European Enlightenment Thinkers on Benjamin Rush's Antislavery Views

In the pamphlet, Rush mentioned several Enlightenment thinkers to support his arguments on slavery. He wrote, “Montesquieu, Franklin, Wallis, Hutchinson, Sharp, Hargrave, Warburton, and Forster, who have all employed their Talents against them.” Rush also explained his intellectual debt to the Enlightenment thinkers. He pointed out, “Without availing myself of the Authorities of Smith, Adanson, Astley, Bosman, and others who speak in high Terms of the Africans, I shall allow that many of them are inferior in Virtue, Knowledge, and the love of Liberty to the Inhabitants of other parts of the World.” Influenced by these eminent Enlightenment thinkers, Rush naturally disagreed with Nisbet’s view that the African Negros were an inferior Race of Men. Instead, he asserted, “I honour the West-Indians for their Hospitality, Generosity, and Public Spirit. I have had the Pleasure of knowing many of them, who were distinguished for their Humanity, and every other Virtue that could adore human Nature.” When witnessing “human Nature is now aiming to regain her Dignity, amongst the Slaves, in the Brazils, Surinam, and Chili, who have at last asserted their Liberty,” Rush was naturally happy and supported these deeds.

Compared with other abolitionists who generally proposed their antislavery arguments based on religion, enlightened medical knowledge also supported Rush’s views on slavery. In his pamphlets, Rush argued that Negroes were not by nature intellectually or morally inferior. Any apparent evidence to the contrary was only the perverted expression of slavery, which “is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.” Based on the medical science he learnt at Edinburgh, in 1792, Rush presumed that the black skin of Africans could be cured under medical care. In a paper he presented before the American Philosophical Society, he believed that the “color” and “figure” of blacks were derived from a form of leprosy. He was convinced that with proper treatment, “blacks could be cured (i.e. become white) and eventually... assimilated into the general population.”