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom, Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, CT, 2012). 12  George Fox’s remarks (Barbados, 1657), William Edmunson’s Letter (Newport, 1676), and the Germantown petition (1688)—the three earliest criticisms of chattel slavery in the American colonies—are indeed scribal documents.

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the antislavery pamphlets were crucial agents of transmission in the circulation of ideas. Until the very late 18th century, London remained the undisputed center of book production in the British Empire. And while, from the 1690s onward, the Quaker movement was deeply transformed by the emigration of a large portion of its population to the colonies of Pennsylvania and the two Jerseys, London remained the heart of the Quaker book trade. This predominance was explained by the fact that printers, bookbinders and other ancillary tradesmen were highly skilled artisans who worked with material and machines that were extremely costly to export to America. From paper to types, the components necessary to produce books in the colonies were highly taxed and difficult to obtain, so the progress of the press was slow. Moreover, Tracy Sowle had established a solid printing enterprise directly connected to the London Quaker Meeting, with production in Shoreditch and bookstores around Fleet Street, two London neighborhoods with an established Quaker community. She had also established far-reaching distribution networks, thanks to Quaker merchants who transported the unbound volumes to the colonies. Decisively, London’s centrality for the Quaker networks was also a consequence of the centrifugal force exercised by the Second Day Morning Meeting. Indeed, since 1674, British authors affiliated to the Society of Friends had been asked to submit their texts for review to the London committee composed of the leaders of the community, who sometimes financed the publication of approved texts.13 As a result of this concentration of all components in London, it would be quite natural to assume that abolitionist pamphlets would follow the standard pattern of production of Quaker books during the period: first editions were usually published in London, then shipped to the colonies and only then reproduced in a second or third edition by colonial printers, which also acted as booksellers for their London counterparts. Following this assumption, the pamphlets themselves would then appear as products of a transatlantic passage that made manifest the transatlantic movements of the abolitionist debate. Yet out of the seven pamphlets studied here, not a single one was produced by a London-based printer, and only two had a second edition in London. This chapter argues that the production of the first abolitionist pamphlets in the peripheries is significant to understanding the early evolution of 13  The development of the notion of authorship within the Society of Friends has been the subject of solid in-depth studies. See, for instance, Thomas Corns and David Loewenstein, eds., The Emergence of Quaker Writing (London, 1995), and Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge, 2005).

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a­ bolitionism within the Society of Friends. If we consider the importance of London in the antislavery debate, the geographical anomaly observed in this study indicates that distance from the central point of Quaker discipline might have been necessary to transform an internal debate into a public discussion. This hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that the first antislavery pamphlets were written and produced by individuals at the margins of official Quaker networks. As the pamphlets against slavery were gradually accepted and supported by the Quaker communities from which they emanated, the last element addressed is the expansion of the circulation of the texts, from a restricted distribution within the neighboring Quaker community to a universal message to Christians in general. Benezet’s pamphlet appears as the culmination of this paradigmatic shift, as the key text which launched the Quaker abolitionist campaign into the public sphere.

Printing Networks

Printing networks formed the primary layer for the material diffusion of ideas across the Atlantic. The term ‘printing network’ is not restricted here to referring to a narrowly defined trade network but is used to describe the commercial, social, and ideological connections that linked authors, printer-publishers, and booksellers. Throughout the period under study, the American press was still in its infancy, with a small number of operating printing houses. It took a century and a quarter for the press to spread across the thirteen colonies, and almost a century and a half to reach an estimated total of 30 printing houses by 1750, the majority of which operated on a single press. By comparison there were already 33 printing houses by 1668 in London, with an estimated 72 presses.14 American printing presses also depended directly on exports from London for paper, ink, and type. As summarized by Hugh Amory, in the colonies, “European printing occupied the commercial sector of the market; colonial printing was subsidized, official and of small commercial value,”15 Extended printing networks were therefore financially crucial to sustain American book production. Any printing enterprise depended vitally on the 14  D.F. McKenzie, “Printing and Publishing 1557–1700: Constraints on the London Book Trades,” John Barnard, D.F. McKenzie, eds., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. 4: 1557–1695, p. 555. 15  Hugh Amory, “British Books Abroad: the American Colonies,” The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. 4: 1557–1695, p. 745.

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efficiency of these networks. The fact that the first seven Quaker antislavery publications were produced on American presses is therefore perfectly counterintuitive but provides an exceptional case to understand how these networks worked and to refine the geography of the antislavery debate. It is, for example, significant that Benjamin Lay’s treatise was one of only sixteen bound books printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin, who was by far the largest book printer outside of Boston in his day.16 Brycchan Carey has recently argued that the seemingly isolated authors of these early pamphlets were in fact connected by the larger antislavery debate that agitated the Society of Friends, and the history of the pamphlets shows that these authors were part of a coherent printing network. As the first noticeable figure in the early history of colonial printing and as the printer of the first two abolitionist pamphlets, William Bradford appears to have been at the origin of this network. He and his son Andrew were direct competitors of Franklin’s first employer in Philadelphia, Samuel Keimer. William Dunlap, the printer of Benezet’s second abolitionist pamphlet, had served his apprenticeship with Bradford, and so had James Parker, Benjamin Franklin’s associate.17 Interestingly though, James Chattin and Christopher Sower did not fit into this network. Chattin remained active only for a short period. He established his printing house in 1752 but sold all his publications at a reduced price in 1755 when the overseers of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting disowned him for having printed “a certain scandalous Paper”. It seems that he was employed as a journeyman for the rest of his life.18 Christopher Sower, who published Benezet’s 1759 pamphlet, was an independent figure who relied on his skills in German to serve as the Germantown printer, and, an enterprising mind, he established himself as a type-caster, paper-maker, ink-maker, and bookbinder. Sower was thereby able to control all the steps of the production of books, an exception worth noting at a time when ancillary trades were usually separated in different workshops. Although one can observe professional connections between the printers of the early Quaker abolitionist pamphlets, the primary link that connected them to one another and to their authors was their denomination. 16  James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass, Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer (London: 2006), p. 61. 17  To these professional connections one must add a familial one, as Dunlap had “married a relation of Mrs Franklin, wife of Benjamin Franklin, in consequence of which connection Franklin appointed him postmaster,” Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America. (New York, NY, 1970), p. 386. 18  Frost, “Quaker Books,” p. 9.

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Although this can be observed for all Quaker commercial exchanges, denominational endogamy was even greater in the Quaker book trade because of the importance given to books in Quaker education and for the defense of the Society of Friends. Trust was one of the main considerations in the establishment of networks, and religious proximity inspired trust; even more so as the community could oversee questions of debts and payment if this trust was broken. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, therefore, that William Bradford and James Chattin were, or had been, Quakers. Bradford had immigrated to Pennsylvania to serve as printer for the Society of Friends after he had served his apprenticeship at the shop of Andrew Sowle (then printer and bookseller of the Quaker community in London and father of Tracy). James Chattin, the first printer of Woolman’s pamphlet, produced all the epistles of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and served de facto as the official printer of the Pennsylvania meeting until his disownment. Woolman’s pamphlet was printed after approval by the overseer of the press of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, who was none other than Benezet, and it is likely that the meeting approved and financed its publication under his influence. This influence explains why Woolman’s pamphlet finally received approval after circulating for seven years within the community as a manuscript.19 Although there is no evidence that Christopher Sower, who printed Benezet’s treatise, was a Quaker, he served consistently as the official printer for the Quaker community of Germantown. The connection is less obvious for the printer of Sandiford’s treatise, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was not a member of the Society of Friends. He was, however, a member of the Quaker party in the Assembly of Pennsylvania and, as Green and Stallybrass underlined, he had “worked hard to court the Quakers” during his political campaign of 1747. If we turn to his list of publications, it becomes clear that Franklin played a decisive role in the diffusion of Quaker ideas in the colonies. Symbolically, his first employment by printer Samuel Keimer was justified by the publication of “the biggest and most expensive book yet printed in Philadelphia”,20 Willem Sewel’s The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Quakers, the first Quaker history authored by a Quaker; and only a year after he opened his own printing house, Franklin published Sandiford’s abolitionist pamphlet. Franklin did not support financially the printing of Sandiford’s and Lay’s treatises. Publications were primarily commercial exchanges, so in that sense Franklin was providing a professional service to clients. He did not take part in the editorial process and acted as a technician rather than an intellectual patron. It can nonetheless be observed that he could turn down material 19  This answers Frost’s question in “Quaker Books,” p. 7. 20  Green, Stallybrass, Franklin, Writer and Printer, p. 29.

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he disapproved of. With the notable exception of Franklin,21 the printers of the Quaker abolitionist pamphlets described their trade as their contribution to a social or evangelical mission. Bradford in particular insisted on the spiritual force of the publication process and used his press to try to reform the Quaker networks from within. The only printer in Pennsylvania, he intended his edition of the Keithian An Exhortation as a public denouncement of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.22 Bradford was Keith’s most influential supporter as the author proposed to reform Pennsylvania Quakerism and the Society of Friends as a whole, and his involvement in the controversy led him to be tried for the printing of seditious pamphlets. While Keith was not punished, the Philadelphia magistrates seized Bradford’s press and tools, and fined the innkeeper who was distributing the infamous volumes. Although Bradford’s trial did not constitute an act of persecution, as he and Keith claimed, the prosecution certainly illustrated that censorship was used in Pennsylvania as a legal tool to ensure political and religious stability. The An Exhortation was the first tract to be printed after Bradford was given his press and type back, and after he established his new shop in New York. Interestingly, the pamphlet was also published anonymously and without the printers’ name. This can be understood as a decision to design a communal manifesto against slavery that could supersede the controversy. It can also be interpreted as a means to evade new judicial pursuits as the Pennsylvania case against Bradford confirmed that the legal responsibility of the production and diffusion of a seditious pamphlet was borne by the printer, not the author. If we follow Michel Foucault’s assertion that “books were assigned real authors [ . . .] only when the author became subject to punishment”, this would indicate that Bradford was the actual ‘author’ of the pamphlet in the sense that he was held responsible by the authorities.23 To understand the reach of any transgressive discourse one has to question how it came into being and who was responsible for it. From Bradford’s anony.

21   Franklin’s ambivalence has been studied elsewhere. See Louisiane Ferlier, “The Abolitionist Circles of Benjamin Franklin: a Reluctant Abolitionist in Context, 1750–90,” Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808, eds. Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel (London, 2016). 22  Keith’s separation from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, as the result of a somewhat absconse theological dispute, aggregated political discontent from various groups of colonists regarding Quaker governance of the colony. See Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, Pennsylvania 1681–1726 (Boston, MA, 1993), pp. 153–60. 23  Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?”, Language, Counter-memory, Practice, Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (New York, NY, 1977), p. 124.

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mous effort to Franklin’s disengagement from the text, one can see the transfer of responsibility of printers toward their productions: from a militant act to the commercial support of a worthy cause. More generally, these reflections illustrate that one should not ignore the involvement of printer-publishers in the composition of early modern texts. Besides the fact that their decision ultimately gave birth to books, printer-publishers were responsible for the dialogic form taken by so many early modern books, of which Hepburn’s pamphlet is a good example, as we will later develop. Milton described how printer-­ publishers fabricated religious anthologies in Article 19 of Areopagitica: Sometimes five Imprimaturs are seen together, dialoguewise, in the piazza of one titlepage, complimenting and ducking each other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the sponge.24 Milton’s metaphor of the piazza also shows that these exchanges were contained in a geographical space that we still need to define. Indeed, if denomination and the material fabrication of books connected authors and printers, the concentration of the printing of antislavery pamphlets on American soil should still be explained to understand how the transatlantic trade fashioned the colonial piazza.

Writing from the Margins

As was previously underlined, until well into the 19th century, the shipping of books followed a predominantly westward direction. The passage of books across the Atlantic materialized the circulation of ideas in the British Empire. The symbolical dependence on the metropolis in the diffusion of ideas did not, however, prevent the growth of an American book trade. Indeed, the main centers of the American press—Boston in particular—were the primary publishers of colonial authors. This specialization of the colonial press is a crucial factor in understanding the case of those seven abolitionist pamphlets: all authors were colonists, and abolitionist discourse bore on a colonial reality with which the authors were confronted on a daily basis. But this explanation cannot be fully satisfactory because the disciplinary decisions by Quaker 24  John Milton, Areopagitica (London: 1644), p. 13, see Jason P. Rosenblatt (2011), Milton’s Selected Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Biblical Sources, Criticism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.). Areopagitica, pp. 337–80.

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meetings to forbid their members from owning slaves were first taken in the metropolis. Topicality alone does not explain, therefore, the geographical concentration. I suggest, rather, that circulation in print was first experimented with in the colonial piazza because it allowed abolitionist Quakers to operate outside of the space of control exercised by the Second Day Morning Meeting. As opposed to the first Friends known as the ‘Publishers of Truth,’ the second generation of Quakers—that of our authors—did not encourage individual Quakers to publicize their opinion. As shown by the Keithian controversy, dissenting voices that channeled their discontent through the press could be disowned. To take a public stand against slavery was perceived as problematic by the community, so much so that the authors themselves recognized the subversive and marginal character of their publications. Marginality was certainly Keith and Lay’s defining trait. Keith had been disowned by the Pennsylvania and Buck meetings, and Lay’s theatrical harangues, and his pretended kidnapping of a Quaker child to “illustrate the grief suffered by African families when their children were stolen by enslavers,” also tainted his arguments. The eccentricity of the two writers meant that their abolitionist discourse could not be distributed by the main channels of the Quaker book trade. Even though the other writers were respected figures in Quaker circles, they apologized for having resorted to print. For example, Coleman remarked that his publication dissented from general silence: Some may think it hard to have this Practice spoken against, that has been carried on so long pretty much in Silence; I may let such know that I have found it hard to write against it, yet nevertheless believing it so be my duty to do so, I have written according to the understanding I have thereof [ . . .] I am not unthoughtful of the ferment or stir that such discourse as this may make among some who [ . . .] may say, by this craft have we our wealth.25 Coleman justifies his publication not merely as a posture of humility that would reinforce his authority but because he was conscious of disturbing a public consensus. Sandiford identified more precisely who might criticize his choice to take a public stand against slavery, as the first and second editions of his pamphlet were published without the permission of the Philadelphia meeting. In an apologetic note to “my select Friends,” closing the first edition he wrote: 25  Coleman, Testimony, “To the reader,” pp. ii–iii.

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If any are offended with me, or the foregoing Treatise, because it came not forth with the Concurrence of the Meeting, it is in my Heart to desire your Freedom with me therein, that all offences may be removed according to the Ability the Lord gives me.26 Sandiford presented his opinion as dissenting from the general view of his community but he explained that his sense of Christianity forced him to breach silence. Hepburn also opened his “Preface to the Reader” with words of apology: Christian Reader, it is not Singularity or Ostentation that I appear in Print, but my Christian Duty [. . .] I doubt not, but this may be to some a very unwelcome theam [sic], and they would wonder to find their beloved Delilah, the making slaves of negros [­], and others rejected.27 Again abolitionism is described as an unwelcome topic of publication, and publication is itself described as a means of individual expression that singles out the author rather than connecting him to a larger discursive web. Finally, in the introduction to Woolman’s first edition of Some Considerations, we find the idea that publication is a means of last resort rather than the first step in a campaign: “What I write on this subject is with Reluctance, and the hints given are in as general terms as my concern would allow.”28 This is a surprising remark, considering that Woolman had received approval from the committee on publications, but less so if one remembers that it took seven years of unpublished circulation before he obtained it. Lay is the first author to affirm that These things following are far from offending or grieving my very dear true and tender Friends called Quakers, who love the truth more than all, that it is by their request and desire that they are made publick.29 Taking into account how militant and provocative Lay was, one should view these words with extreme caution. Benezet, in fact, was more balanced when justifying his publication. Although he did not apologize for publishing his treatise, he still recognized how difficult abolitionist arguments were to accept 26  Sandiford, A Brief Examination, 1st edn, p. 71. 27  Hepburn, The American Defence, “The preface to the reader,” unpaginated. 28  Woolman, Some Considerations, “Introduction,” unpaginated. 29  Lay, All Slave-Keepers, “The Preface,” unpaginated.

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for those who had been raised in the prejudice of slavery.30 The diffusion and circulation of the abolitionist discourse in a public form was only gradually accepted by the Quakers, and this process was more contentious than might generally be conceived. Slavery as a topoï of private conversation might have been accepted in Quaker circles, but the authorities of the Society of Friends restricted it first to a decision of individual conscience inside the community. Diffused through marginal networks rather than through the main media of diffusion of the Society of Friends, antislavery pamphlets did not constitute banal publications. To write them, to print them, and to diffuse them was therefore relegated to the margins of the religious organization and to the margins of the sphere of influence of its central authority. In the same way that the Hicksite Friends were later at the forefront of 19th-century abolitionism in the United States, the earliest forms of antislavery campaigning emanated from pockets of contestation in the Society of Friends. Keith, Bradford, and Lay had been disowned by their local meetings, and the other writers remained eccentric individuals in the sense that they operated from a distance to the centers of decision of Quakerism, and that they fully realized that their discourse remained marginal. This peripheral position of the authors does not means that they were isolated or that their voices were not heard. Rather, it means that the impulsion toward the antislavery debate was a centripetal force: it began in the margins but gradually reached the center, increasing in strength simultaneously.

Audience and Circulation

Although antislavery ideas emanated from the geographical and religious margins of colonial society, this does not indicate per se that the circulation of the pamphlets was restricted to specific groups of readers within the Society of Friends. None of the seven pamphlets appears in the Biographical Database, the 1680–1830 repository containing subscriptions lists for publications sent through Great Britain, the American colonies and the Early Republic.31 In this absence, it is difficult to identify individual readers who would have invested financially in the diffusion of antislavery publications. In several recent studies, circulating libraries have been presented as good indicators of books’ 30  Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, pp. 2–3. 31  Publication after subscription was a less common practice in the colonies, and, as for Woolman’s pamphlet, the Committee on Publication could serve as a financing network within the Society of Friends.

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popularity because they were commercial enterprises based on the demand from subscribers. Interestingly, Lay’s, Woolman’s and Benezet’s pamphlets did figure in the catalog of the Philadelphia circulating library of the Library Company founded by Benjamin Franklin.32 This is a good indicator of their success in the American colonies and the young Republic if we add that, on the one hand, none of the pamphlets was in any of the large British circulating library catalogs consulted for this chapter and, on the other, whereas the Company had been founded by Franklin, the titles he published are not in the catalog. Yet this presence can be explained by the fact that the Philadelphia meeting donated a significant number of Quaker pamphlets to the Library Company, rather than responding to demand from readers.33 Indeed, it seems that the pamphlets by Keith, Sandiford, Coleman, and Hepburn attracted limited attention and readership in the decade following their publication. Tellingly, Benezet was the only one of the seven authors who had various publications in different formats in the Library Company’s catalog. The popularity of Benezet’s first antislavery pamphlet is also supported by its reprinting in three different editions in the interval of three years. Assuredly, Benezet’s Observations on the Inslaving was distributed in greater volume than the other pamphlets. The expansion of the readership may have resulted from the fact that his predecessors addressed their texts more or less explicitly to a group of identified readers, while Benezet attempted to deliver a universal message. For instance, the Keithian “Caution” is addressed to “Friends and Brethrens.” Whereas in Quaker literature the address was a common call to all members of the Society of Friends, replaced in the context of the Keithian controversy, 32  In the catalog of books belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia of 1807, we find Lay’s pamphlet (item 493), a 1774 collection of John Woolman’s works donated by Joseph Crukshank (item 1118), and various texts by Anthony Benezet: A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from Various Authors, and Submitted to the Serious Consideration of All, more Especially of Those in Power (Philadelphia, PA, 1766) in octavo format donated by Joseph Parker Norris; A Short Account of the People Called Quakers (Philadelphia, PA, 1780) and its French edition in duodecimo format (items 791 and 1086); Serious Reflection on the Times (Philadelphia, PA, 1778); Thoughts on the Nature of War and its Repugnancy to the Christian Life (Philadelphia, PA, 1776); and The Plainness and Innocent Simplicity of the Christian Religion, With its Salutary Effects, Compared to the Corrupting Nature and Dreadful Effects of War (Philadelphia, PA, 1782), gathered with other titles in a volume of pamphlets (item 791). 33  James Raven, London Booksellers and their American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748–1811 (Columbia, SC, 2001), p. 163.

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it was mainly intended to be circulated among Keith’s supporters. The selftermed ‘Christian Quakers’ gathered various groups who opposed the Quaker proprietaries, as was seminally demonstrated by Gary B. Nash and Keith’s abolitionist manifesto, which targeted implicitly the Quaker slave-owners of Pennsylvania.34 Similarly, Sandiford restricted his readership to his surrounding community. His pamphlet, addressed to an anonymous “Friendly Reader”, was dedicated to a representative of the County of Bucks, and in the preface of the second edition he addresses the possible repercussions of his publications not simply within the limits of the yearly meeting but also considers that the cause transcends this immediate readership: Had I been committed as threatened by our chief judge, in the face of our chief judge, in the face of our annual meeting, for printing the ensuing treatise, and distributing them at my own charge, to clear my conscience, it would not have moved me from my foundation, knowing that my God is over all, and the truth I witnessed over them that oppose my testimony against this trade, which I understand hath its original in England, therefore I am concerned at this time to offer this treatise.35 Like Sandiford, Coleman did not identify his reader but his justification of the Quaker faith indicates that he intended to circulate his pamphlet to reform American Quakers. Lay’s treatise was the first to call for an expansion of the distribution of the pamphlet: he presented his publication as “a general service” to advance the universal necessity to abolish slavery, a desire that, he pretended, was supported by his community.36 Hepburn similarly hoped to be read across denominations by all English-reading Christians as he addressed an unspecified “Christian Reader” in his preface and added: If these Lines should come to the Island of Great Britain (my native Land) I hope the sincere Christians there of all Sects will commend my Christian care, [. . .] And I hope the learned Christians there will admonish their American Brethren, for putting such an Affront upon the blessed Messiah and his glorious Gospel as this their Practice doth, in making Slaves of Men.37

34  Nash, Quakers and Politics, Pennsylvania, 1681–1726, p. 156. 35  Sandiford, A Brief Examination, 1st edn, p. 4. 36  Lay, All Slave-Keepers, “Introduction,” unpaginated. 37  Hepburn, The American Defence, “Preface to the Reader,” unpaginated.

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Although he addressed primarily his fellow American Quakers, Hepburn considered English-reading Christians as the body regulating the unruly colonial behavior. He only modestly hoped that the pamphlet “should come” to Great Britain and did not trust that the colonists would impulse the change. Moreover, he tried to place himself in a lineage of earlier publications bridging both sides of the Atlantic. He opened this intertextual lineage by mentioning two sermons by John Tillotson and A Crying Sin in the Land by Cotton Mather, before referring to “George Fox’s [text] against this practice” and recalling that “there was another paper printed by (I think) G. Keith and his Party in Philadelphia and half a sheet was printed against this practice at London called the Athenian Oracle.” Hepburn viewed his contribution as a continuation of a transatlantic abolitionism constituted by authors of opposing denominations rather than restricting himself to the Quaker lineage that would connect him to a colonial phenomenon. Despite his title, The American Defence, he—or his publisher—replaced materially his discourse in a transatlantic intertextuality. Hepburn’s transatlantism is materialized in the dialogic juxtaposition of his text to “Arguments against Making Slaves of Men,” written by “a native of America” who, as Henry Cadbury rightly argued, was unlikely to have been a Quaker.38 Over the period, we observe a geographical and religious expansion of the intended readership. Indeed, following Hepburn’s rather explicit address to an imaginary transatlantic Christendom, Woolman dedicated his discourse in Some Considerations to “Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination.” Expansion and generalization of the discourse become even clearer in Benezet’s pamphlet, which does not address, define, or name the reader and offers instead a treatise structured on a multitude of proofs and examples. Benezet’s choice was perfectly unusual. Addressing the reader was a paratextual courtesy as much as a marketing necessity in the book trade. He exposed facts in a convincing manner to a nameless, faceless, and faithless reader. By doing so, he potentially designed a universal treatise that could be read by, and could touch, everyone. Finally, succinct observations on the current preservation of the first editions of the pamphlets seem to confirm the expansion of the circulation. Of course, the geography of contemporary holdings does not indicate the original geography of the circulation of the pamphlets. Nevertheless, as today’s trade in 17th- and 18th-century books relates first to the value an artefact has acquired

38  Henry J. Cadbury, John Hepburn and his Book against Slavery, 1715 (Worcester, MA, 1949), p. 104.

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through time rather than primarily on its rarity, it is a good indicator of the success of a pamphlet to enter the piazza of abolitionism.39 Only three original copies of Keith’s An Exhortation have been cataloged. One is in the London Library of Friends, along with other pamphlets mentioned in this study, except for those of Hepburn and Benezet. This primarily illustrates the minute record-keeping of the Friends following their 1674 decision to keep two copies of all texts written by a member. Another copy is kept in the New York Public Library, the city where it was printed, and another in the Huntington Library. The fact that the Huntington Library possesses a copy is explained by the value acquired by the status of the pamphlet as the “first printed tract against slavery in the American colonies.” In the English Short Title Catalogue, Hepburn’s tract is said to have only survived in the collections of the British Library and Boston Central Library. Boston’s defective copy was digitized as part of the first Early American Imprints microform collection but is no longer listed in the collections of the Boston Public Library. Besides the digitized version, the pamphlet circulates mainly thanks to Cadbury’s partial reproduction, published in 1949 by the American Antiquarian Society.40 Apart from the copies kept in the Friends Library in London, Sandiford’s, Coleman’s, Lay’s, and Woolman’s pamphlets are all preserved in American institutions. In total, eight copies of Sandiford’s41 and four copies of Coleman’s have survived,42 while Lay’s pamphlet can be found in six libraries, of which three are in Pennsylvania where the pamphlet was printed.43 Eleven copies of Woolman’s pamphlet and of the first edition of Benezet’s tract are preserved in the United States.44 Interestingly, Benezet’s first tract is not preserved in the Library of Friends but it is to be found in England in the Congregational Library, a collection at Dr William’s Library. Its second edition is preserved in an additional four 39  The figures are compiled using the English Short Title Catalogue. 40  Cadbury, John Hepburn. 41  London Library of Friends, Haverford College Library (Pennsylvania), Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Beinecke Yale University Library (New Haven). 42  London Library of Friends, Haverford College Library (Pennsylvania), Library Company of Philadelphia. 43  Swarthmore College McCabe Library (Pennsylvania), Harvard University Houghton Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company, the Library of Congress, and University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. 44  London Library of Friends, but preserved in the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Massachusetts), the Harvard University Houghton Library, the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum (Wilmington, Delaware), the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI), the Library Company of Philadelphia, the New York Historical Society, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library (California), and the Library of Congress.

