Introduction
In 1765 a black slave imported from Barbados was brutally beaten by his master. The latter left him to die in terrible agony right in London Street (Christophe, 2020, p.42). Granville Sharp, a physician who treated the poorest classes of the British capital, picked up the poor man and cured his wounds. Two years later, the slave’s owner met him by chance in the street, took him back to his house, locked him up, and never let him out again. Dr. Sharp appealed to the authorities for justice and secured the young man’s release. Granville Sharpe was a zealous Christian. Impressed with the ideas of democracy of the Renaissance, he was convinced that slavery was inherently immoral and contrary to English law, so he decided to support other blacks who were campaigning to abolish slavery.
In 1772, the trial of one slave, James Somerset, set a judicial precedent. The decision to grant freedom to the fugitive Somerset was the beginning of recognizing the illegitimacy of slavery throughout the British Empire (Christophe, 2020, p. 44). From that time onwards, it was no longer possible to encounter advertisements in London such as: ‘Hanging locks of silver for sale for negroes and dogs’.
In 1780 a group of English idealists, inspired by the example of Granville Sharpe, initiated a debate on slavery in the empire. In 1785, the University of Oxford organized a short story competition on the theme “Is it lawful to make a man a slave against his will?” (Mathieson, 2017, p. 135). The winner of the competition was Thomas Clarkson, a 25-year-old theology student. He immediately set off for London. On his arrival in London, he immediately contacted Dr. Sharpe, who had organized a circle of like-minded Quakers who long opposed slavery. With them, he founded the Committee for the Abolition of Slavery.
The determined abolitionists decided to launch a campaign to raise public awareness of slavery. Clarkson traveled to the critical Negro ports of Bristol and Liverpool to gather intelligence on how masters behaved towards slaves. The defenders of slavery sent goons to stop Clarkson, and he narrowly escaped death when they attacked him in Liverpool (Mathieson, 2017, p.167). However, this did not break the young man.
He began to organize local committees in favor of abolishing slavery and held public debates. He invited freed slaves to inspire others to fight. An important impetus for the beginning and motivation to continue the anti-slavery campaign was the inaccessibility of education and spiritual enlightenment to slaves. “The slaves, more especially the great body of the field Negroes, were practically strangers to the multiplied blessings of the Christian Revelation” (An appeal to the religion, 1823, p.296).
The prohibition of slavery in Britain was a turning point in world moral history. In the battle against slavery, “a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality, of the most unprecedented degradation, and unrelenting cruelty” was defeated (An appeal to the religion, 1823, p.295). A system that had existed for centuries was abolished, even though it was profitable and supported what was believed to be Britain as a world power (Wills, 2019, p.56). Moreover, the abolition of slavery seems to have been one of the rarest moments in history. Those who enjoyed the benefits of life fought for the human dignity and equality of those who did not have access to those benefits. When it comes to change, it is always of interest to historians, especially if there is a radical change in the system of moral values.
Reasons for the emergence of the abolitionist movement
In eighteenth-century Britain, several critical circumstances contributed to the rise and development of the abolitionist movement; the most important, perhaps, was that it was a time of religious reform and demographic change. The urbanization of English society also facilitated the spread of ideas and information. The new culture of the press, news and coffee houses became a powerful new medium for distributing ideas and information beyond the control of the government (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.4). At the same time, improvements in transport and communications made it much easier to spread ideas outside London.
In 1754, for example, it took 254 hours to get from London to Edinburgh; by 1792, the journey time had been reduced to 75 hours (Mathieson, 2017, p.153). By 1789 letters reached their destination within twenty-four hours, and postal carriages delivered London newspapers to the province.
By the end of the eighteenth century, literacy had risen considerably, and there was greater scope for disseminating ideas in society. More and more people began to show concern and even opposition to the system of slavery, and books and articles have been actively written on the subject. “Let anyone peruse the writings of authors who opposed the abolition of the Slave Trade, more especially the Travels of Mr. Parke and M. Golberry, both published since the commencement of the Slave Trade contest” (An appeal to the religion, 1823, p.298). Importantly, rigorous criteria for evaluating existing institutions, including the institution of slavery, also began to be proposed.
Around the same time, the Enlightenment was spreading in Western Europe. Although the movement was heterogeneous and brought together diverse viewpoints, many Enlightenment thinkers converged in their criticism of religious dogma and a society that distributed goods among people according to their background (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.6). Enlightenment thinkers were eager to apply their scientific and mathematical discoveries to social and political problems, questioning conventional ideas and putting their views in the public domain. The spread of Enlightenment ideas in the mid-eighteenth century triggered an unprecedented wave of humanist sentiment (An appeal to the religion, 1823, p.300). These movements included movements to abolish torture, improve prison conditions, help the poor, end the abuse of animals, and improve education. These movements attracted public attention.
Abolitionist campaign strategies
In 1783 English Quakers began to establish committees to oppose the slave trade, petition Parliament, and win public opinion by exposing the evils of the slave trade in tracts. In 1787, the Society for the Abolition of Slavery was founded, headed by Thomas Clarkson (Griffin, 2018, p.245). He decided to dedicate his life to the eradication of slavery. He worked full-time for society and became the first paid professional abolitionist.
English abolitionists, including Clarkson, were convinced that they lived in a time of impending victory over all vices. They hoped to win public opinion and turn it against the slave trade to pressure Parliament to abolish the slave trade. They used every means to achieve this goal: they formed local antislavery committees and published newsletters and posters. They also boycotted goods produced with slave labor, held public readings, distributed information by messenger, sent letters to officials, and published reports on their activities (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.3). The initiative from below exceeded the abolitionists’ most ambitious dreams.
