David Rice

David Rice (1733-1816) was a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), after which he became a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky and a staunch abolitionist. He married the daughter of Sameul Blair, another Presbyterian minister. He worked with Samuel Davies in Virginia primarily among the slave population, and when he was forced to leave that state, settled in Kentucky and continued his work among the slaves, helping to form the Kentucky Abolition Society. In 1792 he wrote Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy; Proved by a Speech delivered in the Convention, held at Danville, Kentucky (London: M. Gurney, 1793), printed and sold the following year by the Baptist bookseller Martha Gurney.  Gurney’s edition was a reprint of the Philadephia edition by Parry Hall in 1792. Though frequently reprinted in America, Gurney’s is the only English printing of Rice’s speech.