Abolishing Slavery

4

The fellowship hoped that abolishing the trade in slaves would
end slavery itself and allow Africans to live freely and happily.
Abolition was also intended to end the degradation of the sailors, merchants, and planters involved in slavery.

The Fellowship
Creating a New World

What they felt

In a book that swept fashionably secular Britain, William Wilberforce wrote, “Joy is the mark of a true Christian.” Like Christ, the members of the fellowship loved the earth, their families, friends, and neighbours, food and wine, mountains and cities, roads and seas and God. Their love made them want to treat others fairly and lovingly. In the case of Wilberforce it made him irresistibly charming even to his political enemies. He had sheathed his scathing wit, and as the years passed they felt his love. He wanted his fellow MPs to abolish slavery not only for the sake of the Africans, but for their own sakes.

It is worth emphasizing that the members of the fellowship had experienced a relationship of love with Christ that they wanted to share. It may surprise some to learn that they were not following Christ in the hope that if they were good, they would go to heaven and live a disembodied life listening to harp music. That idea would have struck them as strange and possibly idiotic. The idea that slaves should hope for heaven as a reward for their misery on earth would have struck them as cruel.

Their ultimate destination was a renewed earth, a new world of justice and peace created by God in which they were resurrected. They knew they could not build this new world, but they could build for it. “Every act of justice, every word of truth, every creation of genuine beauty, every act of self-sacrificial love, will be reaffirmed on the last day, in the new world” (NT Wright, Bishop of Durham, Following Jesus). Their happiness came from more than they could describe – from seeing the earth bathed in a beautiful, eternal light, from raising children and feeling the support of friends, from feeling that Christ was with them, standing with them in hardship and grief. They believed it was Christ who was asking them to free Africans.

The fire of events

They trusted in Christ’s support, but the frustrations of trying to abolish slavery were huge. In the early 1790s, France declared war on Britain. An uprising in French St Domingo (now Haiti) saw slaves burning plantations and killing planters, a rebellion that made many Parliamentary supporters of abolition nervous.

In 1793, after receiving support from the House of Commons for gradual abolition of the slave trade (see Part 3), Wilberforce proposed a motion to urge action in the House of Lords, but it was rejected sixty-one to fifty-three. In June, when he proposed a measure to prohibit delivering slaves to foreign powers, it was rejected on the third reading by just two votes. When he carried the measure the following year in the House of Commons, it was thrown out in the Lords on the excuse that more research was necessary.

Petitions from the British people calling for the end of the slave trade continued to arrive in Parliament. They came from hundreds of thousands of people living in small and big towns. Clarkson was organizing valiantly and brilliantly all over Britain.

In 1794, Clarkson collapsed. He had driven himself to the edge of death, and had spent all his little fortune on the cause. Wilberforce immediately organized a subscription, and members of the fellowship gave Clarkson enough money to buy a farm. He was able to make a good recovery, and married a spirited and charming wife who supported abolition and was a friend of the poet Wordsworth. But during the mid and late 1790s, Clarkson was out of action.

Am I not a man and a brother?
Wedgewood ceramic

The cause remains alive

There were many others, most of them unknown today, who kept the cause alive – children who refused to eat sugar, women who wore the Wedgewood image, “Am I not a man and brother?” as brooches and election pins, and voters who sent petitions to Parliament. The fellowship had opened out in spiralling circles to include hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life from all over Britain. One of them was Robert Wedderburn.

In 1795 Robert Wedderburn walked from the port at Musselburgh to Inveresk House, where his father, Lord James Wedderburn, was living. Robert was the child whom James had fathered by a slave girl, Rosanna, while living as a plantation owner in Jamaica. He sold her on while pregnant with his child on the condition that the child should be born a free man, not a slave. When Robert arrived, Lord Wedderburn sent him away with a cracked coin. His father's callous rejection of him was a turning point in Robert Wedderburn's life.

