Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788 (review)

Abstract

60QUAKER HISTORY (p. 104). We are told that the Keithian schism "affected" one-fourth of the members of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (p. 254). What does "affected" mean? Is the estimate correct? When Solberg says (p. 235) that Charleston, S.C. "was the most important population center south of Philadelphia during the colonial period," one wonders if he means the whole period (what about Baltimore in the latter part of this era? ) . Southern Methodist UniversityKenneth L. Carroll Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788, edited by Roger Bruns. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977. 551 pages. Illus. $18.50. Although American Negro slavery disappeared more than a century ago it continues to provoke attention and arouse controversy. The legacy of slavery exacerbated the post-war struggle for independence on the part of Europe's Caribbean colonies, and it persists there as a searing memory, and an excuse for many of the troubles of the new commonwealths and republics in that region. In the United States the black cloud of slavery remains a vital factor in our social climate, and we have recently seen the whole country, white and black, transfixed by the televised version of a black American's search for his roots, a search which led him back through the bitterness of slavery, through the horrors of the Middle Passage and the slave-raiding of western Africa, to a land where black men were once independent and free. Twentieth -century scholars, again both white and black, delving into the subject of American slavery with extraordinary energy, have almost come to blows over their interpretations of its character and significance. Revisions have followed revisions, as historians, sociologists, and economists explored the pros and cons of the "peculiar institution" which shaped so much of our national destiny and almost shattered our federal Union. Antislavery, however, the long slow effort to outlaw the African trade and abolish slavery itself, has only recently begun to attract the attention it deserves . In fact, abolitionism, as it came to be called during the antislavery crusade of the 1830's and after, has often been viewed by conservative white Americans as subversive of economic, social, and political stability. Was not Benjamin Lay literally carried out of Friends meeting for his bizarre denunciation of Quaker slave traders and slaveholders? Did not Whittier have to flee from the proslavery mob that burned Philadelphia's reformist Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, and William Lloyd Garrison suffer the indignity of being dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck? Nevertheless , abolitionists finally had the satisfaction of seeing their dream of a land free from slavery come true; and they have since been praised, as well as condemned, for their efforts, as the pendulum of popular and professional opinion has swung back and forth between a defense of slavery and an attack upon it. Recently attention has begun to shift back to the antecedents of the nineteenth -century antislavery struggle, and this book marks that shift of interest. It brings together for the first time the basic documents which chronicle the story in the colonial period, from the first formal protest of Germantown Meeting Friends in 1688, to the antislavery provision of the Northwest BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES61 Ordinance and the debates on the slave trade and slavery in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Here religious protests, political petitions, letters, pamphlets, books and resolutions chronicle the gradual development of antislavery sentiment from a simple religious conviction that slavery was wrong, through the belief that the slave trade was not only morally outrageous but economically unsound and socially dangerous, to the conviction that a people who demanded liberty for themselves on the grounds that all men were created equal could not in all conscience deny freedom to their slaves. From fiery protests of lonely Quaker prophets like Robert PyIe, Ralph Sandiford, Elihu Coleman and Benjamin Lay, through reasoned arguments by the indefatigable Quaker reformers like John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and Moses Brown, the antislavery chorus widens to include many of the great spokesmen for the cause of political liberty and independence. Men such as James Otis, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Rush, Thomas...