European intellectuals framed abolition as a choice between reform and violent slave revenge

Evidence

The passages in Raynal and Mercier were intended as both indictment and warning. Mercier appended a note to his powerful portrait of the “Avenger,” spoken from the eighteenth-century present: “This hero will probably spare the generous Quakers who have just granted liberty to their negroes in a memorable and touching era that made me cry tears of joy, and will make me detest those Christians who do not imitate them.” There, was, then, a way to avoid carnage and revenge. Slavery must be abolished by the Europeans, before the slaves abolished it—and their masters— themselves. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later chapter on Enlightenment critiques of slavery and to Raymond/Mercier’s influence on actual revolutionaries.
• SEED: Angle: how prophetic warnings from intellectuals about a coming ‘avenger’ shaped both the imagination and later legitimacy of slave revolt — the prophecy becoming self-fulfilling.