to be clear.. it's pretty clear from his writings he had no idea how the african slaves were being, uh, sourced? I don't know what he thought was going on down there, but he did get to a point where he saw slavery of any form as evil.

but yeah. it's a fascinating progression and thing to settle on. "enslaving local people" is somehow more offensive than "enslaving foreign people and shipping them in." I rather imagine he got to know a few of the locals. came to respect them, see them as humans and not something as lesser, but he never had that experience with african people, until, well, maybe he did. if that makes sense.