9781422274187

viewing slaves not as people, but property to be bought, sold, and treated as they wished. EARLY OPPONENTS TO SLAVERY Opposition to slavery, while not organized into the abolitionist movement that would build in the decades just prior to the Civil War, existed in the colonies prior to the American Revolution. Enlightenment beliefs about the natural rights of life, liberty, and property drove the movement for independence. Yet how could a country be founded on freedom and democracy while also allowing slavery to exist? Pre-revolutionary sentiment against slavery initially came from moral and religious grounds. Soon, arguments would cite economic, political, and cultural repercussions to the continuation of slavery and the slave trade in addition

to moral objections. Further, as colonists used Enlightenment philosophies to justify their wish to break ties with Great Britain, opponents of slavery used the same philosophies to enumerate the rights of slaves as they corresponded with the rights of colonists. Religious leaders and communities made up the

DID YOU KNOW ?

When the colony of Georgia was founded, its charter prohibited black slavery. By the 1730s, however, Georgians began demanding that they be allowed to own slaves, citing the perceived economic need of black slavery if the colonists were to prosper. Colonists and Georgia’s trustees reached an agreement permitting slavery, effective on January 1, 1751. Within 25 years, Georgia’s enslaved population grew from less than 500 to almost 18,000.

core of American slavery’s earliest

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Seeds of Discord