On this date in 1791, Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801) preached a strong anti-slavery sermon before "the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and for the Relief of Persons unlawfully holden in Bondage." Edwards was a Congregationalist minister, like his more famous father, and later became president of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. The sermon became one of the earliest anti-slavery publications in the Library of Congress collections, demonstrating abolition as a social movement in the early days of the republic.
