Chapter 8 Antislavery

This chapter focuses on the idea of antislavery and its players. Smedley starts us off by talking about the individuals who were against slavery. We are shown how many people are against the idea of slavery because of the thought of someone being owned by someone else and controlled. They felt as thought society had advanced and therefore the emphasis of the Bible and mythology backing of slavery was unjust.

Europeans and people in England thought that the baptism of slaves were their moral duties as Christians and therefore supported the idea to help convert them to Christianity since the Africans were looked at as heathens. With many New England colonist liking the concept of missionary work this would be supported by many. In 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign lands was established and held slaves on many of its several plantations.

Previous to this, the Quakers were very vocal in their ideologies about slavery and their anti slavery involvement. This could be met with criticism because many of the Quakers had slaves themselves. In 1650 George Fox the leader of the Quakers considered slavery inherently evil and repulsive. Many viewed the issues with slavery as a recurring issue because children were seeing the treatment of slaves and would refer to them as nothing less than animal property. Thomas Jefferson in 1787 spoke on this issue saying that children would see these acts and replicate them. John Woolman also thought that these children would refer to the negro as inferior because of their upbringing and think that all blacks were like this (dirty workers who were property).