Virtually
the whole of Europe was involved in
the slave trade in the 1700s. British involvement expanded rapidly in
response to the demand for labour to cultivate
sugar in Barbados and other British West
Indian islands. In the 1660s,
the number of slaves taken from Africa in British ships averaged 6,700 per
year. By the 1760s, Britain was the
foremost European country engaged in the Slave Trade. Between 1793 and 1815, cotton exports from the U.S. grew from 500,000 tons to more than 80
million tons. Cotton from the U.S. was the fuel
for the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the development of capitalism -
and slavery was the key to producing
cotton. As Karl Marx wrote from his vantage point in Britain, "Without
slavery, there would be no cotton, without cotton, there would be no modern
industry."
Some of the
first public support for the abolition of slavery came from American Quakers, but it was in Britain that the decisive developments, which would ultimately lead to abolition throughout the Atlantic, took
place. William Wilberforce, a well-connected
young politician, became the spokesman and leader of the abolitionists in the
British Parliament in 1787, taking
advantage of his friendship with the Prime
Minister, William Pitt, to promote their cause. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British
slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. http://abolition.e2bn.org/people.html
Wilberforce’s conversion and how he
became involved in the abolition of slavery:
In October 1784, Wilberforce embarked upon a tour of Europe which would
ultimately change his life and determine his future career. Wilberforce's
spiritual journey is thought to have begun at this time. He started to rise
early to read the Bible and pray and kept a private journal. Wilberforce
underwent an evangelical conversion, regretting his past life and resolving to
commit his future life and work to the service of God. Wilberforce's conversion
led him to question whether he should remain in public life. Wilberforce sought
guidance from John Newton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton), a leading
Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the day and Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the
City of London, who used to captain a slave ship but had a dramatic conversion
during a storm on the ship. Both Newton and Pitt counselled Wilberforce to remain in politics, and he resolved to
do so "with increased diligence and
conscientiousness". Thereafter, his political views were informed by
his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in
private and public life. In 1783, Wilberforce, while dining with his old
Cambridge friend Gerard Edwards, met Rev. James Ramsay, a ship's surgeon who
had become a clergyman on the island of St Christopher (later St Kitts) in the
Leeward Islands, and a medical supervisor of the plantations there. What Ramsay
had witnessed of the conditions endured by the slaves, both at sea and on the
plantations, horrified him. Wilberforce apparently did not follow up on his
meeting with Ramsay. However, three years later, and inspired by his new faith,
Wilberforce was growing interested in humanitarian reform. In early 1787, Thomas Clarkson, a fellow
graduate of St John's, Cambridge, who had become convinced of the need to end
the slave trade after writing a prize-winning essay on the subject while at
Cambridge, called upon Wilberforce at Old Palace Yard with a published copy of
the work. This was the first time the two men had met; their collaboration would last nearly fifty years.
There was strong
opposition from those profiting from the trade, who used political pressure and delaying tactics to maintain the status
quo.
The two sides of the argument:
For
slavery
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Against
slavery
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The trade
was necessary to the success and wealth of Britain. The merchants and
planters warned that abolition would mean ruin for Britain, as the whole economy would collapse.
|
There were
alternatives to the trade. Clarkson’s Box: Much of the evidence
that Thomas Clarkson collected during his travels to many ports and trading vessels illustrated the
potential for practical alternatives. One of the first African trading ships
Clarkson visited was called the ‘Lively'. The ship was full of beautiful and
exotic goods: carved ivory and woven cloth, along with produce such as
beeswax, palm oil and peppers. Clarkson could see the craftsmanship and skill that would have been required to produce
many of the items. The idea that their creators could be enslaved was
horrifying. He used the contents to demonstrate the skill of Africans and the
possibilities that existed for an alternative humane trading system.
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If Britain did not engage in
the trade then others would. If Britain ceased to trade in slaves with
Africa, their commercial rivals, the French and the Dutch, would soon fill
the gap and the Africans would be in a much worse situation. This was an
argument used in a speech to parliament in 1777.