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British libraries and thirteen institutions in the United States, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania alone possesses eight copies.45 Reprinted in three editions in a short period of time, surviving in at least fifty-four original copies, Benezet’s first abolitionist pamphlet circulated much more widely that its predecessors’ and has received much attention since. To explain this success, one must turn to Benezet’s multi-faceted transatlantic world as much as to the almost irrefutable way in which he presented his argument to a universal reader. Although all the pamphlets that preceded his also contained powerful liturgical and rhetorical discourses, Benezet, as his publishing practices embody with force, managed to reframe these arguments to place them in the context of a transatlantic dialogue which made it possible to progressively turn antislavery into a discourse audible across Christianity.

45  Congregational Library, Dr Williams’ Library in England, and the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Massachusetts), Haverford College (Pennsylvania), the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI), Linderman Library at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania), the Library Company, New York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library.

Chapter 10

Anthony Benezet’s Antislavery Reputation in France: An Investigation Marie-Jeanne Rossignol Introduction This chapter challenges an established historiographical tradition that has claimed that two of Anthony Benezet’s antislavery pamphlets were translated into French decades before the French Revolution, and that Benezet’s ideas were well known in France. It is in fact more likely that only one pamphlet, written in French by Benezet himself, and presenting the Quaker religion (with no major emphasis on antislavery), found its way to France as a translation. Part of this chapter tells the story of how this conclusion was reached. Although there is no evidence that his antislavery pamphlets were either read or circulated, Benezet did enjoy a remarkable reputation in France as an antislavery figure, as well as other North American Quakers. I trace how and why Benezet and the Pennsylvania Quakers came to be so highly regarded in the Atlantic world starting in the late 1760s, as it became known that this group had emancipated their slaves. By the late 1780s, the French antislavery society (les Amis des Noirs), now working jointly with the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London, felt it could no longer do without a proper translation of Benezet’s works. It thus commissioned translations which apparently were never completed, as we shall later see. One antislavery tract by Benezet was translated into French in 1788, though it did not enjoy much posterity as it remained anonymous: Tableau précis de la malheureuse condition des négres dans les colonies d’Amérique: suivi de considérations adressées aux Gouvernemens de l’Amérique libre sur l’inconséquence de leur conduite en tolérant l’esclavage (A Caution and a Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies). This confirms the view that although Benezet was a key name in French antislavery circles, his published ideas on the subject never circulated as such. The broader goal of this chapter is thus to qualify the very notion of “Atlantic circulation” with regard to the supposed existence of an “Antislavery international” network which emerged in the 1780s.1 1  Yves Bénot salutes this network but calls it ‘a sketch’ in “L’internationale abolitionniste et l’esquisse d’une civilisation atlantique,” Dix-huitième siècle 33 (2001): 265–79. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004315662_012

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The case of Benezet illustrates the importance of national contexts: though he proved to be a source of inspiration for French activists as an iconic antislavery figure, his own antislavery arguments were not readily available in print in French, and, as a result, his humanitarian and religious rationale could do little to shape the French antislavery argument, which was characterized by the prevalence of philosophical, administrative, and economic arguments, together with moral indignation targeted at colonial planters.2

Benezet’s Antislavery Tracts and the Absence of French Translations

Before examining which Benezet publications may or may not have been translated into French, it is necessary to present the corpus of Benezet’s antislavery publications, a task made easier thanks to David Crosby’s 2014 edition of The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet 1754–1783.3 Benezet’s first written piece was An Epistle of Caution and Advice Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves (1754), a brief work of three pages. This was followed in 1759–60 by Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, also a short publication of about eight pages. In 1762 Benezet published A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes, a much longer work of around sixty pages focused on how much destruction the slave trade caused in Africa—a pioneering argument. This was followed by A Caution and a Warning (1766), a shorter, twenty-five-page treatise, before Benezet turned to Africa again in what came to be his most famous publication, Some Historical Account of Guinea (1771). Some Historical Account was not simply Benezet’s longest pamphlet (around eighty pages in the Crosby edition4) but also proved to be so convincing through its array of arguments and examples that it became “a kind of bible for later 2  Jean Ehrard, Lumières et esclavage. L’esclavage colonial et l’opinion publique en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2008); Madeleine Dobie, Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture (Ithaca, NY, 2010). 3  David L. Crosby, ed., The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet 1754–1783: an Annotated Critical Edition (Baton Rouge, LA, 2014). The Crosby edition will serve as a yardstick to compare the length of Benezet’s antislavery writings. 4  The 1771 Philadelphia edition and the 1772 London edition are both very long pamphlets, comprising Benezet’s views for over two-thirds of the text, while the rest reproduces excerpts from famous or less famous antislavery texts (Granville Sharp, George Wallace, Frances Hutcheson, James Foster, newspaper editorials, or sermons). The two editions are similar but paginated differently. The London edition (paginating the document in a continuous way) lists 198 pages, without the index. Benezet’s fifteen chapters make up 144 out of the 198 pages.

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abolitionists in England and America” (most specifically Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, who later founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787 in London).5 John Wesley, founder of Methodism, used Some Historical Account as the basis for his own 1774 Thoughts upon Slavery. Benezet’s next publication was Observations on Slavery (1778), which was four pages long. He ended his career as an antislavery pamphleteer in 1783 with the publication of Short Observations on Slavery, six pages which were added to extracts from A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies by the Abbé Raynal. He died in 1784. Benezet’s works were first published in Pennsylvania at his own expense,6 but they found their way to London through Quaker networks and Benezet’s personal international activism since he kept sending them to his British ­contacts.7 There they were reprinted by the Quaker publisher James Phillips to meet the needs of an increasingly interested public. In Great Britain, Benezet’s propaganda work was instrumental in preparing minds for the abolitionist campaigns that were to start in the 1780s. Although Benezet’s tracts were made available in many circles in the 1770s and 1780s in Great Britain, there no evidence that they were translated into French in those years or before. The widespread idea that his work was translated into French, and read in France—as far as I can ascertain—is due to Edward D. Seeber in his monumental, and invaluable, Antislavery Opinion in France, published in 1937. Seeber’s view was that a French translation of Benezet’s A Caution and a Warning was published in 1767, immediately after its original publication in English, under the title Avertissement [sic] à la Grande-Bretagne et à ses colonies, ou Tableau abrégé de l’état miserable des nègres esclaves dans les dominations anglaises. He also believed that a French-language edition of Benezet’s major work, Some Historical Account (1771), was published in French in London in 1788 under the title Relation historique de la Guinée. Seeber relied on information provided by 19th-century bibliographers (Joseph-Marie Quérard, Ferdinand Hoefer, and Joseph Sabin), whom he probably should not have fully trusted since he explained himself that all had wrongly dated the first English edition of Relation historique as published in 1762 as opposed to

5  Crosby, The Complete Antislavery Writings, p. 113. 6  Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1817), p. 24. 7  Vaux, Memoirs, p. 27. Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), pp. 396–432. Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), pp. 139–87.

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its actual date nearly a decade later.8 Seeber did not document Benezet’s influence on the French readership, rather stating that it was Benjamin Rush who publicized the Quaker antislavery commitment of the 1760s to a group of early French antislavery men (physiocrats who were also friends of Franklin’s).9 His views were used in two PhD dissertations focusing on Benezet’s antislavery.10 In 1980, William B. Cohen also asserted in The French Encounter with Africans that Benezet “was closely read in France” without backing up this statement.11 Quite logically, Maurice Jackson recently retained the views of these specialists of 18th-century French culture in his highly stimulating and widely acclaimed biography of Benezet.12 However, none of Benezet’s supposed antislavery works in French appears in the catalog of the French national library nor in any other library catalog containing his books. And when one looks closer, the bibliographical works to which Seeber refers in his footnotes as sources do not provide sufficiently 8  Edward D. Seeber, Antislavery Opinion in France during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1937), pp. 85, 125. 9  Seeber, Antislavery Opinion, pp. 85, 86. 10  Leonard C. Lashley, “Anthony Benezet and his Antislavery Activities”, unpublished dissertation (Fordham University, 1939); Nancy S. Hornick, “Anthony Benezet: Eighteenth Century Social Critic, Educator and Abolitionist,” unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Maryland, 1974). I could not get hold of Lashley’s dissertation but Hornick says she compared Condorcet’s Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nègres (Neufchatel, 1781) with Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce and the General Disposition of its Inhabitants (Philadelphia, 1771) and found plagiarized passages from Benezet in Condorcet. Unfortunately these two documents do not have much in common, apart for their common criticism of slavery. Condorcet briefly alludes to the slave trade and Africa but, as a philosopher, mainly focuses on the question of “rights” and “justice” in the enslavement of Africans. He uses economic arguments more than humanitarian ones to denounce planters, and puts forward a long and detailed plan of gradual emancipation (not to be found in Some Historical Account). Examples are drawn from the French Caribbean colonies. 11  William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530–1880 (Bloomington, IN, 1980), p. 152. 12  Jackson posits that a translation of Benezet’s tract A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from Various Authors, and Submitted to the Serious Consideration of All, more Especially of Those in Power “appeared as early as 1767,” while “a later work, A Short Account of That Part of Africa, Inhabited by the Negroes was also published in Paris and republished in 1788, the year of the founding of the Société des Amis des Noirs.” See Jackson, Let this Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009) p. 168.

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accurate information on the supposed French editions.13 Quérard was a general bibliography published from 1827, and the “new” general biography edited by Ferdinand Hoefer was published from 1852. Sabin was published last, in English, from 1868. Interestingly the title of Quérard’s bibliography is Literary France, or the Biographical Dictionary of learned men, as well as foreign literary men who wrote in French, especially during the 18th and 19th ­centuries.14 It should clearly have been a reliable source of information about whether Benezet’s antislavery tracts were indeed translated. Quérard does list Avertissement and Relation historique (both later mentioned by Seeber and Jackson), together with another text by Benezet, Observations sur l’origine, les principes et l’établissement en Amérique de la Société des Amis, connue sous la denomination de Quakers, extraites des divers auteurs, et rédigées principalement en faveur des étrangers, to which Seeber does not refer.15 While the publishing house is mentioned in the case of Observations sur l’origine, the lack of publishing information is striking with regard to the two other volumes, most particularly in the case of Avertissement, for which no publisher is specified. This is strange because Quérard usually provides his readers with detailed information—for example, when books are translated from English, this kind of information is specified (as is the case of Bentham, a little further down in the same volume). One is therefore led to wonder whether Quérard did not merely translate the original English titles in the entries, and whether he was really referring to translations. For example, he lists Relation historique (published in London in 1788 according to him) as being a fourth edition. Had he referred to the fourth edition of the English version (Some Historical Account), this would make sense as indeed a posthumous edition of this popular work did come out in London in 1788, but obviously this was not the fourth edition of the work in French, so one senses a problem there. By comparing this Benezet entry with other entries dealing with the translations of foreign authors in the same bibliography, one is thus led to question the quality of information in the case of Benezet’s supposed publications in French.

13  Seeber, Antislavery Opinion, p. 125, n. 33. J-M Quérard, La France littéraire, ou Dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens et gens de lettres de la France, 12 vols. (Paris, 1827–64); Dr Hoefer, ed., Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés, 37 vols. (Paris, 1854–66); Joseph Sabin and W. Eames, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, from its Discovery to the Present Time, 22 vols. (New York, NY, 1868–1936). 14  My translation; emphasis in bold is mine. 15  Quérard, La France littéraire, vol. 1 (Paris, 1827), pp. 272–73.

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The information in the general bibliography edited by Ferdinand Hoefer is even scantier with regard to Benezet’s work: there are only references to Relation historique (1762) and Avertissement (1767), and the reader is made to understand that these works were translations, but with no further ­explanation.16 For his part, Sabin lists Avertissement as having been published in 1767, with no publisher indicated (as opposed to the entry on Observations sur l’origine, for which full publication details are given). Relation historique de la Guinée is also mentioned as having been published in 1788.17 Were there any French translations of Benezet’s works in the 18th century? If so, why do they not appear in library catalogs, or on the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database? If Relation historique had been published in London, the book could be found on ECCO and other catalogs, as is the case with Observations sur l’origine, to which I shall presently come. Durand Echeverria, in his massive The French Image of America, a Chronological and Subject Bibliography of French Books before 1816 Relating to the British North American Colonies and the United States, also mentioned the existence of the 1767 and 1788 translations (based on the bibliography by Sabin). According to him, however, “no copy could be located.”18 One is thus led to the conclusion that Benezet’s works may never have been translated into French before the French Revolution, as has been claimed. As a result, it is highly unlikely that his antislavery works made him famous in French antislavery circles, and that the very specific arguments he used became a central part of the French antislavery rhetoric, as they did in Great Britain. The sources of his reputation in France (which was well established in the late 1780s at least, as we shall see later) must be sought elsewhere.

The French Version of A Short Account of the People Called Quakers: Benezet’s Command of French and the Sources of his Reputation in France

Surprisingly, neither Seeber nor later historians showed an interest in Observations sur l’origine, the Benezet publication mentioned by Quérard and which was said to have been published in France in 1822. In fact it had been published as early as 1780 in both English and French, was republished in three 16  Hoefer, Nouvelle bibliographie générale, vol. 5 (Paris, 1852), p. 353. 17  Sabin and Eames, A Dictionary of Books, vol. 2 (New York, NY, 1869), pp. 60–64. 18  Durand Echeverria, The French Image of America, vol. 1 (Metuchen, NJ; London, 1994), pp. 236, 656.

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different editions in French, and is widely available even today in specialized libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. The English version was entitled A Short Account of the People Called Quakers: Their Rise, Religious Principles and Settlement in America. Both versions were originally published in Philadelphia, at Joseph Crukshank’s, the same year. That the volume was thus originally published in Philadelphia, in both French and English, makes it possible to surmise that, when Benezet wanted to translate his works in French, he followed through completely. My assumption is that his Short Account of The People Called Quakers was a volume that he wanted to circulate in France in 1780, which is why he had it published in both languages. In order to examine Benezet’s production of pamphlets in both English and French, it is necessary to document his command of French, the language of his birth country and family. In his biography of Benezet, Vaux deplores the absence of proper archives concerning his subject, but one point which seems to be undisputable is Benezet’s continuing command of French throughout his life. A sizable section of Vaux’s biography is devoted to Benezet’s efforts on behalf of the 500 or so exiled Acadians who landed in Philadelphia in 1755. Raised in a French-speaking home, Benezet is said to have been able “to converse with them in their own language” and served as an “interpreter” to the members of this dispossessed community to which he devoted his time and his own resources over a long period.19 Christopher Hodson gives more detail about Benezet’s intervention on behalf of the destitute Acadians: as the exiles approached the city in November, they were first quarantined on Province Island, six miles south of Philadelphia; Benezet made sure they were given proper shelter and food. His command of French was all the more essential as the bitter exiles insisted on using only French in their correspondence with the British imperial authorities in the following years.20 He may have kept up his French afterwards through contacts with those Acadians who had not moved to various places in the French Empire after 1763, such as Charles Leblanc.21 In the 1770s, the revolutionary crisis in the British North American colonies led to an alliance with France, which gave one final, and major, opportunity for Benezet to renew and cultivate French connections (personal and political), while practicing his French through contacts with French diplomats and

19  Vaux, Memoirs, pp. 82–91. 20  Christopher Hodson, “Exile on Spruce Street: an Acadian History,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 67:2 (2010): 263–67. For a general history of the Acadian community, see his The Acadian Diaspora: an Eighteenth-Century History (New York, NY, 2012). 21  Hodson, “Exile on Spruce Street,” pp. 268–70.

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­military officers.22 The friendships he established then were central to his later reputation, but the French visitors (diplomats, military officers) probably already entertained a very favorable image of Quakers in general. When Benjamin Rush visited Paris in the spring of 1769, he was introduced to members of the physiocratic circle and a number of philosophers.23 He must have publicized the Quakers’ decision to emancipate their slaves, since it found its way the same year into the Ephémérides du citoyen, the physiocrats’ journal edited by Dupont de Nemours.24 Because of their peace commitment, simple manners, and toleration, Quakers had long been popular in France, a trend that culminated with Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques in 1734, which opened on four “Letters on the Quakers.”25 But the emancipation of their slaves by the Pennsylvania Quaker community struck the French enlightened elite as remarkable, just at a time when antislavery was rising as a preoccupation in liberal and philosophical circles. To give just one example, Quakers were praised in the 1769 narrative by Saint-Lambert, Zimeo.26 Benezet’s name gradually became known that way in France. Keeping in touch with Benjamin Franklin’s enlightened friends, Benjamin Rush sent an antislavery pamphlet he had written to Franklin’s friend Barbeu-Dubourg in 1773, saying that he had drafted it at “the instigation of a pious Quaker of French origin, Anthony Benezet, whose name is held in veneration in these parts and deserves to be spread throughout the world.”27 Such a glorified image of Benezet was to spread in French enlightened circles in the following 22  Hornick, Anthony Benezet, pp. 442–43. 23  Benjamin Rush, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, His “Travels through Life” together with His Commonplace Book for 1789–1813, ed. George W. Corner (Princeton, NJ, 1948), p. 67. 24   Ephémérides du citoyen IX (1769), 172–75. See Maurice Jackson’s foreword for further details. 25  Edith Philips, in The Good Quaker in French Legend (Philadelphia, PA, 1932) argued that references to Quakers were common in French literature starting in the mid-17th century. But these merely built a “legend,” that of “ a traditional Quaker [. . .] who resembled but little the real Quaker of history” (p. ix). The text of Voltaire’s first four “Letters” is to be found at https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_philosophiques (accessed February 22, 2016). Far from deliberately building a myth, Voltaire, basing his analysis on a number of meetings and interviews with Quakers, presented the Quaker faith, its history, and the origins of William Penn’s settlement in the United States, and he sounded a pessimistic note as to the future of the organization in Great Britain. 26  Seeber, Antislavery Opinion, pp. 85–89. Saint-Lambert, Zimeo, in Trois contes philosophiques, Diderot, Saint-Lambert, Voltaire, ed. Dominique Lanni (1769, reprinted Paris, 2007). 27   Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 1, ed. L.H. Butterfield (Princeton, NJ, 1951), “To BarbeuDubourg, Philadelphia 29 April 1773,” p. 76.

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years due to the presence of many French diplomats and military officers in Philadelphia during the War of Independence. When the French were in Philadelphia, Benezet became acquainted with French diplomats such as Conrad Alexandre Gérard, François Barbé-Marbois, and the Chevalier de la Luzerne, at whose home he met with French officers such as Cromot du Bourg, and probably many others. All of their letters talk about Benezet as an exceptional figure, but also as a man who was “partial to his nation”, meaning that he was curious about his birth country.28 When the academician François-Jean de Chastellux, Rochambeau’s chief of staff, visited Philadelphia in the fall of 1780, he found himself seated next to Benezet at a banquet. As he entered into a long conversation with the older man, he observed: “your command of French is very good.” When Benezet left, he asked Chastellux whether he could send him some pamphlets. According to the French academician, Benezet then sent him some tracts, “mainly in praise of his sect,” so obviously they had to be Observations sur l’origine, the full French title of which indicates that it was “written in favour of foreigners.” Chastellux did not specify whether these pamphlets were in French or in English, although we may assume that they were in French.29 Whatever the case, it appears that Benezet became some sort of celebrity in the French circles of revolutionary Philadelphia, and he may have meant Observations sur l’origine to present his religious group to representatives from a nation which he had long feared as the son of Huguenots, a nation he now felt he could trust.30 Adding to the Quakers’ celebrity in France, by 1780 they had been acclaimed as emancipators in the best-selling A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, a French anti-colonial and antislavery publication by the Abbé Raynal that proved so successful that it was rapidly translated into English and many other languages. The chapter specifically dedicated to the North American Quakers vividly describes a scene in which an anonymous Quaker rises and convinces 28  George S. Brookes in his Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1937) reproduces the many letters written by these important men about Benezet. See pp. 45, 51, 133–34, 453–54. 29  François-Jean de Chastellux, Voyage de Newport à Philadelphie (Imprimerie royale de l’escadre, 1781), p. 114. After the British surrender at Yorktown, Chastellux went on two other journeys in the new American nation before sailing back to France, and the three were gathered in a volume which was published as Voyages de M. de Chastellux dans l’Amérique septentrionale (Paris, 1786). 30  See Chastellux, Voyage de Newport à Philadelphie, p. 115 for Benezet’s views on the persecution from which his family suffered.

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his fellow Quakers to desist from slavery. As we read it today, we cannot but think that this is a rendering of Benezet’s 1758 appeal in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to change Quakers’ slave-owning practice, as if the author had heard an oral account of it (from Franklin, from Rush?).31 Originally published in 1770, A Political and Philosophical History grew more critical of slavery in its later editions. This is probably what moved Benezet to get in touch with Raynal in 1781 (although the antislavery passages had actually been penned by Diderot, which few people knew at the time) and to publish some excerpts from A Political and Philosophical History with an introduction in Philadelphia.32 To thank Raynal for his favorable presentation of North American Quakers in the book, and to express his admiration for the Frenchman’s antislavery positions, Benezet also sent him letters and his pamphlet on Quakers in French, Observations sur l’origine, through Franklin. One of the letters prompted Raynal to answer, the correspondence being published in Brussels in 1782, and then posthumously in Philadelphia in 1785.33 A 1781 letter from Benezet to his friend and neighbor Franklin, then United States representative in France, suggests that Benezet also wanted to renew connections with some family members in his native Saint-Quentin, in the north of France. The correspondence must have been conducted in French.34 The French alliance during the American Revolution thus seems to have revived Benezet’s interest in his mother country, now seen as an ally and no more as an enemy of Protestants. It prompted him to start writing a pamphlet in both languages, which he had never done before to the best of my knowledge. However, his French-language opus was no antislavery tract but a small volume presenting the Quaker sect. Surprisingly it 31  Abbé Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, vol. 4, book 18, ch. 32 (Geneva, 1780), pp. 359–61. See Jackson’s foreword for details about the scene. 32  Anthony Benezet, Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory to some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbe Raynal on that Important Subject (Philadelphia, PA, 1781). 33  Richard Baxter, Baxter’s Directions to Slave-Holders, revived; First Printed in London, in the Year 1673. To Which is Joined a Letter from the Worthy Anthony Benezet, Late of this City, Deceased, to the Celebrated Abbé Raynal, with His Answer, which were First Published in the Brussels Gazette, March 7, 1782 (Philadelphia, PA, 1785). 34  Irv. A. Brendlinger, To Be Silent . . . would Be Criminal: the Antislavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet (Lanham, MD, 2007), pp. 66–67: Benezet to B. Franklin, Philadelphia, July 12, 1781 “Having several times attempted to get intelligence by letter from my kindred at St. Quentin, in Picardie, the place of my nativity I take the liberty to trouble thee, my dear friend, with the enclosed packet for M. Debrissac, my dear kinsman, one of the principal traders there; a person whose assistance would, in several respects, be agreeable to thee; requesting thy kind assistance in the conveyance to its destination.”

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went through several editions between 1780 and 1822, although there were few Quakers in France, and their small community had no ties to the English and American ones until the late 1780s.35 Of course, one of the reasons for the volume enjoying such longevity in France is that the Quaker sect itself had embodied antislavery in France as early as the 1770s. And as early as the 1780s, Observations sur l’origine had given new inspiration to the rising French antislavery movement.

Observations sur l’origine, its Editorial Longevity and Paradoxical Influence on French Antislavery

Following initial publication in Philadelphia in 1780 in both languages, and then in London by James Phillips in 1783, Observations sur l’origine appears in the catalog of the French national library as published in 1788 in London, again by James Phillips, with whom Brissot, founder of the French antislavery society, was in contact. The treatise actually dealt with slavery only in one short section: Benezet briefly recalled how the religious society had decided to exclude any member trading in slaves or owning them, as well as to educate the ex-slaves and to help them improve their lot.36 The rest of the tract contained a historical and spiritual introduction to the sect’s founders (George Fox, the ways and manners of early English Quakers, William Penn and the removal to America, Penn and the Indians, and freedom of conscience in Pennsylvania). This was followed by various descriptive sections, such as “The Universality of the Grace of GOD, and its Saving Effects,” “On War,” “Of Worship,” “On Baptism and the Supper,” “On Swearing,” and “Their Discipline and their Oeconomy,” all studded with quotations from and references to the Bible. In 1817 a “new edition” of Observations sur l’origine from the same London printer featured a short foreword followed by a brief biography of Benezet. It was reprinted in 1822, this time in Paris by L.T. Cellot, at the very time when the 35  Henry Van Etten, Chronique de la vie quaker française 1745–1945 (Paris, 1947), pp. 44–86. Jean de Marsillac, who connected the two communities in 1788–89, seems to have been involved in the publication of an antislavery pamphlet in1789: Le More-Lack ou Essai sur les moyens les plus doux et les plus équitables d’abolir la traite de l’esclavage des Nègres d’Afrique en conservant aux colonies tous les avantages d’une population agricole (Paris, 2010). 36  Following the Benezet treatises, the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania gradually eradicated slavery in its ranks, by forbidding first the sale and purchase of slaves among its members (1758), and then the ownership of slaves (1776). See Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers & Slavery: a Divided Spirit (Princeton, NJ, 1985).

