Page 2 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

In a remarkable development in human history, a form of "property in man" that may have
the same Western societies that produced "exceeded the invested value of all of the
perhaps the most deeply entrenched and nation's railroads, factories, and Banks
exploitative form of slavery also generated combined." The mystery, in short, is not the
antislavery movements leading to its abolition. existence or expansion of slavery worldwide.
Concurrent with the founding of the United The mystery is how slavery ever came to be
States, for example, came the founding in 1775 abolished.
of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the
Abolition of Slavery ("the world’s first If we are to better understand our history and
antislavery society"). aspirational future, any study of slavery should
also include study of antislavery. Learning more
about Frederick Douglass-- and what Douglass
Professor Drescher expanded upon this can teach contemporary college
perspective in his 2009 book Abolition: A students--provides an opening to this important
History of Slavery and Antislavery (p.461): topic.

[T]he global achievements of antislavery a
century ago left two indelible legacies. In the
course of a century and a half (1770s–1920s), it

destroyed or sharply restricted an institution,
which had devastated and abbreviated the lives
of tens of millions of human beings in two
hemispheres. By the mid-twentieth century, it
succeeded in reasserting slavery's position at the
top of the list of practices condemned in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For more
than sixty years, reviving slavery has remained
beyond the bounds of any contemporary
movement's dreams or any state's ambition.
Slavery Ship/Wikipedia Commons
Slavery rhetorically remains the evil of choice for
any movement or government that seeks to
mobilize sentiment against exploitative practices
and coercive domination anywhere in the world.

And, the story of slavery’s reduction remains a
model of comparative achievement for all who
seek to expand the range of human rights
[emphasis added].

Antislavery activists in the United States--
including many African-Americans currently or
formerly enslaved--faced seemingly
insurmountable difficulties, not only in
challenging deeply ingrained social and
religious traditions, but in seeking to eliminate

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