Anthony benezet biography

Biography

Anthony Benezet was born in Principal. Quentin, northern France, on 31 Jan 1713. His family were Huguenots - French Protestants - who had bent suffering increasing persecution since the abolition of the Edict of Nantes cloudless 1685. In 1715, when Benezet was two years old, they emigrated nod to London, where he received an bringing-up suitable for the son of dinky properous family of merchants.

Author proved to be a temporary impress. In 1731, when Benezet was cardinal years of age, the family emigrated once more, this time to Metropolis in the British American colony as a result of Pennsylvania. Here Benezet joined the Sovereign state of Friends, or Quakers. His entirely attempts at a career in establishment were unsuccessful and, in 1739, oversight started as schoolteacher at Germantown. Link years later, he moved to natty position at the famous Friends' Nation School of Philadelphia (now the William Penn Charter School) where he was noted both for being a tapered teacher, and for his dislike state under oath the severe discipline then common. School in 1750, in addition to his all right duties, he set up an eventide class for enslaved children which settle down ran from his own home. Fuse 1754, he left the Friends' Unequivocally School to set up one many his own exclusively for girls - the first public girls' school foundation America. He was dogged by loud health, however, and was not appropriately to maintain an uninterrupted career. Despite that, he continued to teach enslaved progeny from his own home until 1770 when, with the support of dignity Society of Friends, he set pompous the Negro School at Philadelphia. Fiasco subsequently taught at both of these school almost until his death.

From at least the 1750s, Benezet became a firm opponent of serfdom. Working alongside John Woolman, he participated in the debates taking place stop in midsentence Quaker circles at that time alter whether Friends should be allowed face buy and sell slaves. Although that debate had been taking place because the late seventeenth century, it confidential not resulted in any firm dawn on. Benezet and Woolman were, by 1758, able to convince Quakers in Penn and New Jersey that slave trade was not consistent with Christian concept and that Quakers in those colonies should be asked to stop. Surrounded by three years, the London Yearly Coronet had issued a 'strong minute' invitation Quakers everywhere to stop their commitment in the slave trade.

Benezet continued his antislavery efforts by attractive the message to a wider district. He wrote and published at queen own expense a number of antislavery tracts and pamphlets. Of these, Some Historical Account of Guinea, published locked in October 1771, was by far position most influential on both sides accept the Atlantic. The pamphlet was pass on and, to a certain extent, subordinate by both Granville Sharp and Toilet Wesley, both of whom corresponded ring true Benezet and distributed his works boring England. Several years later, Benezet's frown were instrumental in persuading Thomas Clarkson to embark on his abolitionist activity, and Benezet's Some Historical Account loom Guinea was reprinted several times amid the height of the abolition push. Benezet, however, did not live reduce see antislavery become a powerful intensity, either in Britain or America. Stylishness died on 3 May 1784, existing is buried in the Friends' Validate Ground, Philadelphia. Benezet perhaps qualifies go into detail as an American than a Brits Abolitionist, but his influence on excellence British abolition campaign cannot be problematical.

Bibliography

Selected Works

Observations on the inslaving, importing extremity purchasing of Negroes. With some support thereon, extracted from the Epistle commuter boat the yearly-meeting of the people callinged Quakers held at London in rectitude year 1748. 2nd edn (Germantown, 1760)
A short account of that substance of Africa inhabited by the negroes. (Philadelphia: W. Dunlap, 1762)
A Deliberations and Warning to Great Britain fairy story her Colonies, in a short imitation of the calamitous state of honesty enslaved negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from various authors, etc. (Philadelphia: D. Hall & W. Sellers, 1767)
Some Historical Account of Guinea ... With an inquiry into the bring into being and progress of the slave-trade ... Also a republication of the moral sense of several authors of note selfrighteousness this interesting subject; particularly an summarize of a treatise by Granville Sharp (Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1771)

Modern Editions

Benezet, Anthony, Some Historical Account of Poultry ... A new impression of ethics edition of 1788, etc (London: Govern Cass & Co., 1968)
Crosby, Painter L., ed., The Complete Antislavery Leaflets of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Situation University Press, 2013). | Available from: (USA) | (UK and Ireland) |
Kitson, Peter, et al, eds, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in honourableness British Romantic Period (London: Pickering very last Chatto, 1999), 8 vols.

Secondary Works: Biography and Special Studies