ABSTRACT
Quakers, evangelicals inside and outside the Church of England and Rational Dissenters and Unitarians all articulated a powerful abolitionist and emancipationist appeal over more than half a century. The fundamental dynamic driving towards reform in these three religiousintellectual traditions differed subtly but the appeal demonstrated considerable coherence and continuity from earlier to later phases of antislavery. From the late 1780s onwards, often fierce dialectical conflict with pro-slave trade and pro-slavery spokesmen was central to the intellectual experience of the antislavery movement. In controversy abolitionists found arguments in common whatever their religious affiliations. The deployment of particular arguments both in response to their opponents and when they went beyond those limits, revealed a family resemblance in fundamental ideas. Antislavery success, it was assumed, would be a large step towards creating a proper moral order in the world and from that could be expected to flow greater social and political harmony. Such a moral order was legitimate since it was consonant with the dictates of Providence or, in different intellectual terms, expressive of the natural order progressively opening to the minds of Enlightenment intellectuals through scientific investigation and freedom of thought.
