[Rees], Letters on Liberty and Slavery

Baptist Minister Morgan John Rhees was born in Graddfa in South Wales, migrated to America in 1794, and is perhaps best remembered for leading a migration of setters into western Pennsylvania in 1797. It is possible to infer, from Rhees's responses, what arguments in favour of slavery were being put forward by John Lawrence. The tone of Letters on Liberty and Slavery is perhaps its most remarkable feature. This is no gentle encouragement to reform like that of Jarvis Brewster included elsewhere in this collection. For Rhees, however, slavery deprived men of their inalienable right to liberty, and it was clearly contrary to the spirit of the American Revolution. Rhees had actually been in the South during a trip two years previously, preaching to the large number of enslaved Baptists in Savannah after their own preacher, Andrew Bryan, had been prohibited from preaching by the city council.