Concluding for the Night

Plenary Session was very interesting. The most compelling point was one raised during Question and Answer Session. I raised my hand to ask if a war (The Civil War) could have been avoided completely if the attitudes and methods of the first group of abolitionists who lived during the Colonial period had not completely died out. The speaker, Dr. Maurice Jackson of Georgetown University, has recently completed a study of an influential anti-slavery Quaker activist, Anthony Benezet.

For roughly 30-40 years, no standout leaders in the movement sprang up, and a more ideological, violent group replaced it after decades of lying fallow. Though war might have been a foregone conclusion, there is some discussion as to whether it would have been as bloodthirsty as it became had a different school of thought persisted.