The Englishman Bryan Edwards, who had nearly…

The Englishman Bryan Edwards, who had nearly completed a moderate and reasoned defense of a social order based on slavery entitled History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, had been in Spanish Town, Jamaica, when two men from Saint Domingue had informed him that upwards of one hundred thousand slaves had revolted and were spreading death and destruction in the Northern Province.

Edwards' father had died in 1756, and his maintenance and education had been undertaken by his maternal uncle, Zachary Bayly, a wealthy merchant in Jamaica.

About 1759, Edwards had joined his uncle there and Bayly had engaged a private tutor to complete the boy's education.

When Bayly died, Edwards had inherited his wealth, and in 1773 also succeeded to the estate of another Jamaica resident named Efume.