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second French antislavery movement was enjoying good press in artistic, intellectual, and political circles in France. Indeed, major French political figures such as Benjamin Constant and the Duke of Broglie criticized the government in 1821 and 1822 for not keeping up with Great Britain in repressing the slave trade, while the French Academy set “The Abolition of the Slave Trade” as a topic for its annual poetry contest in 1823.37 In his account of French antislavery activity in the 1820s, Lawrence C. Jennings explained how British influence was instrumental in the founding of the Société de la morale chrétienne (Society of Christian Morality) in 1821, an elite grouping of both liberal Catholics and Protestants. One of their philanthropic activities was opposition to the slave trade and slavery.38 The society sponsored a slave-trade committee formed in April 1822 at the instigation of a British Quaker, Joseph Price. Obviously the publication of Observations sur l’origine in France in that year corresponds to the rise of this British-inspired antislavery campaign. Indeed, as Kate Hodgson has shown, the British-led campaign to abolish the slave trade and then slavery after 1814 was characterized by a deliberate attempt to make antislavery publications available in many languages.39 With so little content bearing on slavery, one can hardly think of one valid reason why Benezet’s tract was published in a new edition in French in 1817 and 1822, apart from the fact that it was penned by him, and that the name of Benezet, as well as the Quaker sect which in French eyes he embodied, had long been associated with antislavery. Indeed, however focused on the religious convictions of Quakers this tract may have been, Observations sur l’origine had found its way into the publications of the French pro-American antislavery coterie in Paris in the 1780s, clearly owing to a lack of more appropriate Benezet treatises, and also out of sheer interest in the antislavery Quakers on the part of Crèvecoeur, the famous author of Letters from an American Farmer, and more particularly of JacquesPierre Brissot, who was to found the first French antislavery society, the “Société des Amis des Noirs” (the Society of the Friends of the Blacks), in 1788.40 37  Nelly Schmidt, L’abolition de l’esclavage: Cinq siècles de combats XVIè–XIXè (Paris, 2005), pp. 127–28. 38  Lawrence C. Jennings, French Antislavery: the Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France 1802–1848 (Cambridge, UK, 2000), pp. 8–17. 39  Kate Hodgson, “La circulation des idées”: Translating European Abolitionism”, L’empire britannique en heritage: Esclavage, abolition, discrimination et commemoration de l’Amérique du nord à l’Australie, Cahiers Charles V, 46 (Paris, 2009): 97–118. 40  The antislavery connection between Brissot and Crèvecoeur is studied in my “The Quaker Antislavery Commitment and How it Revolutionized French Antislavery through the Crèvecoeur-Brissot Friendship, 1782–1789,” Quakers and Slavery, eds. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (Urbana, IL, 2014), pp. 180–94.

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Half of the English version of Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, published in London in 1782 and 1783, was devoted to descriptions of Quaker communities and Quakers.41 The French version, published in Paris in 1784, focused directly on Benezet: Crèvecoeur started by mentioning him briefly in the introductory letter (which was in fact a whole chapter devoted to Quaker antislavery and emancipation) as “the grandson of a Frenchman,” and the first to publish a book against the slave trade and to campaign against it.42 Later in the book, Crèvecoeur praised Benezet again, along with the Quaker sect, in a long section entitled “Lettre écrite par Ivan AI-Z” and devoted to John Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, highlighting the Quakers’ antislavery commitment and their religious beliefs.43 This was followed by a whole chapter on the issue of Quaker religion entitled “Description abrégée de la secte des Quakers ou Amis.” The first three pages briefly summarized what may have been the substance of Benezet’s presentation of Quakers history and theological tenets in Observations sur l’origine, and were followed by a mix of Crèvecoeur’s personal impressions of Quakers and further considerations regarding their religion. Unlike Benezet’s treatise however, the chapter contained no biblical references, the narrator even warning his correspondent about his own theological incompetence; it was merely a “secularized” and, in fact, politicized presentation of the group whose ways were romanticized and generally idealized.44 As he had when focusing on the Nantucket Quakers in the English version of the book, Crèvecoeur insisted on the simple and peaceful way of life of Quakers, a pastoral and pre-modern ideal at odds with both the hierarchies of old Europe

41  J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (New York, NY, 1981). 42  J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain écrites à W.S. Ecuyer, Depuis l’année 1770 jusqu’à 1781 vol. 1 (1785; reprinted Paris, Geneva, 1979), p. xiii: “Antoine Benezet, petit-fils d’un françois, publia enfin à ce sujet un excellent livre. Cet ouvrage a eu tout l’effet dont l’auteur pouvait se flatter; mais non content de ce commencement de bien, il abandonna ses affaires à sa femme, quitta sa maison, & fut de société en société prêchant la liberté des nègres.” Crèvecoeur seems to confuse Benezet and Woolman because Woolman, not Benezet, led a peripatetic campaign against slavery in the British North American colonies. 43  Crèvecoeur, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, pp. 159–71. See p. 165: “Tel est leur système religieux; sans hierarchie, sans lois coercitives, & sans culte extérieur.” 44  Crèvecoeur, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, pp. 172–98. See p. 175: “Rien ne peut être plus simple que leur système religieux; la crainte de Dieu, l’observance des vertus morales, la douceur, la bienveillance, la charité, etc.”

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and the bustle of modern life.45 The chapter ended with a long anecdote about Warner Mifflin, another famous Quaker figure whom Crèvecoeur had mentioned at the beginning of his book regarding his courageous emancipation of his own slaves.46 This time, Crèvecoeur focused on Mifflin’s commitment to peace during the War of Independence. Published two years later in 1786 by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, an admirer of Crèvecoeur, as an explicit defense of North American Quakers, American democracy, and blacks, Examen critique (a critical examination) devoted a much longer section to Quaker religion and was directly inspired by the reading of Observations sur l’origine.47 Starting on p. 39, Brissot entered into the details of Quaker theology and spiritual specificities, referring to Benezet’s writings in Observations and even quoting him.48 Later in his pamphlet, Brissot revealed his extensive knowledge of Quaker theological figures through long quotes of Robert Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1676), while William Penn was quoted at various times too.49 References to Benezet appeared in the rest of the document, which focused on the abolition of slavery and the peace commitment of Quakers. A close reading of Brissot’s 1786 defense of the Quakers thus proves that he had read Observations sur l’origine, and he used it to support his budding antislavery commitment. Yet references to other tracts by Benezet, more focused on antislavery than Observations sur l’origine was, do not appear in Brissot’s writings at the time, except as pamphlets which should be translated urgently. This is one more indication that Benezet’s antislavery pamphlets may never have been translated before, and may not even have been read in English by Brissot in 1786. As the most famous figure of the Quaker sect, who were now famous for having emancipated their slaves in North America, Benezet was a source of inspiration, but his antislavery writings were not easily available. Brissot moved to correct that wrong in the early months of the creation of the French antislavery society in 1788.

45  This is the point made by Robert Sayre in La modernité et son autre. Récits de la rencontre avec l’Indien en Amérique du nord (Paris: 2008). 46  Crèvecoeur, Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, pp. x–xxi. 47  Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Examen critique des voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale de M. de Chastellux, ou lettre à M. le marquis de Chastellux, dans laquelle on réfute principalement ses opinions sur les Quakers, sur les Nègres, sur le peuple, et sur l’homme (London, 1786). Reference to Observations sur l’origine (no title indicated) is on p. 17. 48  Brissot, Examen critique, p. 39. The original quote is to be found in Observations sur l’origine, p. 15. 49  Brissot, Examen critique, pp. 42–48.

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The Proposed Translation of Benezet and Woolman’s Works by the Société des Amis des Noirs

When Brissot and Clavière formally launched the Société des Amis des Noirs on February 19, 1788, Brissot delivered a long speech presenting the goals of the organization, which included the translation of works by Benezet and Woolman.. Debates within the society can be followed on a meeting-by-­ meeting basis in the edition of the proceedings established by Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot.50 The plan to translate antislavery books (as well as newspaper articles) was presented to members of the society on March 4 by Brissot, who referred to them as “the English papers, in favor of the emancipation of Negroes” and as “English works,”51 More specifically, he declared that he had already launched an initiative to translate and publish those works that were sent to him by the London society: he referred to “Benezet, Clarkson, and l’Adresse des Quakers.”52 Although Brissot added that “these translations exist, all we have to do to is revise them and having them printed,” Dorigny and Gainot assume that such translations were unlikely to have existed at the time, and comment that “few translations eventually came out.”53 By stating that “these translations exist,” what was Brissot referring to since no copy of a Benezet translation was ever located, and he had never used Benezet’s writings directly in his own writings, except for Observations sur l’origine? Whatever may be the case, he was among those people who started spreading the rumor that these tracts were to be found in French. Later events showed that the members of the Amis des Noirs never revised, let alone translated, Benezet’s works. With regard to his projected translating and publishing enterprise, Brissot wanted to form a “committee” of bilingual translators at the initiative of the Amis des Noirs. They would translate English tracts, revise existing translations, and have all of those documents printed. He considered that this propagandistic activity would be a full-time pursuit. In order to counter the need for government authorization (necessary in pre-revolutionary France), his idea 50  Marcel Dorigny and Bernard Gainot, eds., La Société des Amis des Noirs: 1788–1799 Contribution à l’histoire de l’abolition de l’esclavage (Paris, 1998). 51  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 73. 52  Dorigny et Gainot, La Société, pp. 73–74, n. 28, 29, 30. Marcel Dorigny suggests that this may have been Brissot’s reference to The Case of Our Fellow Creatures, the Oppressed Africans, Respectfully Recommended to the Serious Considerations of the Legislature of Great-Britain by the People called Quakers (London, 1783), a 16-page pamphlet published by British Quakers to alert Parliament to the question of slavery and the slave trade. 53  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 74, n. 31.

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was to collaborate with Mirabeau, who had suggested that the translated works should appear as an appendix to Analyse des papiers anglais (a newspaper he edited and which focused on news from Great Britain, and other liberal topics, such as antislavery) on a regular basis. Beside this committee on translation, Brissot thought a second committee should be established, which would keep up the connection with Great Britain and procure antislavery newspaper articles and books from England, in order to publish them also in Analyse, at a time when the first British antislavery campaign was in full swing.54 Publishing the antislavery tracts as an appendix to an authorized newspaper was not simply a ploy to thwart censorship but was presented by Brissot as the best way to reach a wider readership and shape public opinion.55 This translation agenda remained prominent in the activities of the Amis des Noirs throughout 1788 and 1789, although no concrete results in terms of actual translations appeared, at least as far as Benezet was concerned, while the rumors of previous translations can still be found circulating in the Amis des Noirs discussions later on. The minutes of the meeting do not reveal who sat on this committee.56 When one turns to Analyse for evidence on the concrete implementation of this plan, one finds the first part of Brissot’s inaugural speech of February 19 in issue XXV. Brissot praises the efforts of one Quaker in particular, whom we can assume was Benezet.57 A second instalment of the speech, in issue XXVI, targets the Quakers by name, praising them, from George Fox to Benezet.58 A third instalment of the speech was published in issue XXVII, and Brissot then focused on his translation project, saying that works by Benezet, Clarkson, and Ramsay “have already been translated.”59 One of Clarkson’s publications appears in the French national library catalog as being translated and published in Paris in 1789, when the Amis des Noirs was at its apex.60 The final 54  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, pp. 74–79. 55  See Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 76, for Brissot’s ideas about journalism and the shaping of modern public opinion. 56  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 84, n. 49. 57   Analyse des papiers anglais (1788) XXV: 22–23: “Vous devez vous rappeler à quels faibles efforts l’Amérique libre doit l’amélioration du sort de ses Nègres, un seul homme, presque sans appui, sans fortune, n’ayant d’autre force que celle de sa volonté, entreprend de faire abolir l’usage des Esclaves dans sa Patrie.” 58   Analyse (1788) XXVI: 47. 59   Analyse (1788) XXVII: 78. 60  Thomas Clarkson, Essai sur les désavantages politiques de la traite des Nègres (Neufchâtel, 1789). Marcel Dorigny says that M. de Gramagnac translated this work into French (see Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 140, n. 163), but one Mr Bridel came to collect his translation fee for a book by Clarkson, November 4, 1788, La Société, pp. 184–85). This was the

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part of Brissot’s speech came out in Analyse issue XXVIII and contained one final reference to Benezet. It was followed by a formal notice for a subscription to an appendix to Analyse which would be devoted to the translation of English publications: interested members of the public were advised to send their subscriptions and correspondence to Lejay fils, the printing house that was in charge of Analyse.61 A similar announcement was inserted at the end of issues XXIX, XXXI, XXXII and XXXIII. A later issue published a speech delivered by Brissot to the Amis des Noirs in which he referred to “books which have recently been sent to us by the London society.”62 Following the progress of this initiative in the minutes of the Amis des Noirs’ meetings provides even more details: on March 11, Brissot expressed his intention to start with the translation of Benezet’s Some Historical Account and of Clarkson’s Essay. Having received those books from the British society, Brissot summarized Benezet’s pamphlet to his fellow Amis des Noirs and insisted on how important it was to translate it, while being far less enthusiastic about Clarkson’s Essay; the title of Some Historical Account was translated as Détails historiques de M. Benezet, sur la Guinée, et sur le commerce des esclaves, etc., which does not correspond to the title later indicated by Quérard (Relation historique).63 By March 18, numerous antislavery publications had indeed been received from London (by Ramsay, Newton, Benezet, Wesley, Neutin, Day, Falconbridge, Nicholls, and many others).64 By April 22, a new batch of books had been received from London, including “Recherches de Benezet sur la Guinée” (another possible translation for the title of Some Historical Account), a new edition of “Clarkson’s Essay, and a new edition of Dr. Nicholls’s letter”.65 A longer list of books received was read by Brissot on April 29, books by Granville Sharp this time, but also “the new edition of Description de la Guinée par M. Benezet,” probably the latest London edition (was Description de la Guinée another proposed translation title for Some Historical Account?).66 Excerpts from M. “Nikol’s letter” did appear in Analyse, but soon Brissot’s proposed translation project, a major, if not the central, pillar of the Amis des translation of Clarkson’s first and prize-winning essay, entitled An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African, Translated from a Latin Dissertation, which was inspired by his reading Benezet. 61   Analyse (1788) XXVIII: 100–03. 62   Analyse (1788) LXII: 431. 63  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, pp. 90–94. 64  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, pp. 102–05. 65  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 145. 66  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 156.

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Noirs activities, was jeopardized, although subscribers had easily been found for the appendixes on slavery to be published.67 Indeed, it looks as if the plan to publish these works through publisher Le Jay had fallen apart just as Brissot was about to depart for the United States in the summer of 1788: by May 6, this mission was transferred to Cuchet, another Paris printer and member of the Amis des Noirs who decided to postpone such work indefinitely on account of the political crisis then rising.68 However, it was decided that the committee on publications would avail themselves of the break in the publication initiative to assess the state of “translations already carried out.”69 This is a precious indication that some translation work had been carried out, but there is little sign of the actual translations, apart from a report on a set of six pages translated from Benezet, which Le Jay had already printed.70 Later meetings revealed that de Gramagnac had volunteered to translate the “most interesting volumes” received from Great Britain.71 With regard to Benezet, one Mr Carra resigned from the Amis des Noirs in January 1789, asking that his translation of Benezet be returned to him. This was done, and he also collected the first printed pages of the translation.72 A number of elements thus converge to confirm that a translation of Benezet was begun in 1788 but was never completed, at least under the aegis of the Amis des Noirs. One volume in French by Benezet came out in 1788: Tableau précis de la malheureuse condition des négres dans les colonies d’Amérique: suivi de considérations adressées aux Gouvernemens de l’Amérique libre sur l’inconséquence de leur conduite en tolérant l’esclavage. Traduit de l’anglais par M. Porphire.73 This title is not mentioned in the Amis des Noirs proceedings or in Seeber and Quérard, yet it was dedicated to the Amis des Noirs, and was included by Brissot in a list of antislavery works “given to the National assembly” on May 7, 1790.74 This volume contained translations of Benezet’s A Caution and a Warning as well as A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of Their Conduct Respecting Slavery by “a Farmer,” the latter not written by Benezet. 67  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, pp. 145–46. 68  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 163. 69  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 164. 70  August 12, 1788: Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 172. 71  October 7, 1788: Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 181. 72  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 191. 73  Paris, 1788. This was brought to my attention by Kate Hodgson. The tract is listed under “Anonymous” in Seeber, Antislavery Opinion, p. 202. 74   Le patriote français: journal libre, impartial et national (consulted on February 15, 1790), p. 7. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k49496x.r=le%20patriote%20fran%C3%A7ais% 3A%20journal.

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In the absence of completed translations clearly sponsored by the Amis des Noirs in the key year of 1788, Analyse remained an outlet for the publication of antislavery ideas by French activists Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Brissot (through his own speeches and a defense of Crèvecoeur in many instalments), to such an extent that earlier texts by French antislavery proponents were republished there: such was the case with excerpts from Zimeo by Saint-Lambert (1769), earlier published in the physiocratic Ephémérides.75 However, the ideas expressed in the Ephémérides, a favourite place of publication for French economists, cannot be assimilated with those of Benezet and Woolman—whose work was hardly made available to the French ­public— stressing as the physiocrats did economic reasons for the emancipation of slaves. The traditional French enlightened argument that it was profitable to treat slaves well was also insisted on in one of the few documents translated from English: excerpts from a letter by Mr Nikol, “Dean of Middle-Ham.”76 The translation of documents on the abolition of the slave trade, and, more generally, the abolition of slavery, was still contemplated by the Amis des Noirs as one of its most important tasks on February 26, 1789.77 Books sent by the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade kept pouring in, but French publications on both sides of the slavery question now also multiplied in 1789 and 1790, before the activities of the Amis des Noirs stopped in 1791. As suggested earlier, a list of antislavery books in French and in English held by the Amis des Noirs was published in Le patriote français, Brissot’s paper, on May 7, 1790. None of Benezet’s works was included in the list of translated works for obvious reasons (although one of his publications was in fact 75   Analyse, XLVI, 473: the excerpts from Zimeo were introduced by a comment showing the connection between Benjamin Franklin’s ideas (1751 Observations on the Increase of Mankind, stressing the economic inefficiency of slavery) and those of the physiocrats on antislavery: “ Extrait des éphémérides du citoyen, année 1771, tome 6, pages 178–246. De tous les contes de M. Saint-Lambert, celui qui nous intéresse le plus est celui de Ziméo. Ce conte, qui montre combien l’esclavage des Nègres est odieux et détestable en lui-même, nous offre l’occasion de développer un calcul par lequel nous nous flattons de prouver qu’il est en outre un crime inutile et onéreux pour nous. Il y a environ deux ans que nous avons fait ce calcul, dont le célèbre Benjamin Franklin avait déjà conçu l’idée en 1751.” Continued in Analyse XLVI, 497–504, 518–28. 76   Analyse (1788) XLVIII, 17–24. For the French economic antislavery rationale, see Michèle Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 1978), and Dobie, Trading Places. A recent publication focusing on economic arguments against slavery is that by Caroline Oudin-Bastide and Philippe Steiner, Calcul et Morale: Coûts de l’esclavage et valeur de l’émancipation (XVIIIe–XIXe siècle) (Paris, 2015). 77  Dorigny and Gainot, La Société, p. 202.

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to be found in the list, Tableau précis, but Benezet’s authorship was not recognized). One pamphlet by the Saint-Quentin born Quaker appeared in the list of books in English, with only its title having been translated.78 Indeed, this list of English books with their titles translated is the very document that may have confused and misled later bibliographers because it included the translations in French of the titles of key volumes of antislavery literature in English, such as those by John Newton, John Wesley, and Granville Sharp, but in a section entitled “Livres anglais” (English books), with the note “We have translated the titles” in italics underneath. The titles had been translated but not the books. Conclusion The fact that Benezet’s command of French was very good, that he did pen one of his pamphlets in both French and English, and that this very treatise (Observations sur l’origine) found its way to French readers and libraries in the 1780s, let alone later, seems to confirm that his other pamphlets probably never were translated into French as early as the 1760s, nor circulated in the French enlightened public, apart from the single 1788 anonymous publication (which does not match references in Quérard and thus adds to the mystery). Had a single Benezet pamphlet been translated in the 1760s or 1770s, we would find it in library catalogs, and its arguments would be discussed, but we do not. Benezet was highly regarded as an antislavery activist and author in France in the late 1780s, due to the rise of the antislavery movement around Crèvecoeur and Brissot, who were deeply impressed by the Philadelphia Quakers’ achievements with regard to the eradication of slavery in the wake of the physiocrats, Diderot and Voltaire. But Benezet’s antislavery ideas themselves hardly reached the French public directly: they were mediated by Crèvecoeur, then more specifically by Brissot, who mentioned them to the Amis des Noirs. Observations sur l’origine, Benezet’s only pamphlet in French that was acknowledged as his at the time, is the one that could least shape the antislavery views of the French public because its antislavery content was minimal. Yet, paradoxically, it is the one that was explicitly referred to by Brissot in 1786, published in London in French, and republished twice in later years when French public opinion had to be shaped by abolitionist literature, as if all other works by Benezet were unavailable in France or in French. 78   Le patriote français, (consulted on May 7, 1790), p. 8. I want to thank Maurice Jackson for discussions as I was revising the chapter, which led me to reconsider this “list of English books” as the possible source of later historiographical confusion.

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However, translations of his major antislavery works were rumored to exist in French in Amis des Noirs circles, while being paradoxically launched at the same time—a very confusing situation indeed. As we saw, only one seems to have been completed, independently of the efforts of the Amis des Noirs, but by one of their admirers though. By the end of 1788, a flood of English publications displaced those by Benezet from the forefront of the antislavery struggle. They were not translated either, equally failing to impress the French public. But Benezet lived on in the French antislavery imagination: starting in the 1770s, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre penned an antislavery play, Empsaël and Zoraïde, completed in 1793, in which Benezet plays a minor role.79 It takes place in an imaginary Morocco, Benezet coming on stage at the beginning of Act 2, to praise the “innocence” of Africa. Emphasis was placed on his Quaker qualities and values (which included vegetarianism and exercise), which were pitted against the intolerance of Catholic priests. In many ways the fanciful presentation of Benezet in the play was an appropriate illustration of his status in French intellectual circles as an antislavery icon more than as a provider of antislavery arguments.

79  Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Empsaël et Zoraïde, ou les Blancs esclaves des Noirs à Maroc: drame, ed. Maurice Souriau (Caen, 1905) (consulted February 15, 2016), pp. 71–73, https:// archive.org/details/empsaeletzorad00sain. I want to thank Hélène Cussac for bringing this little-known work to my attention.

Chapter 11

“This Precious Book”: Africa and Africans in Anthony Benezet’s Account of Guinea Randy J. Sparks

Africa before Benezet

When Thomas Clarkson began his landmark Cambridge dissertation on the slave trade in 1785, he recalled that he had no idea where to begin research on that topic, when going by accident into a friend’s house I took up a newspaper, then lying on the table; one of the articles which attracted my notice was an advertisement for Anthony Benezet’s Some Historical Account. I soon left my friend and his paper, and to lose no time hastened to London to buy it. In this precious book, I found almost all I wanted. Clarkson was only one of many thousands of readers who gained their first insights into Africa and the slave trade from Benezet’s influential study of West Africa. At a time when much of Africa was unknown to Europeans, and when a great deal of what was known about Africa was erroneous and colored by European ethnocentrism, Benezet set out to collect reliable, first-hand accounts of West Africa and the conduct of the slave trade there. Influenced by his own encounters with Africans in Philadelphia and by insights gained from his knowledge of other Africans whose stories of their enslavement were reported to him, he was eager to correct many misrepresentations of West Africa that were used to defend the slave trade, and to present as accurately as he could the rich cultural diversity in the region known to Europeans as Guinea. As Clarkson suggests, Benezet’s account played a fundamental role in shaping early abolitionist thought about Africa and Africans. This chapter will explore Benezet’s book, and his understanding of Africa and Africans, and it will assess the impact of his views on early abolitionist thought. Before Benezet’s Some Historical Account was published, Europeans pictured Africa as a hostile place, plagued by disease, wild beasts, and savage inhabitants. The image of Africa in the European mind differed sharply from that of

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a peaceful, arcadian America whose native population was seen as primitive but unsuited to slavery. Africans were often described as savage and “beastly” or “brutish,” and these perceived attributes combined with the Africans’ dark skin color set them radically apart. Early travel narratives to the New World emphasized similarities between Native Americans and Europeans, while early narratives of Africa emphasized difference and denigrated Africans and their culture. While many European writers considered it a crime to enslave Native Americans, enslaving Africans was portrayed as an act of kindness and humanity. Europeans did not colonize Africa before the 19th century, and the relatively small number of European traders in the weak forts there dealt on relatively equal terms with West African traders. Europeans could argue that they engaged in a trade already well established in Africa, and that they were saving captives from an almost certain death, either as criminals or as prisoners of war. Enslaved Africans, they reasoned, were better treated in the America and were offered the benefits of Christianity. As one 18th-century English economist wrote, Though the odious Appellation of Slaves is annexed to this Trade . . . they are certainly treated with great Lenity and Humanity: And as the Improvement of the Planter’s Estates depends upon the due Care being taken of their Healths and Lives, I cannot but think their Condition is much bettered to what it was in their own Country. Thomas Thompson, who served as a missionary on the Gold Coast in the mid-18th century, referred to Africans as “pagans . . . of as dark a mind as complexion.”1 1   David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York, NY, 1966), pp. 165–187; Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550– 1812 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 3–43; Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54 (January, 1997): 21–44; William Hamlin, The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare: Renaissance Ethnography and Literary Reflection (New York, NY, 1995), pp. 2, 9; Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1995), pp. 211–26; Malachy Postlewayt, The National and Private Advantage of the African Trade Considered (London, 1745), p. 4 first quotation; Thomas Thompson, The African Trade for Negro Slaves, Shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion (Canterbury, ?), p. 10 second quotation. Thompson’s pamphlet outraged Benezet, who wrote angry comments in his copy. See David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY, 1975), p. 532. On race and ideas of Africa and Africans, see Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing,

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Benezet intended his Some Historical Account of Guinea to challenge these widely held perceptions and to undermine one of the chief arguments in favor of the slave trade. Note that he did not set out to write a history of Africa, but rather of that part of Africa where the British forts were located and where British slavers purchased most of their human cargoes. He made it clear in his preface that he intended to challenge another central argument used to justify the trade: That the slavery of the Negroes took its rise from a desire, in the purchasers, to save the lives of such of them as were taken captives in war, who would otherwise have been sacrificed to the implacable revenge of their conquerors.2 From the outset, he challenged the notion that Africans were uncivilized, uncultured, and better off enslaved in the Americas. In his view, enslavement left them “broken-spirited and dejected,” and that condition made it easier for their enslavers to credit: accounts we frequently hear or read of their barbarous and savage way of living in their own country . . . as incapable of improvement, destitute, miserable, and indefensible of the benefits of life; and that our permitting them to live amongst us, even on the most oppressive terms, is to them a favour. He sought to prove that Guinea was a rich land that provided all the comforts of life to its inhabitants, that despite their interactions with “the worst of the Europeans,” its inhabitants retained “a great deal of innocent simplicity,” that they were “a humane, sociable people, whose facilities are as capable of Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between European and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1994); George Fredrickson, Racism: a Short History (Princeton, NJ, 2002); Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54 (January, 1997): 103–42; David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford, 1993); Ivan Hannaford, Race: the History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore, 1996); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: the Origins of American Racial Anglo Saxonism (Cambridge, MA, 1981); and Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origins and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder, CO, 1993). 2  Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of its Inhabitants With an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, Its Nature, and Lamentable Effects (London, 1783), pp. xiv–xv.