In 1792 the government received 519 petitions against the slave trade and slavery with 390,000 signatures (Griffin, 2018, 241). Thus, it can be concluded that the abolitionist information and education campaign was very effective. Boycotts also played an important role, and people were pleased to join them. For example, more than 400,000 British people publicly refused to consume Caribbean sugar (Griffin, 2018, p.252). Sales of Wedgwood porcelain, with its famous image of a slave surrounded by the questioning inscription “Am I not a man and a brother?”, skyrocketed.
Political success, however, was a separate issue. In 1789 Clarkson’s close friend William Wilberforce, MP for Kingston-Upon-Hull, and British Prime Minister William Pitt tried to ban the slave trade through the House of Commons. The attempt failed, but Wilberforce continued the fight. In 1792 he succeeded in getting a bill outlawing the slave trade through the House of Commons, but it failed again in the more conservative House of Lords.
Seeking political success, the early abolitionists developed a campaign strategy to abolish slavery that led indirectly to the goal. Well aware that many members of Parliament were economically linked to the slave trade system, they deliberately framed their campaign as being against the horrors of the slave trade rather than against slavery itself (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.4). There were several reasons for this decision. Firstly, the reformers feared that it would be challenging to persuade Parliament to abolish slavery (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.5). Secondly, they believed that if they succeeded in abolishing the African slave trade, slavery would die by itself, which of course, was naive.
In making arguments against the slave trade, they deliberately lowered the humanistic pathos. They tended to take a pragmatic approach, arguing that free labor would be more efficient than slave labor (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.5). Wilberforce, one of the early leaders of English abolitionism, is considered a shining symbol of the new morality.
Wilberforce and Clarkson kept their hands up and continued their mission. Finally, in 1807, they reached their goal (Griffin, 2018, p.265). The year before, while the war with Napoleon was raging, the British government had banned ships from transporting slaves to the French colonies. Seizing the opportunity, Wilberforce, supported by another abolitionist minister, Lord Grenville, ensured the ban applied to the entire slave trade. In a sense, Wilberforce and the abolitionists won the battle for public opinion. They mastered the complexities of the legislative machinery. Nevertheless, it is one thing to win the votes needed to ban slavery and quite another to win the ultimate victory in the battle to put the new laws into practice.
Post-abolition dynamics
When the abolitionists passed a law banning the slave trade, they believed that this would end slavery without any further legal action. They calculated that without the trade, slavery would surely die. Unfortunately, both slavery and even the slave trade persisted. Slave owners continued to buy slaves from traders from those countries where the trade in live goods was still legal (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.5). It was not possible to impose an injunction on all British ships that transported slaves. Even after the British Parliament upheld the law banning slavery altogether in 1833, slave owners and their allies in Parliament managed to find various loopholes to avoid enforcing it in practice. The abolitionists hoped that deprived of the use of slaves, the planters on the Caribbean sugar plantations would be unable to find cheap labor.
However, the British government allowed a few dubious arrangements to prevent their ruin. In 1840 planters were allowed to make “contracts” with freed slaves, thereby leaving them under their control (Nicholas, 2020, p.137). In 1843, following protests by abolitionists who claimed that these treaties were a form of slavery, the planters tried to persuade the American government to participate in a plan to transport slaves to the Caribbean plantations (Wills, 2019, p.44). When that scheme failed too, they switched to immigrants from Asia and, in an attempt to regain their former prosperity, brought in hundreds of thousands of workers from there. In this way, African slavery was ended. Following England, slavery was abolished in France in 1848, in the United States in 1865, and in Brazil in 1888 (Nicholas, 2020, p. 129).
Conclusion
In conclusion, in the eighteenth century, a variety of ideas related to slavery circulated in society, including the concepts of natural law, personal freedom, and the equality of all men before God. It is well known that often these ideas have been around for a long time. Initially, their purpose was to protect the elite from attacks, real and imagined, from the government, the oppressive ruling church, or the legally protected aristocracy (An appeal to the abolitionists, 1840, p.3). However, in the eighteenth century, as new ideas about the slave trade and the institution of slavery spread, concepts of right, freedom, and equality, initially intended for other purposes, set new standards for judging slavery.
Whether this new understanding of right, freedom, and equality was political or religious, in any case, those who thought seriously about these issues recognized that slavery could not withstand being confronted with these ideas. In British abolitionism or any other humanist movement, it is not necessary that all share the same beliefs and principles and that all dissenters move in the same way towards Enlightenment. The struggle must go on, and the ideological means must be varied. In the struggle for public opinion, the abolitionists made arguments based on law and arguments based on the equality of all people before God. They used public meetings, pamphlets describing the conditions of slavery and the slave trade, petitions, boycotts, china products – every available means to persuade.
References
An appeal to the abolitionists of Great Britain for the American Anti-Slavery Society. (1840). Web.
Christophe, K. (2020). Henry Christophe and the English Abolitionists. In Dubois L., Glover K., Ménard N., Polyné M., & Verna C. (Eds.), The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics (pp. 41-44). Duke University Press. Web.
Griffin, S. (2018). Antislavery utopias: Communitarian labor reform and the abolitionist movement. Journal of the Civil War Era, 8(2), 243-268.
Mathieson, W. L. (2017). British slavery and its abolition. Pickle Partners Publishing.
Nicholas, R. (2020). Abolition and revolution. In Murder on the middle passage: The trial of captain Kimber (pp. 121-148). Boydell & Brewer. Web.
Wills, M. (2019). Abolition onshore. In Envoys of abolition: British naval officers and the campaign against the slave trade in West Africa (pp. 41-68). Liverpool University Press. Web.