Robert Pleasants was an American educator and abolitionist. He was born in Henrico County, Virginia

Henrico County, Virginia

Henrico is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state of the United States. As of 2010, Henrico was home to 306,935 people. It is located in the Richmond-Petersburg region and is a portion of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 and became a plantation owner and operator of Robert Pleasants & Co., a consignment tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 exporting company. Pleasants was a Quaker whose commitment to the abolitionist movement was spurred in large part by the anti-slavery advocate Anthony Benezet

Anthony Benezet

Anthony Benezet, or Antoine Bénézet , was a French-born American educator and abolitionist.-Biography:Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France, on 31 January 1713. His family were Huguenots. Because of the persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685,...

. He freed his slaves in 1782 and then hired them as paid laborers and provided for their education. In 1784, he founded the Gravelly Hill School, the first educational institution for free blacks in Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

.

Pleasants was one of the founders of the Virginia Abolition Society and served as its president in 1790. He submitted numerous petitions to the Virginia state government and the U.S. Congress calling for the end of the slave trade. Many of his letters to George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 and Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786...

regarding the legality and morality of slavery still survive.