Matthew Franklin
The Address of the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
(Philadelphia, 1804).
Slavery in early North America and elsewhere in the hemisphere belied the developing rhetoric of universal rights often espoused in written constitutions. In the British American colonies, Quakers centered in Pennsylvania were among the first anti-slavery activists.
Philadelphia was the first important center of American abolitionism even prior to 1804, when The Address of the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery was published. It is addressed to “free blacks and other free people of color” who were actively involved in the struggle to end slavery in the early United States. Pennsylvania passed the world’s first statute to abolish slavery, in 1780, yet emancipation was only granted after a term of years.
