The Spread of Antislavery Sentiment through Proslavery Tracts in the Transatlantic Evangelical Community, 1740s–1770s

Abstract

In the history of the Atlantic antislavery movement, two events were of great importance: the Great Awakening and the American Revolution. In the 1730s and 1740s, many evangelicals stimulated by the religious revival, travelled to the opposite side of the Atlantic, preached the gospel, and published a number of books that contained their evangelical faith and ideals. Through these activities many evangelicals in Anglo-American communities shared common interests, faith, and ideology, and some found a channel of transatlantic communication in which they were able to debate the slavery issue. The American Revolution also contributed to creating an atmosphere of tension in the 1770s, in which antislavery sentiment became transformed into moral conviction. The development of this ideology can be explained by the spread of antipathy toward slavery in the Atlantic world before the Revolution. This essay focuses on the change in the evangelical mindset between these two religio-political events, asking: how did the antislavery sentiment spread through the transatlantic evangelical network from the 1740s into the 1770s?