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If
something is wrong, it is wrong
whether others do it or not. The anti-slavery supporters argued that just
because other countries engaged in the trade this did not provide a valid
reason for Britain to also participate, even if it was profitable.
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Africa was already involved in
slavery. They
stated that Africans enslaved each
other. Indeed, Britain was engaged in a moral trade because they were
helping people, captured in African wars, who may otherwise be executed.
|
The
slavery that existed in Africa was very
different from the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Those enslaved in Africa were usually
prisoners of war or victims of political or judicial punishment. The enslaved
people could keep their name and
identity and slavery did not
extend to future generations.
|
Taking
Africans from their homeland actually benefited
them. They argued that African
societies and cultures were unskilled, uneducated and savage.
|
The
African people were in no way inferior
and should be treated as equals. The Quaker teacher, Anthony Benezet, was
always horrified at the suggestion that the Africans were in anyway inferior.
His claimed his experiences, gained during 20 years teaching black pupils,
proved this was not the case. However, it was the books and speeches of
African writers of the time, such as Olaudah
Equiano, that had the greatest impact in dispelling such misconceptions.
Even some of those involved in the
slave trade were willing to admit that raciest views were wrong, as illustrated by the writings of
Captain Thomas Philips
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The
enslaved people were unfit for other
work. Many people were very prejudiced in their beliefs. Many ordinary
people in Britain were uneducated and travelled little further than their own
village, making it easier for those involved in the trade to influence public
opinion.
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The trade
was damaging to Africa. William Wilberforce summed this up in his
speech of 1789: "...Does
anyone suppose a slave trade would help their civilization? Is it not plain,
that she must suffer from it? ....Does
not everyone see that a slave trade, carried on around her coasts, must carry
violence and desolation to her very centre?
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The
enslaved people were not ill-treated
unless rebellious. Conditions on the slave ships were acceptable. Several of those involved in the trade,
merchants, ships captains and plantation owners, provided evidence to parliament
regarding this.
|
The
Africans suffered greatly from
being removed from their homeland.
They collected evidence to show that many resisted or preferred death to transportation. Many more
died on the voyage to the Caribbean. Conditions
on the ships were terrible, as illustrated and the speech made by William
Wilberforce to parliament in 1789 and by testimony from people like ship's doctor James Ramsay.
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Slavery
was accepted in the bible. The
pro-slavery supporters used the bible to suggest that the Slave Trade was
tolerated and approved of by God in the days of Abraham.
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It was morally wrong and, as a Christian
country, Britain should not be involved. The anti-slavery society also used
the bible to back up their arguments. They pointed to biblical text like Luke
16:13: "No man can serve two masters". In answer to the claims of
the pro-slavery lobby, Granville Sharp, for example, wrote in his pamphlet
'The just limitation of slavery in the Laws of God': "... If we carefully examine the scriptures we
shall find that slavery and oppression were ever abominable in the sight of
God..."
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However, the
enthusiasm and organisational skills
of the abolitionists saw the first ever
campaign, in which people became angry about the treatment and rights of people they did not know and
were prepared to support them in their struggle for freedom. To successfully
end slavery, the abolitionists needed to do two things: make people aware of what was going on and put pressure on those with the power to change the law. They did this
by introducing many of the ways of campaigning that we take for granted today. http://abolition.e2bn.org/campaign.html
The campaign
to abolish slavery
·
Organising action groups: By the late 1700's, a number of
people had stated their opposition to slavery. The Quakers had put the first
petition to Parliament in 1783. The Committee
for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed on 22 May, 1787, to be the driving force behind the movement in Britain.
It consisted of 12 men, nine of them Quakers. However Quakers were religious
dissenters (disagreed with the doctrines of the Church of England) and banned from public life. To ensure a
wider appeal and greater political influence, three Anglicans, Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson and Philip Sansom,
were chosen to represent the committee. William
Wilberforce was later recruited by Thomas Clarkson to be the voice of the
movement in Parliament.
