Anthony Benezet

This chapter examines the global impact of Anthony Benezet's antislavery ministry, including Benezet's influence on black abolitionists outside the Society of Friends. More than any other individual's work in the eighteenth century, that of Benezet served as a catalyst, throughout the Atlantic world, for the initial organized fight against slave trade and the eventual ending of slavery. His written work, which combined Quaker principles and Enlightenment thinking with knowledge gained through a deep study of Africa and her history, and his own contacts with black people as a teacher and philanthropist influenced men from Benjamin Franklin to John Jay and Patrick Henry in North America; from Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and William Wilberforce in England; to Condorcet and the Abbé Raynal in France. His words helped inspire African-born Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano to write, and students at his Quaker schools such as American-born blacks Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to organize.