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vocal opponents. Quaker radicals, such as Benjamin Lay and John Woolman, spoke out against the Quakers’ involvement in slavery using various methods of persuasion; by 1787, many northern Quakers had freed their slaves. Other religious leaders worked toward the liberation of slaves, as well as supported the education of blacks. Benjamin Rush published pamphlets urging Pennsylvania to end its involvement in the slave trade, which its Assembly did in 1773. Other prominent Americans, including Abigail Adams, spoke out against slavery’s hypocrisy in denying freedom to a whole race of people while fighting to gain freedom for another. Thomas Paine, famed author of the revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense , published an essay in 1775 that decried patriots complaints over “attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousand in slavery.” Paine became a founding member of America’s first anti-slavery society, which formed in Philadelphia in April 1775. The enslaved were not without a voice in this opposition. Phillis Wheatly, upon gaining her freedom, published a book of poems that included, among other topics, a commentary on the immorality of slavery. She became a vocal supporter of abolitionism. Enslaved blacks in Massachusetts staged protests and petitioned the colonial governor for the right to work for themselves once a week, thus earning money toward buying their own freedom. Uprisings, too, occurred throughout the colonies, as slaves attempted to win freedom for themselves by force. Opposite page: Slavery was an accepted way of life in colonial America, and almost all of our country’s Founding Fathers owned slaves. At one time Benjamin Franklin owned two slaves. As he grew older, his views on slavery changed and he freed his slaves. Toward the end of his life, Franklin joined the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, an early abolitionist group. Franklin wrote this letter in 1789, asking that the federal government end slavery and educate former slaves so that they could become useful members of American society.

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CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR