"The Paradise of Negro-Slaves.--a dream"

1787 [Rush, Benjamin] (1745-1813). “The Paradise of Negro-Slaves.--a dream.” The Columbia Magazine: or Monthly Miscellany 1.5 (January 1787): 235-38. Rpt. in his Essays Literary, Moral and Philosophical. 2^nd ed. with additions (Philadelphia, PA: Thomas and Samuel F. Bradford, 1806), 305-09; rpt. ed. Michael Meranze (Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 1988), 187-90.

Those who had been slaves are in their own heaven, where, knowing they are saved, wait for the final judgement. Visited by the author in a dream, they are frightened by seeing a white man but learning that he supports abolition, they welcome him, and a few tell him their stories. Each tells of the horrors of slavery and how they were mistreated and killed, but they hope that those who mistreated them will repent and be saved rather than face damnation for their actions in life. The dream ends with the arrival and welcome of another white man, Anthony Benezet (1713-84), the founder of world's first anti-slavery societies, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, which, after his death, was reconstituted by Benjamin Franklin and Rush as the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery; the first public school for girls in North America; and the Negro School at Philadelphia.