The Huguenots had been persecuted and suffered violent attacks in France since the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had provided religious tolerance.

In 1731, the Benezet family migrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded by Quakers and one of the English colonies of North America.

After several years as a failed merchant, in 1739 Benezet began teaching at a Germantown school, then a separate jurisdiction northwest of Philadelphia.

Abolitionist sympathizers, such as Abigail Hopper Gibbons, continued to teach at Benezet's Negro School in the years before the American Civil War.

Eight years later in 1783, Benezet wrote a letter to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz discussing "the cruelty of slavery and his opposition to the slave trade.

He authored a pamphlet in 1774, The Mighty Destroyer Displayed which influenced Benjamin Rush, an early temperance advocate.

[11] This brief work, written while Benezet was teaching at the Quaker Girls' School in Philadelphia, was the author's first publication to draw on sources documenting the African trade in slavery.