Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) was a White Congregationalist theologian who was born in Connecticut and later worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He owned enslaved people for parts of his life but eventually freed them and became a vocal proponent of abolition. Hopkins composed several antislavery texts. This chapter is a selection from his Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, published anonymously in 1776, which is a fictional conversation between an enslaver who defends slavery a…
Read moreSamuel Hopkins (1721–1803) was a White Congregationalist theologian who was born in Connecticut and later worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He owned enslaved people for parts of his life but eventually freed them and became a vocal proponent of abolition. Hopkins composed several antislavery texts. This chapter is a selection from his Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, published anonymously in 1776, which is a fictional conversation between an enslaver who defends slavery and someone who argues for abolition. Hopkins makes many notable points in this text, for instance about the epistemic situation of enslavers and enslaved people, as well as about racist prejudices. This text is dedicated to the Continental Congress, a joint legislative body of the thirteen colonies that declared independence in 1776 and became the United States.
