The Atlantic Abolitionism and the Making of Rush as an Abolitionist

The Atlantic Abolitionism and the Making of Rush as an Abolitionist

But how did Rush apply his ideas of Enlightened Christianity to his antislavery movement? Before answering this question, let’s firstly discuss how he became an abolitionist in the eighteenth century Atlantic world.

In the second half of the 18th century, slavery as a problem was greatly discussed in the British Atlantic world. In 1729, Philadelphia Quakers opposed to purchase slaves. Leaders like John Woolman and Anthony Benezet believed that slaveholding violated the spirit of Christianity. Woolman even addressed to his fellow Quakers Some Consideration of the Keeping of Negroes in 1754, which exerted great influence in leading the Society of Friends to recognize the evil of slavery. Anthony Benezet, a Huguenot who escaped religious persecution and migrated to North America, published Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes in 1759, which was treated as the first of many antislavery works by the most influential antislavery writer in the eighteenth century North America. In Great Britain, as a famous abolitionist, Granville Sharp took part in the Jonathan Strong case, as well as James Somerset’s case, and struggled for the rights of the African slaves in England and highly supported the abolition of the slavery in the British Empire. Sharp finally published his tract ─ A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery, which was treated as the first antislavery tract in England. These people argued that “slaveholding and slave trafficking were incompatible with a Christian way of life and offense against that ‘sweetness of freedom’ which should be recognized in every fellow creature.” Following Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect continued the antislavery movement in England and its overseas colonies. With the help of these abolitionists, the Atlantic slave trade was finally ended in England in 1807 and in the United States in 1808.