The thing that strikes me the MOST on reading some of the earlier chapters is that WHITE PEOPLE WERE HELPING with abolition for a long time! The author describes the dangerous escape of one of the enslaved people who was met by 2 white people in a boat in NYC and who protected him when the people from his ship tried to take him back.

A white sailor was fined a year's salary + jail because he was distributing one of the banned books that extols the enslaved to revolt.