Notes on Slavery and Abolition: foremath and first condition for moral progress

My primary source for the following notes is the excellent Encarta article on the abolitionist movement.

Foremath

Focus: The Atlantic slave trade of black Africans.
Justification: It was the last major slave trade that existed before the general abolition of slavery.
Period: mid-1400s to mid-1800s.

Reasons for the social more permitting slavery included the following:

• Economies of many of the colonies were based on huge plantations that required large labor forces in order to be profitable.
  
• Many people accepted that 'lower' classes of people should be in servitude or slavery due to class system where:
  
  
  
  • Rich dominated poor; and
    
  • People in lower classes were prevented from social advancement.
    
  
  
• Widespread perception that blacks were culturally, morally, and intellectually inferior to whites.
  

First condition for moral progress

Reasons for the change in social attitudes towards slavery included the following:

• Maroon communities--settlements formed by escaped slaves located in inaccessible areas, usually heavily fortified.
  
  
  
  • Purposes:
    
    
    
    • Havens for escaped slaves.
      
    • Bases for attacks on plantations and passersby.
      
    
    
  • Encouraged antislavery sentiment among whites because:
    
    
    
    • Made some whites disturbingly aware of their vulnerability in a slave society due to:
      
      
      
      • Inability of local authorities to recapture escaped slaves; and
        
      • Periodic violent raids by members of maroon communities.
        
      
      
    • Whites became more aware of the inherent cruelty of slavery because slaves were willing to risk severe punishment and even death to:
      
      
      
      • Escape from their masters; or
        
      • Rise up against them.
        
      
      If slaves had submitted meekly to their masters, slavery would not have been perceived to be oppressive and sinful.
      
    
    
  
  
• Quakers--first whites to denounce slavery in Europe and the European colonies.
  
  
  
  • Beliefs: All people, regardless of race, have a divine spark inside them and are equal in the eyes of God.
    
  • Actions: Took following steps against slavery in Great Britain and the British colonies in North America:
    
    
    
    • During 1750s, ended slave trading among fellow Quakers because:
      
      
      
      • The barbarity of the buying and selling of slaves was more obvious than that of the institution of slavery as a whole; and
        
      • It was generally assumed that if the slave trade was abolished, slavery itself would soon cease to exist.
        
      
      
    • During 1760s, Quaker congregations began expelling slaveholders.
      
    • In 1775, American Quakers formed world's first antislavery society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
      
    • In 1783, British Quakers formed Britain's first antislavery society, the London Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade.
      
    
    
  
  
• Age of Enlightenment--18th-century European intellectual movement that asserted that all human beings had natural rights.
  
  
  
  • Chain of preconditions:
    
    
    
    • Industrial Revolution
      
    • Increased economic opportunity and power to lower and middle classes
      
    • Undermining of traditional class system.
      
    
    
  • Lens for:
    
    
    
    • The American Revolution (1775-1783)
      
    • The French Revolution (1789-1799)
      
    • The Haitian Slave Revolt (1791)