Edward Brown (born circa 1790) was a South Carolina lawyer who wrote an early and robust proslavery tract, Notes on the Origin and Necessity of Slavery.[1] The book was published four years after the Denmark Vesey conspiracy. Brown's tract was a companion to other South Carolina proslavery works by Whitemarsh Benjamin Seabrook and was shortly before the more famous proslavery pamphlet by Chancellor William Harper (South Carolina politician).[2] His book is remembered for the phrase that "slavery is the stepladder by which civilized countries have passed from barbarism to civilization."[3]