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improvement as those of other men,” and that their economy and government were commendable.3

Benezet’s Proofs

He set out to overturn virtually all of the notions of African inferiority that had accumulated since the Europeans made contact with sub-Saharan Africa. To do that he drew on the best-informed sources for his evidence, and ironically it was slave traders who had the most experience on the coast of Guinea. He referred to them as “authors of credit . . . principal officers in the English, French, and Dutch factories . . . who resided many years in those countries.” Maurice Jackson has described Benezet’s clever use of documents left by the slave-traders as a “brilliant rhetorical strategy” since they could hardly be accused of having a pro-African bias.4 His research into the published writings of individuals who lived on the coast of West Africa or traded there is impressive, and many of his sources are still heavily relied on for our understanding of the region. He cited a dozen sources, including the Gentleman’s Magazine and well-known published accounts, such as those of James Barbot, William Bosman, and Astley’s Collection of Voyages. It is also worth noting that he carefully footnoted these sources throughout Some Historical Account.

An African Paradise

Contemporary scholars take footnotes for granted, but footnoting, too, has a history. The footnote was still relatively new in Benezet’s time, having originated in historical writing only around 1700. Why did Benezet employ them in his Some Historical Account? He did not use them in his other publications related to slavery or the slave trade. Anthony Grafton noted that one maxim often associated with noting sources was that “the text persuades, the notes prove.” Many forms of historical writing appeared during the 18th century, and it became increasingly common for such works to be footnoted. They represented a shared assumption that notes should lead the reader to the original 3  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 1; Jonathan D. Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image: Anthony Benezet, African Travel Narratives, and Revolutionary-Era Antislavery,” Journal of Early Modern History 10 (2006): 97–98. 4  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 3. Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), p. 72.

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sources and that those sources were accurately represented in the text. Notes also provided a test of the historian’s critical abilities; if a writer were to be believed, he could not just tell a good story, he also had to cite hard evidence. Such proof was especially important for writers who confronted controversial topics. Footnotes were one means of convincing skeptical readers, and were increasingly seen as a mark of intellectual modernity. More significantly, the desire on the part of historians for documentary evidence and rigorous proof arose at the end of the 16th century as Protestant reformers attacked the medieval Church, and it is no coincidence that some of the early innovators of footnotes were Huguenot writers, most particular Pierre Bayle. Protestant reformers attacked a deeply rooted institution sanctioned by tradition. In a similar vein, Benezet and other abolitionists launched an assault on a deeply rooted institution, and they sought authority for their radical position as they sought to persuade their readers.5 Benezet began by describing the land, its climate, and its productivity. He observed that while West Africa was unhealthy and even deadly for Europeans, it was not so for Africans, who were “able to procure to themselves a comfortable subsistence, with much less care and toil than is necessary in our more northern climate.” He praised the fertility of the land, the abundance of fruits and grains, and the numbers of cattle and poultry. The climate was so warm that few clothes and simple lodgings were sufficient. Guinea extended for over 3000 miles along the coast, and he took care to differentiate the Grain Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Slave Coast. In every case he drew upon the favorable accounts of traders to these regions to paint a picture of Eden-like beauty and bounty. In a typical description of this kind, he quoted Michel Adanson, who traveled in Senegal and published his Histoire naturelle du Sénégal in 1757. Adanson described

5  He did not use footnotes in Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes (1760); Short Observations on Slavery, Introductory to Some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbe Raynal, on that Important Subject (1770?); Serious Considerations on Several Important Subjects: viz. On War and its Inconsistency with the Gospel; Observations on Slavery: and Remarks on the Nature and Bad Effects of Spirituous Liquors (1778); Notes on the Slave Trade [s.l.] (1778–?); The Case of Our Fellow-Creatures the Oppressed Africans, Respectfully Recommended to the Serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great-Britain, by the People Called Quakers (1784); or A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies: in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions (1785). Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: a Curious History (Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 15–16, 95–107, 121, 205, 217, 220–21, 230–32, quotation on p. 15. I have found no direct evidence to show that Benezet was influenced by Bayle in his use of footnotes, though the possibility is an intriguing one.

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a perfect image of pure nature, an agreeable solitude, bounded on every side by charming landscapes; the rural situation of cottages in the midst of trees; the ease and indolence of the Negroes, reclined under the shade of their spreading foliage; the simplicity of their dress and manners; the whole revived in my mind the idea of our first parents, and I seemed to contemplate the world in its primitive state . . . it convinced me, that there ought to be a considerable abatement made in the accounts I had read and heard every where of the savage character of the Africans. Descriptions like this one enabled Benezet to challenge the widely held perception of Africans as savage and barbarous. Before the Europeans arrived on the scene, Africans lived in innocence in this idyllic environment. Benezet undermined the perception of African barbarity by holding the slave trade responsible for bringing evil into paradise. Framing the history of West Africa as a parable of the fall of man enabled Benezet to portray Africans as victims of European greed and to hold the slave trade responsible for spreading wars and enslavement there.6

Race and Slavery

Benezet further challenged the concept of African savagery in his description of the states along the coast of Guinea as well governed. It was significant that he took pains to describe the various nations along that coast and to pay attention to the various forms of government among them. They were not “destitute, miserable, and insensible to the benefits of life.” Instead, he found their economy and government to be “commendable.” In Gambia, for instance, he identified three “nations”: the Jolofs, Fulis, and Mandingoes. He described the Jolof kingdom as being well governed by the king and his councilors, by a chief justice, and royal treasurer, down to the local “Alkadi” or chief magistrates of every village. The Fulis (the Fulas or Fulani, also referred to as the Pullo) were Moslems whose chiefs, he reported, “rule with much moderation.” The Mandigos were also Moslem, and each town was governed by an Alkadi. Deeply religious and literate, he considered them “a good hospitable people.” All of these nations had thriving markets and skilled tradesmen, including

6  Benezet, Some Historical Account, pp. 4 first quotation, pp. 13–14 second quotation; Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image,” pp. 96–98; Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, p. 74.

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smiths, potters, saddlers, and weavers.7 He noted correctly, for example, that the Slave Coast and Gold Coast were divided into different states, some ruled by kings and others, “more of the nature of a commonwealth, are governed by some of the principal men, called Caboceros.”8 He continued down the Guinea coast, identifying each of the many states that lined it, and generally praising the people and their governments. When describing the Gold Coast, Benezet noted that crimes including murder and adultery were severely punished. He reported that in Benin, adulterers were put to death and their bodies thrown on a dunghill. These reports enabled him to comment on the supposed libidinous nature that Englishmen had associated with Africans even before they made contact with West Africa, associations that had only intensified with the slave trade. For Benezet, these laws were evidence that “Negroes are not insensible of the sinfulness of such practices.” He condemned slave-owners in the English colonies for refusing to recognize slave marriages and for separating husbands from wives and parents from children, and he marveled that the clergymen in those colonies failed to hold slave-owners accountable for these faults.9 Another prominent justification for the enslavement of Africans was the concept of racial inferiority. Race and racism lay at the heart of African enslavement, and it was Benezet and his friend and fellow Quaker John Woolman who first grappled with the complex coupling of race and slavery. Together they played a central role in exposing and challenging this dynamic. In his A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes, Benezet speculated on the origins of racism and its link to slavery. Slaves, he wrote, “are constantly 7  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 2 first and second quotations, p. 7 third quotation, p. 8 fourth quotation, p. 9 fifth quotation, p. 11 sixth quotation. For an examination of the impact of the arrival of the Europeans and the slave trade on this region, see Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 31, 81, 91–94. It is instructive to compare Benezet’s descriptions with those of Richard Jobson, who published his account of the same people along the Gambia in 1622. He characterized them in negative terms, and referred to “Fulbie” (Benezet’s Fulis) as animals, “seemingly more senselesse, then our Country beasts.” Jobson, The Golden Trade, Or a Discovery of the River Gambra [Gambia?] (1628; Amsterdam, 1968), p. 35. Sassi claims that Benezet “downplayed the power and autonomy of African rulers,” but I do not agree with that assessment. Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image,” p. 98. 8  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 27 quotation. 9  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 27 quotation, p. 31; Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 32–40; Jennifer L. Morgan, “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500–1770,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54 (January, 1997): 183–84.

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employed in servile Labour, and the natural Tendency to create in us an Idea of a Superiority over them, which induces most People to look upon them as an ignorant and contemptible Part of Mankind.” The recognition of racial prejudice (the term ‘prejudice’ came into wide use at the same time as Woolman’s and Benezet’s publications) is a critical one in the struggle for abolition.10 Benezet took the next step and dismissed race as an irrelevant characteristic: “Are they not Men as well as we, and have they not the same Sensibility?”, he asked. Over and over again he stressed the unity and equality of mankind: We and they are Members of one and the same great Society, spread over the Face of the whole Earth . . . and are joined together, by the close and strong Ties of human Nature, common to us all; and it is this Bond of Humanity, that is the Foundation of all other particular Ties and Connections between Men . . . A Patriot, or a Lover of his Country, is a brave Character; but a Lover of Mankind is a braver Character.11

Benezet and Abolition

Benezet proposed that the concepts of natural inferiority and inherent vice that had been used to justify racial slavery were false, and he looked to Africa to help prove his arguments. He challenged the idea that “Negroes are generally a stupid, savage People, whose situation in their own Country is necessitous and unhappy, which has induced many to believe, that bringing them from their Native Land is rather a Kindness than an injury.” He argued instead that “the Negroes are generally a sensible, humane, and sociable People, and that their Capacity is as good, and as capable of Improvement as that of the WHITES.”12 He turned to his research on West Africa to prove this point, one that he returned to consistently in his work. He quoted Adanson, who referred to the people of Senegal as “generally speaking, very good-natured, sociable, and obliging.” The residents of the Ivory Coast were described as “sensible, courteous, and the fairest traders on the coast of Guinea.” Only abuse from the slave-traders, particularly the kidnapping of free people, had altered their treatment of Europeans. He praised the “civility, kindness, and great industry” 10  Anthony Benezet, A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes . . . Second Edition, with Large Additions and Amendments (Philadelphia, PA, 1762), pp. 65–66. 11  Benezet, A Short Account, p. 33 first quotation, pp. 38–39 second quotation; Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 275–281. 12  Benezet, A Short Account, p. 7.

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of the people of Whydah. He concluded that the “natives are inoffensive people; corrupted by the Europeans.”13 One justification for the enslavement of Africans was that they were prisoners captured in war, and their enslavement was therefore justified by the law of nations. Writers often portrayed Africans as warlike, but Benezet challenged this assertion. Based on his research, he contended that West Africans generally lived in peace amongst themselves; for I do not find, in the numerous publications I have perused on this subject, relating to these early times, of there being wars on that coast, nor of any sale of captives taken in battle, who would have been otherwise sacrificed by the victors. It was only after the Portuguese began to enslave Africans “that we read of the different Negroe nations making war upon each other, and selling their captives.” He regarded these wars as “unnatural,” a result of the “drunkenness and avarice” the Portuguese had introduced to West Africa.14 He found it outrageous that Europeans fomented wars, encouraged Africans to enslave and sell one another, and used that as a “pretence” to portray them as savages “unworthy of liberty, and the natural rights of mankind.”15 Benezet’s views about Africa and the slave trade were landmarks in the history of abolition. Thomas Clarkson claimed that his work was “instrumental, beyond any other book ever before published, in disseminating a proper knowledge and detestation of this trade.” John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, picked up Benezet’s work in 1772 and was won over to the abolitionist cause. He wrote: “I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern: And it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mahometan countries.” Wesley and Benezet began to correspond, and Wesley wrote to Benezet to describe the experience of two enslaved Africans whom he had recently met.16

13  Benezet, A Short Account, pp. 13–14 first quotation, p. 26 second quotation, p. 25 third quotation, p. 45 fourth quotation; Jordan, White Over Black, pp. 282–83, 286. 14  Benezet, Some Historical Account, pp. 51–52 quotations, pp. 53, 94–96, 99–101. Historians continue to debate the role that Europeans played in the wars fought by African states in the era of the slave trade. See John K. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London, 1999). 15  Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 54. 16  Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols, vol. I (London, 1808), p. 169.

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The two men were Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, members of a prominent slave-trading family in Old Calabar and the rulers of Old Town. They were captured by James Bivins, a British slave-trader, during a bitter battle between Old Town and its chief rival, New Town. The Robin Johns arrived in Bristol in 1772 after a long and eventful odyssey around the Atlantic world. Their journey began in June 1767 when the captains of six British slave ships conspired with the ruler of New Town to launch an ambush against Old Town. The British captains invited the slave-traders of Old Town on board their ships anchored in the Cross River, where they entertained them and offered to mediate between the two towns. Several hundred unarmed slave-traders and their canoe boys from Old Town either came on board the British ships or anchored alongside them. After a night of entertainment, the British captains attacked their guests, and armed warriors from New Town set out in their canoes for a wholesale massacre of the men from Old Town. Hundreds died— the river literally ran red with blood—and hundreds more were enslaved by the British captains, including Little Ephraim Robin John, brother to Grandy King George, the king of Old Town, and Ancona Robin Robin John, the king’s nephew.17 Remarkably, the Robin Johns managed to stay together when both of them were sold to a French physician on the island of Dominica. After a few months on that island, Capt. William Sharp of Liverpool sailed the Peggy into the harbor at Roseau. He offered to help the Robin Johns escape and return to Old Calabar. The young men, who were “determined to get home,” ran away and boarded the captain’s ship, but rather than return them to Old Calabar, the captain sold them to Capt. John Thompson in Virginia, who employed them on his schooner, which traded between Virginia and Bristol. Thompson was an abusive master, and to the Robin Johns’ relief, he suddenly dropped dead on board his ship in March 1772. About three weeks later, Capt. Terence O’Neil arrived in Virginia from Old Calabar in the Greyhound with his enslaved cargo. Two African sailors employed on his ship recognized the Robin Johns and knew the story of their capture. They convinced O’Neil to rescue them. He offered to buy them but could not come up with enough money, so he urged them to run away to his ship. He promised that he would take them to Bristol, then back to Old Calabar on his next slave-trading voyage.18 Once they arrived in Bristol, O’Neil held the Robin Johns’ prisoner and intended to sell them back into slavery. Desperate to escape, they wrote to 17  Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: an Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 10–32. 18  Sparks, The Two Princes, pp. 81–89.

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Thomas Jones, one of Bristol’s most important slave-traders who had close ties to their family (the Robin Johns were literate in English, probably before they left Old Calabar). He helped them get off the ship, but they remained in jail until they successfully appealed to Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, who helped free them. Mansfield agreed to hear their case, the first dealing with slavery since the landmark Somerset case. Thanks to the publicity surrounding the case, the young men soon became known as the Two Princes of Calabar. In their deposition, they argued that they “were free people, and no ways subject to the people of New Town.” They denied that they had been legally enslaved since they had not been “conquered in fight or battle, or taken prisoners” by the people of New Town, nor had they “done anything to forfeit our liberty.” They further argued that the English captains had no right to interfere in Old Calabar’s internal affairs or to enslave them. Mansfield was not eager to rule in such cases and forced the parties to negotiate. In an out-of-court settlement arranged in November 1773, the captain who kidnapped the Robin Johns in Old Calabar, James Bivins, paid the heirs of John Thompson in Virginia the value of the two men, who were then freed, and Thomas Jones agreed to return them to Old Calabar.19 Conclusion While in Bristol the Robin Johns sought religious instruction from Charles Wesley, and much of what is known of their history comes from letters the two wrote to Charles and other members of his family. The two converted to Methodism under the ministry of Charles and John Wesley, and Charles baptized them into the Church of England. They studied scripture with Charles Wesley, and so engrossed were they in their studies that Little Ephraim noted: “I Dreamt I . . . read the 100 Psalm and . . . found good for my heart.” One of the most beloved of all the Psalms, it speaks to the universal message of Christianity and the unity of all believers (“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands . . . we are his people, and the sheep of his pastures.”). They joined the close Methodist community in Bristol and socialized with Charles and his family, with whom they were on affectionate terms. In March 1774 they set sail for Africa on board the Maria, a slave ship owned by Thomas Jones. The ship wrecked on a desert island off the African coast, and they were rescued by a British ship and returned to Bristol. They spent their time studying scripture and attending Methodist meetings. In October 1774, Thomas Jones sent 19  Sparks, The Two Princes, pp. 90–106.

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another slave ship to Old Calabar with the Robin Johns on board, and the two men returned to their families.20 It is easy to see why Wesley would have been anxious to share the remarkable story of the Two Princes of Calabar with Benezet since their experience validated not only many of Benezet’s most negative criticisms of the slave trade but also most of his positive assessments of the nature and character of West Africans. Wesley apparently wrote to Benezet around the time of the Robin Johns’ initial departure from Bristol, describing the two princes and the bloody massacre that led to their enslavement. While Wesley’s letter has not survived, Benezet told his fellow abolitionist Granville Sharp that he had “just received” it in October 1774. He immediately wrote to Sharp in England to tell him about the Robin Johns’ story and to suggest that it could be useful to the cause. The two men had opened their correspondence only two years earlier, as had Wesley and Benezet. At this stage, these men stood virtually alone in the abolitionist camp, and their Anglo-Atlantic communication network paved the way for greater cooperation between abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic. Benezet had abridged and published Sharp’s A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery before corresponding with him, and Sharp was so pleased with it that he put it in James Somerset’s hands so that he could give it to his legal counsel during his landmark hearing before Lord Mansfield.21 Given Sharp’s interest in the legal fight against the trade, Benezet believed that the Robin Johns’ case might lead to the prosecution of Capt. Bivins, who had participated in the massacre and captured them in Old Calabar. Benezet told Sharp that the Robin Johns (“Brother & Nephew to the King of Old Calabar”) had been violently brought from Guinea, with many others at a time when their King was murdered by order of one Captain Bevan of London. Now in this Case or any other of the like nature, which I believe frequently happen, would it not be right to endeavour to get the matter proved, & the Villain & his Accomplices, who have so flagrantly transgressed the Laws 20  Sparks, The Two Princes, pp. 127–35. 21  Benezet to Sharp, November 18, 1774 (Sharp Papers, Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester, England); Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and Abolition, 1760–1830 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1975), p. 240; Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 23; Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), pp. 165, 400–03; Benezet to Sharp, May 14, 1772 in Prince Hoare, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. (London, 1820), pp. 81, 98–100, 112–15.

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of God & Man, arraigned and brought to justice. It would I am persuaded, be in several respects productive of good.22 Over and over again in his Some Historical Account, Benezet had charged Europeans with kidnapping free Africans off the coast and fomenting conflicts between African states. The Robin John case was tailor made, he believed, to bring these transgressions before the public and to prove Europeans responsible for the enslavement of Africans. The Robin Johns were also perfect examples of the sort of Africans he had described in his work. They were literate, civilized, friendly, and personable—persecuted princes whose story was bound to arouse public sympathy. Their obvious intelligence, their conversion to Christianity, and their claim to natural liberty made them ideal ­versions of the African natives Benezet had described in Some Historical Account. Benezet sought to bring Bivins to trial in order to “get the matter proved.” Proof was what he sought with his carefully footnoted Some Historical Account (17th-­century writers entitled the documentary appendices intended to support their works “Proofs”23), and it was what he sought with the case of the Robin Johns—inconvertible evidence of the evils of the slave trade. Perhaps Wesley had not informed Benezet that the case had already been heard by Lord Mansfield, and that it would not get another hearing, nor would Bivins face prosecution. Following the story of the Robin Johns as it circulated among Wesley, Benezet, and Sharp takes us inside the close network among a handful of individuals who laid the foundations of the Atlantic antislavery effort. These men shared cases like that of the Robin Johns that could be useful to arouse sympathy, a crucial component of sentimental antislavery. These encouraged borrowing, and they lifted liberally from one another’s works. These letters and exchanges of published materials laid the foundations of the transatlantic abolitionist crusade.24 Benezet may not have found all the proofs he wanted, but his work had an enormous impact on the abolitionist movement, and his challenges to the range of negative views of Africans and Africa were an important part of his 22  Benezet to Sharp, November 18, 1774. 23  Grafton, The Footnote, p. 16. The 1788 edition of Benezet’s Some Historical Account includes in an appendix a letter from Harry Gandy, a slave-trader from Bristol, who wrote: “His Treatises appear to me incontrovertible, and supported by good authority. Whoever reads them, and remains insensible of the unparalleled injustice of such a trade, must require something more than proofs and arguments to break the callous membrane of his obdurate heart.” Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 125. 24  Jordon, White Over Black, p. 370; Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 138–39, 153–60.

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legacy. Thomas Clarkson claimed that Benezet’s Some Historical Account was “instrumental, beyond any other book ever before published, in disseminating a proper knowledge and detestation of this trade.”25 His efforts to prove that Africans were not brutes and savages whose condition was improved by enslavement, but rather that they were equal members of the greater human family who shared the natural rights belonging to all humankind, was path breaking. The concept of natural rights was not new to him, of course, but he was perhaps the first to apply it so concretely to Africans. He was also among the first to portray disasters such as the French and Indian War and the American Revolution as divine punishment for the slave trade. Benezet believed that no government that encouraged the slave trade could be legitimate. “No Legislature on Earth . . . can alter the Nature of things, or make that to be Lawful, which is contrary to the Law of God,” he wrote. The success of the American Revolution proved the folly of the British who had brought “under hard Bondage a people over whom the Parliament had not the least shadow of Rights.”26 His tireless efforts to reach out to men and women of like mind, and to have his views heard and read on both sides of the Atlantic, helped give birth to the abolitionist movement and undermined one of the chief arguments in favor of African enslavement. After Benezet, the inherent inferiority of Africa and Africans could no longer simply be assumed around the Atlantic World.

25  Clarkson, History of the Rise, vol. I, p. 169 quotation; Brown, Moral Capital, pp. 397, 400–01; Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image,” pp. 121–22. 26  Benezet, A Short Account, p. 52; Benezet, Some Historical Account, p. 131; Davis, Problem of Slavery, pp. 271, 319.

Chapter 12

Benezet’s Ghost: Revisiting the Antislavery Culture of Benjamin Rush’s Philadelphia Nina Reid-Maroney “I seldom dream, and when I do, seldom dream of anything worthy of the attention of the public.” With this address to the editor of the Columbian Magazine, Rush opened “The Paradise of Negro Slaves—A Dream.”1 First published in 1787, this was Rush’s account of a dream, occasioned, as he tells us, by his reading of Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.2 In the dream, Rush is transported to a beautiful land in the afterlife. There he meets a group of former slaves who are awaiting their translation into the kingdom of Christ. The sudden appearance of a white person brings a shock of panic among the “peaceful and happy company,” but, once Rush is recognized as a friend to the antislavery cause, he becomes an interlocutor, charged with hearing former slaves’ testimony on the cruelties, both physical and mental, that they have suffered in enslavement. The people of the dream world urge Rush not only to listen to the evidence they present—words and scars of the abuses suffered at the hands of slave-holders—but to carry messages back to their still-living enslavers, warning them of the punishment that awaits slave-masters after death if they do not repent of the sin of slavery and turn to emancipation. As the fourth of such narratives unfolds in Rush’s hearing, the testimony is interrupted by the appearance of Anthony Benezet, a “grave, placid,” and unassuming figure who advances on the company from the opposite side of the lush groves of paradise, bearing a petition and antislavery literature. All eyes turn toward him, and he is greeted joyously. At the sound of voices raised in the shout of “Anthony Benezet,” Rush wakes up and the dream is over. 1  “The Paradise of Negro Slaves—a Dream,” Columbian Magazine (January 1787): 235–38. The essay also appeared under the same title in the State Gazette of South Carolina, December 24, 1787, and as “Paradise of Negro Slaves.—A Dream” in Benjamin Rush, Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (Philadelphia, PA, 1798), pp. 185–90. 2  Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin dissertation, which was honoured with the first prize, in the University of Cambridge, for the year 1785, with additions, 3rd edn (Philadelphia, PA, 1787).

