ABSTRACT
For twenty years from the 1780s the abolition debate brought long-established images of the Negro into new focus. The early stages of abolition pressure revived interest in the theories of Edward Long. In the era of debate it was, in short, the practical racism of slavery rather than the racism of ideology which dominated attitudes. Moreover, in developing the contrary view that races were species, White shared the intellectual isolation of Edward Long. As well as substantially accepting Long’s claims about the infertility of mulattoes, he developed the argument to its logical extreme by claiming that many other apparent varieties lower down the Chain of Being were also in reality species. Many more reiterated long-standing arguments which saw slavery as a device for civilizing savages. After Long and Estwick had cited him, there was only one further significant endorsement of David Hume among hundreds of pro-slavery pamphlets and articles.
