Anthony Benezet
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Illustration in a book from 1850
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Anthony Benezet, or Antoine Bénézet (1713-1784), was an American educator and abolitionist.
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[edit] Biography
Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France, on 31 January 1713. His family were Huguenots. Because of the persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, his family decided to leave France. They moved first to Rotterdam, then briefly to Greenwich, then to London. In 1727 Benezet joined the Religious Society of Friends. In 1731 the Benezet family immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in North America.
Anthony Benezet and John Woolman were the earliest American abolitionists.
In Philadelphia, Benezet worked to convince his Quaker brethren that slave-owning was not consistent with Christian doctrine. He believed that the British ban on slavery should be extended to the colonies (and later to the independent states) in North America.
After several years as a failed merchant, in 1739 Benezet began teaching at a Germantown school. In 1742, he moved to the Friends' English School of Philadelphia (now the William Penn Charter School). In 1750 he added night classes for black slaves to his schedule.
In 1754, Benezet left the Friends' English School to set up his own school, the first public girls' school on the American continent. In 1770, he founded the Negro School at Philadelphia.
Benezet also founded the first anti-slavery society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush reconstituted this association after Benezet's death as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
Benezet died on 3 May 1784, and was buried in the Friends' Burial Ground, Philadelphia.
[edit] Bibliography
- Observations on the inslaving, importing and purchasing of Negroes. With some advice thereon, extracted from the Epistle of the yearly-meeting of the people called Quakers held at London in the year 1748., 1760
This brief work, written while Benezet was teaching at the Quaker Girls' School in Philadelphia, was the author's first publication to draw on sources directly familiar with the African trade in slavery.
- A short account of that part of Africa inhabited by the negroes, 1762
- A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies, in a short representation of the calamitous state of the enslaved negroes in the British Dominions. Collected from various authors, etc., 1767
- Some Historical Account of Guinea ... With an inquiry into the rise and progress of the slave-trade ... Also a republication of the sentiments of several authors of note on this interesting subject; particularly an extract of a treatise by Granville Sharp, 1767
In 1817, abolitionist Roberts Vaux wrote a biography on Anthony Benezet.[1]
[edit] References
- Webster's Biographical Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, MA (1980).
- Anthony Benezet: biography and bibliography from Slavery, Emancipation, and Abolition
[edit] External links
- Some Historical Account of Guinea full text from Project Gutenberg
- Works by Anthony Benezet at Project Gutenberg
- Biography on PBS
- Engraving of Benezet
- Essay on Benezet
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