An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slave Keeping
BR-2023.017
Rush identifies himself as the author of this unsigned address in a 29 April 1773 letter to Barbeu Dubourg (see Butterfield, Letters, 76). Butterfield (77-78, n. 2) says that this unsigned address, the first of Rush's "controversial tracts, and his first effort in behalf of the Negroes . . . is one of his most forceful productions and remains one of the most read-able."
Rare. Only 9 copies at auction in the last 125 years, the latest in 2004.
Rush was twenty-eight years old when he published this pamphlet -- already Benjamin Franklin's student in the broadest sense, following the older man's example of using the press as an instrument of civic improvement. The argument is both moral and medical: slavery is incompatible with natural rights principles; the experience of enslavement produces precisely the moral and physical degradation that slave-holders use to justify the institution. Publication in 1773 -- two years before the Revolution and two years before the founding of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society -- marks Rush as one of the earliest antislavery voices in America. Franklin read it with approval.
- Accession
- BR-2023.017
- Date
- 1773 — First Edition
- Author / maker
- Rush, Benjamin
- Inscription
- Custom Clamshell Box. Ink Stamp of “J. M. Onderdonk” on front pages, ink signature "George Onderdonk's Book, November 10, 1811" on last page.
- References
- Fox 1773-3, Butterfield, Letters, 76, Butterfield 77-78, n. 2
- Notes
- Benjamin Rush to Benjamin Franklin: "Phila May 1st 1773 You will receive with this Letter a small Pamphlet which the public have ascribed to me. It was written at the Request of Anth: Benezet to promote and accompany a Petition to our Assembly to put a more complete Stop to the Importation of Negro Slaves into the Province. I have sent a Copy of it together with all those News Papers which contain the late Dispute between Govr: Hutcheson and the Counsil and Assembly at Boston to our good Friend Monsr. Dubourg of Paris. They are directed to your Care. Please to forward them by the first Opportunity."
“An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slave Keeping.” The Soiferman Collection, BR-2023.017, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. EIS LIBRIS, https://eislibris.com/objects/an-address-to-the-inhabitants-of-the-british-settlements-in-america-upon-slave-k (accessed [date]).