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It is a curious text, befitting its curious author. Yet in its very strangeness, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” rewards a more detailed reading. Its publication history is not an extensive one, but it raises important questions about reception, readership, and its place in Rush’s thought. My analysis leads in two directions. First, the text can be understood as part of a recurring encounter between Rush and the “ghost of Benezet.”3 “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is one in a series of such visitations, in which Rush invoked Benezet’s name, Benezet’s example, and Benezet’s memory. As a pivotal text, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” allows Rush to introduce a revolutionary turn in racialized narratives of religious conversion; it speaks the evangelical language of salvation but makes slaves the agents of white redemption. Placing “Paradise of Negro Slaves” in this context illuminates the process by which Benezet was at the center of Rush’s struggle to form a moral imagination that could envision, if not wholly realize, a world built on antislavery principles. Second, his encounters with the ghost of Benezet chart the transitional intellectual ground where Rush’s antislavery principles met the world of Philadelphia’s black abolitionists. The sense of place evoked in “Paradise of Negro Slaves” slips from dreamscape to landscape, from moral imagination to the moral geography that black abolitionists would later use to map the contours of freedom, not in Rush’s Philadelphia but in bold experiments with emigration to Canada. I am using Benezet’s haunting of Rush through his appearance and reappearance in Rush’s work as a starting point, a way of working back into the 18th-century foundations of that moral geography. Rush’s Philadelphia and black abolitionist communities in Canada are not as far apart as they may appear to be on the surface. In the region known as Upper Canada (subsequently Canada West, and now southern Ontario), black émigrés from the United States created a complex antislavery culture. It was a culture tied to Enlightenment views of human nature, to evangelical arguments for racial equality, and to the language of a redemptive Enlightenment. On these terms, black abolitionists in Canada found common ground with white antislavery supporters. Ideological, religious, and economic connections ran between enlightened Philadelphia and Upper Canada/Canada West, making important aspects of 19th-century antislavery history in Canada a Philadelphia story. And because black abolitionist communities in Canada were founded as 3  In his analysis of Rush’s antislavery commitments, and shortcomings, Nash argues that the “ghost of Benezet” in the “guilt-drenched” vision of “The Paradise of Negro Slaves” actually jolted Rush from complacency and directed him into active antislavery work in 1787. Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1988), p. 104.

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a response to the immediate experience of the violence of enslavement—the narratives of passage to and from Canada through the underground railroad were narratives of violence and of resistance—they gave space to the full range of revolutionary antislavery activism developed by the Black Founders discussed in Richard Newman’s work (Chapter 13). I argue that “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is a pivot point, reminding us that our understanding of antislavery movements in Canada begins in the Atlantic world of Anthony Benezet, and in what Benjamin Rush made of his encounters with Benezet’s ideas. Largely through Benezet’s friendship, influence, and connections, Rush became one of the best-known American voices raised against slavery in the revolutionary period, and the author of An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slavekeeping and the Vindication of the Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America . . . by the Author of that Address, both published in 1773.4 In the early republic, he was a friend and supporter of free black Philadelphians, a member and eventually the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Yet Rush left a mixed record. Among the founders and signers of the Declaration of Independence, Rush stood out as the author of unequivocally abolitionist literature; at the same time, he blended into the background as one of many founders who owned a slave. Rush bought a young man named William Grubber, held him in slavery, and took his time about emancipating him. In addition, Rush the abolitionist was the author of a number of seemingly earnest and decidedly strange discussions about race (most notably his paper on blackness as a form of leprosy, and his dangerous assertions in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 that blacks would not fall ill to the disease.) The ironies are not quite Jeffersonian in their proportion but there are grounds for comparison. Rush was the one “founder” who devoted much of his life to the antislavery cause, which makes it all the more striking to see his actions hedged about by his participation in the culture of slavery. “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is part of this ambivalent record. It falls between Rush’s essays on slavery written in the pre-revolutionary fervour of the 1770s, and the “astonishing production,” in L.H. Butterfield’s words, entitled “Observations Intended to Favor a Supposition that the Black Color (as it is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,” written in 1797 and first read at the American Philosophical Society shortly after Jefferson became

4  Benjamin Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping. By a Pennsylvanian (Philadelphia, PA, 1773); A Vindication of the Address, in Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled, “Slavery Not Forbidden in Scripture; or a Defense of the West India Planters” (Philadelphia, PA, 1773).

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its president.5 “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is an in-between text of peculiar and unsettled genre. As part of a publication devoted to the showcasing of American progress, Rush’s dream is tucked in amid essays on agricultural practice, news of scientific and literary attainments, and praise for General Washington—the appearance of an “Ode written at Mount Vernon” is striking, some ten pages into the magazine, for its portrayal of a different sort of paradise built on the labor of slaves. In the early years of the 19th century, Mathew Carey would have much to say on the subject of slavery and African colonization. However, in the early days of the republic, well before Carey’s controversial critique of black Philadelphians and the response of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, Rush was a frequent contributor to Carey’s publications, and his dream-­ condemnation of slavery and the dream-acclamation of Benezet found their place in the Columbian Magazine. Rush was quite likely responding to one of Carey’s own contributions to the periodical—a dream narrative in which the author writes of “being transported to so distant a period as the year 1850” where he imagines reading the newspaper headline of the future.6 Like Carey’s essay, Rush’s dream narrative was a production not quite political, not quite 5  Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, February 4, 1797, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ, 1951), pp. 785–86. Rush, “Observations Intended to Favor a Supposition that the Black Color (as it is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289–97. See Donald J. D’Elia, “Dr. Benjamin Rush and the Negro,” Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969): 413–22; Jacqueline C. Miller, “The Wages of Blackness: African American Workers and the Meanings of Race during Philadelphia’s 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 129:2 (2005): 163–94; Dana Nelson, “Consolidating National Masculinity: Scientific Discourse and Race in the Post-Revolutionary United States,” Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed., Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca, NY, 2000), pp. 201–15; Richard Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers (New York, NY, 2008), pp. 110–11; Sarah Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009), pp. 314–17. My reading of Rush’s “Observations” is open to the possibility that he was attempting to satirize Jefferson’s scientific racism in Notes on the State of Virginia (Reid-Maroney, “Benjamin Rush and the Abolition Question,” conference paper for “The Republics of Benjamin Rush,” (Carlisle, PA, March 2014)). 6  Mathew Carey, “For the Columbian Magazine”, Columbian Magazine, September, 1787, pp. 5–6. One of Carey’s imaginary headlines was an item dated Charleston, S.C., 1850: “No less than 10,000 blacks have been transported from this state and Virginia, during the two last years to Africa, near the mouth of the river Goree. Very few blacks remain in this country now; and we sincerely hope that in a few years, every vestige of the infamous traffic, carried on by our ancestors in the human species, will be done away.” (p. 6) On Mathew Carey’s support of the colonization movement in the 19th century, see Beverley Tomek, Colonization and

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historical, not quite poetic, but in keeping with the sense of literary exploration that was the Columbian Magazine’s title metaphor. In 1773, fresh from the publication of his first antislavery pamphlets, Rush wrote to a friend in Charleston that he had turned down an offer to move from Philadelphia to South Carolina. “I am too attached to my own country, this dear province where one owes one’s ease only to free and honest toil,” Rush told his correspondent, “to be tempted to exchange it for a country where wealth has been accumulated only by the sweat and blood of Negro slaves.”7 This memory may well have returned to him in December 1787, when “Paradise of Negro Slaves” made its appearance in the Charleston-based State Gazette of South Carolina, alongside advertisements for slave sales that took up much of the rest of the paper. Here, as in Columbian Magazine, the piece was unsigned. Both the place and the printer make the appearance of Rush’s dream in this forum particularly intriguing. The State Gazette of South Carolina was published by Ann Timothy, the wife of Huguenot printer Peter Timothy, who had been taken prisoner, along with Rush’s friend, Dr David Ramsay, by the British during the American Revolution. Given the Timothy family’s deep connections to Philadelphia (where Ann Timothy had spent much of the war during her husband’s exile) and to David Ramsay, it is likely that Rush’s authorship could have been suspected. Ramsay had helped to shepherd other Rush productions into print in the pages of Timothy’s paper in the previous year.8 Rush is noted in another news item in the same issue—a Boston paper’s account of the debate on the federal constitution—but “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is on its own, without attribution beyond the address to the editor of the Columbia Magazine. Because Ann Timothy supplied the State Gazette of South Carolina to Congress, Philadelphians would have seen the reprint. Even in its early history as a text, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” points to connection and tension in post-revolutionary Philadelphia and Charleston, joined by their revolutionary

Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania (New York, NY, and London, 2011), pp. 63–92. 7  Rush to Jaques Barbeu-Dubourg, April 29, 1773, Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 1, pp. 76–77. 8  Robert L. Brunhouse, ed., David Ramsay, 1749–1815 Selections from His Writings (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series), vol. 55, no. 4 (1965), pp. 1–250. In 1786, Ann Timothy moved her Charleston printing shop to a home on Broad Street, just a few doors down from Ramsay’s house. On Ann Timothy, see Cynthia Kennedy, Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: the Women of Charleston’s Urban Slave Society (Bloomington, IN, 2005), p. 44; Hennig Cohen, The South Carolina Gazette, 1732–1775 (New York, NY, 1953); Martha King, “Making an Impression: Women Printers in the Southern Colonies in the Revolutionary Era,” PhD dissertation (College of William and Mary, 1991), pp. 247–70.

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history, entering into the debate about the federal constitution, and just beginning to understand how deep the division on slavery might run. “Paradise of Negro Slaves” appeared once more in print, when Rush included it in the first edition of his Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (1798). He altered it slightly to omit the opening address to Mathew Carey (which had been included in Columbia Magazine and the State Gazette of South Carolina) and to leave out some of the geographic detail supplied in the slaves’ narratives. Rush died in 1813. David Ramsay’s eulogy for him included “Paradise of Negro Slaves”—though not the 1773 antislavery pamphlets—in its list of Rush’s publications, though he did not comment on it. Preaching a eulogy for Rush in Philadelphia, the Baptist divine William Staughton praised “Paradise of Negro Slaves” as an “elegant dream,” the product of Rush’s virtue and benevolence.9 In Teach Me Dreams, historian Mechal Sobel places “Paradise of Negro Slaves” in the context of other writers’ dreams centered on the theme of slavery. She points to the role that the dream narrative played in Rush’s fashioning of self. She also notes that Rush’s public exploration of his dream life was informed by the perspective provided by moral physiology of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the extensive literature on dreams that was part of medical discourse.10 As a physician, Rush regarded dreams as the result of “morbid excitement” in the sleeping brain, and sleep itself as a disease, a reminder of the fragility of human life in a fallen world. He created a nosology of dreams, 9  William Staunton, Eulogium in Memory of the Late Dr. Benjamin Rush (Philadelphia, PA, 1813); David Ramsay, An Eulogium Upon Benjamin Rush, M.D.: Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Practice in the University of Pennsylvania. Who Departed this Life April 19, 1813, in the Sixty-ninth Year of His Age (Philadelphia, PA, 1813). On Ramsay and slavery, see Arthur H. Schaffer, “Between Two Worlds: David Ramsay and the Politics of Slavery,” Journal of Southern History 50 (May 1984): 175–96. 10  Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: the Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton, NJ, 2000), pp. 84–86. Rush’s “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is also discussed in John Stauffer’s “In the Shadow of a Dream: White Abolitionists and Race,” “Collective Degradation: Slavery and the Construction of Race,” Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Gilder Lehrman Center International Conference, Yale University, 2003, pp. 1–44. Stauffer reads the dream as evidence for Rush’s belief that former slaves needed a period of amelioration, a version of “black uplift before interracial equality, even in heaven, could be achieved. Before ascending to heaven, blacks needed to learn the ways of the lord, especially forgiveness. Rush also treats blacks, though not whites, as spirits (symbols) rather than men. The only characters who are literally men are Rush and Benezet; they have not yet died, are still alive and able to bridge the realms between ‘Negro Paradise’ and earth.” (pp. 5–6.) As noted below, however, the insight from Rush’s universalism offers another view of the dream and its links to Rush’s reformist thought.

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associating familiar tropes with those faculties of mind thought to be suffering from disordered or “unequal excitement” of the brain; particular excitements produced particular dream effects. According to this scheme, the dream that Rush recounts in “Paradise of Negro Slaves” was the result of imperfect balance between the memory (asleep) and the imagination and understanding (not so asleep). In such a state, we “dream of seeing departed friends, and of conversing with them, without recollecting that they are dead.” At the same time, while he argued that dreams were the result of “morbid phenomena in the mind,” he also believed that the faculties of the mind were restored in sleep, through a sort of “settling” process, each faculty possessed of its own “specific gravity.” Upon waking, “the moral faculties now occupy the highest and most honorable station in the mind, while all the passions are precipitated to the bottom of it.” Rush’s dreams have a double nature: a strangeness that he acknowledges as he begins to recount them, and a grounding in detail that linked them to the need for action in the waking world. “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is, on this level, in keeping with his view that the best ideas came as small revelations that intruded on the mind—unbidden but not unwelcome. It is an intermediary text, with one eye to the place of a dream narrative in moral physiology of the Enlightenment, and one eye to the spiritual language and understanding of dreams as part of Rush’s sense that the human mind—even human reason— needed to be enlivened by a sudden apprehension of divine truth. Although it begins with a disclaimer (“I seldom dream . . .”), “Paradise of Negro Slaves” stands as one among many of Rush’s accounts of dreams that he shared with correspondents, and others that he noted in his commonplace book. Other examples include his “singular dream” of the figure perched atop the steeple of Christ Church, related to John Adams in 1805; the waking dream with the “departed spirit” of his medical school mentor, the Edinburgh physician William Cullen; the dream of Jefferson and Adams reconciled; and the last entry in Rush’s commonplace book. The latter is a dream in which he sounds the theme of redemption and salvation, this time wandering through Christ Church burial ground, the final resting place of many American founders, including Benjamin Franklin and other prominent members of the revolutionary generation. In this example of the dream narrative, Rush returns to the theme of the afterlife and walks through the burial ground thinking about whether or not “persons would rise from their graves at the general Resurrection with the same habits of virtue and vice which they had laid down in them.”11 11  Benjamin Rush, “A Dream,” ed. George Corner, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, His “Travels through Life” together with His Commonplace Book for 1789–1813 (Princeton, NJ, 1948), pp. 357–60.

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Here, as in “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” Rush used the form of a dream narrative to combine political observation with an exercise of imagination. The dreams fit in with his idea that insight could come as a sudden intuition as much as it could come from a structured, rational inquiry. In that sense, we should not be surprised to find him dreaming.12 Even before Benezet appears, walking across the heavenly grove in the dream, he makes his presence felt in the text of “Paradise of Negro Slaves”. The narrative borrows from the abolitionist arguments that Rush learned from Benezet in the 1770s. There are echoes of Rush’s An Address of 1773, which had drawn both argument and evidence from Benezet’s work. Although the narrator of the dream tells us that he “was conducted to a country which in point of cultivation and scenery, far surpassed anything which I had ever heard, or read of in my life,” the beautiful grove and the quiet religious exercises into which he intrudes are actually familiar to readers of Benezet’s descriptions of the fertile and wholesome landscapes of Africa, and the “modesty attention and reverence” of African religious practices. The examples of cruelty and mistreatment at the hands of masters on the sugar islands recall the tone as well as the details of Benezet’s work, down to the particulars of a grim slave diet consisting of roots and herring. The warning for slave-holders—the particular masters of the slaves whom Rush meets in the dream—echoes the latter sections of Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce, as well as Benezet’s Some Historical Account of Guinea. Such details place the text in the setting of abolitionist literature with which Rush had been engaged throughout the 1780s, and they reveal the depth of his reliance on the works of Benezet and Clarkson (as other scholars have noted).13 While the details of the dream draw on the tradition of antislavery writing that Rush knew well, they drift from historical to imaginative writing. In 1773, Rush had emphasized the historical accuracy of the conditions described in his pamphlet. “This is no exaggerated

12  Carl Binger, “The Dreams of Benjamin Rush,” American Journal of Psychiatry 125 (1969): 1659–63. Rush’s dreams find mention in Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: the Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville, VA, and London, 2004). 13  Philip Gould, who uses “Paradise of Negro Slaves” in the introduction to Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA, 2009), pp. 1–2, has noted that the dream “is as much the story of Rush’s place in the AngloAmerican antislavery movements that were gaining support in this era as it is the story of the abuse of Africans themselves.” Rush’s use of this material, including Benezet’s work, and Rush’s correspondence with Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and others in Benezet’s circle, places him in the tradition of transatlantic antislavery writing described by Randy J. Sparks in chapter 11.

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picture,” he told his readers. “It is taken from real life.”14 The dream narrative is fiction, and, in this looser narrative form, Rush creates a moral landscape that is framed by his understanding of moral faculties of the mind, and by his religious preoccupations. Rush uses the testimony of slaves in the dream to recount a catalogue of slavery’s physical and psychological horrors—beatings, separation from children, murder; the wounds are still visible, even in the afterlife. In part, he is borrowing from the abolitionist appeal to the sensibilities of his readers, much as he responds to this dynamic in the works of others, including Clarkson, whose “ingenious and pathetic essay” had occasioned the dream. According to Rush’s own theories on the subject of sympathy and the association of ideas, his account of the dream was passing on the effect—exciting sympathy in others as Clarkson had done, setting up a moral chain of impulse, and, in the end, the hope of action. In the process, he creates fictional characters in a rough prototype of those created by white abolitionists in the 19th century—writers who had no hesitation in simultaneously giving voice to, and appropriating the voices of, black characters who mediate between fictional and historical accounts of the experience of enslavement. In An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals, and upon Society, composed within a few months of “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” Rush wrote of sympathy as “the viceregent of the divine benevolence in our world. It is intended to bind up all the wounds which sin and death have made among mankind.”15 Even so, he argued that it was important not to excite a sympathetic response without offering the chance to do something about it. The bonds of sympathy between the inhabitants of the dream and the reading public whom Rush addressed in 1787 were meant to elicit a political response. Readers who read and sympathized but did nothing might have to deal with what Rush called “the pernicious effects of sympathy, where it does not terminate in action.”16 14  Benjamin Rush, Address to the Inhabitants of British Settlements in America, upon Slavekeeping (Philadelphia, PA, 1773), p. 24. 15  Benjamin Rush, An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals, and upon Society, Read in the Society for Promoting Political Enquiries, Convened at the House of Benjamin Franklin, Esq. in Philadelphia, March 9, 1787, printed in Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Philosophical and Moral, ed. Michael Meranze (Schenectady, NY, 1988), p. 82. 16  Rush, An Enquiry into the Effects, p. 83. Michael Meranze notes that Rush found it difficult to rely on the concept of sympathy, “a combination of Scottish moral philosophy and Anglo-American sentimentalism,” because he believed that “the capacity for sympathy . . . meant that individual psychology was inherently unstable; the sympathetic character was eminently corruptible.” Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,

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A sympathy that terminates in action was about overturning moral complacency, which Rush took on through the device of having the inhabitants of the dreamscape come forward, not only to describe their suffering under slavery but to plead with the dream-Rush to take their message back to those masters who might still be alive and able to mend their ways. “Paradise of Negro Slaves” is a condemnation of the sin of slavery, but Rush is more interested in the prospect of redemption than the threat of punishment. Focused on the need for slave-holders to do something, the dream points to a way out. It carries within it the means of grace (defined elsewhere in his work as words of forgiveness and a benevolent regard for others), which Rush places in the mouths of former slaves. There is a bizarre presumption about all of this that is typical of Rush, and it makes “Paradise of Negro Slaves” open to the interpretation that it was nothing more than an effort to ease white guilt and diffuse black rage. As Sobel argues, if this were the intention, then Rush’s dream did not succeed. Rush’s dream report of paradise indicates that he knew blacks hated whites, that he feared the consequences of their just anger, and that he used his dream life to cope with the recognition that he did not measure up—not to Benezet, and not to what he himself knew was right.17 The first figure we meet, for instance, is “a young man who bore the mark of wound on his head,” who tells Rush that his master murdered him because he had saddled the wrong horse. Then he asks Rush to take words of warning and reconciliation back to the murderous master, even offering to “apply to be of the convoy that shall conduct his spirit to the regions of bliss appointed for those who repent of their iniquities.”18 To have a white author (even one who was only dreaming) speak so confidently of forgiveness that was his neither to appropriate nor to apportion is disconcerting. It would have been disconcerting to his 18th-century readers for a different reason. That is because despite its limitations as an abolitionist text, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” imagines a dialogue across the divide of race in which the balance of power shifts. p. v. For an extended discussion of Rush and sensibility, see Sarah Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009); on the British context, see Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery (London, 2005). 17  Sobel, Teach Me Dreams, pp. 84–85. 18  Rush, “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” p. 2.

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It reverses the flow of moral energy. It is slaveholders who need salvation, and the enslaved who wield the power to save them. To grasp the significance of Rush’s reversal of the terms of the conversion narrative, it is helpful to recall the evangelical sensibilities that Rush acquired during his upbringing and education among New Side Presbyterians, first at the academy run by his uncle, Samuel Finley, and then at the College of New Jersey. For Rush, the moral problem of slavery would always be a religious matter, framed by the language and understanding of sin. In this respect, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” resembles not only the uncompromisingly abolitionist literature of Anthony Benezet but the evangelical appeal of an earlier generation of Rush’s New Side friends and teachers, who acknowledged a common bond of humanity across the divide of race but stopped well short of anything that was explicitly antislavery in its intention.19 The difference is made clearer by comparing “Paradise of Negro Slaves” to the work of Samuel Davies, who urged slaveholders not to emancipate the enslaved but to convert them. His most widely read sermon on the subject opens with a view of the afterlife, and depends on the idea that the egalitarian promise of Christianity can be deferred until eternity. Justice would finally kick in, but not in this world. In Davies’ sermon, there was no condemnation of slavery as an institution in the here and now, and the only real argument he offered for allowing the enslaved to hear the gospel was the masters’ fear of having to keep his unconverted slaves company in hell.20 Rush rejected this view and used the dream narrative to turn the dynamic of the evangelical conversion around: it is the inhabitants of “Paradise of Negro Slaves” who are preaching salvation and the white masters who need to be saved. In some of its most peculiar features, “Paradise of Negro Slaves” also bears the imprint of Rush’s belief in universal salvation, a doctrine which he gradually adopted from his reading of the universalist minister John Murray (who had 19  A recent discussion of the implication of New Side Presbyterians in the culture of slavery is found in Craig Wilder’s Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York, NY, 2013). Rush was familiar with George Whitefield’s proposal to educate black children at Nazareth, and with Benezet’s father’s involvement in the venture. Whitefield urged masters to convert slaves but not to emancipate them. Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI, 1991), p. 108; Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard. Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), p. 8. On Rush and New Side culture, see N. Reid-Maroney, Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740–1800 (Westport, CT, 2000). 20  Samuel Davies, The Duties of Christians to Propagate Their Religion among the Heathens, Earnestly Recommended to the Masters of Negro Slaves (Philadelphia, PA, 1757).

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found Benezet an uncommon and striking example of Christian benevolence during his preaching tour of Philadelphia in 1773), and Elhanan Winchester, who had served briefly as the minister at Philadelphia’s First Baptist Church in 1781.21 Rush’s version of universalism, like Winchester’s, retained the idea of punishment for sin in the afterlife, but those punishments would not last forever; in the end, there could be no power to prevent the final reconciliation between God and all of humankind. Rush’s universalism helps to explain the idea of a waiting-place between life and the afterlife that is the central conceit of the dream. Those who suffered on earth await the final restoration in peace; their oppressors face punishment unless they repent. Slavery is a sin so deep that it is almost beyond the reach of grace, but, in “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” not quite. It is the former slaves’ benevolence toward their masters that reverses the expectation of retribution and provides the moral force to reach out to the most unregenerate. In the dream and elsewhere, Rush turned the theological doctrine of universal salvation into a justification for social reform. As he told Richard Price, universalist principles have bound me to the whole human race; these are the principles which animate me in all my labours for the interests of my fellow creatures. No particle of benevolence, no wish for the liberty of a slave or the reformation of a criminal, will be lost. They must finally all be made effectual.22 Benezet was singled out by Rush as the representative of the antislavery movement who proved the theory. Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce is cited as the inspiration for the dream as Rush describes it, but Rush had also been thinking about Benezet in the weeks before “Paradise of Negro Slaves” appeared, when he wrote one of his best-known essays, An Enquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes on the Moral Faculty. Benezet graces this important address as Rush’s best example of human potential for good. In Benezet, 21  John Murray and Judith Sargent Murray, Records of the Life of the Reverend John Murray; Late Minister of the Reconciliation, Written by Himself (Boston, MA, 1816), p. 171; Edwin Martin Stone, Biography of the Reverend Elhanan Winchester (Boston, MA, 1836). Win­ chester’s sermon, published in 1788 as “Reigning Abominations, Especially the Slave Trade” marked his entry into the transatlantic antislavery dialogue that Benezet had done so much to sustain and that Rush did much to encourage. Rush provided an introduction to Richard Price in July of 1787, and encouraged a correspondence with Joseph Priestley. 22   Rush to Thomas Jefferson, February 4, 1797, Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 2, pp. 785–86. Rush to Richard Price, June 2, 1787, Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 1, p. 419.