·
Obtaining support from
influential people: For
example, the Clapham sect is "a
network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its
centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and
spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love
for each other, and by marriage".
·
Investigation and research: For example, Clarkson’s Box. The abolitionists also
published eye witness accounts of the cruelty inflicted upon the slaves. Moving
accounts by former slaves, such as Phyllis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano. These personal testimonies were very powerful, as
the people reading them saw the events through the eyes of a person they could
relate to.
·
Giving the Campaign an identity: The approved design was the
image of an African man, kneeling and in chains with the motto (or slogan) 'Am I not a Man and a Brother?'
·
Using a
variety of media (the written word,
the spoken word and images)
·
Petitioning and lobbying
Parliament: William
Wilberforce’s 1789 Abolition Speech
to the House of Commons, in which he
reasoned that the trade was morally
reprehensible and an issue of
natural justice. Drawing on Thomas Clarkson's
mass of evidence, he described in detail the appalling conditions in which slaves travelled from Africa in the
middle passage, and argued that abolishing the trade would also bring an
improvement to the conditions of existing slaves in the West Indies. He putting
forward twelve propositions for
abolishing the trade, but made no
reference to the abolition of slavery itself. However,
supporters of the Slave Trade used delaying
tactics. The first time a bill was introduced in 1791, Wilberforce lost the debate by 163 votes to 88. After the
bill was rejected, the abolitionists flooded Parliament with petitions. A bill to cease the Slave Trade was passed in the House of Commons in 1792 - but with the amendment that the ban should be 'gradual', which effectively meant 'never'.
A change in political tactics led to the first breakthrough in 1806, when James Stephens advised Wilberforce to propose a ban on British subjects
participating in the Slave Trade with France and its allies. Britain was at
war with France and this made it difficult to oppose the proposal,
without seeming unpatriotic. The bill was passed, limiting the Slave Trade by
about a third and paving the way for the
Abolition Act, which was finally passed on 25th March 1807, abolishing the
Slave Trade in the British colonies.
·
Consumer Action (boycotts of
sugar and rum): An anti-sugar pamphlet by William Fox was
published in 1791. Spurred on by
pamphlets and posters, by 1792, about 400,000 people in Britain were boycotting
slave-grown sugar. Some people managed without, others used sugar from the East Indies, where it was produced by free labour.
·
Election Campaigning and Supporting
Parliamentary Reform: The
abolitionists campaigned to get those who supported abolition, elected. The
December elections of 1832 swept more
than half of those who had supported slavery out of Parliament, paving the
way for the 1833 act.
The 1807
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was a major achievement for the anti-slavery movement
but the law did not go far enough:
• It did not outlaw slavery completely.
Enslaved Africans on British owned plantations would not be set free. Only the
trade had been abolished.
• The slave trade continued. Some traders
risked being captured because profits were so high. Slave ships that were in
danger of being captured threw slaves overboard before reaching British
controlled waters.
• Other countries such as France,
Portugal and Spain still traded in
slaves.
The end of
the Transatlantic Slave Trade, however, did not see the end of slavery and
abolitionists continued to lobby Parliament for a total ban, which was not
achieved until 1833. In July 1833, a
Bill to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire passed in the House
of Commons, followed by the House of Lords on 1st August. Factors that
contributed to the final success of the bill:
·
A change in economic interests. After 1776, when America became independent,
Britain's sugar colonies, such as Jamaica and Barbados, declined as America
could trade directly with the French and Dutch in the West Indies. Furthermore,
as the industrial revolution took hold in the 18th century, Britain no longer
needed slave-based goods. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the West
Indies were becoming less important to Britain, which could get cheaper sugar from
Cuba and Brazil. Also, Britain was becoming less dependent on the sugar trade
for profits, as other important industries, such as iron, cotton and coal, had
grown. Cotton, rather than sugar, became the main produce of the British
economy and English towns, such as Manchester and Salford, became industrial
centres of world importance.
