# Antebellum racial attitudes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 25, 2010, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982 "2010-09-25T07:18:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982/1 "2010-09-25T07:18:57Z")

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Were there any whites in the US who had 20th century racial attitutdes? (i.e races are equal)

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**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982/2 "2010-09-25T09:53:57Z")

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[John Brown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29) seems like [a likely candidate](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/opinion/02reynolds.html?_r=1).

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**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982/3 "2010-09-25T10:31:29Z")

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There were certainly many in the US who thought slavery wrong, going back to the 18th century and beyond. A few early examples:

> [@](#):
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> 1754
> 
> ```
> * John Woolman (b. New Jersey 1720; d. York, England 1772) addresses his fellow Quakers in Some Consideration of the Keeping of Negroes and exerts great influence in leading the Society of Friends to recognize the evil of slavery. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting appoints a committee in 1758 to visit those Friends still holding slaves. At the Yearly Meeting in London in 1772, Woolman presents an anti-slavery certificate from Philadelphia. The London Yearly Meeting also issues a statement condemning slavery in its Epistle for the first time in 1754.
> 
> ```
> 
> 1759
> 
> ```
> * Publication in Germantown (PA) of Anthony Benezet's pamphlet, Observations on the Inslaving [sic], Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, the first of many anti-slavery works by the most influential antislavery writer of 18th century America.
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> ```
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> 1775
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> ```
> * Founding of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), the world's first antislavery society and the first Quaker anti-slavery society. Benjamin Franklin becomes Honorary President of the Society in 1787.
> * Thomas Paine speaks out against slavery and joins the PAS with Benjamin Rush.
> 
> ```

From the [American Anti-Slavery and Civil Rights Timeline.](http://www.ushistory.org/more/timeline.htm)

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**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antebellum-racial-attitudes/554982/4 "2010-09-25T13:31:21Z")

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You can think slavery is wrong and at the same time not think that the races are equal. Like Abraham Lincoln said:

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> Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

One of the closest might be Thaddeus Stevens, whose attitude can be seen in his epitaph (in Lancaster’s black cemetery)

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> I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude; but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before the Creator