Tag: Abolitionists

Abolitionism was a political movement that sought to end the practice of slavery and the slave trade. ‘The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage’ was the first American abolition society. It was established in Philadelphia in 1775, primarily by Quakers, who believed that one man owning another was a sin. Its operation was suspended during the British occupation of Philadelphia and the Revolutionary War. It began again in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as first president. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, an agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the international slave trade by 1808. The principal organized bodies of this reform were the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and…