who led the abolition of slavery in england
In the 17th century, English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian; in the 18th century, abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies; in the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticised it for violating the rights of man. James Edward Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning slavery in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds, arguing against it in Parliament and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More vigorously to pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, they joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect. Though anti-slavery sentiment was widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nation-states that used slave labour continued to do so.