·
Resistance by enslaved people. Enslaved people had resisted
the trade since it began. However, the French Revolution brought ideas of
liberty and equality, which inspired those seeking an end to slavery. Major
slave revolts followed: they gave a strong indication that, regardless of political
opinion, the enslaved people were not going to tolerate enslavement. The revolts shocked the British government
and made them see that the costs and
dangers of keeping slavery in the West Indies were too high. In places like Jamaica, many terrified plantation owners
were finally ready to accept abolition rather than risk a widespread war.
·
Parliamentary reform. When parliament was finally
reformed in 1832, more than half of
those who supported slavery were swept from power. The once powerful West
India Lobby had lost its political strength.
·
Abolition campaigns and religious
groups. The demand
for freedom for enslaved people had become almost universal. It was now driven
forward, not only by the formal abolition campaign but by a coalition of
non-conformist churches as well as Evangelicals in the Church of England.
·
The act,
however, did not free enslaved people
immediately; they were to become "apprentices"
for 6 years. Compensation of 20
million was to be paid to the planters. Protests finally forced the
government to abolish the apprenticeship
system on 1st August, 1838.
·
Economists,
such as Adam Smith, argued that slavery
was less profitable than paying workers. He argued that slaves who were
forced to work for no money would not work anywhere near as hard as those people
who were paid to work. Smith also argued that slaves who were paid would buy
goods from Britain and this would create more jobs in the country. Smith’s
ideas had a big impact on how politicians thought about trade. Some plantation
owners even began to believe that it was cheaper to employ ex-slaves as paid labourers
than to house and feed enslaved Africans.
·
Some
historians argue that abolishing slavery also gave Britain ‘an excuse’ to interfere with the trading of their two big
rivals, France and America. For example, the British Royal Navy could stop
French and American ships, claim that they were looking for slaves to trade.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was
founded in 1833, where William Lloyed Garrison was the most
prominent activist. At first antislavery sentiments were equally strong in both the North and South.
Then the abolitionist movement gained strength in the North, where slavery was
of less economic importance. In the South,
the economic and social system was based on slave labor and took the opposite
tack. Soon, many in the South were preaching that slavery was an
institution sanctioned by God, and that conversion, not
emancipation, is what the slaves need. By 1843, over a thousand Methodist ministers and preachers owned slaves.
Other denominations were equally ambivalent.
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (also known as The Great Debates of
1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Illinois, and Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party
candidate. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery. After losing the election for Senator in
Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. The widespread
coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the
1860. Lincoln said that the American
Declaration of Independence apply to blacks as well as whites. With very little
support in the slave states, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president
in 1860. No compromise or reconciliation was found regarding slavery. The slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America, thus
the American Civil War commenced. Lincoln’s primary goal was to reunite the nation.
The Emancipation Proclamation: Abraham Lincoln signed this on January 1, 1863. The proclamation
declared "that all persons held as
slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be
free." However, it applied only to states that had seceded from the
Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. The proclamation
used the Army to protect escaped slaves,
encouraged the border states to outlaw slavery, and helped push through
Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution, which permanently outlawed slavery. (Because
prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, the United States Constitution (adopted in
1789) did not expressly use the words slave or slavery but included several
provisions about unfree persons.)
His Gettysburg Address of November 1863 became an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, republicanism,
equal rights, liberty, and democracy. In just over two minutes, Lincoln
reiterated the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and
proclaimed the Civil War as a struggle for the preservation of the Union
sundered by the secession crisis, with "a
new birth of freedom", that would bring true equality to all of its
citizens. Lincoln also redefined the Civil War as a struggle not just for the
Union, but also for the principle of
human equality.
References:
Clarke, Duncan. History of American Slavery, JG Press, 1998.
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