Introduction

At the end of the eighteenth century, attitudes in Britain and the United States began to change.  People began to realise that it is wrong for one person to own another.

The Campaign for Abolition

The leader of the campaign to abolish slavery was William Wilberforce (although there were many other prominent abolitionists – notably Granville Sharp , Thomas Clarkson and James Stephen).  Each year, from 1788 to 1807, Wilberforce presented a Bill to the British Parliament calling for the abolition of the slave trade.  For 18 years, his Bill was defeated.

The abolitionists decided to get public opinion on their side.  They produced leaflets and books; they travelled round the country giving speeches.  Their campaign against slavery was the first ever public campaign for reform.

In the end, the abolitionists won.  They changed people's opinions.  The slave trade in the British Empire was abolished in 1807.

The Campaign for Abolition

The abolition of slavery, and the subsequent acrions of the Royal Navy to prevent it, are something of which British people are rightly very proud.  However, historians recently have pointed out that our histories of that achievement have been too white, and too male.  There is a danger that we represent the abolition of the slave trade as something done *to* the slaves, for them *by* the British (which is ironic really, given the part the British played in enslaving them in the first place).

Recent histories acknowledge the huge contribution to abolition made by the slaves themselves – by freed slaves in England (such as the Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cuguano and Ignatius Sancho) and those who resisted slavery in the colonies (such as the Maroons and Toussaint L'Ouverture) – as well as by women (such as Hannah More and Elizabeth Heyrick).

After you have studied this webpage, answer the question sheet by clicking on the 'Time to Work' icon at the top of the page..

Links:

The following websites will help you research further:

• Abolition: BBC Bitesize. 

• The Abolition Project.  

• The Debate for Abolition in the House of Commons, 1807.

ARGUMENTS FOR ABOLITION

ARGUMENTS AGAINST ABOLITION

1  Traditional African history

From the oral (probably sung) history of the Pende people of the Congo:

When the white men came, they exchanged eggs and chickens for beads and gold, they exchanged eggs and chickens for beads and gold. 
They brought us maize and cassava, knives and hoes, groundnuts and tobacco.
From that time until our day the whites brought us nothing more but wars and miseries.  

A  William Hosack, 1833

From a poem, The Happy Negro, in the Jamaica Monthly, October 1833.

And now the happy Negro homeward goes,
Contented as the honey-laden bee,
Because his heart no earthly sorrow knows,
Deluded sons of Britain, Would that ye...
Beheld him seated at his ample meal,
With all his children smiling at his knee!
Then would ye know the nature of his weal,
And honestly confirm the truth of this appeal.

2  John Pinney, 1805

As the abolitionist campaign grew in strength, many planters tried to improve conditions.  When an abolitionist visited the plantations of the Bristol firm of Pinney, John Pinney wrote to his manager:

Do not allow a Negro to be corrected in his presence, or so near for him to hear the whip...  Point out the comforts the Negroes enjoy beyond the poor in this country, drawing a comparison between the climates – show him the property they possess in goats, hogs, poultry, and their Negro-ground.
By this means he will leave the island possessed with favourable sentiments. 

B   Malachy Postlethwayt, 1749

Malachy Postlethwayt was a British economist who wrote this anti-abolitionist pamphlet, Slavery Defended

[The slave trade is] the most nationally beneficial of any we carry on…  [It gives] the West Indian Planters a constant supply of Negro Servants for the Culture of their lands in the produce of Sugars, Tobacco, Rice, Rum and Cotton: so that the extensive Employment of our other Shipping in, to and from America, the great Brood of Seamen consequent thereupon, and the daily bread of the most considerable of our British Manufactures, are owing primarily to the Labour of Negroes. 

3  D. Dennis and S. Willmart, 1984

In 1667, the British Parliament passed an Act to regulate the slaves on the British Plantations. These rules were called 'The Black Codes'. Dennis & Willmart summarise them in Black History for Beginners:

The Black Codes – HIGHLIGHTS
• If a slave owner beats his slaves to death (or kills one by mistake) there shall be NO legal consequences.
• All slaves must carry a pass at all times.
• Slaves shall be whipped or branded on the face if they strike a 'Christian'.

C  King Pepple of Bonny, 19th Century

Many African kings wanted the slave trade to continue. King Pepple of Bonny in Africa criticised people like William Wilberforce (the 'big man) and the British Paliament (the 'grand Palaver-house) :

What is the matter that you big man for your grand Palaver-house make all dat noise for we country and we trade?  We no kill too much man all same you, and, s'pose we black and no sabby book?  God A'rnighty made we so, and we blieve God make we all; but you country want for pass all country, and now den stop we trade...  

4  Lady Nugent, 1802

Lady Nugent was wife of the Governor of Jamaica.

[The white planters] really eat like cormorants and drink like porpoises … they become lazy and inactive.

D  Temple Luttrell, 1777

From his speech in Parliament, 23 May 1777:

Some gentlemen may, indeed, object to the slave trade as inhuman and evil, but let us consider that, if our colonies are to be cultivated, which can only be done by African Negroes, it is surely better to supply ourselves with those labourers in British ships, than buy them from French, Dutch or Danish traders. 

5  John Newton, 1788

An excerpt from Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.

Perhaps [the slaves] would wish to spend the rest of their days on ship-board, could they know beforehand the nature of the servitude which awaits them on shore, and that the dreadful hardships and sufferings they have already endured [on the Middle Passage] would, for the most of them, only end in the excessive toil, hunger, and the excruciating tortures of the cart-whip, inflicted at the whim of an unfeeling overseer, proud of the power allowed him to punish whom, and when, and how he pleases.  

E  Bryan Edwards, 1819

An excerpt from his History of the British West Indies:

[A slave named Clara told me that in Africa] after the death of a great man named Anamoa … twenty others were killed at his funeral.
I asked her which country she liked best, Jamaica or Africa.
She replied that Jamaica was the better country, ‘for that people were not killed there, as in Africa, at the funeral of their masters’.  

6  Nicholas Cresswell, 1774

An excerpt from his Journal.

The Cruelty exercised upon the Negroes is at once shocking to humanity and a disgrace to human nature.  For the most trifling faults, sometimes for more whims of their Masters, these poor wretches are tied up and whipped most unmercifully I have seen them tied up and flogged with a piece of Cowskin till there was very little sign of Life...
Some of them die under the severity of these barbarities, others whose spirits are too great to submit to the insults and abuses they receive put an end to their own lives.  If a person kills a slave he only pays his value as a fine.  It is not a hanging matter.
Certainly these poor beings meet with some better place on the other side of the Grave, for they have a hell on earth.  

F  James Boswell, 1791

An excerpt from his Life of Samuel Johnson:

To abolish slavery, which in all ages God has allowed, and man has continued, would not only be robbery [of the slave owners] but it would be extreme cruelty to the African savages, whom it saves from massacre in their own country, and introduces to a much happier state of life, especially now when their passage to the West Indies and their treatment there is so humanely regulated.
To abolish that trade would be to shut the gates of mercy on mankind  

7  Capt. Thomas Phillips, 1732

An excerpt from A Voyage Made in the Hannibal, 1693-4.

I cannot imagine why they should be despised for their colour, being what they cannot help, and the effect of the climate God has given them. I can't think there is any basic value in one colour more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think so because we are so.  

G  David Hume, 1753

An excerpt from Of National Characters by the English philosopher David Hume:

I am inclined to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites.  There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that colour.  No clever manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences…
In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro [Frank Williams] as a man of learning, but it is likely that he is admired like a parrot who speaks a few words properly.