Antislavery activism peaked during the Revolution then declined as cotton economics took over

Evidence

The antislavery refrains first heard from the mouths of the Germantown Petitioners reached a crescendo during the American Revolution, but then started to trail off. And the remaining abolitionists, such as Benjamin Rush and company, who were urging uplift suasion hardly had as large an audience as John Woolman and Samuel Hopkins had enjoyed a generation prior. King Cotton was on the march. And the slaveholding producers of racist ideas had convinced legions of Americans to see slavery as a necessary evil to pay off their debts and build their nation. Besides, it seemed better than the supposed horrific barbarism bound to arise, they argued, from Black freedom. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 346

Categorization

• SEED: Angles well for an essay on how economic incentive (King Cotton) outpaces moral reform movements like uplift suasion — direct evidence for the book’s core inversion.