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Historical Document "Address to the Public" 1789 |
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Click here for the text of this historical document. Even among the most stalwart abolitionists, support for ending the slave trade often co-existed with a belief in black inferiority -- either innate or as the inevitable result of slavery and oppression.
In 1789, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, one of the earliest and best known American anti-slavery organizations, issued a broadside entitled "Address to the Public." Doubting that former slaves could overcome the irreparable intellectual and social damage of enslavement, the broadside ventured that "[u]nder such circumstances Freedom may often prove a misfortune to [the freed slave] and prejudicial to Society."
Related Entries:
• Founding of Pennsylvania Abolition Society
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