A clear example for the manipulative way melodrama was used by the West Indies slave masters to lobby against abolition. Benevolent Planters is a short play by Thomas Bellamy published in the revolutionary year 1789. It just shows how creative communities such as artists, writers, poets were involved in the pro-slavery propaganda.
The play tells the love story of Oran and Selima who were separated in Africa and got together again by living on nearby plantations in the West Indies patronized by well-intentioned masters. The two black slaves left their idle life in Africa and replaced it with the new productive and god-fearing lifestyle on plantations. The names of their respective slave owners, are emotionally suggestive of the alleged good-willingness of their new 'fathers' - Goodwin and Heartfee - these, as Malcolm X would immediately add, will become the family names of Oran and Selima, as it happened with so many Africans enslaved by the efficiency-loving white Europeans.