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Rush argued, “not only reason and revelation, but many of the physical causes that have been enumerated, concurred to produce such attainments in moral excellency, as have seldom appeared in a human being.” Such “moral excellency,” moreover, seemed to Rush to have moved outward into a broadly influential path of reform that was already visible in the affairs of the world: This amiable citizen, considered his fellow-creature, man, as God’s extract, from his own works; and, whether this image of himself, was cutout from ebony or copper—whether he spoke his own or a foreign language—or whether he worshipped his Maker with ceremonies, or without them, he still considered him as a brother, and equally the object of his benevolence. Poets and historians, who are to live hereafter, to you I commit his panegyric; and when you hear of a law for abolishing slavery in each of the American states, such as was passed in Pennsylvania, in the year 1780—when you hear of the kings and queens of Europe, publishing edicts for abolishing the trade in human souls—and lastly, when you hear of schools and churches with all the arts of civilized life, being established among the nations of Africa, then remember and record, that this revolution in favor of human happiness, was the effect of the labours—the publications—the private letters—and the prayers of Anthony Benezet.23 In this respect, Benezet’s appearance in “Paradise of Negro Slaves” signals not only the “moral excellency” of one person but Rush’s hopes for the imminent transformation of currents of reform into the high tide of global redemption. Thus the strange little narrative, “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” brought together Rush’s personal history of political agitation on behalf of the antislavery cause, and the expansive moral and cosmological framework that gave it ultimate meaning. Rush’s political work in 1787 provides further context for understanding the theme of redemption in “Paradise of Negro Slaves.” In April he became secretary to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society; in May, the constitutional convention began its work in Philadelphia. In Rush’s mind the two were closely connected, and he was convinced that the Pennsylvania delegation could “make the suppression the African trade in the United States an essential article of the new Confederation.” As a member of the Pennsylvania Convention that ratified the federal Constitution of 1787, Rush wrote of the Constitution 23  Benjamin Rush, An Enquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes on the Moral Faculty (Philadelphia, PA, 1786), p. 26.

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as a great instrument of human happiness that would secure the gains of the American Revolution. By September he could write with great confidence of the role that Pennsylvania had played in the liberating of slaves, using the 1780 gradual emancipation law as evidence that much had improved since the time when “John Woolman and Anthony Benezet stood alone in defending the claims of the Negroes to the rights of humanity and justice in Pennsylvania.” He saw “the prevalence of sentiments favourable to African liberty in every part of the United States ‘and proof of it’ in the new Constitution of the United States.”24 It was a moment of high optimism. “Paradise of Negro Slaves” derived much of its power from the pulse of millennial expectation that runs through Rush’s work like a current from a Franklin battery, and his millennial hopes supplied a version of the past as well as of the future. Rush connected his antislavery writings of the 1770s to the Constitutional convention of 1787. In his 1773 Vindication of the Address, he had characterized the transatlantic movement against the slave trade as the first step: “It shall be our Business to collect the materials:—the next Generation we hope will behold and admire the finished Temple of African Liberty in America.”25 In 1787 he was clearly ready to behold and admire. “We are traveling fast,” he wrote to Richard Price in June of 1787, “into order and national happiness.”26 Michael Meranze has written that while “Rush’s writing displays a social optimism arising from his confidence in reason . . . there is [nonetheless] a fear at the center.”27 The fear at the center—the deep awareness of both the power and the limitations of the very enlightened progress that Rush proclaimed— meant that Rush’s encounter with the ghost of Benezet was a recurring affair. Even as he wrote “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” championed the Constitution, celebrated the provision for a congressional vote (albeit delayed until 1808) to end the slave trade, and took up work in earnest with the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Rush was a slave-holder. He had purchased a young man named William Grubber in the early 1770s from David McCullough, Philadelphia sea captain and privateer. As David Freeman Hawke argued in 24  Rush to Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson, December 25, 1787, Letters of Benjamin Rush vol. 1, pp. 446–47. 25  Rush, Vindication of the Address, pp. 5–6. 26  Rush to Richard Price, June 2, 1787, Letters of Benjamin Rush vol. 1, p. 418. David Waldstreicher notes that Rush and other Pennsylvania abolitionists chose to interpret key provisions of the Constitution in the best possible antislavery light, placing Rush’s enthusiasm on this point in the context of his more general federalist principles. See Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution (New York, NY, 2009), p. 132. 27  Michael Meranze, ‘Introduction’ to Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, p. xvii.

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his biography of Rush, it is difficult to imagine Rush becoming a slave-holder after the publication of An Address. Maurice Jackson suggests that it was Rush’s ownership of Grubber that made him hesitate to write the pamphlet when Benezet asked him in 1772. Although the date of his purchase of Grubber is not known, it is clear that Rush had grown up in a household that included two slaves; his first romantic interest, Sarah Eve, was the daughter of a sea captain who owned slaves; his in-laws, the Stocktons of New Jersey, owned slaves; and classmates and faculty at the College of New Jersey owned slaves. The immediacy of slavery in his own household and in the households of family and friends gives an unsettled edge to Rush’s discussion of Benezet’s benevolence as the “sentinel of the virtue as well as the happiness of his country.”28 Rush’s euphemism was to say that he had bought Grubber’s “time” but not his person. Nonetheless, Rush could not deny his own complicity in the very practices that his work condemned. Even with our full knowledge of his implication and participation in the culture of slavery, it is startling to imagine Rush walking from the London Coffee House, site of slave sales and perhaps even the place where he had met David McCullough to arrange the purchase of Grubber, to collect the copies of An Address to the Inhabitants at Dunlap’s print shop a few steps down the street, or reading his letter to Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson, written on Christmas Day, 1787: I flatter myself I should not apply in vain in favor of manumission for your Alexr. from a leading member of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and send it to Graeme park. I rejoice to find that a spirit of humanity has at last reached the southern states upon the subject of the slavery of the Negroes.29 The spirit of humanity had yet to secure the manumission of William Grubber, leaving us to wonder what path Rush had in mind in his concluding remarks in the Ferguson letter: “O! Virtue, Virtue, who would not follow thee blindfold?” Small wonder, then, that the publication and reprinting of “Paradise of Negro Slaves” late in 1787 forced Rush into a fresh colloquy with the example of the “godlike Anthony Benezet.”30 Early in 1788, Rush’s infant son William 28  Rush, An Enquiry into the Influence, p. 14. 29  Rush to Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson, December 25, 1787, Letters of Benjamin Rush vol. 1, pp. 446–47. 30  Rush used this phrase to describe Benezet in his “Lectures on Animal Life,” Benjamin Rush’s Lectures on the Mind, eds. Eric Carlson Jeffrey L. Wollock and Patricia S. Noel (Philadelphia, PA, 1981), p. 619.

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died after a brief illness. Within a short time, Rush was “seized with the same disorder and lay for nine days in such a situation that my recovery is thought the next thing to a miracle.”31 He was nursed through his illness by Grubber, whose loyalty and sympathy Rush commended years later in his ­autobiography.32 He did not respond to his brush with death by freeing Grubber, though. Instead, in May, 1788, he signed a document that promised manumission in six years’ time, fixing the date of February 25, 1794 as the moment when he would have had his money’s worth of Grubber’s service.33 During the same period of his recuperation, Rush spent his days thinking about Benezet, and writing Benezet’s biographical anecdotes, which he published later that year. The biographical anecdotes did not dwell on Benezet’s suggestion that even those “men of candor” who “may be concerned in the purchase of Negroes purely from a principle of charity” were still obliged to “restore them to their liberty.”34 This was a position Rush would have surely had in mind even as he noted his determination to hold on to Grubber until “such a time as will be a just compensation for my having paid for him the full price of a slave for life.”35 Instead, Rush praised Benezet’s selflessness and holy sympathy with all people. It is tempting, though not entirely fair, to assess this in Rush’s own terms, and to conclude that the writing of Benezet’s biographical anecdotes in some sense drained away the “plethora” of emancipation fever that Rush felt building up in the brain; for the moment, it suited Rush to write of holy sympathy rather than to act entirely in accordance with it. But the memory of Anthony Benezet would not leave Rush be. In May of 1793, at the beginning of the long summer that would end in epidemic and open a new chapter in his relationship with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, 31  Rush to John Montgomery, April 9, 1788, Letters of Benjamin Rush vol. 1, pp. 455–56; Corner, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 165. 32  Corner, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 246. 33  The manumission of Grubber is discussed at length in David Freeman Hawke’s Benjamin Rush, Revolutionary Gadfly (New York, NY, 1971), pp. 361–62. The proposed manumission is carefully framed in the terms that echo Benezet’s suggestion that it might be made more practical following a period of service that would compensate owners for the price they had paid. See John Jay’s practice of purchasing slaves in order to “manumit them at proper ages and when their services have afforded a reasonable retribution” in John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay’s Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay (New York, NY, 2005), p. 299. 34  Anthony Benezet, “A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by Negroes,” The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, ed. David L. Crosby (Baton Rouge, LA, 2013), p. 67. 35  Hawke, Benjamin Rush, Revolutionary Gadfly, p. 361.

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Rush at last emancipated William Grubber. It had been five years since he signed the document that promised freedom. Always keen to connect the personal and the political, Rush cast Grubber’s manumission in terms that he would doubtless have defended as in keeping with Benezet’s mild prescription for moral improvement as a preparation for the exercise of freedom. After Grubber’s death, Rush characterized him as a drinker corrupted by his early life in slavery, whose ways were mended only during his years in Rush’s household. It is less an account of Grubber than it is revealing as a gloss on Rush’s life as a slave-holder.36 Grubber’s emancipation in 1793 meant that Rush was reconciled to the moral vision of “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” and it was also at that moment that Rush turned once more to Benezet for inspiration. In the weeks following Grubber’s emancipation, when Rush was most active on behalf of the building of the African Church in Philadelphia, he revived Benezet’s idea, noted in Some Historical Account, of a settlement of emancipated slaves in the backcountry of the American colonies.37 Rush’s proposal, elaborated in 1794 and eventually accompanied by the donation of land which he deeded to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1804, was to be named after Benezet, “the late worthy and indefatigable advocate of the freedom of the blacks.”38 The idea was not new to Rush, but the timing of his revival of it in the days following Grubber’s emancipation is suggestive; “Benezet” was to be a clear alternative to enslavement and the protracted manumission of long promises. The settlement was supposed to offer a life of improvement, prosperity, and virtue free from every influence of slavery, including that exercised by someone styling himself as the most reluctant of masters. Rush’s “Benezet” was part of a growing literature on emancipation and colonization within the new republic, which Rush knew well. His proposal, however, was both a part of this broader discussion and distinguished from later colonization schemes, and from a number of early proposals for manumission that followed the outline of Jefferson’s argument in Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson had called not for settlement of freed people but for deportation out of the state.39 By 1796, St. George Tucker’s argument for the deportation of freed slaves to the west and south was a central part of his 36  Rush, “Travels through Life” in Corner, Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 246. 37  Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 213–14. 38  Rush to John Nicholson, August 12, 1793, Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 2, pp. 636–37; Rush to the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Letters of Benjamin Rush, vol. 2, pp. 754–56. 39  Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London, 1787), pp. 154–55.

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s­ystematic proposal to lessen the social and political impact of manumission on white people. Denying former slaves the right to hold property and the right to hold political office was Tucker’s way of ensuring that “the seeds of ambition” in manumitted slaves “would be buried too deep, ever to germinate.”40 Rush’s “Benezet” was supposed to have the opposite effect, encouraging selfsufficiency and virtue, “safety and honor and prosperity” within the republic. His original plan for “Benezet,” on the doorstep of the French émigré colony of Azilum, established in 1793 on the Susquehanna River, was steeped in the language of republican virtue.41 As Rush wrote in his Account of the Progress of Population, Agriculture, Manners, and Government in Pennsylvania, “we do not pretend to offer emigrants the pleasures of Arcadia—It is enough if affluence, independence, and happiness are ensured to patience, industry, and labour.”42 In this context, the idea of western settlement on lands of “excellent quality” constituted not removal from but engagement in the great republican experiment, with Benezet’s name lending solid abolitionist credentials to the plan. It is as though the emancipation of William Grubber freed Rush to take the culture of a redemptive Enlightenment seriously. Writing to Granville Sharp in 1791, Rush acknowledged that work for freedom and for the rights of freed people was a universal good that crossed the boundaries of states and colonies across the Atlantic world, even though he knew well that his antislavery friends in Great Britain, including Sharp, sought answers to the question of freedom in their dreams of Sierra Leone.43 Rush’s ideas of “Benezet” were both of the world of transatlantic antislavery and peculiar to his hopes for the American republic. He was never a supporter of African colonization; his version of “the temple of African liberty” was to be an American creation. In the end, Rush’s “Benezet” remained as much a dream on paper as was the vision of redemption in “Paradise of Negro Slaves.” Precisely because it was confined to the world of ideas but never realized, “Benezet”

40  St. George Tucker, Dissertation on Slavery, with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It in the State of Virginia (Philadelphia, PA, 1796), pp. 95–96; H.N. Sherwood, “Early Negro Deportation Projects,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 95 (March 1916): 484–508; Nicholas Guyatt, “ ‘The Outskirts of Our Happiness’: Race and the Lure of Colonization in the Early Republic,” Journal of American History 95 (March 2009): 986–1011. 41  Azilum is described in Edward A. Worman’s “The 1790’s French Azilum in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine (April 1989): 25–30. 42  Benjamin Rush, “Account of the Progress of Population, Agriculture, Manners, and Government in Pennsylvania in a Letter to a Friend in England,” Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, ed. Michael Meranze, p. 128. 43  Rush to Granville Sharp, August, 1791, Letters of Benjamin Rush vol. 1, pp. 608–09.

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reveals the central paradox of Rush’s Enlightenment, which promised much even as it was limited by its own apprehension of failure. Despite those apprehensions, Rush never abandoned the idea that progress could be made, if not in new places then in old ones, including Philadelphia. There were moments of hope. After the dinner to celebrate the raising of the roof on the African Church in 1793, Rush wrote to his wife, Julia, that he had never been witness to such “virtuous and philanthropic joy.” Yet even as Rush sat at table with the leaders of Philadelphia’s black community and considered what more could be done to spread the benefits of freedom, he surely knew that there were renewed pressures in Congress to extend the reach of slavery. In 1793, just a few months before he proposed the idea of a western settlement, Congress passed its first Fugitive Slave Law. It ran counter to everything in the ideological foundation and practical work of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, even as it confirmed abolitionist fears that Congress would continue to exercise its power in the defense of slavery. In this context, the Fugitive Slave Law forced renewed attention to land, to the expansion of the republic, and the emerging geo-political borders that defined either the possibilities or the limitations of freedom. When read in light of “Paradise of Negro Slaves”, Rush’s proposal for western settlement highlights abolitionist work in deteriorating circumstances, requiring a sharpened attention to detail and to a sense of place. And Anthony Benezet is there—first in the land of dreams and, then, in the dreams of land. Throughout the 1790s, black Philadelphians took measure of their prospects at home against the backdrop of revolution in Saint-Domingue, of the exodus of black loyalists from Nova Scotia for the uncertainties of Sierra Leone, and of the new Fugitive Slave Law. With a vision that was ultimately more expansive than that of Rush, they looked beyond Philadelphia, beyond the Pennsylvania backcountry where Rush’s gaze had come to rest. At the dinner to celebrate the African Church, Rush had offered a toast to his friends, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and William Gray: “May African Churches everywhere soon succeed African bondage.”44 What Rush did not see was the link between African American activism of the 1790s and the events in the contested borderland of the Great Lakes region. In March 1793, the legislative council of Upper Canada passed An Act to Prevent the Further Introduction of Slaves and to Limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province—the first law of its kind in the British Empire. It was of limited effect: it freed no one.45 But it was 44  Rush, “Travels through Life”, in Corner, Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 229. 45  Daniel Hill estimated the enslaved population of Upper Canada to be between 500 and 600. See Daniel Hill, “Black History in Early Toronto,” Polyphony (1984): 28–30. The 1793 act

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important nonetheless. Its chief architect, the colony’s Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, had been commander of the Queen’s Rangers in occupied Philadelphia during the American Revolution, and he was well acquainted with American slavery. In 1787, reflecting on the war just lost, he predicted, in a commentary directed at Thomas Jefferson, that the old dominion of Virginia would have its strength sapped by new settlements, and that as slavery weakened under the weight of itself, freed people would be drawn westward to “participate in the benefit of these new settlements.”46 Five years later, Simcoe sought ways to attract new settlement out of the United States. Writing to the Philadelphia Quaker, Phineas Bond, in May of 1792, he urged the resettlement of Pennsylvania Friends in Upper Canada, where, he argued, the “very form of the Government secures the subject, as far as human intentions admit, from all undue exercise of authority . . . The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns.”47 Even as he wrote this, Simcoe knew that the most powerful members of his own government in the Canadian colony owned slaves. Moreover, he was using the term ­“slavery” in a double sense that was both specifically directed toward racial slavery and more broadly political.48 But the ambivalence of the government of Upper Canada was hardly an obstacle to black freedom seekers, who were well accustomed to negotiating the sharpest ironies that the early republic had to offer. The question of Canada—and it was always a question rather than an unequivocal affirmation—allowed black leaders to use those ironies to take command of the discussion about their future.49 In the early 19th century, Canada helped to unsettle and to complicate the discussion of emancipation, land, citizenship, hope, redemption, and disappointment—the discrepancies embodied in Rush’s simultaneous ­ is discussed in Robin W. Winks’ The Blacks in Canada, (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 96–99, and in Alan Stauffer’s The Light of Nature and the Law of God (Montreal and Toronto, 1992), pp. 12–13. 46  John Graves Simcoe, Remarks on the Travels of the Marquis de Chastellux in North America (London, 1787), p. 60. 47  John Graves Simcoe to Phineas Bond, May 7, 1792 The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe, ed. E.A. Cruikshank, vol. 1 (Toronto, 1923) p. 53. 48  Gregory Wigmore, “Before the Underground Railroad: from Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland,” Journal of American History 98 (2011): 437–51. As Wigmore argues, while early antislavery laws “did nothing to free slaves within their jurisdictions . . . their enactment—and the proximity of a permeable border between rival regimes—afforded slaves an unprecedented opportunity to take their freedom” (p. 451). 49  Richard Allen’s ambivalence on the question of Canadian emigration is noted and discussed in detail in Newman’s Freedom’s Prophet, p. 265.

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c­ elebration of Benezet’s moral excellency, of the temple of African liberty, and the loyalty of his own slave. The Canada question—to stay or go— was informed by the ambiguities of the 18th-century background. Black Philadelphians expanded and cultivated the common ground of redemptive Enlightenment—the ideas of human progress, practical improvements, and political freedom all suffused with an evangelical sensibility that measured every step of progress against a deep apprehension of human limitations, the efficacy of grace, and the contingency of even the best human effort that answered a call to higher purpose. In “Paradise of Negro Slaves,” and in his proposal for the free settlement of “Benezet,” Rush gave a spatial dimension to the ideal of freedom; in their discussion of the emigrationist alternative, black Philadelphians would give a spiritual dimension to their practical choices. In Rush’s text, forgiveness, intercession, and agency provide the moral center of a dream; in the work of Richard Allen, forgiveness, intercession, and agency provide the moral center of black resistance.50 Enlightened Philadelphia was the intellectual foundation of antislavery work in the contested “promised land”— where there was a pressure to see if the symbolic values of freedom could be mapped out, claimed, and given grounding in particular, an effort summed up in Richard Allen’s terms as the opportunity for “advancement to the summit of civil and religious improvement.”51 Between 1793 and the convention of 1830, when Allen gave his support to emigration, African Methodist Episcopal missionaries were already busy opening the Canadian circuit, and Upper Canada had begun to acquire the ideological associations of a promised land that would wash over it through the antebellum period.52 Convinced neither by the republican ideal of “Benezet” nor by the theoretical claim that “the principles of the British Constitution 50  Richard Allen, To Those Who Keep Slaves, and Approve the Practice (Philadelphia, PA, 1792). Allen wrote: “The meek and humble Jesus, the great pattern of humanity, and every other virtue that can adorn and dignify men, hath commanded to love our enemies, to do good to them that hate and despitefully use us. I feel the obligations, I wish to impress them on the minds of our colored brethren, and that we may all forgive you, as we wish to be forgiven, we think it a great mercy to have all anger and bitterness removed from our minds; I appeal to your own feelings, if it is not very disquieting to feel yourselves under dominion of wrathful disposition.” 51  Richard Allen, Address to the Free People of Colour of these United States (Philadelphia, PA, 1830). 52  Nina Reid-Maroney, “History and Historiography in the Promised Land,” The Promised Land: History and Historiography in Chatham-Kent’s Black Settlements and Beyond, ed. Boulou Ebanda de b’Béri, Nina Reid-Maroney and Handel Kashope Wright (Toronto, 2014), pp. 62–72.

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do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns,” black Philadelphians hoped nonetheless to use Canadian emigration—literally, antislavery ­movement—to effect a translation from promise to experience. At the end of his biographical notes on Benjamin Lay, written in 1790, Rush wrote of the early antislavery movement as a “principle which bids fair to produce a revolution in morals-commerce—and government, in the new and in the old world . . . No seed of truth or virtue ever perished.”53 Upper Canada was not the republican solution that Rush prophesied, nor was it a dream, nor was it paradise. It was, however, linked to the world of Rush and Benezet in ways that are just beginning to be explored.

53  Rush, “Biographical Notice of Benjamin Lay,” Essays, Literary, Philosophical and Moral, ed. Meranze, p. 184.

Chapter 13

From Benezet to Black Founders: Toward a New History of 18th-Century Atlantic Emancipation Richard S. Newman* In 1816, Philadelphia reformer Roberts Vaux sought to put an exclamation point on his forthcoming biography of the once-famous abolitionist Anthony Benezet. Knowing that Benezet’s name would be familiar to many reformminded readers in England and North America (where his book would circulate), Vaux nevertheless worried that Benezet’s legacy had gone missing in more recent battles against Atlantic bondage. Just who was this man and what did he do? After surveying Benezet’s career as an abolitionist, multi-cultural educator, and advocate of Native Americans’ rights, Vaux settled on a phrase that encapsulated Benezet’s overall impact on 18th-century reform. According to Vaux, Benezet was nothing less than “an illustrious benefactor of mankind.” Scratch the surface of any major cause, he indicated, and Benezet’s influence would surely be found.1 Nearly 200 years later, Vaux’s introduction to the biography remains apt for a new generation of scholars struggling to understand Benezet’s place in the Atlantic world of slavery and freedom. For while 21st-century historians of abolitionism remain familiar with Benezet, they are not sure he belongs in the antislavery vanguard. Where Vaux saw Benezet as the activist forerunner of the transatlantic abolitionist struggle, many historians now place him in the background of anti-imperial and antislavery movements—struggles led largely by people of African descent themselves. Indeed, Benezet has not inspired much reverence from recent scholars examining global emancipation. In The American Crucible, a wide-ranging study of emancipation and the rise of a human rights ideology, British scholar Robin Blackburn reads Benezet’s antislavery struggle as limited to a small subset of Quakers “and others who aspired to a righteous life.” As he puts it, neither Benezet nor his network of

* I should like to thank Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke for their helpful suggestions and editorial patience. 1  Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, PA, 1817), p. iv.

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friends sought to “campaign” for anything like antislavery public policy.2 Nor did he/they imagine black rebellion and liberation as vital parts of nascent antislavery discourse. Rather, Benezet conjured up a moral counterexample to racial injustice, hoping that others would copy it some day. Lest this judgment seems too harsh, consider that even David Brion Davis’ more recent work on abolitionism has called Benezet-style antislavery protest “feeble” compared with the continued surge of Atlantic slavery in the late 1700s. For a scholar who once highlighted the importance of Benezet and the “Quaker International,” this is telling.3 Still other scholars re-examining Atlantic emancipation (particularly in Iberian and Francophone contexts) see Benezet as a marginal figure in Atlantic race reform, or they ignore him completely.4 Yet, as I hope to show, scholars of Atlantic race reform must continue to see Benezet as a formidable antislavery agitator. For one thing, he was far from an antislavery ascetic—a lone activist whose abolitionist ruminations flowed from his own perfectionist desires. He was much bigger than that. Benezet committed himself to a brand of political lobbying at both the colonial and imperial levels that influenced generations of abolitionists in England, France, and the United States. Engaged in a variety of educational initiatives, he also remained committed to black uplift as a key mode of grassroots race reform, something that would influence 20th-century civil rights reformers in the United States. For another, Benezet was a virtuoso literary activist. Not only did he challenge racial stereotypes in the Atlantic press but he prefigured the 19th-century romantic abolitionist author who attempted to shatter the dramatic illusion between reader and writer, slavery’s pretend paternalism and its rapacious reality. In these ways and more, he was indeed a “father of Atlantic abolition,” in Maurice Jackson’s felicitous phrase.5 No matter how much we

2  Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (Brooklyn, NY, 2011), pp. 152, 330–31. 3  David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: the Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York, NY, 2006), p. 234 and Epilogue. See also David Brion Davis, Slavery in the Age of Revolution (New York, NY, 1975), especially ch. 5. 4  See, for instance, Seymour Drescher’s admirable book, Abolition: a History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge, UK, 2009), which gives Benezet a few cameos but relegates him to a rather marginal status. For an even broader perspective on slavery and freedom, see Patrick Manning’s The African Diaspora: a History through Culture (New York, NY, 2009), in which emancipation is viewed primarily through communities of African people throughout the Atlantic world rather than antislavery reformers such as Benezet. 5  See Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia, PA, 2009).

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learn about other activists, Benezet must remain a key player in the history of emancipation struggles in the Atlantic world. At the same time, it is important to understand that Benezet’s brand of activism was itself part of a shifting abolitionist world. For scholars who have paid attention to him, this has usually meant tracing the transformation of Quaker struggles from inside to outside the Society of Friends.6 But as a wave of recent scholars has shown, black activism surged throughout the Atlantic world in the second half of the 18th century, indicating that there, black and white activists were engaged in parallel struggles to stop racial subjugation. Indeed, even as Benezet’s name has gone missing from broader examinations of abolitionism, we have a much richer portrait of the rebels, reformers, and writers of African descent whose exertions fundamentally reshaped the antislavery cause between the 1760s and early 1800s. Thus we now know that while Benezet was starting to challenge bondage in Philadelphia, an enslaved man named Tacky launched a massive rebellion against British bondage in Jamaica.7 At nearly the same time, African American men and women from South Carolina to Massachusetts began speaking out against racial oppression, which led to the first legal challenges to bondage in British American courts of law. Seeing Benezet as one point on a broader antislavery spectrum filled with people of African descent reminds us that the abolitionist struggle was always an expansive and multi-cultural enterprise.8 In short, even at its dawning, antislavery was not—and could not be—­ limited to a small number of dissenters in or beyond the Society of Friends. Like other white metropolitan reformers, Benezet was a mediating and transitional figure—an activist whose abolitionist meditations were radical precisely because they tied into (and then amplified) the exertions of an international and multi-cultural network of race rebels. Seeing Benezet as a complement to these “Black Founders,” as I have referred to them in another context, allows us to view late 18th-century abolitionism less as a prelude to more radical action and more as a revolutionary movement in its own right.

