‘So much hath been said upon the subject of Slave-keeping, that an apology may be required for this paper,” wrote a Philadelphia physician two years before the start of the American Revolution. “The only one I shall offer is, that the evil still continues.”
What followed was one of the most devastating intellectual assaults on slavery ever published in the American colonies. The pamphlet titled “Address to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies upon Slavekeeping” struck a nerve: All 1,200 copies quickly sold out. Its author, Benjamin Rush, would soon join the revolutionary cause and sign the Declaration of Independence.
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