In the year 1739, the celebrated George Whitfield became an instrument in turning the attention of many others to their hard case, and of begetting in these a fellow sympathy towards them.  This laborious minister, having been deeply affected with what he had seen in the course of his religious travels in America, thought it his duty, to address a letter from Georgia to the inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.  This letter was printed in the year above mentioned, and is in part as follows:—­

As I lately passed through your provinces in my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling for the miseries of the poor negroes.  Whether it be lawful for Christians to buy slaves, and thereby encourage the nations, from whom they are bought, to be at perpetual war with each other, I shall not take upon me to determine.  Sure I am, it is sinful, when they have bought them to use them as bad as though they were brutes, nay, worse; and whatever particular exceptions there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you who own negroes are liable to such a charge; for your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride.  These, after they have done their work, are fed and taken proper care of; but many negroes when wearied with labour, in your plantations, have been obliged to grind their corn after their return home:  your dogs are caressed and fondled at your table, but your slaves, who are frequently styled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege; they are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master’s table:  not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel taskmasters, who, by their unrelenting scourges have ploughed their backs and made long furrows, and at length brought them even unto death.  When, passing along, I have viewed your plantations cleared and cultivated, many spacious houses built and the owners of them faring sumptuously every day, my blood has frequently almost run cold within me, to consider how many of your slaves had neither convenient food to eat, nor proper raiment to put on, notwithstanding most of the comforts you enjoy were solely owing to their indefatigable labours.

The letter, from which this is an extract, produced a desirable effect upon many of those who perused it, but particularly upon such as began to be seriously disposed in these times.  And as George Whitfield continued a firm friend to the poor Africans, never losing an opportunity of serving them, he interested, in the course of his useful life, many thousands of his followers in their favour.

To this account it may be added, that from the year 1762 ministers, who were in the connection of John Wesley, began to be settled in America, and that as these were friends to the oppressed Africans also, so they contributed in their turn[A] to promote a softness of feeling towards them among those of their own persuasion.