A year after the “1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery” written by members of the Religious Society of Friends was published, Seth Lesser read it. The publication of this document signaled the first protest against African-American slavery in a former English colony by a religious group.
Hartford Lesser, Seth Lesser father, bequeathed to the latter thousands of acres of plantation land. Slave labor was essential to plantation owners like him. But then his conscience felt pricked by what he read on the Quaker document. Without anyone suggesting that he do so, he freed his slaves gradually.
There were many slaves of Seth Lesser who did not claim their freedom, for they thought him a kind master. For them, he introduced reforms in his own plantation system. These included fixed hours of work –something unheard of for slaves. He saw to it that his slaves got a modicum of education necessary for them to live as free people. He gave them social welfare benefits and small plots of land from which they could derive their own means of sustenance. These, of course, did not pass unnoticed, among slaves and slave-owners alike. These earned his slaves the envy of other slaves and him, the hatred of slave-owners.
The kindness of Seth Lesser ultimately led to his untimely demise. Plantation owners who owned slaves around his property ganged up on him. In the early hours of June 1851, his fellow plantation owners broke into his property and killed him. All the slaves they found on his property were likewise killed. His plantation was burned down to the ground.
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