6  See especially Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1757–1761 (New Haven, CT, 2012). 7  See Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the AngloJamaican World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004). For reports in colonial America, see “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at St. Mary’s,” April 14, 1760, reprinted in Pennsylvania Gazette, June 5, 1760. 8  See Erik Seeman, “ ‘Justise Must Take Plase’: Three African Americans Speak of Religion in Eighteenth-Century New England,” William and Mary Quarterly 56 (April 1999): 395–416.

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Benezet as an Atlantic Race Rebel

What made Benezet’s activism so important and powerful? According to recent scholars of Quaker abolitionism, he was not simply part of a long line of antislavery dissenters within the Society of Friends but part of a new generation of white reformers who, inspired by religious scruples and the rise of liberal sensibilities, sought to pressure political bodies to pass abolitionist laws.9 Moving from internal to external modes of protest, Benezet pushed a new brand of abolitionism: one that was politically conscious, legally viable, and culturally ramifying. Even though some members of the Society of Friends dissented from his vision of a new abolitionism, yet Benezet pressed on. But to reimagine Benezet as a powerful reformer in the Age of Revolution, we might also think of him as an Atlantic race rebel. For he challenged the emergence of what Charles Mills calls the “Racial Contract” of early Western democracy: the idea that rights themselves were invested with inherent racial meanings.10 From his first antislavery pamphlets to his late work on behalf of Native Americans, Benezet tried to slash colonial taxonomies of race, making clear that modernity must be defined by notions of equality and justice that simply did not exist in the 1760s or 1770s. His earliest attacks on the overseas slave trade argued that white colonists were not simply sinners but hypocrites: while they decried colonial captivity (to Native groups, among others), Benezet noted, British subjects had little trouble supporting the African slave trade. How could this be, he wondered?11 His tone of incredulity remained no less powerful at the end of his life, when he accused Americans of forgetting their revolutionary credo of equality. “[A]t a time when the general rights and liberties of mankind . . . are become so much the subjects of universal consideration,” as he put in the much-reprinted A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies, it seemed incomprehensible that “the Advocates of Liberty remain insensible and inattentive to . . . to our fellow men . . . kept in the most deplorable state of slavery.” Enslaved Africans were as “free as ­ourselves by

9  Among others, see Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom; Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard; Thomas P. Slaughter, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York, NY, 2008). 10  Charles M. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY, 1997). 11  Anthony Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes (Germantown, PA, 1760), pp. 3–10.

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nature,” Benezet lectured, and he found it truly “surprising” that abolitionists needed to say so in a supposed Age of Revolution.12 Even here, it would be wrong to see Benezet as many scholars once did: a lone prophet whose abolitionist meditations came from an inner sense of moral rectitude. For his rise as a race rebel occurred in the midst of wide-­ranging upheavals in Atlantic culture. Put another way, one might say that Benezet was a mediator: a reformer whose activism flowed from, and was aligned with, a whole family of activists fighting against racial subjection in 18th-century culture. From the Caribbean and Canada to Brazil and the North American backcountry, a range of reformers debated the meaning of racial subjugation anew: who was a slave, why, and with what broader ramifications? In this world, Benezet was an important voice precisely because he tied together different activist constituencies—from enslaved rebels to Native voices to colonial abolitionists—attacking the racial status quo in Atlantic society. Indeed, Benezet was clearly inspired by the series of slave rebellions that shook the Caribbean in the 1760s and became a focal part of the Atlantic press. The first occurred in British Jamaica, where a galvanizing, the aforementioned Tacky, led an audacious attack on several plantations in St. Mary’s parish on Easter Sunday (April 12, 1760). After securing arms, a force of nearly 100 slaves killed several overseers and burned neighboring plantations before seeking shelter “in the woods” outside of town. According to one report, rebels had “long” been planning to attack whites, perhaps in an effort to establish autonomy from British authorities (in the manner of maroon colonies). African ethnicity framed English officials’ understanding of the revolt, as Tacky and his co-leaders were quickly identified as “Coromantee Negroes”—in the parlance of slave regimes, particularly fierce fighters. Refusing to give in, Tacky’s troops struggled until they were defeated by planter militias. Tacky was killed but many of his men either committed suicide or were killed so as not to betray any “intelligence” to British authorities.13 Three years later an even larger slave rebellion broke out in Dutch Berbice along the South American coast, news of which haunted British as well as Dutch officials. British forces helped quash the raid, both to suppress the possibility of rebellion in their own colonies and to sustain trade with the Dutch (in nearby Surinam). Much larger than Tacky’s Rebellion—some reports estimated 12  Anthony Benezet, A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies (Philadelphia, PA, 1766), pp. 3–4. 13  Among other books, see Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, MA, 2000).

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rebel forces in the thousands—the Berbice uprising decimated many colonial plantations and killed a host of whites. Unlike Tacky’s men, Berbice’s rebels articulated their grievances for public consumption. As one story reprinted in several North American newspapers showed, blacks felt that they had suffered “long enough” under white rule and “would no longer be slaves.” Making clear that they aimed at the plantation complex itself—and not just Dutch imperial rule—rebel leaders threatened the “same fate” (death and destruction) to blacks and Natives who rendered aid to Dutch masters.14 Led by two energetic men—Accara and Coffy—rebel forces held off colonial powers for well over a year. In that time the ripple effects of black rebellion spread widely, as Dutch ship captains fled to various safe harbors, including British Antigua and ports of North America. In this way, alarm spread from imperial regime to imperial regime. Just as important, the ever-expanding colonial press publicized the 1763 revolt as a pan-Atlantic threat to imperial order. Soon after the rebellion started, Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette reported on it; so did papers in New York and Boston.15 By 1764 a Boston paper noted that the final “subjection” of Berbice rebels was cheering news around the Atlantic rim.16 Indeed, the lessons of Berbice could have easily applied to British masters everywhere. As the Dutch colonial governor of Surinam put it, the 1763 revolt offered a “dangerous example . . . to our slaves” because they seemed “already too prone to revolt.” The lesson of the hour, then, remained not an easing of slavery but more firm control of blacks’ lives. As the correspondent put it, “if the most vigorous methods are not pursued at home to crush this insurrection, and prevent those rebels from settling or nesting in the very bosom of all our colonies, I’m afraid we will in a few years be without any of this continent.” There was more: “if white people had made a stand [in the first place], affairs would not have come to that extremity.”17 The correspondent may not have been exaggerating about the potential power of black rebellion in the Caribbean, for as one student of the incident has recently put it, the 1763 revolt was the largest and most effective slave rebellion prior to the Haitian uprising.18

14   Pennsylvania Gazette, May, 19, 1763. 15   Pennsylvania Gazette, March 22, 1763. 16  See paragraph beginning “A Gentleman lately . . . from Surinam,” Massachusetts Gazette, May 31, 1764. 17  “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Surinam,” Boston Evening Post, August 1, 1763. 18  See Junius P. Rodriguez, ed., Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion, 2 vols (Westport, CT, 2007), entry on “Coffy,” vol. 1, pp. 124–5.

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Thus black rebellion connected imperial British readers across time and space, from the pain factories of Caribbean slavery to embattled North American landscapes. Benezet knew that his own pamphlets dealing with the horrors of slavery and the slave trade were well timed to have an impact among Atlantic readers and reformers learning about black uprising. Indeed, we might read A Caution and Warning, his first major attack on bondage, as his initial meditation on slave rebellion.19 Where other white voices in the Atlantic press favored severe crackdowns on slave uprising, Benezet called for the opposite: the beginning of an abolitionist movement. Though he did not favor it strategically, he—like other Quaker abolitionists—struggled with the rights of the enslaved to rebel. His pamphlet told Britons that unless they acted forcefully to end slavery and the slave trade, rebels would take matters into their own hands. In the days of the Haitian Revolution, this would be radical enough. For Benezet it was perhaps even more radical to say so in the 1760s. If black rebellion framed Benezet’s rise as an abolitionist and race rebel, so too did North American borderland battles. As Gregory Dowd, Gordon Sayre, and many others have asserted, Native American uprisings in the 1750s and 1760s challenged both British and colonial officials to think more deeply about racial captivity, though with an interesting twist: in the North American borderland, unfreedom applied to white colonists as well as people of color.20 Pontiac’s War of 1763–65, which featured widespread Native attacks on white settlements in the trans-Ohio borderland, was in many ways the backcountry equivalent of a slave rebellion. While Pontiac did not see himself literally as an enslaved person, it is clear that he galvanized Native allies much as Tacky and Caribbean rebels did: by seeking to smash the concept of white racial domination in the 18th-century world. Pontiac himself gave impassioned testimony to the power of slavery as metaphor in Native discourse when he claimed control over land and people in the Great Lakes interior. In a confrontation at Fort Detroit, he lectured English representatives that the price of frontier peace must be British surrender of military garrisons—and thus the very idea

19  Benezet, A Caution and Warning, pp. 3–5. 20  See, among many other books, Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations and the British Empire (Baltimore, MD, 2002), Gordon Sayre, The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009). See also the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, special issue on “The Pennsylvania Backcountry” (October 2012), for a variety of perspectives on Native–white relations in the mid-Atlantic region.

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of mastery over Native landscapes—west of Niagara Falls.21 While eventually defeated, Pontiac’s dream of Native sovereignty remained strong for years to come in the backcountry. Closer to Benezet’s Pennsylvania home, borderland battles prompted a resurgence of colonial captivity narratives illuminating British American fears of Indian mastery. According to newspaper accounts throughout the 1750s and 1760s, Indians captured and sold hundreds of white colonists in a North American slave trade ultimately funneled through French agents in Montreal. In response, Americans called for proactive emancipatory movements that liberated whites free of charge rather than via traditional forms of monetary and spiritual redemption. Colonists saw Native mastery as not only un-christian but ideologically wrong-headed in the era of Enlightenment thinking. In short, Britons believed that they could never be enslaved in any form whatsoever. Evidence came in an epic emancipatory event that surely played on Benezet’s mind as he contemplated ways to undermine racial slavery: the heroic welcome given to British Col. Henry Bouquet, whose famous 1764 expedition into the Ohio country liberated hundreds of British American captives. Bouquet was feted in the colonial press as well as political bodies for his epic maneuvers in Native landscapes.22 Hard numbers are difficult to harness, but his forces may have freed nearly 300 white captives or more. At Fort Pitt, Bouquet’s forces liberated roughly 200 colonists. The majority came from Pennsylvania—about 60 percent—while the remainder came from Virginia. Many were women and children. But this was not the total number of suspected captives among the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, and others; there were other white emancipation moments in Ohio country. In December of 1764, for instance, both Ohio and Georgia newspapers reprinted a story of Bouquet’s treaty with Ohio Indians at the Forks of the Muskingum River, where about forty captives were redeemed.23 Revealingly, Bouquet also demanded the return of runaway slaves in Native hands, for this was still an acceptable form of bondage in white colonists’ eyes. In fact, both British and colonial officials recommitted themselves to African slavery in the wake of white indenture shortages wrought by the Seven Years War and Pontiac’s War. While the Society of Friends banned slave-trading in the 1750s, the overseas slave trade surged both in and beyond Pennsylvania. 21  “Copy of a letter from a gentleman at Fort D’Etroit,” July 9, 1763, published in the New York Gazette, August 15, 1763. 22   See the image of his deed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Bouquet_at_ Muskingum.png, accessed March 6, 2016. 23   New York Gazette, February 10, 1764, and Georgia Gazette, February 7, 1765.

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In northern colonies in particular, the shortage of white laborers during the imperial war—indentured and otherwise—compelled whites to rely more on enslaved Africans. Gary Nash has estimated that perhaps as many as 1,000 people of African descent were brought to the Quaker state in chains in the 1760s. From colonial New York to Georgia, one could easily find advertisements announcing slave sales. In Maryland, for instance, one family firm was responsible for importing nearly 10,000 African souls between the 1740s and 1770s.24 Increasing the number of captive Africans did not occur without doubts among the master class, but the point remains: white colonists hardened the liberty line during the mid-18th century by claiming access to a grand heritage of freedom and equality while also denying freedom to people of color.25 Enter Benezet, whose early critiques of racial bondage also aimed at destabilizing white supremacy. Indeed, it is no coincidence that he began his antislavery crusade in the midst of the Seven Years War, when white captivity and black bondage simultaneously expanded as key parts of colonial American discourse, or that he intensified his critique of bondage in the years following Tacky’s Rebellion and Pontiac’s War, when many British American whites highlighted their own freedom from bondage as an essential part of colonial life. Benezet’s very first pamphlet attacking British involvement in the slave trade argued that the logic of empire had created, in essence, a terrible duality in colonists’ minds. While they decried colonial captivity to Native groups, Benezet noted, British subjects had little trouble supporting the African slave trade. “We as a nation are guilty,” he observed flatly in 1759, of violating the Golden Rule. White Britons had demonstrated a total “disregard to the rights and liberties of mankind” by participating in the overseas slave trade, all the while disparaging the savage treatment of colonials captured by Native groups at home.26 Not only had British colonials participated in the slave trade but they supplied the Spanish with tens of thousands of slaves in South America. As we know, Benezet broke new literary ground by basing his abolitionist critique on interviews with slave-traders and even enslaved people. Yet he also 24  According to one scholar, members of Christopher Lowndes and Company of Maryland were alone responsible for nearly 15,000 enslaved imports in the 18th century. The Lowndes family underwrote thirty-seven voyages to West Africa, which brought 9637 enslaved people to the New World between 1746 and 1770. See James H. Johnston, From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family (New York, NY, 2012), p. 19. 25  See Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: the Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720– 1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1988), p. 36. 26  Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, pp. 1–11.

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folded white captivity narratives into his antislavery appeals as a white man to illustrate colonists’ hypocrisy. Consider the extract he chose from French slavetrader John Barbot’s account of slave raids on the West African coast: those slaves sold by the Negroes, are for the most part prisoners of war, taken either in fight or pursuit, or in the incursions they make into their enemies territories; others are stolen away by their own countrymen, and some there are who will sell their own children kindred or neighbors. Despite their protests “against [such] treachery,” enslaved African captives were herded into prisons and condemned to bondage far from home.27 Now consider Benezet’s account of the horrible captivity scenes “in the present war”—the Seven Years War. “How many of our poor countrymen are dragged to bondage and sold for slaves,” he wondered, how many mourn, a husband, a wife, a child, a parent or some near relative taken from them; and were we to follow them a little further, and see them exposed to sale and bought up to be made a gain of, what heart so hard that would not melt with sympathy and sorrow. The only difference in this latter case? Now the captives were white. Benezet thus asked readers to change the faces and the locations of enslavement— white for black, British North America for Africa—to see just how terrible bondage had become. “What inhuman wretches should we call them, what punishment should rethink their guilt deserved!” With these thoughts in mind he urged his readers to “extend our thoughts to others,” namely enslaved Africans.28 Put another way, by tying white fears of captivity along the North American borderland to seemingly distant scenes of slave-trading, Benezet hoped he could compel his readers to see all bondage as deplorable. Perhaps because white captivity among Native Americans remained such an emotional subject (for white readers) during the 1760s, Benezet did not make it the centerpiece of any of his pamphlets. Nevertheless, by conjuring up searing memories of white captivity, he continued to link red, white, and black subjection. He continued to focus on this theme. In Some Historical Account of Guinea he linked red, white, and black captivities by comparing British bondage to Spanish atrocities visited upon Native peoples centuries before.29 27  Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, pp. 5–6. 28  Benezet, Observations on the Inslaving, p. 3. 29  Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (Philadelphia, PA, 1771).

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Like his hero Bartolome de Las Casas, Benezet attempted to illustrate that British subjects would (like the early Spanish explorers) forever be castigated by their treatment of marginalized groups of people. As we know, this type of critique prompted severe criticism of Benezet and his fellow Quakers, who were depicted as would-be Indians who engaged in skulking literary ambushes on white mastery.30 Still, by criticizing all captivities, Benezet believed that he could reorient British American morality itself, gaining adherents to the early abolitionist crusade. That did not happen. Indeed, it may be viewed as a supreme irony that the one form of captivity that grew in heinousness and importance in the white colonial mind during the 1760s and 1770s was not black or Indian bondage but white captivity to imperial Englishmen. Yet knowing that Benezet’s antislavery critique flowed from the vicious borderland wars raging in North America at mid-century as well as uprisings haunting the Caribbean—and not merely the abstract realm of religious doctrine, travel literature, or Enlightenment philosophy—we might better appreciate his standing as a race rebel. In the era of Tacky and Pontiac, Benezet made sure that his voice would be added to those challenging racial subjection in Atlantic society. Considering all that was going on around him, it was a brave move.

From Benezet to Black Founders

Despite his manifest importance as a race rebel and critic of slavery, Benezet remained in many ways a man of his time: a Quaker activist committed to peaceful protest and gradual abolition. Not only did he believe that emancipation must occur over an extended period of time, but he abhorred slave rebellion. Moreover, as Jonathan Sassi has reminded us, Benezet’s literary abolitionism cloaked appeals for universal humanity in Quaker garb: for him, Africans were tolerant, pious, and anything but threatening—the virtual embodiment of the famous image of the supplicating slave who begs (rather than demands) to be treated as a “man and brother.”31 It is perhaps this side of Benezet—the patient and paternal gradualist as opposed to the well-meaning antislavery ascetic—that seems most out of step 30  See, for instance, the debates about Quaker politics, revisited nicely in Philalethes’ The Quaker Vindicated; or, Observations on a Late Pamphlet, Entitled, The Quaker Unmask’d, or, Plain Truth (Philadelphia, PA, 1764). 31  See Jonathan Sassi, “Africans in the Quaker Image,” Journal of Early Modern History 10:1 (May 2006).

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with our historiographical moment. It surely accounts for his virtual disappearance from many broader histories of Atlantic abolitionism, where again Benezet (if he is covered at all) is pictured not as an iconoclastic father of race reform but a rather distant antislavery cousin chipping away at the margins of bondage. In Slavery: A New Global History, British historian Jeremy Black’s sweeping and incisive account of the rise and fall of Atlantic bondage, Quakers get less than a paragraph of coverage—and Benezet none at all. Why? While he admits that “Quakers played a prominent role in [early] Abolitionism,” Black asserts that “they and others were effective in part because of a more widespread shift in public opinion” in the Western world.32 Many scholars now share this view: Quakers were not so much progenitors of abolitionism as representatives of a new climate of antislavery opinion. In fact, a variety of historians argue that the most important abolitionist thrust in the Age of Revolution (and beyond) came not from white metropolitan or colonial activists such as Benezet but black abolitionists, slave rebels, and whole communities of color challenging racial injustice throughout the Atlantic world. Blackburn calls this the “Haitian Pivot”: the moment when slave rebels in the Caribbean claimed “the rights of man” and thereby initiated the most radical critique of racial bondage in the 18th century. To be sure, he links Haitian rebels to radical political and social movements in Atlantic society, showing that the abolitionist charge from below had a vital inter-racial and class component. But he credits slave rebels more than any metropolitan reformer for reorienting global antislavery struggles.33 By referring to the Haitian Revolution as the tipping point in Atlantic abolitionism, Blackburn’s argument serves as a metaphor for our historiographic moment. Like others, he highlights black activists as formative players in the creation of antislavery and human rights ideologies. His thesis rests on a scholarly wave that has elevated black voices in Atlantic world reform circles as never before. Whether in French, British, Spanish, or American contexts, as a variety of scholars have shown, people of African descent became visionaries of a new antislavery sensibility aimed at more immediate forms of liberation and more radical forms of protest, especially physical rebellion and flight. These Black Founders were a varied and complex lot, comprising writers and theorists, runaways and revolutionaries, everyday people and extraordinary leaders, all of them trying to fight through the wall of Atlantic bondage. Once hidden in plain sight, we now know how important their exertions were to Atlantic world abolitionism and race relations. In no small way they have ­displaced 32  Jeremy Black, Slavery: a New Global History (London, 2011), p. 157. 33  Blackburn, American Crucible, Introduction.

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early ­abolitionists such as Benezet as the stars of Atlantic race reform. It pays to look more closely at what these Black Founders did to reorient abolitionism in the Age of Revolution. For instance, Eric Robert Taylor’s If We Must Die, an examination of slave rebellion in 18th-century British American society, argues for a role reversal in abolitionist influences: for him, enslaved peoples’ persistent threats of rebellion along the Atlantic slave trade actually inspired the work of Benezet and his allies. Tracing roughly 500 reported rebellions (potentially impacting tens of thousands of would-be African captives), Taylor argues that black uprising punctured defenses of slavery as benign and even uplifting, thereby shaping the 18th-century antislavery struggles of Benezet, Thomas Clarkson, and others. Here we do not have to get bogged down in debates over black versus white agency. As Taylor admits, both sets of activists mattered. Still, by emphasizing the formative nature of black protest on the slave trade, he challenges us to acknowledge African-descended people as more than adjuncts of early antislavery struggles—mere abstractions in the developing cause. Rather, he views even unsuccessful slave rebels as co-creators of a modern antislavery mindset that compelled reformers such as Benezet to listen, act, and protest.34 Other historians of Atlantic emancipation make this same point: the “active participation” of African and African-descended people in revolutionary-era antislavery struggles, in the words of Jane Landers, was perhaps the most important aspect of early race reform.35 We must therefore place people of color at the center of the long antislavery century that began in the 1760s (say, with Tacky’s Rebellion) and ended in the 1880s (with Brazilian freedom). Landers does this by looking at Black Founders in 18th-century Iberian locales. At roughly the same time as Benezet began building a far-flung antislavery network in the North Atlantic, Landers traces a surge in political activism among “Atlantic Creoles” in Spanish settlements. As she puts it, “African and African descended actors had access to a wide range of political information, both printed and oral, and they made reasoned and informed choices in their attempt to win and maintain liberty.”36 From Iberian settlements on the North American mainland to the Spanish Antilles, both slaves and free people of color pushed more decidedly into the civic and social realm, using Spanish manumission traditions, imperial strife, and revolutionary movements to do what Benezet did through antislavery literature: undermine notions of racial 34  Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge, LA, 2006), see Introduction and Epilogue. 35  Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, MA, 2011), p. 4. 36  Landers, Atlantic Creoles, p. 5.

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superiority and create a new understanding of black people’s civil and social rights. To take one example, former slaves Prince Whitten and Georges (Jorge) Biassou forged alliances with Spanish officials in the final decades of the 18th century, hoping to use what Biassou termed “the current” of rebellion sweeping Atlantic shores to secure black liberty and autonomy. Though from different locales, Whitten (who fled slavery in Georgia during the American Revolution) and Biassou (a leading rebel in Saint-Domingue) ended up in Spanish Florida in the 1790s, where they became the archetypal black Atlantic Creole: savvy, politically conscious, and focused on creating new identities for people of color in the Atlantic world. As Christopher Schmidt-Nowara has recently shown, the story does not stop there. By the early 1800s, enslaved people’s participation in Latin American Wars of Independence created a series of black freedom claims in Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina. By the 1820s, in fact, black activism convinced many of these new nations to craft emancipation policies of one form or another. “Enslaved men and women and free blacks took part in battles between empires and for national liberation,” Schmidt-Nowara writes, shaking “the foundation of New World slavery to its core” just as surely as Enlightenmentera religious and philosophical disquisitions.37 If black protest was still not enough to bring down slavery across the Spanish realm (during the 1800s, a “second slavery” would bring to Cuba alone as many Africans as had arrived during the entire pre-1800 period), then waves of black activism indicated that people of African descent would not remain silent. Searching for new allies, and embracing outright rebellion when antislavery reform failed, they made clear that bondage would be retained only by the force of arms, inspiring further reflection among antislavery reformers and statesmen throughout the Atlantic world. By the early 1800s, Iberian abolitionists were circulating work by British and American antislavery reformers in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, and other locales. In the 1812 Aponte Rebellion, for instance, Cuban masters discovered that enslaved people and free blacks had access to work by British abolitionists. With such access to a vibrant antislavery underground, Cuban masters realized that both free and enslaved blacks were a constant threat to bondage’s security in the Caribbean.38 Of course, Black Founders in the French Caribbean generated perhaps the most sweeping challenge to slavery in the Age of Revolution. As we know from 37  Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Sante Fe, NM, 2011), p. 92. 38  Matt D. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle Against Atlantic Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006).

