Moved by every variety of suffering whenever and wherever found, Benezet's attention had during these years been attracted to a class of men much farther down than the lowliest of the lowly of other races. He had not been in this country long before he was moved to put forth some effort to alleviate the sufferings of those bondmen whose faces were black. In the year 1750, when the Quakers, although denouncing the evil of slavery here and there, were not presenting a solid front to the enemy, Anthony Benezet boldly attacked the slave trade, attracting so much attention that he soon solidified the anti-slavery sentiment of the Quakers against the institution.[34] For more than thirty years thereafter he was a tireless worker in this cause, availing himself of every opportunity to impress men with the thought as to the wickedness of the traffic. In his class room he held up to his pupils the horrors of the system, always mentioned it in his public utterances, and seldom failed to speak of it when conversing with friends or strangers. Benezet set forth in the almanacs of the time accounts of the atrocities of those engaged in slavery and the slave trade and published and circulated numerous pamphlets ingeniously exposing their iniquities.[35]
Devoted as Benezet was to the cause of the blacks, he was not an ardent abolitionist like Garrison, who fifty years later fearlessly advocated the immediate destruction of the system. Benezet was primarily interested in the suppression of the slave trade. He hoped also to see the slaves gradually emancipated after having had adequate preparation to live as freedmen. Writing to Fothergill, Benezet expressed his concurrence with the former's opinion that it would be decidedly dangerous both to the Negroes and the masters themselves in the southern colonies, should the slaves be suddenly manumitted. Except in particular cases, therefore, even in the northern colonies the liberation of slaves in large numbers was not at first Benezet's concern. He believed that "the best endeavors in our power to draw the notice of the governments, upon the grievous iniquity and great danger attendant on a further prosecution of the slave trade, is what every truly sympathizing mind cannot but earnestly desire, and under divine direction promote to the utmost of their power." If this could be obtained, he believed the sufferings of "those already amongst us, by the interposition of the government, and even from selfish ends in their masters, would be mitigated, and in time Providence would gradually work for the release of those, whose age and situation would fit them for freedom." Benezet thought that this second problem could be solved by colonizing the Negroes on the western lands. "The settlements now in prospect to be made in that large extent of country," said he, "from the west side of the Allegany mountains to the Mississippi, on a breadth of four or five hundred miles, would afford a suitable and beneficial means of settlement for many of them among the white people, which would in all probability be as profitable to the negroes as to the new settlers." But he did not desire to take up time especially with matters of so remote a nature, it being indeed with reluctance that he took up at all a question which he would have avoided, "if there had been any person to whom he could have addressed himself with the same expectation, that what he had in view would have thereby been answered."[36]
Taking a more advanced position with this propaganda Benezet published in 1762 a work entitled "A Short Account of that Part of Africa inhabited by Negroes, with general Observations on the Slave Trade and Slavery." "The end proposed by this essay," says the author, "is to lay before the candid reader the depth of evil attending this iniquitous practice, in the prosecution of which our duty to God, the common Father of the family of the whole earth, and our duty of love to our fellow creatures, is totally disregarded; all social connection and tenderness of nature being broken, desolation and bloodshed continually fomented in those unhappy people's country." It was also intended, said he, "to invalidate the false arguments which are frequently advanced for the palliation of this trade, in hopes it may be some inducement to those who are not yet defiled therewith to keep themselves clear; and to lay before such as have unwarily engaged in it, their danger of totally losing that tender sensibility to the sufferings of their fellow creatures, the want whereof set men beneath the brute creation."[37]
In the year 1769 appeared his "Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies on the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions." Referring to this work, he says: "The intent of publishing the following sheets, is more fully to make known the aggravated iniquity attending the practice of the Slave Trade; whereby many thousands of our fellow creatures, as free as ourselves by nature and equally with us the subjects of Christ's redeeming Grace, are yearly brought into inextricable and barbarous bondage; and many; very many, to miserable and untimely ends." Fearlessly directing this as an attack on public functionaries he remarks: "How an evil of so deep a dye, hath so long, not only passed uninterrupted by those in power, but hath even had their countenance, is indeed surprising; and charity would suppose, must in a great measure have arisen from this, that many persons in government both of the Laity and Clergy, in whose power it hath been to put a stop to the Trade, have been unacquainted with the corrupt motives which gives life to it, and with the groans, the dying groans, which daily ascend to God, the common Father of mankind, from the broken hearts of those his deeply oppressed creatures." Coming directly to the purpose in mind, however, the author declares: "I shall only endeavor to show from the nature of the Trade, the plenty which Guinea affords to its inhabitants, the barbarous treatment of the Negroes and the observations made thereon by authors of note, that it is inconsistent with the plainest precepts of the Gospel, the dictates of reason, and every common sentiment of humanity."[38]
This work turned out to be the first really effective one of Benezet's writings, creating not a little sensation both on this continent and Europe. It was especially rousing to the Quakers here and abroad. The Yearly Meeting of London recommended in 1785 that all the quarterly meetings give this book the widest circulation possible. The Quakers in various parts accordingly approached numerous classes of persons, all sects and denominations, and especially public officials. Desiring also to reach the youth the agents for distribution visited the schools of Westminster, the Carter-House, St. Paul's, Merchant Tailors', Eton, Winchester, and Harrow. From among the youths thus informed came some of those reformers who finally abolished the slave trade in the English dominions.
