Quakers Petition Congress to Abolish Slavery: America's First Anti-Slavery Lobby
The Quakers walked into the first Congress and demanded slavery end. February 1790. The petition landed like a bomb — southern delegates threatened to walk out, northern ones scrambled to table it. Benjamin Franklin signed it. He had two months to live and spent them arguing that all men meant all men. Congress buried the petition in committee. Seventy-five years later, 600,000 Americans died fighting over what the Quakers said in a single page.
February 11, 1790
236 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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