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the avalanche of literature on Saint-Domingue over the past decade, the famous slave uprising took shape at a crossroads of Atlantic revolutionary thinking, with black and white colonists heatedly debating whether or not the principles of 1789 belonged to people of African descent. Per Nick Nesbitt’s formulation, we might think of Haitian rebels as truly modern visionaries who believed not only that slavery was wrong but that new governments must aim for “the free development of all human beings.”39 Yet what I want to emphasize for the moment is the way in which black rebels self-consciously turned Benezetstyle abolitionism on its head to achieve grand emancipatory results. For by proclaiming physical rebellion a legitimate way to obtain both black freedom and human liberation, Haitian revolutionaries created a powerful counterexample to non-violent protest—one that simultaneously terrified Atlantic whites and stirred Atlantic blacks. Throughout the Caribbean, enslaved communities sought to join the black international created by Saint-Dominguan rebels. As Bernard Moitt has shown, even Caribbean women supported physical uprising as a legitimate form of protest. From carrying arms, to supplying ammunition, to goading fathers, sons, and brothers into dying for freedom, black women helped enshrine physical confrontation as a worthy abolitionist tactic. As French writer Antoine Métral noted in his 1818 history of the uprising, entire black communities took to heart the revolutionary-era dictum that “war was indispensable to liberty.”40 But focusing on physical tactics apart from the political and ideological contexts that gave rise to them misses the essential logic of black activism in the revolutionary Caribbean. Indeed, it is well to remember Laurent Dubois’ call for a reading of the Haitian Revolution that “places the violence in context” and does not “avoid confronting the ideological and political significance of the ideals” that the revolution generated.41 As Deborah Jenson has recently argued, Haitian revolutionaries engaged in a vivid form of “scribal politics” to explain and rationalize both black rebellion and black nation-building. A brand of literary outreach, scribal politics deployed print culture to enshrine universal emancipation as a necessary part of modern society.42 For Jenson, 39  Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: the Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlighten­ ment (Charlottesville, VA, 2008), p. 56. 40  Antoine Métral quoted by Bernard Moitt in Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848 (Bloomington, IN, 2001), ch. 7, pp. 126–38. 41  Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: the Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 5. 42  Deborah Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (Liverpool, 2012), Introduction.

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Nesbitt, Dubois, and other scholars, black Caribbean scribal politics culminated in a striking series of declarations and constitutions in the early 1800s that elevated antislavery to a national and international standard at a time when no nation or empire (save the French national assembly) had done so. Toussaint Louverture issued the first black Caribbean Constitution in 1801, claiming Saint-Dominguan autonomy within the broader French Empire. With Napoleon’s force bearing down on him, Louverture hoped his constitution would win the war of ideas emanating from enslaved people’s rebellion. A few years later, after the deposed Louverture’s heirs had defeated the French and created the black republic of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines made sure that the new nation’s constitutional architecture repeated Haiti’s emancipatory origins. As the 1805 Constitution declared, the “will” of the Haitian people had been “legally constituted” in an independent nation that banished slavery “forever.” Moreover, as Article III noted, “equality in the eyes of the law is clearly recognized.” That was indeed a radical philosophy even in the age of abolition.43 Black Founders in British American contexts became perhaps the bestknown exemplars of scribal politics, using a range of literary forms to make their claims for universal freedom. The Black Anti-Slavery Writings Project, based at the University of Detroit-Mercy, has archived more than 1500 blackauthored documents in North America from between the 1760s and 1820s.44 Demographics and geography help explain African Americans’ reliance on print. With relatively small average slave-holding groups spread across a wide swath of territory, black uprising was hard to achieve in North America. Public protest and literary appeals for black freedom thus became increasingly important in African American circles. Yet as literary scholars have shown, early black writing offered a potent response to black oppression. By challenging new defenses of bondage in the early republic (particularly in the Deep South and emerging cotton states of the southwest, where slavery was viewed as a necessary component of American nation-building), African Americans sought to undermine white stereotypes of African-descended people while also illustrating blacks’ fitness for freedom in emancipating locales ­stretching from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. Already by the 1770s and 1780s, black 43   See the 1805 Constitution at http://mjp.univ-perp.fr/constit/ht1805.htm, accessed March 6, 2016. 44  Editor’s note: The Black Antislavery Writings project was conducted between 2002 and 2005 by John Saillant and Roy Finkenbine but National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding was not renewed after the collection period. Saillant and Finkenbine hope to be able to carry out the publication in the future (information provided by Roy Finkenbine to Marie-Jeanne Rossignol on May 4, 2016).

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writers were utilizing petitions, pamphlets, and poems to lay claim to political and social rights. For these reasons, John Ernest has aptly termed early African American protest literature a “liberation historiography”—a grand project self-consciously aimed at achieving racial justice and equality as well as abolition.45 African American print culture proved to be a capacious vehicle in this regard. The earliest calls for reparations date to black literary activism in the revolutionary era, as do the earliest calls for African repatriation, civic equality in emancipating states, and international brotherhood.46 Indeed, whether it constituted a counterpublic or simply a form of public discourse, early black print culture allowed Black Founders to spread their brand of abolitionism through white as well as black communities. After the rise of black literary activism, it was not only harder for masters and their allies to claim that people of African descent were inferior in intellectual capacity but simply more difficult to ignore black testimony about slavery’s horrors. With access to print, African Americans could challenge the political and historical transcript of bondage, passing it on to future generations of black as well as white activists. By 1800, print culture was well established as a potent protest vehicle and a critical networking source. Yet Black Founders in British American society also embraced physical confrontation as a key means of struggle, perhaps another reason some scholars emphasize their importance over and against Quaker abolitionists such as Benezet. Following in the footsteps of Benjamin Quarles, Gary Nash and Stephen Hahn have called the American Revolution perhaps the greatest slave rebellion prior to the uprising in Saint-Domingue.47 The full number of enslaved people who fled and rebelled during the 1770s and 1780s may never be ascertained, but scholars do know that a sizable number of enslaved Americans interpreted the wars as a mass physical confrontation with bondage. As they had done in countless imperial conflicts, enslaved people followed nations and leaders who promised them freedom. In the South Carolina and Georgia low country, according to Betty Wood and Maya Jasanoff, several thousand blacks rejected masters’ rule by running away to British lines. (Jasanoff calls this the 45  John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African-American Writers and the Challenge of History 1794–1861 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004). 46  On these themes, see Richard S. Newman and Roy Finkenbine, “Black Founders in the New Republic: Introduction,” The William and Mary Quarterly 64:1 (2007): 83–94. 47  See Gary Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2006), and Stephen Hahn, The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (Cambridge, MA, 2009).

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largest single slave emancipation prior to Saint-Domingue). In Charleston and Savannah, for instance, British forces officially counted roughly 9,000 people of color in their midst by the early 1780s—the proverbial tip of the iceberg in terms of the overall number of escaped slaves seeking refuge within British lines, but still three times the number of fugitives comprising the more famous collection of black Loyalists in New York City. Of course, many black southern refugees met the harsh fate of re-enslavement from unscrupulous British officials. Nevertheless, black runaways’ very existence compelled British statesmen to adopt, in Jasanoff’s words, a “Spirit of 1783”: “a clarified commitment to liberty and humanitarian ideals” across lines of ethnicity and color. Having experienced not one but two revolutions (a colonial white rebellion and a massive slave uprising), some British officials believed that the empire must confront slavery and the slave trade in the near future.48 This reminds us that the assault on bondage was not merely a matter of the mind (via antislavery literature) or the heart (via the rise of sentimental discourses), but also of the legs, arms and entire bodies. Indeed, if we call the men and women who fled American bondage in the 1770s not just fugitives but antislavery activists, we may have a better sense of why so many white figures decided to embrace gradual abolitionism precisely at this late 18th-century moment. In palpable and indelible ways, they now saw slavery as a violation of human rights—something people of color no less than white colonists were willing to fight and die for.

Kindred Spirits: Benezet and Domingos Alvares

This brings me back to the opening theme of this chapter: the historiographical move from Benezet to Black Founders. Where do we go from here? As several new studies on abolitionist currents among Quakers illustrate, it is time to re-emphasize Benezet’s signal importance as both an antislavery activist and thinker. His exertions were not limited to the Society of Friends, nor were they confined to the pages of books destined for a small group of reformers. Indeed, as my own work attempts to show, he had his finger on one of the essential problems of the age: racialized injustice. Arguing forcefully and consistently in 48  See Betty Wood’s essay “High Notions of their Liberty”: Women of Color and the American Revolution in Lowcountry Georgia and South Carolina, 1765–1783,” African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: the Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee, ed. Philip Morgan (Athens, GA, 2010); Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York, NY, 2011), p. 12.

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pamphlets and petitions that slavery violated new understandings of human rights, Benezet was a race rebel who made clear that emerging republics would be hollow and hypocritical if they failed to ensure liberty across the color line. Moreover, he fearlessly attacked racial hypocrisy at a time when black bondage was profitable and growing throughout colonial North American society, and when white bondage in the backcountry remained a sensitive concern to many colonists. That Benezet essentially shoved white captivity back in the faces of colonial readers during a time of widespread racial rebellion—challenging them to confront their hypocrisy as racial overlords—remains a stunning part of his activist portfolio two centuries later. But as the historiography on Black Founders has illustrated, it is equally important to see African Americans, Atlantic race rebels, and free people of color as co-creators of Atlantic abolitionism. By expanding the universe of antislavery tactics and strategies (particularly flight and rebellion), they pushed Atlantic abolitionism away from its gradualist sensibilities and toward grander schemes of liberation and equality. Indeed, Black Founders remind scholars that the abolitionist turn in the 18th-century world was not simply a matter of shifting economic priorities (wherein slavery’s economic demise allowed white reformers to suddenly embrace abolitionism) or the generic rise of a liberal sensibility (one that revolved around rather abstract Enlightenment conceptions of liberty). Rather, abolitionism was part and parcel of a global shift in black activism. Beginning in the 1760s, people of African descent attacked racial injustice along a pan-Atlantic front; their exertions reverberated throughout the Age of Revolution and extended into the golden age of 19th-century abolition. At its heart was the very modern notion that oppressed people had an entire complement of rights, including the right to express their discontent, sue for their freedom in courts of law, write about their oppression, violently revolt against their subjugation, and declare black nationhood. When African American activist David Walker famously told white readers in 1829 that the Declaration of Independence was primarily about equality and justice for oppressed people, he drew on ideas circulating through black activist circles since the 1760s. “Do you understand your own language?” he wondered in utter disbelief.49 Throughout Atlantic society, black rebels and reformers had for decades been asking this same question of white masters and political leaders.

49  See Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Boston, MA, 1829), p. 85, http:// docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html, accessed March 6, 2016.

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On that score, it is intriguing to consider Benezet as an intellectual and activist ally of Black Founders. For instance, we might think of him as a ­kindred spirit to another mid-18th-century Atlantic race rebel whose name many scholars have only recently come to know: an African healer named Domingos Alvares, who defied Portuguese slave-holders in ways that still echo today. As James Sweet has argued beautifully in his award-winning biography of this little-known figure, Alvares came from a family of healers and divines on the margins of the Kingdom of Dahomey in western Africa before being captured by slave-traders, sold into Brazilian bondage, and destined for perhaps nothing more than a short and brutal life inside the Atlantic plantation complex. But he survived, and eventually secured autonomy by practicing the healing arts. Appealing to white masters as well as black clients in a variety of rural and urban locales, Alvares led an amazing life by promising to heal the sick, injured, and downtrodden. Indeed, his healing work not only led to his freedom but eventually threatened the Brazilian authorities, which shipped him to Portugal, where he faced the dreaded Inquisition. Accused of sorcery, Alvares was exiled to the margins of Iberian society where his paper trail simply vanishes into thin air. Sweet reads Alvares as a potent figure, not only a race rebel but an intellectual whose life in and out of bondage was dedicated to preserving African worldviews: communalism, divination, and, above all, healing. Indeed, Sweet argues that Alvares allows us to trace African ideas about the tragic world wrought by the Atlantic slave trade. To Alvares and countless others, the era of slavery was one of utter carnage and devastation; getting beyond bondage would thus require more than abolition. In fact, Atlantic society would have to reckon with aspects of healing and justice that few if any mainstream thinkers—even white reformers—wanted to consider when Alvares addressed them in the mid-1700s.50 For Sweet, Alvares remains a powerful intellectual and race rebel: a man whose ideas about the pain and horror of enslavement— as well as the balm of community and divination—still challenge and haunt us today. I’d like to suggest that we consider Sweet’s book as a way forward: in the age of Alvares, Benezet was a part of a constantly expanding network of Atlantic activists beginning to challenge racial injustice on all fronts—literary, intellectual, political, and physical. Scholars must now find ways to link Benezet’s work and world to that of Alvares. Here I would again argue that Benezet remains a vital figure because, like Alvares, he saw the utter carnage of slavery and the 50  James Sweet, Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2008). See especially the Epilogue.

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slave trade, and he dedicated his life to overturning an unjust racial order. That was not just a small part of Atlantic reform but an intellectual and political challenge to the very structure of Atlantic economies and society. This does not mean that Benezet and Alvares stood for precisely the same critique or solution, but they were both race rebels in one form or another and at a time when neither had many allies in mainstream Atlantic society. To begin a history of abolitionism anew, we therefore need both Benezet and Black Founders.

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Index of Names and Places Acadians 64, 107, 170 Accara 226 Adanson, Michel xiii, 189, 192 Africa x, xi–xv, xxiv, 2, 3, 67, 68–70, 79, 82, 83, 97, 98, 134, 139, 165, 184, 185, 206, 211, 230, 240 Allegheny 74 Allen, Richard xix, 202, 214, 217, 219 Allinson, Samuel 129–131, 134, 136–138, 140–142, 144, 146 Alvares, Domingos 238, 240, 241 Amiens, Picardy 26, 27, 29, 30, 32 Amsterdam 33 Arcadia 216 Argentina 234 Azilum, PA 216 Barbé-Marbois, François 43, 172 Barbeu-Dubourg, Jacques 171 Barbot, Jean (John) xiii, 79, 92, 188, 230 Barclay, Robert 177 Barisy, Marie de 25 Bayle, Pierre 46, 189 Beauce 23 Beauvais 30 Belgium 36 Bénézet, Jacques 22, 47 Bénézet, Jean 39 Bénézet, Jean-Antoine 21, 23 Benezet, Jean-Étienne (John Stephen)  viii, 2, 13, 21–23, 34–52, 58, 63, 107 Bénézet d’Artillon, Antoine 13, 23 Berbice 225, 226 Berry 23 Bivins, James 194–197 Blackstone, William 136 Bond, Phineas 218 Bosman, Willem (William) xiii, 79, 92, 188 Boston, MA 112, 152, 155, 162, 203, 226 Boston, Absalom 108 Boudinot, Elias 141 Bouquet, Henry 228 Braddock, Edward 74 Bradford, William 148, 152–154, 158 Brainerd, David 64

Brazil 225 Brie 24 Brissac, Baptiste Isaac de 31, 35 Brissot, Jacques-Pierre xv, xvi, xix, xxvi, 174–183 Bristol 117, 194–196 Broglie, Duke of 175 Brown, Moses xiv, 135 Brue, Andre xiii, 79, 83 Bruyère (family) 33 Burke, Edmund 132 Burlington, NJ 58, 59, 94, 129, 130, 134–136, 140, 144, 145 Cambrai 27 Canada xxvi, 3, 74, 109, 200, 201, 217–220, 225 Caribbean (the) xxiv, 83, 98, 99, 225–227, 231–236 Carey, Matthew 202, 204 Catelet 25 Cévennes 8, 10, 17, 18, 39, 50, 52 Chalkley, Thomas 63 Chancellor, William 92 Chandler, Thomas Bradbury 140–142, 144, 145 Charlotte, queen of Britain xiv Chastellux, François-Jean de 35, 43, 172 Chattin, James 152, 153 Chauvelin 28 Chesterfield, NJ 145 Chile 234 Churchman, John xi, 60, 75, 76 Clarkson, Thomas xiii, 166, 178–180, 185, 193, 198, 199, 206, 207, 210, 233 Claverack (Hudson), New York 109, 115 Clavière, Étienne xvi, 178 Clinton, Sir Henry 113 Coffy 226 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 18, 20, 27 Coleman, Elihu 108, 148, 156, 159, 160, 162 Collier, Cdre 113 Collins, Isaac 129 Condorcet, Nicolas de xvi Constant, Benjamin 175 Cottin (family) 33

250 Cottin de Fontaine Louis 33 Couillette (family) 25 Crane, Stephen 140–142 Crèvecoeur, Michel Guillaume Jean de (J. Hector St. John) xxvi, 124, 175–177, 182, 183 Crommelin (family) 18, 19, 25, 26, 29, 40, 44 Crommelin, Pierre 40 Crommelin, Rachel 10, 11, 40 Cromot du Bourg, Maxime de 172 Cuba 234 Cullen, William 205 Dartmouth, Nova Scotia 109 Davies, Samuel 209 De la Méjanelle, Judith 8, 9, 17 De la Méjanelle, Léon 18, 19, 44 Delaware 59, 107 Delawares (the) 74, 76, 80, 228 Descarrière, Jean 29 Diderot, Denis 173, 183 Dillwyn, George 130, 134 Dillwyn, William 134, 137, 138, 140–144, 146 Dominica 194 Douglass, Frederick vii Du Bois, W. E. B. viii, ix Dumoustier (family) 33 Dumoustier, Jacques 30 Dumoustier de Vâtre, Marie 33 Dunkerque 10, 13, 16, 23, 39, 109, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel 171 Duquesne (Fort) 74 Enderby, Samuel 117 Equiano, Olaudah xii Farrar, Eliza Rotch 112 Fenwick, Joseph 123 Ferguson, Elizabeth Graeme 213 Finley, Samuel 209 Fizeaux (family) 33 Fizeaux, Pierre 33 Folger, Timothy 114, 116 Forks of the Ohio 74, 228 Fort Detroit 227 Forten, James ix, xix Fox, George 103, 161, 174, 179

Index Of Names And Places Franklin, Benjamin xi, xiv–xix, 35, 69, 132, 152–155, 159, 167, 171, 173, 205, 212, 226 French Prophets 50 Fromaget (family) 33 Gates, General Horatio 113 Geneva 33 Georgia 228, 229, 234, 237 Gérard, Conrad Alexandre 172 Germantown, PA 58, 59, 152, 153 Gibert, Jean-Louis 38 Girardot (family) 33 Goodwin, William 139 Grandy King George 194 Gray, William 217 Great Cove, PA 81 Great Lakes 217, 227 Grégoire, Bishop Henri Abbé xvi Grelet, Pierre 23 Greville, Sir Charles 116, 117 Griffiths, Samuel Powell xvii Gronniosaw, James Albert Ukawsaw xiii Grubber, William 201, 212–216 Guinea 35, 131, 132, 134, 165, 185–198, 206, 230 Haiti (Saint-Domingue) 226, 227, 232, 235, 236 Hamilton, Sir William 116 Harding, Capt. 84 Hartley, David 64 Hendrickson, Daniel 143 Henri, Antoine 27 Henri, Jean 27 Henry, Patrick xiv Hepburn, John 148, 155, 157, 159, 160–162 Hoefer, Ferdinand 166, 168, 169 Holland 27, 40, 43, 44 Hoops, Adam 81 Hunt, John 133 Hussey, William 114 Iroquois (the) 74 Jamaica 84, 223, 225 Jay, John 122 Jefferson, Thomas 110, 120–123, 201, 205, 215, 218 Jenkins, Jonathan 112

251

Index Of Names And Places Jenkinson, Charles 117 Jobson, Richard xiii Johnson, Robert 139 Joly (family) 30, 33 Joncourt (family) 25 Jones, Absalom ix, xix, 202, 214 Jones, Thomas 195 Keasbey, Edward 139 Keimer, Samuel 152–153 Keith, George 148, 154, 156, 158–162 Kempis, Thomas à 64 Lafayette, marquis de xvi, 122 Lake Erie 74 Law, William 59–60 Lay, Benjamin 67, 148, 152–153, 156–160, 162, 220 Le Jay, Edme-Jean 180–181 Le Serrurier, Jacques 28 Lehaucourt, Picardy 9, 11, 21, 23, 25, 27–28, 40 Létuvé, Anne 23 Lieurard, Charlotte 9, 18, 23 Liévard, Judith 44  London xii, 1, 3, 9, 19, 22, 28, 33, 39, 46–50, 57, 64–65, 68, 74–75, 77, 90, 98, 100, 104, 106, 114–118, 129–130, 132–133, 144, 147, 149–162, 164, 166, 168–169, 174, 176, 178, 180, 183, 185, 196, 213 Loudun, Poitou 30 Louis XIV viii, 9, 23, 29, 37 Luzerne, Chevalier de la (Anne-César) 172 Luzerne, Count of (César Henri) 121, 123 Marcillac, Jean de 123–124 Marriott, Joyce 59, 134 Massachusetts 50, 109, 112–113, 115, 223, 236 Mauritius 85 Mehelm, John 141–142 Mettayer, Samuel 27 Mexico 234 Mifflin, Warner 177 Milford Haven 109, 116–117 Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti de xvi, 179 Montesquieu, Charles de Sondat, baron de xiii

Montreal 228 Moore, Francis xiii Morris, Governor 80–81 Murray, John 209n Muskingum River 228 Namur 31 Nantucket, MA 106–114, 118–120, 125–126 Neale, Samuel 132 Necker, Jacques 122 New Bedford, MA 120, 125 New Bordeaux, SC 38 New England 33, 108, 110, 113, 125 Newfoundland 110, 117 New Jersey 97, 129–146, 148, 209, 213 New York 36, 38, 40, 48, 74, 113, 148, 154, 162, 226, 229, 238 Niagara Falls 228 Nicholson, Samuel 139 Nicolas, Armelle 59, 61 Normandy 23 Nova Scotia 109, 115–116, 118, 217 Nutter, Michael A. xxi Obama, President Barack vii Ohio 74, 227–228 O’Neil, Terence 194 Owen, Thomas 116 Paris vii, ix, xv, xxii, 1, 10, 18–21, 23, 25, 33, 35, 42, 82, 114, 118–119, 122, 171, 174–176, 179, 181 Parr, John 115 Pays de Caux, Normandy 23 Pemberton, John xviii, 76 Pemberton, Israel, Jr. 66 Pemberton, Israel, Sr. 65 Penn, William (and the Penn family) viii, 59, 69, 75, 77, 174, 177 Pennsylvania xi, xviii, xix, xxi, 1, 34, 37, 39, 48–50, 52–53, 5–58, 61, 6–65, 74–77, 80, 82, 94, 132–135, 150, 153–154, 156, 160, 162–164, 166, 171, 174, 201, 211, 215–218, 226, 228, 236 Perth Amboy, NJ 142 Peru 234 Pétion de Villeneuve, Jérôme xviii Pleasants, Robert 134–144

252 Philadelphia, PA viii, xi, xii, xiv, xviii, xxi, xxii, 1–3, 35, 37–38, 48, 51–52, 57–59, 62–69, 72, 74, 76, 79–80, 83, 88, 90–94, 96, 98–101, 104, 106–108, 129–130, 134, 145, 148–149, 152–154, 156, 159, 161, 170, 172–174, 176, 183, 185, 199–200, 203–204, 210–212, 215, 217–219, 221, 223 Phillips, James 166, 174 Picardy viii, 8, 9, 14, 19, 21–22, 24, 30, 36, 38–39 Pitt, William 118–119 Pittsburg, PA 74 Pommery 25 Pontiac 227–229, 231 Poupart Adélaïde and family 33 Price, Joseph 175 Puerto Rico 234 Quérard, Joseph-Marie 166–169, 180–181, 183 Ramsay, David 203–204 Raynal, Guillaume-Thomas, Abbé xvi–xvii, 35, 166, 172–173 Remigny 23 Robin John, Ancona Robin and Little Ephraim 194–197 Rochambeau, Donatien-Marie-Joseph 172 Rodman, Samuel 118 Rotch, (family and Benjami, Thomas, William, Jr., William, Sr.) 108–113, 117–126 Rotterdam 1, 9, 39, 42–47, 52 Rush, Benjamin xiv, xvi, xix, xx, xxi, 133–134, 167, 171, 173, 199–220 Sabin, Joseph 166, 168–169 Saint-Lambert, Jean-François de 171, 182 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de 85, 182, 184 Saint-Quentin, Picardy viii, xxi, 1, 2, 8–11, 18–19, 23–33, 35–43, 47, 49, 173, 183 Salem, NJ 138–140 Sancho, Charles Ignatius xiii Sandiford, Ralph x–xi, 67, 148, 153, 156–157, 159–160, 162 Scarborough, John xi Sedan 33 Senegal 189, 192

Index Of Names And Places Shackleton, Richard 132 Sharp, Granville xv, xxi, 100–101, 129–138, 144, 166, 180, 196–197, 216 Sharp, William 194 Shawnees (the) 74, 76, 80, 228 Sherborn, MA 110, 114 Shrewsbury, NJ 142–143 Simcoe, John Graves 218 Sinnickson, Andrew and Thomas 139 Sloane, Hans 84 Smith, Adam xiv, 88 Smith, John 66 Somerset, James (and Somerset case) xv, 100, 136, 195–196 Sons, François de 25 South Carolina xx, 36, 38, 40, 48–50 Sower, Christopher 152–153 Sowle, Andrew and Tracy 150, 153 Spafford, Horatio Gates 122 Spanish Antilles 233 Stanton, Daniel xi Starbuck (family) 110, 116, 122 Staughton, William 204 Surinam 85, 225–226 Swain, William 108 Sykes, John xi Testart, Madeleine 21 Testart, Marie-Madeleine 10–11, 21, 23 Testart, Pierre 10, 11, 21 Testart (family) 18–21 Tewksbury, NJ 141 Thiérache 24–25, 30 Thompson, John 194–195 Thompson, Thomas 135–136, 186 Timothy (family) 203 Tournai 31, 33 Trenchard, George 139 Tucker, St. George 215–216 Vaux, Roberts 35–37, 170, 221 Vendelle 30 Vermalette, Pierre 9, 23 Vermandois 23–32 Virginia xiv, 74, 94, 102, 132, 134, 144, 194–195, 215, 218, 228 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 49, 171, 183

253

Index Of Names And Places Wales 109, 116 Walker, David 239 Wallace, George xiii Washington, George 74, 202 Wesley, Charles 195 Wesley, John xiv, 166, 180, 183, 193, 195–196 Whitefield, George xiv, 58 Whitten, Prince 234 Wilberforce, William xv

Winchester, Elhanan 210 Woodson, Carter G. ix, x Woolman, John xi, 3, 60, 66–69, 76, 91–108, 149, 153, 157, 159, 161–162, 178, 182, 191–192, 212 Wyandots (the) 228 Zinzendorf, Count 52, 58