Response Post History l.n., history homework help

Please respond to/add/agree/disagree this discussion post in 50 words or more. Please use the website given and/or the chapter in order to cite within your answer. When citing within the answer/response post, please use (Foner, pg #).

1. List 2 less than famous activist found on this site.

   a) Benjamin Lay was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin. He wrote a book called, ” All Slave keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage” was not very popular with the slave owners. He thought that having slaves was considered a sin. He wrote the book to those who “pretend to lay claim to the pure and holy Christian religion” because as Foner states in the text, many slave owners used biblical sources to justify slavery. 

http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/people/lay.php

   b) Anthony Bezet was a Quaker born in France. He came to the United States when he was 17. He opposed slavery because it contradicted with Christian teachings. He said that slavery lessened a person’s humanity. He said that the slave trade would end if the buyers would stop buying and selling slaves and that they were guilty in contributing to slavery.

http://abolition.e2bn.org/people_27.html

2. How was anti-slavery sentiment popularized at this time? 

    a) Through songs and poems. George W. Clark was a white musician that wrote The Liberty Minstrel. Its a book containing music with anti-slavery words and an occasional poem. In his introduction he says that it is dedicated to the true friends of universal freedom. Possibly targeted to white men as himself who enjoyed music.

    b) Suffer the children. A tract distributed by the Sunday School Union is about the mistreatment of slave kids by their owners. This item was targeted to excite the sympathy of free children.

The website says that it was extremely effective in getting slavery abolished. I think it also brought people together who shared the similar beliefs and probably encouraged each other.

3.  In what ways does this collection build upon what you learned in Foner’s text?

Both the website and the text have used religion for slavery and against slavery. The slave masters used Christianity as a form of excuse to have slaves and some of the anti-slaves activist used Christianity to condemn it.

4. I think that I was shocked at the papers that had the sentiments of the slaves. Like The Negro Woman’s Appeal to Her White Sisters and Suffer the Children. I can feel the desperation in their words and the very vivid description of their emotional and physical pain.