Abstract
ABSTRACT: Pennsylvania Quaker William Southeby wrote one of the earliest American critiques of slavery in 1696 and continued agitating against the institution until his death in 1722. Scholars have been restricted in their attention to Southeby because his 1696 protest and all but one of his other writings have been lost to history. This article reproduces and analyzes a recently discovered transcript of his 1696 address made in 1791 by another Quaker abolitionist, James Pemberton, along with Southeby’s other known antislavery essay, from around 1714. Both documents shed new light on the contentious early history of abolitionism.