Chapter 2

prize. Although Benezet himself did not live to see it, this volume converted to the cause of the oppressed race a man who as an author and reformer became one of the greatest champions it ever had.[41]

Benezet continued to write on the slave trade, collecting all accessible data from year to year and publishing it whenever he could. He obtained many of his facts about the sufferings of slaves from the Negroes themselves, moving among them in their homes, at the places where they worked, or on the wharves where they stopped when traveling. To diffuse this knowledge where it would be most productive of the desired results, he talked with tourists and corresponded with every influential person whom he could reach. Travelers who came into contact with him were given thoughts to reflect on, messages to convey or tracts to distribute among others who might further the cause. Hearing that Granville Sharp had in 1772 obtained the significant verdict in the famous Somerset case, Benezet wrote him, that this champion of freedom abroad might be enabled to cooperate more successfully with those commonly concerned on this side of the Atlantic.[42] With the same end in view he corresponded with George Whitefield and John Wesley.[43]

His connection with the work of George Whitefield was further extended by correspondence with the Countess of Huntingdon who had at the importunity of Whitefield established at Savannah a college known as the Orphan House, to promote the enlightenment of the poor and to prepare some of them for the clerical profession. Unlike Whitefield, the founder, who thought that the Negroes also might derive some benefit from this institution, the successors of the good man endeavored to maintain the institution by the labor of slaves purchased to cultivate the plantations owned by the institution. Benezet, therefore, wrote the Countess a brilliant letter pathetically depicting the misery she was unconsciously causing by thus encouraging slavery and the slave trade. He was gratified to learn from the distinguished lady that in founding the institution she had no such purpose in mind and that she would prohibit the wicked crime.[44]

Learning that Abbé Raynal had exhibited in his celebrated work a feeling of sympathy for the African, Benezet sought in the same way to attach him more closely to the cause of prohibiting the slave trade. Observing that the slave trade which had because of the American Revolution declined only to rise again after that struggle had ceased, Benezet addressed a stirring letter to the Queen of England, who on hearing from Benjamin West of the high character of the writer, received it with marks of peculiar condescension.

Let no casual reader of this story conclude that Benezet was a mere theorist or pamphleteer. He ever translated into action what he professed to believe. Knowing that the enlightenment of the blacks would not only benefit them directly but would also disprove the mad theories as to the impossibility of their mental improvement, Benezet became one of the most aggressive and successful workers who ever toiled among these unfortunates. As early as 1750 he established for the Negroes in Philadelphia an evening school in which they were offered instruction gratuitously. His noble example appealing to the Society of Friends, he encouraged them to raise a fund adequate to establishing a larger and well-organized school.[46] This additional effort, to be sure, required much of his time. When he discovered, however, that he could not direct the colored school and at the same time continue his female academy which he had conducted for three generations, he abandoned his own interests and devoted himself exclusively to the uplift of the colored people. In this establishment he received all the rewards he anticipated. It was sufficient for him finally to be able to say: "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 whites, 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, who have kept their slaves at such a distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them."[47]

His devotion to this work was further demonstrated by another noble deed. His will provided that after the payment of certain legacies and smaller obligations his estate should at the death of his widow be turned over to the trustees of the public school "to hire and employ a religious-minded person or persons to teach a number of negroe, mulatto, or Indian children, to read, write, arithmetic, plain accounts, needle work." "And," continued he, "it is my particular desire, founded on the experience I have had in that service, that in the choice of such tutor, special care may be had to prefer an industrious, careful person, of true piety, who may be or become suitably qualified, who would undertake the service from a principle of charity, to one more highly learned not equally disposed."[48]

But this philanthropist's work was almost done. He was then seventy years of age and having been an earnest worker throughout his life he had begun to decline. One spring morning in the year 1784 it was spread abroad in Philadelphia that Anthony Benezet was seriously ill and that persons realizing his condition were apprehensive of his recovery. So disturbed were his friends by this sad news that they for several days besieged the house to seek, so to speak, the dying benediction of a venerable father. The same in death as he had been in life, he received their attentions with due appreciation of what he had been to them but exhibited at the same time in the presence of his Maker the deepest self-humiliation. "I am dying," said he, "and feel ashamed to meet the face of my Maker, I have done so little in his cause." Anthony Benezet was no more.

The honors which his admirers paid him were indicative of the high esteem in which they held the distinguished dead. Thousands of the people of Philadelphia followed his remains to witness the interment of all that was mortal of Anthony Benezet. Never had that city on such an occasion seen a demonstration in which so many persons of all classes participated. There were the officials of the city, men of all trades and professions, various sects and denominations, and hundreds of Negroes, "testifying by their attendance, and by their tears, the grateful sense they entertained of his pious efforts in their behalf."[49]

C. G. WOODSON.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] William Burling of Long Island was the first to conceive an abhorrence of slavery. Early in his career he began to speak of the wickedness of the institution at the yearly meetings of the Quakers. He wrote several tracts to publish to the world his views on this great question. His first tract appeared in 1718. It was addressed to the elders of the Friends to direct their attention to "the inconsistency of compelling people and their posterity to serve them continually and arbitrarily, and without any proper recompense for their services." See Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade," Volume I, pp. 146-147.

[23] After Burling came Ralph Sandiford, a merchant engaged in business in Philadelphia. This man attracted the attention of his friends because he declined the assistance offered him by persons sufficiently wealthy to establish him in life, merely because they had acquired their wealth by enslaving Negroes. He not only labored among his own people for the liberation of the slaves, but boldly appealed to others. He finally expressed his sentiments in a publication called the "Mystery of Inquiry," a brief treatise on the evil of the institution of slavery. The importance attached to this work is that Sandiford published it and circulated it at his own expense despite the fact that he had been threatened with prosecution by the judge. This pamphlet was written in correct and energetic style, abounding with facts, sentiments and quotations, which showed the virtue and talents of the author and made a forceful appeal in behalf of the blacks. See Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,"