"GIVE LIBERTY TO WHOM LIBERTY IS DUE, THAT IS, TO EVERY CHILD OF MAN": FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF THOUGHTS UPON SLAVERY, 1774, BY FOUNDER OF METHODISM JOHN WESLEY, THE FIRST EDITION FEATURING ABOLITIONIST ANTHONY BENEZET'S KEY ADDITIONAL TEXT

(BENEZET, Anthony) WESLEY, John. Thoughts upon Slavery. IN: A Collection of Religious Tracts. London, Printed: Re-Printed in Philadelphia: Joseph Cruckshank, 1774. Small octavo, early full brown sheep. $12,000.

First American edition, preceded only by the same year's much shorter English edition of Wesley's influential and controversial early attack on slavery and the slave trade, the first to contain abolitionist Anthony Benezet's expansive notes and afterword not in the English edition, bound with a separate title page with four other works in publisher Joseph Crukshank's A Collection of Religous Tracts.

Wesley, a "founder of Methodism…was noted not only for outstanding powers of leadership, but also for practical holiness, social concern and immense courage" (Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, 1037). He formulated a doctrine of perfection that led to the "creation of the largest new family of churches to be thrown up by the revival in Britain and in the rest of the English-speaking world" (ODNB). While he was a colleague of leading abolitionists William Wilberforce and Anthony Benezet, in Thoughts upon Slavery, "the ethical core of the argument is Wesley's own" (Field, John Wesley as a Public Theologian, 4). He first witnessed the horrors of slavery as a missionary in Georgia and South Carolina. "By the time he published his Thoughts upon Slavery, he clearly opposed the cruelties and violations of the slave trade… It is striking that in this attack on slavery Wesley explicitly does not use the Bible as the basis for his position. Instead he argues that slavery cannot be reconciled with justice and mercy, and derives his understanding of justice from natural law… Jennings reports that Wesley went even further in moving from protest to transformation" (Sample, Future of John Wesley's Theology, 58-9). Wesley's work also stands out in that he was a political conservative who rejected democracy and "strongly criticized mass action… here, however, he legitimated slave resistance and rebellion as an expression of natural liberty in contradiction of biblical injunctions to slaves" (Field, 6).

This pivotal edition was issued at the urging of Benezet after reading the same year's much shorter English edition. He was especially moved by Wesley's "exhortation to the ship captains, merchants and planters involved in slaving, urging them to 'give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature.'" Benezet quickly "arranged with Philadelphia printer Joseph Cruikshank to reprint Wesley's pamphlet, but not before he added five expansive footnotes and a lengthy afterword… the general tenor of these additions was to clarify and amplify points Wesley had made" (Crosby, ed. Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 197). In England "the public response to Wesley's Thoughts upon Slavery… would soon be so great that 229,000 people signed petitions against the slave trade to be presented to Parliament" (Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, 126). Yet "Wesley's attack on the profitable slave trade was risky… his opinions were an affront to those who considered the Africans their inferiors. For the latter group, Wesley had further unsettling words: 'The inhabitants of Africa… are not inferior to the inhabitants of Europe; to some of them they are greatly superior'" (Yrigoyen, John Wesley). "Wesley's contribution to the struggle against slavery did not end with the publication of Thoughts upon Slavery… Symbolically the last letter he wrote before his death was to Wilberforce supporting him in his struggle to have the slave trade abolished" (Field, 6). Preceded by the same year's 53-page English edition, published without Benezet's lengthy notes and afterword. Thoughts Upon Slavery was both published separately and included as "the second title in: Benezet, Anthony. The Potent Enemies of America Laid Open, Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1774 (Evans 13146), and as part of some copies of: A Collection of Religious Tracts [as here] Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1773[-1778?] (Evans 13145)" (ESTC W28091). The other titles in this collection, each with a separate title page, pagination, and Crukshank's imprint, are: The Plain Path to Christian Perfection, by Johannes Tauler, translated by Anthony Benezet; The Dreadful Visitation, in a Short Account of the Progress of the Effects of the Plague, 1774, an abridged version of Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year; Benezet's The Mighty Destroyer Displayed… the mistaken Use as well as Abuse of Distilled Spiritous Liquors, 1774, and Stephen Crisp's Sermons or Declarations, 1773. Sabin 4671, 102699. Evans 13145, 13762. Hildeburn 3134. Early owner signature. Small early ink notation to the title page: "Collected by Anthony Benezet."

Minor marginal dampstaining to last leaves of final title (Sermons or Declarations); expected age-wear to early sheep binding. Very scarce.