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Letter to the Society of Friends from Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano) and others

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Letter to the Society of Friends form Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano) and seven others thanking them for their work and the book 'A caution to Great Britain and Colonies Concerning the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Africans.' This shows the contact being made between the different groups concerned with Abolition prior to the setting up of the 1787 committing for effecting the abolition of the slave trade. It reads:

To the truly Worthy Society of Gentlemen called Friends
Gentlemen
By reading your book entitled a Caution to Great Britain and a Colonies Concerning the Calamitous State of the enslaved Negroes.
We the poor Oppressed needy and much degraded Africans who are here met desire to approach you with this address of thanks with our warmest love and warmest acknowledgements and with the deepest sense of your benevolence unreserved labour kind interposition and laudable attempts which under God you have made towards breaking the yoke of Slavery and to administer a little comfort and ease to thousands and tens of thousands of very grievously afflicted and too heavily burdened Negroes. Gentlemen could you by perseverance at last be enabled under God to lighten in any degree the heavy burden of the afflicted some amount it will be in some measure be the possible means of saving the souls of many of the oppressed - and if so sure we are that the God = whose eyes are ever upon all his creatures and ever Rewards every true act of virtue and Regards the prayer of the Oppressed will give you and yours those Blessings which are not in the power of us mortals to express or conceive which we as part of those captured oppressed and afflicted People most earnestly wish and pray
Presented by Gustavus Vassa and seven others the 21st October 1785 -

With kind permission of the 'Library of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain'.

Added:
15th Jan 2008 by Diane Earl

Subjects:
Citizenship, History

Key Stages:
Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, Key Stage 4+


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