Debating Slavery
William Lawrence Brown, An Essay on the Natural Equality of Men (Philadelphia, 1793)
The items found in the attic included about a hundred printed books and pamphlets. For space reasons, only a few of them — ones that specifically pertained to debates over slavery — were acquired together with the manuscripts in the Commodore Collection. (The titles of the others were recorded for the archives.)
This 1793 book by a British author, An Essay on the Natural Equality of Men, argues that no race of human beings is inferior to any other, and that all men are entitled to total freedom as long as they do not harm one another. It might seem an unexpected book to be owned by a slaveholding white family. But in the decades immediately following the American Revolution, the topic of slavery was still debated somewhat freely in white political and intellectual circles, even among some enslavers. Only later — especially after the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831 — did state governments begin passing harsh laws against circulating “dangerous” abolitionist texts.
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