This week's Friend is dedicated to the involvement of Quakers in the campaign which brought about the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. We've received this interesting account from Jan Arriens about the American Friend who provided some of the roots of that campaign

When in 1785 Thomas Clarkson entered the essay competition at Cambridge University on the lawfulness of holding slaves he knew little about the subject. His main motivation was the fact that he had previously won the BA essay competition, and he now wanted to win the MA competition as well.

Clarkson initially struggled to obtain information on slavery. Then he came across an essay by an American Quaker, Anthony Benezet, written in 1772. At last he had the detail he needed.

Benezet was of French origin, and moved as a teenager with his parents to Pennsylvania, where he became a schoolteacher. Twenty years later, in 1750, he ran an evening class for slave children from his own home. It was that experience that sparked off his concern about slavery and his writings on the subject. Like John Woolman, he was highly influential in changing thinking on the subject among American Quakers.

The abolition of the slave trade depended on a number of critical links. Thomas Clarkson was one of these, as of course was William Wilberforce, as well as the organisational structure and inspiration provided by the Quakers. Had it not been for the bright young faces of those slave children in that small classroom in 1750, in whom Benezet surely saw 'that of God', Clarkson's essay might never have been written, and abolition might well have been greatly delayed, or taken a different form.