Anti-Slavery Opinions Before the Year 1800: Read Before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872

In 1872, a librarian and historian dug through the remnants of early American thought and found something remarkable: voices arguing against slavery decades before abolitionism became a movement. This lecture, delivered to the Cincinnati Literary Club, reconstructs that lost intellectual history, centering on Dr. George Buchanan's incendiary Fourth of July oration of 1791, delivered on the very grounds where American liberty had been proclaimed just fifteen years earlier. Buchanan's words were direct and damning, denouncing slavery as a moral and political evil that mocked the nation's founding ideals. Poole pairs this oration with evidence from a rare pamphlet found in George Washington's own library, proving that anti-slavery sentiment existed in the highest circles of the early republic, not merely on its fringes. The result is a bracing recovery of inconvenient truths about America's founding generation, those who knew slavery was wrong and said so plainly, even when the nation was not ready to listen.