began to think that the Negro should be educated and freed. To
acquaint themselves with the claims of the underman Americans
thereafter prosecuted more seriously the study of Coke, Milton, Locke,
and Blackstone. The last of these was then read more extensively in
the colonies than in Great Britain. Getting from these writers strange
ideas of individual liberty and the social compact theory of man's
making in a state of nature government deriving its power from the
consent of the governed, the colonists contended more boldly than ever
for religious freedom, industrial liberty, and political equality.
Given impetus by the diffusion of these ideas, the revolutionary
movement became productive of the spirit of universal benevolence.
Hearing the contention for natural and inalienable rights, Nathaniel
Appleton[1] and John Woolman,[2] were emboldened to carry these
theories to their logical conclusion. They attacked not only the
oppressors of the colonists but censured also those who denied the
Negro race freedom of body and freedom of mind. When John Adams heard
James Otis basing his argument against the writs of assistance on the
British constitution "founded in the laws of nature," he "shuddered at
the doctrine taught and the consequences that might be derived from
such premises."[3]

[Footnote 1: Locke, _Anti-slavery_, etc., p. 19, 20, 23.]

[Footnote 2: _Works of John Woolman_ in two parts, pp. 58 and 73;
Moore, _Notes on Slavery in Mass._, p. 71.]

[Footnote 3: Adams, _Works of John Adams_, vol. x., p. 315; Moore,
_Notes on Slavery in Mass._, p. 71.]

So effective was the attack on the institution of slavery and its