The Revolution shattered polite intellectual consensus on slavery

Evidence

In a speech at the museum, Moreau celebrated a dream that many Enlightenment intellectuals shared, that through reason the wrongs men had created by “deifying” themselves could be resolved. He did not mention what some intellectuals at the time considered to be one of humankind’s greatest injustices: slavery. But i n h e r i ta n c e 71 Moreau regularly came in contact with one man who was very concerned with ending the barbaric institution: the marquis de Condorcet, who in 1781 had published an antislavery essay. Moreau shared a friendship with Condorcet, and fact they had much in common. Moreau was concerned with improving the condition of slaves, and Condorcet believed that slavery could be outlawed only through a gradual process that would start by lessening the hardships of slaves’ lives. Genteel discussions of slavery between intellectuals, however, would soon become difficult. With the onset of the Revolution, the stage for such debate expanded dramatically, and the two men soon found themselves on opposite sides in a vicious political battle. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 252

Categorization

• QUESTION: What made two friends with gradualist antislavery views land on opposite sides once the Revolution began?
• XREF: connects to: Linking slavery to the Revolution challenges the cornerstone of American national identity — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 45; The revolution transformed customs, language, and master-slave relations; Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 269
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Linking slavery to the Revolution challenges the cornerstone of American national identity — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 45; The revolution transformed customs, language, and master-slave relations; Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 269