The most effective of Benezet's works, however, was his "An Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of its Inhabitants, with an Enquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature and Calamitous Effect." This volume approached more nearly than his other writings what students of to-day would call a scientific treatise. The author devoted much time to the collection of facts and substantiated his assertions by quotations from the standard authorities in that field. While it added nothing really new to the argument already advanced, the usual theories were more systematically arranged and more forcefully set forth.[39] "This book," says a writer, "became instrumental beyond any other work ever before published in disseminating a proper knowledge and detestation of this Trade."[40]
The most important single effect the book had, was to convert Thomas Clarkson, who thereafter devoted his life to the cause of abolishing the slave trade. While a Senior Bachelor of Arts at the University of Cambridge, Clarkson had in 1784 distinguished himself by winning a prize for the best Latin dissertation. The following year a prize was offered for the best essay on the subject "anne Liceat invitos in servitutem dare," is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will? Knowing that he was then unprepared to compete, he hesitated to enter the contest, not wishing to lose the reputation he had so recently won. Yet owing to the fact that it was expected of him, he entered his name, actuated by no other motive than to distinguish himself as a scholar. As there was then a paucity of literature on slavery in England, his first researches in this field were not productive of gratifying results. "I was in this difficulty," says Clarkson, "when going by accident into a friend's house, I took up a newspaper there lying on the table. One of the first articles which attracted my notice was an advertisement of Anthony Benezet's 'Historical Account of Guinea.' I soon left my friend and his paper, and, to lose no time, hastened to London to buy it. In this precious book I found almost all I wanted." Clarkson easily won the first prize. Although Benezet himself did not live to see it, this volume converted to the cause of the oppressed race a man who as an author and reformer became one of the greatest champions it ever had.[41]
Benezet continued to write on the slave trade, collecting all accessible data from year to year and publishing it whenever he could. He obtained many of his facts about the sufferings of slaves from the Negroes themselves, moving among them in their homes, at the places where they worked, or on the wharves where they stopped when traveling. To diffuse this knowledge where it would be most productive of the desired results, he talked with tourists and corresponded with every influential person whom he could reach. Travelers who came into contact with him were given thoughts to reflect on, messages to convey or tracts to distribute among others who might further the cause. Hearing that Granville Sharp had in 1772 obtained the significant verdict in the famous Somerset case, Benezet wrote him, that this champion of freedom abroad might be enabled to cooperate more successfully with those commonly concerned on this side of the Atlantic.[42] With the same end in view he corresponded with George Whitefield and John Wesley.[43]
His connection with the work of George Whitefield was further extended by correspondence with the Countess of Huntingdon who had at the importunity of Whitefield established at Savannah a college known as the Orphan House, to promote the enlightenment of the poor and to prepare some of them for the clerical profession. Unlike Whitefield, the founder, who thought that the Negroes also might derive some benefit from this institution, the successors of the good man endeavored to maintain the institution by the labor of slaves purchased to cultivate the plantations owned by the institution. Benezet, therefore, wrote the Countess a brilliant letter pathetically depicting the misery she was unconsciously causing by thus encouraging slavery and the slave trade. He was gratified to learn from the distinguished lady that in founding the institution she had no such purpose in mind and that she would prohibit the wicked crime.[44]
Learning that Abbé Raynal had exhibited in his celebrated work a feeling of sympathy for the African, Benezet sought in the same way to attach him more closely to the cause of prohibiting the slave trade. Observing that the slave trade which had because of the American Revolution declined only to rise again after that struggle had ceased, Benezet addressed a stirring letter to the Queen of England, who on hearing from Benjamin West of the high character of the writer, received it with marks of peculiar condescension.