The Context of Dixon's Act of Bravery

[Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican]

Was Woolman mad? He was, like Fox, a great mystic. 
I said he was the greatest Quaker of the 18th century because he chose
the truly Quaker way of love. He did not work by argument alone, such as
the Germantown Quakers had, nor by angry denunciation as the Irish
Quaker did, but by quiet, kindly persuasion. In his mission he met
Anthony Benezet. 

Anthony Benezet (1713-1784) was one of the most enlightened men of the
18th century. Born to French Huguenot parents who fled France due to
religious persecution, his family settled in Philadelphia in 1731.
Rejecting his father's desire to join the family business, Benezet
became a schoolteacher. He taught Quaker girls and founded the African
School for Blacks. HIs students included James Forten, Absalom Jones and
Richard Allen, who greatly appreciated his work as teacher and
abolitionist. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who were against the
slave trade, Benezet fought actively to end slavery and proclaimed the
complete equality for the African. He wrote many pamphlets against
slavery and corresponded with benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, the
Englishmen Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson and the French patriots
like Mirabeau and Raynal and Brissot. Because he did not leave a
journal, his influence has been overlooked, yet his actions are
unmatched.


http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/gest/jackson.html

http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/aids/benezet/


Woolman opened the way and set a patern for later pamphleteering. 

Thoughts Upon Slavery John Wesley
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/thoughtsuponslavery.stm

Granville Sharpe

In England, during the last quarter of the 18th century, the
anti-slavery movement, initiated by Granville Sharpe, had taken root.
After Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice, upheld Sharpe's petition that
slavery was illegal in England thus setting free 14,000 African slaves
there, the movement attracted more support.