ABSTRACT
Jarvis Brewster’s Exposition on the Treatment of Slaves is a good example of a moderately anti-slavery text that seeks to ameliorate the situation of slaves while skirting around the issue of emancipation. Although a northerner Brewster does not attack slavery as an immoral institution and demand immediate abolition. Indeed, he is far more timid than some eighteenth-century authors such as Samuel Sewell and Benjamin Rush, who had attacked slavery as an institution, and his rhetoric on slavery pales when compared with the architect of radial abolitionism, William Lloyd Garrison. Brewster stops short of calling for the end of slavery, though he believes that divine justice will be brought to bear on slaveholders in the end. Instead, he urges southern legislatures to put in place a legal framework that will ameliorate the worst excesses of slavery. Slaves should have a ‘court of appeal’ that would hear grievances against masters, and should have a legal right to proper food.
