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John Woolman, front page Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Philadelphia, PA 1762.
Credit: Internet Archive
A Quaker preacher from Mount Holly, New Jersey, John Woolman (1720-1772) became convinced of the injustice of slavery and in 1754 and 1762 published his arguments against it in Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. In 1758 Woolman, working with Benjamin Lay and Anthony Benezet, convinced the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to acknowledge the wrongs of keeping slaves. This set in motion the crusade that would culminate in the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Law of 1780.