From highlights of Jonathan Bean's book "Race & Liberty In America"

"Religion was a dominant motive for many leaders of the antislavery movement. Frederick Douglass, an ordained minister, used references to God in rebuking—and inspiring—his fellow Christians. Lewis Tappan used his church ties to create a network of antislavery activists. Senator Joseph Hawley opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act partly because of his missionary work. Louis Marshall’s devout Judaism impelled him to fight for free immigration and against Jim Crow laws. Branch Rickey explained his recruitment of baseball legend Jackie Robinson as “a call from God.”

Not to go on an atheist rant or anything but this type of rhetoric is so empty to me, since it was religion only years before that was used as the primary justification for enslavement of blacks.