ABSTRACT
Africans and African Americans sought to free themselves as soon as slavery came into existence in the British North American colonies during the seventeenth century. By the end of that century a few white Puritans and Quakers in New England and the middle colonies had begun to express reservations concerning the morality of employing slave labor. But it was not until the latter half of the eighteenth century that religious, economic, and ideological change produced authentic abolitionist movements among black and white Americans. These early abolitionists - both slave and free - had considerable success in the North, some in the upper South, and only a negative impact in the deep South.
