Abolitionism

Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery, whether formal or informal. In Western European and America, abolitionism was a historical movement to end the African and Indian slave trade and set slaves free. The Spanish government enacted the first European law abolishing colonial slavery in 1542, although this law was not widely enforced. Later, in the 17th century, English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian; in the 18th century, abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies; and in the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man. James Edward Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds, arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue...