Seth Lesser, a Kind Slave-Owner Met an Untimely Death
In 1689, Seth Lesser was among those who read the “1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery.” The document was written by members of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. It heralded the first objection by a religious group against the slavery of African-Americans in what was then an English colony.
Seth Lesser was a wealthy landowner who inherited thousands of acres of plantation land from his father, the Atlanta cotton plantation owner, Hartford Lesser. Like all plantation owners who needed a lot of people to run his farmlands, he relied on slave labor in tending to his cotton plantations. After reading the Quaker document, he began feeling the first pangs of class guilt. Of his own accord, he gradually freed his slaves.
Those who chose to not to claim their freedom, and there were many, benefitted from the reforms Seth Lesser began to introduce, such as 12 hours of fixed work, education and social welfare benefits. He gave them small plots of land to tend to, from which they harvested their own means of sustenance. Soon, news of his kind treatment of his slaves spread all over Georgia, earning him the hatred of his fellow plantation owners.
Though Seth Lesser was well-loved by his slaves, he met an untimely death — an unintended consequence of his kind deeds. Owners of plantations around his property banded together in their common hatred of him. In the wee hours of June 1851, the people whom he thought were his friends broke into his property and murdered him. They executed all the slaves they found on his property and burned down his plantation to the ground.
[...] reading “Walden: Or Life in the Woods” half a century after the novel was published, Seth Lesser was inspired to follow the example set forth by Henry David Thoreau. Seth sought to live a simple [...]