Philadelphia's Finest 18th Century Abolitionist

Jackson, Maurice, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

–---, “Anthony Benezet: America's Finest Eighteenth-Century Antislavery Advocate.” The Human Tradition in the American Revolution, ed. Nancy L. Rhoden and Ian K. Steele. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000.

Crosby, David L., ed. The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

Germantown Ave. and Wister St., Philadelphia

I don't know how I missed discovering Anthony Benezet in my undisciplined readings in US history. He may be the founder of the abolitionist movement in 18th century America, as well England and France, argues biographer Maurice Jackson in Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism. And he was a Philadelphia homeboy, living in Germantown and what is now Old City sections of Philadelphia, and born a French Huguenot. This first piqued my interest. My Gerould family (my father's side) was French Huguenot. According to our family genealogy, compiled by Mrs. Mildred Gerould Wood in 1970, Jacques Jerauld fled the Province of Languedoc, France, sometime after the Crown's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had formerly offered religious tolerance to Protestants. My forebear Gamaliel Gerould was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1719.

Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France in 1713 to a French Huguenot family. His family fled France in 1715, settled in London, then emigrated to Philadelphia in 1731 when Anthony was 18 years old. Anthony joined the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) in England in 1727, and joined the Friends in Philadelphia and environs at several meetings during his lifetime. He married Joyce Marriott of Burlington, NJ in 1731. She had been made a Quaker minister by the Philadelphia Meeting, surely a unique role for a young woman in colonial America. They had two children, who died in early childhood.

Benezet spent some years working unhappily in the trades. But his bookish nature, and love of children, led him to teaching. In 1739 he took a job as schoolmaster in Germantown (a neighborhood of Philadelphia, then a suburb), succeeding Francis Daniel Pastorius. He also worked as a proofreader, fluent in French, German, and English. In 1742 he began teaching at the Philadelphia Publick School, English (later known as William Penn Charter School), then located at 4th and Chestnut St. in present-day Old City Philadelphia. About 1750, Benezet also began teaching free black children in the evenings at no cost in his home, which he continued for 20 years. During this period he began an association with Quaker mystic John Woolman to advocate the end of the slave trade, and the abolition of slavery in the colonies. Quakers had debated the issue of slavery since at least 1688 when the Quakers of Germantown issued the first resolution condemning slavery. Slavery became a contentious issue in Quaker meetings in the colony and England for the next 100 years.



In 1753 John Woolman wrote Epistle to the Friends of Virginia, and in 1754 Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination, which called for the end of the slave trade and slavery. Benezet urged the Philadelphia Meeting to adopt Woolman's Epistle. The following year the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting decided that Friends may no longer import or purchase slaves. Many Quakers freed their slaves. Benezet became the most outspoken advocate for abolition in the colonies, enlisting Woolman, deist Benjamin Franklin, and physician Benjamin Rush in the cause. From his daily association with free and enslaved Africans in Philadelphia, Benezet regarded blacks as the intellectual equals of whites, a very advanced position for the times. He cited Acts 17:24-26: “God, that made the world, hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the bounds of their habitation.” And he set out to prove it with a steady stream of tracts, the mass media of the day, which are all collected in The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition, ed. David L. Crosby. He documented the horrors of the slave trade in West Africa, and achieved mass circulation in the colonies, England, and France. His arguments were religious and secular/philosophical, drawing from theology and Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. He corresponded or influenced all the major abolitionists in England and France: John Wesley, founder of Methodism; Tom Paine, son of an English Quaker; Granville Sharp; Thomas Clarkson; William Wilberforce; Olaudah Equiano. It is inspiring in our dispirited times to see what he accomplished. This humble Philadelphia Quaker was a brilliant organizer.

Other Benezet exploits: in 1754 he resigned from the Publick School and opened the first school for girls in America under the auspices of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia; in 1755 he organized the relief for hundreds of Acadian French expelled from Nova Scotia, refugees of the French and Indian Wars; in 1775 he organized The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage with Pennsylvania Quakers, with Benjamin Franklin the honorary chair after the Revolution War. Benezet died in 1784, and bequeathed his estate to the African Free School which he founded. He said, “I can with truth and sincerity declare, that I have found amongst the negroes as great variety of talents as among a like number of white; and I am bold to assert, that the notion entertained by some, that the blacks are inferior in their capacities, is a vulgar prejudice, founded on the pride or ignorance of their lordly masters.” He was buried at the Friends Burial Ground at 4th and Arch Street, Philadelphia in an unmarked grave, as was the custom.

Observations on the Enslaving, Importing and
Purchasing of Negroes, Anthony Benezet 1759

The biographer Maurice Jackson is Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies and Affiliate Professor of Performing Arts (Jazz) at Georgetown University. He also scores points with me as a former shipyard rigger, longshoreman, housepainter, community organizer, and fellow Antioch College alumnus. He did a lot of research in Philadelphia at the Library Company and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on Locust Street. I'm sorry I missed his lecture at the Library Company in December 2013, available on YouTube. I hope he comes again.