h
attracted my notice was an advertisement of Anthony Benezet's
'_Historical Account of Guinea_.' I soon left my friend and his paper,
and, to lose no time, hastened to London to buy it. In this precious
book I found almost all I wanted." Clarkson easily won the first
prize. Although Benezet himself did not live to see it, this volume
converted to the cause of the oppressed race a man who as an author
and reformer became one of the greatest champions it ever had.[41]

Benezet continued to write on the slave trade, collecting all
accessible data from year to year and publishing it whenever he could.
He obtained many of his facts about the sufferings of slaves from the
Negroes themselves, moving among them in their homes, at the places
where they worked, or on the wharves where they stopped when
traveling. To diffuse this knowledge where it would be most
productive of the desired results, he talked with tourists and
corresponded with every influential person whom he could reach.
Travelers who came into contact with him were given thoughts to
reflect on, messages to convey or tracts to distribute among others
who might further the cause. Hearing that Granville Sharp had in 1772
obtained the significant verdict in the famous Somerset case, Benezet
wrote him, that this champion of freedom abroad might be enabled to
cooperate more successfully with those commonly concerned on this side
of the Atlantic.[42] With the same end in view he corresponded with
George Whitefield and John Wesley.[43]

His connection with the work of George Whitefield was further extended
by correspondence with the Countess of Huntingdon who had at the
importunity of Whitefield established at Savannah a college known as
the Orphan House, to promote the enlightenment of the poor and to
prepare some of them for the clerical profession. Unlike Whitefield,
the founder, who thought that the Negroes also might derive some
benefit from this institution, the successors of the good man
endeavored to maintain the institution by the labor of slaves
purchased to cultivate the plantations owned by the institution.
Benezet, therefore, wrote the Countess a brilliant letter pathetically
depicting the misery she was unconsciously causing by thus encouraging
slavery and the slave trade. He was gratified to learn from the
distinguished lady that in founding the institution she had no such
purpose in mind and that she would prohibit the wicked crime.[44]

Learning that