September 23, 1738 - Moses Brown
Moses Brown presents a genuinely unusual case for this site: a man who became a committed abolitionist and helped secure anti-slave trade legislation, yet whose industrial investments helped build the American textile economy that depended on enslaved labor in the South. The tension between his principles and his economic legacy is the central fact of his life. He lived nearly a century, long enough to see both the movement he supported gain ground and the industrial system he helped create deepen its entanglement with slavery.
From Wikipedia
Moses Brown (September 23, 1738 – September 6, 1836) was an American abolitionist, Quaker, and industrialist from what became known as Rhode Island. With his three brothers, he co-founded what became Brown University. Later, he supported the founding and revival of the Moses Brown School.
As an industrialist, he supported the development, design and construction of some of the first factories for spinning machines during the American industrial revolution. This included the Slater Mill, which was the first modern factory in America. While he was an abolitionist since before the Revolution, the New England textile industry was dependent on cotton produced by slaves in the Deep South. He helped gain anti-slave trade legislation in Rhode Island and later in Congress. Brown was a pacifist during the War of 1812 and appealed to both the U.S. and Great Britain to work towards a peaceful resolution.
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