Georgetown University

Washington, D.C. – While many historians have focused on 19th -century abolitionists as the beginning of the organized fight against slavery, few have examined Anthony Benezet’s role in the dawn of the antislavery movement during the 18th-century. In his latest book, “Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism” (University of Pennsylvania Press 2009), Maurice Jackson provides an intellectual and social history of the trans-Atlantic fight against slavery triggered by Benezet, a Philadelphia-based, French-born Huguenot-turned-Quaker. Through a detailed examination of Benezet’s life and writings, Jackson identifies the ideological, religious and social underpinnings of the beginnings of one of the world’s first human rights movements.

“Unlike most whites of his time, Benezet sought to change the condition of the chained and oppressed,” writes Jackson, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University. “The sight of enslaved blacks being bought and sold along the wharves and markets brought his distaste for inequity to the fore, and he soon set out to do something about the subjugation he witnessed.”

In transforming Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-based trans-Atlantic movement, Jackson illustrates how Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources – Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life and the Bible – into concrete action. Benezet founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, where future abolitionist leaders Absalom Jones and James Forten studied and went on to spread his ideas to broad social groups. At the same time, Benezet's friends and correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbé Raynal, Granville Sharp and John Wesley, gave his ideas an audience in the highest intellectual and political circles.

“In truth, he was one of the first white intellectuals to forcefully make the argument that Africans were indeed human beings, worthy of God’s and man’s graces,” writes Jackson. “He was not merely against slavery and the slave trade; he was for the freedom and equality of the blacks. These ideas set him apart from his fellow abolitionists, many of whom eventually came to accept his beliefs.”

In addition, Benezet’s successful use of travel narratives – tales of African life written by slave traders themselves – challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, “primitive” African society. Jackson demonstrates how Benezet’s empirical evidence, built upon the intellectual foundations outlined in the writings of Francis Hutcheson, George Wallace and Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, profoundly influenced a broad audience, from the high-culture writings of the Marquis de Condorcet to the opinions of ordinary citizens.

“Benezet’s dream was to create a transatlantic antislavery movement to free the enslaved Africans from their misery and to establish a network to support and educate blacks once freed,” writes Jackson. “His dream was to educate whites both about their complicity with slavery and about their obligations to blacks and their duty to humankind.”

In a fitting tribute to the influence of Benezet’s work, Jackson recounts that when the great antislavery spokesmen Jacques-Pierre Brissot in France and William Wilberforce in England rose to demand abolition of the slave trade, they read extensive unattributed quotations from Benezet’s writings into the records of the French National Assembly and the British Parliament.

“‘Let This Voice be Heard’ is 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 18th century,” says Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of “The Known World.” “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.”

Maurice Jackson teaches in Georgetown University’s history department. His current research interests include race and revolution in the Atlantic world, African-American history and culture with an emphasis on jazz and spirituals, African-American intellectual history, social and labor movements and the history of the nation’s capital.

Jackson’s article “ ‘Friends of the Negro! Fly with me, The path is open to the sea’: Remembering the Haitian Revolution in the History, Music and Culture of the African American People,” appeared in Early American Studies, Spring 2008. His chapter “The Rise of Abolition,” appears in The Atlantic World, 1450-2000 (Indiana University Press 2008). Jackson’s “Diasporan Voices of the African Past: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equinao, and Ignatius Sancho as Sources of African History” appears in “The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa: Essays in Honor of Robin Law” (Durham: Carolina Academic Press 2009). “James and Esther Jackson: A Personal Introspective,” appears in “African American Communists and the Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement” (Routledge Press 2008).

Currently, he is writing a social, political and cultural history of African-Americans in Washington from 1791 until the present and co-editing “African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents” (Routledge Press 2010). Jackson earned his B.A in political economy from Antioch College in Washington and his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Georgetown.

About Georgetown University
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