Thomas Bacon_, pp. 81-97.]
[Footnote 4: Wesley, _Thoughts upon Slavery_, p. 92.]
William Pinkney, the antislavery leader of Maryland, believed also
that Negroes are no worse than white people under similar conditions,
and that all the colored people needed to disprove their so-called
inferiority was an equal chance with the more favored race.[1] Others
like George Buchanan referred to the Negroes' talent for the fine arts
and to their achievements in literature, mathematics, and philosophy.
Buchanan informed these merciless aristocrats "that the Africans
whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as brutes and whom you
unlawfully subject to slavery with tyrannizing hands of despots are
equally capable of improvement with yourselves."[2]
[Footnote 1: Pinkney, _Speech in Maryland House of Delegates_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Buchanan, _An Oration on the Moral and Political Evil of
Slavery_, p. 10.]
Franklin considered the idea of the natural inferiority of the
Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were
improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to
deficient understanding but to their lack of education.
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