A Treatise on the Patriarchal, or Co-operative System of Society as it Exists in Some Governments and Colonies in America, and in the United States, Under the Name of Slavery, with its Necessity and Advantages, was the first major defense of slavery published in the United States. Written by Florida slave trader, planter, and Quaker Zephaniah Kingsley, it was first published under the signature “A Resident of Florida” in 1828, although Kingsley's name is found at the end of the Preface. It was reprinted three times (1829, 1833, and 1834), indicating significant readership. No other pro-slavery writing in the United States was reprinted as often. Kingsley believed that free people of color, better treated in Spanish Florida than in the Southern United States, should be allowed to own property, and other rights, and made the case that they were good citizens and beneficial to the country in which they lived. Daniel Stowell included an annotated edition of the Treatise in his Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley (see previous note). Kingsley's "Address to the Legislative Council of Florida" The Treatise was preceded by Kingsley's "Address to the Legislative Council of Florida [of which he was a member] on the subject of its Colored population", about 1826. In this speech, published in 2000, he calls upon the Legislative Council to accommodate the "free colored population", so that they have a "friendly feeling toward the white population". This is necessary for "our personal safety as well as the permanent condition of our Slave property" ("the most numerous, valuable & productive class [of] our population"). In other words, and he cites examples, the free blacks would side with the whites in protecting them from slave insurrection or other slave misconduct. This "Address", having fallen on deaf ears, was followed by his resignation from the Legislative Council. Within 10 years, Kingsley, in despair over the situation of free blacks, departed from the United States. He moved with his multiple wives, slaves, and free blacks to a new plantation, Mayorasgo de Koka, in what is now the Dominican Republic but at that time was part of Haiti. The Treatise In the meantime, he attempted to influence public opinion towards "free people of color" by means of his self-published Treatise. In the Preface, declaring himself a "votary of rational policy", he states that his object is "to destroy the prejudice existing against slavery".