Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism
In this wide-ranging intellectual biography, Maurice Jackson demonstrates how Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, narratives of African life written by slave traders themselves, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique. Benezet's use of travel narratives challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, "primitive" African society. Benezet's empirical evidence, laid on the intellectual scaffolding provided by the...
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In the first intellectual biography of the man universally recognized in his own time as the founder of the Atlantic antislavery movement, Jackson demonstrates how Anthony Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, African travel narratives, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique.
Introduction1 A Life of Conscience 12 The Early Quaker Antislavery Movement 313 An Antislavery Intellect Develops 574 Visions of Africa 725 Building an Antislavery Consensus in North America 1086 Transatlantic Beginnings and the British Antislavery Movement 1387 Benezet and the Antislavery Movement in France 1688 African Voices 187Epilogue: Anthony Benezet's Dream 211Chronology of Atlantic Abolitionism 231Notes 255Primary Sources 351Index 353Illustrations follow page 107
\ From the Publisher"A grand gift. Maurice Jackson has given us an invaluable examination of a remarkable man who stood at the very foundation of the antislavery movement in the eighteenth century. Anthony Benezet's extraordinary story of generosity and commitment is told in Jackson's thoroughly researched, readable book. Those of us who can appreciate what true greatness—in humble and lasting ways—should really mean, owe him our gratitude."—Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World\ "Let This Voice Be Heard fulfills the mandate of biography at its best because Maurice Jackson has captured the history of a great moral movement's origins in a single, extraordinary life. An indispensable addition to the antislavery bibliography."—David Levering Lewis, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century\ "A masterpiece of its kind. . . . Jackson has made a major contribution to our understanding of the origins of abolitionism in the Western world. This book will exert considerable influence for many years."—David Brion Davis, author of Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World\ "As Jackson demonstrates in his well-researched biography, Benezet was a major force in the transatlantic abolition movement through his publications and correspondence with people like Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush in America, and Granville Sharp and John Wesley in Britain."—Vincent Carretta, Eighteenth-Century Studies\ "A terrific book about a truly great American. . . . What is especially interesting about Jackson's biography of Benezet is that it reflects a new and applaudable trend of taking the religious views of early abolitionists seriously."—Journal of American Studies\ \ \