"He left for London and became an activist against slavery," says one of his descendants. "He was outraged from having seen his mother and grandmother whipped by slave masters, and he spoke at public meetings against slavery." (Story and quotes from the Telegraph.) He also wrote letters urging slaves in the West Indies to murder their masters (Hochschild, Bury the Chains). Slave revolts would contribute to the abolition of slavery, as we will see in Part 6.

In 1796, Wilberforce succeeded in carrying abolition to a third reading in the House of Commons. The fellowship was very close to victory, but hope turned to ashes as the measure was rejected by seventy-four to seventy because many of the measure’s supporters were out attending a new comic opera.

Meanwhile the war with France and revolutionary stirrings in Britain preoccupied Pitt and Parliament. Charles Middleton had become Admiral of the Blue (the Admiral of the White and the Admiral of the Fleet, also known as the Admiral of the Red, were his only seniors in command). He had his hands full with the Navy and the war. Wilberforce did not think Pitt was doing enough to bring about peace, and criticized him in Parliament.

Abolition would never be Wilberforce’s only concern. He would try to create better conditions for prisoners, sponsor medical and educational initiatives for the poor, help to establish the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and give away a large part of his wealth. He was not a perfect man by any means. He had the prejudices of his class, but he never faltered in his support for abolition.

He was sustained by contemplative prayer. When he could take a break from London he liked to go out on Lake Windermere, rowing alone in a small boat, “early in the fine autumn mornings when the lake used to be as calm as so much glass, and all the mountains, shrouded with vapours, compassed me round like so many sleeping lions. . .”

In 1797, Wilberforce published a provocative book, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious system of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, contrasted with Real Christianity. To his surprise, it became a bestseller, and had a profound effect on those who read it, so life-changing that it may be seen as fundamental to the success of abolition and the reform movements of the 1820s and 30s and Victorian Age.

This was the same year that Wilberforce met Barbara Spooner, and fell in love. Two weeks after meeting her, he proposed. They married, and had six babies whom he adored. Despite his hectic political schedule he could often be found on his hands and knees playing with his children. (Unusually for the time, all his children survived to adulthood.)

They lived in Clapham. The other evangelicals who lived there – the “Clapham Sect” – provided emotional and practical support to the abolition campaign. One of them, James Stephen, had married Wilberforce’s sister after renouncing the life of a rake. He had spent several years in the West Indies, where he saw slaves unjustly convicted of offenses and burned alive. As a result Stephen had become one of the most determined advocates for abolition. He would provide the campaign with a brilliant strategy.

At the end of the last decade of the 18th century, Britain defeated Napoleon at the great victory of the Nile, but their coalition of allies on the continent began to fall apart. The abolition of the slave trade continued to be lost by small margins. In 1799 it was overshadowed by famine in Britain.

It was also shadowed by rebellion in Ireland in 1798. In 1801 Ireland became part of the United Kingdom, and 100 Irish MPs and a number of Lords entered Parliament. Part of the trade-off for Irish Catholics was to be the granting of Catholic Emancipation. Among them was Richard Martin.

No one had anticipated the impact of the Irish MPs on abolition. They swept in to vote in support of Wilberforce’s 1804 bill, which was carried. Unfortunately, it was too late in the session to get the bill through the Lords. 

War

In 1805, Pitt was back as Prime Minister, and Britain was threatened with invasion by Napoleon who had conquered much of Europe. The Royal Navy was the first line of defence, and was fighting the sea war with the French Navy.

In April, a crisis blew up at the Admiralty. Lord Melville (Dundas), the First Sea Lord, who had supported abolition years ago, was under attack for tolerating gross dishonesty in a subordinate. There were calls for his resignation. Pitt resisted the calls, and asked Wilber to support him. At four in the morning, Wilberforce rose in the House, and looked at his old friend on the front bench. Declaring that “the purity of our political system” was at stake, Wilberforce said that Melville should resign, and the House supported him. The move had remarkable and unforeseen results not only for representative government but for abolition. Pitt appointed fellowship member Charles Middleton, who had reformed the Royal Navy so it could effectively defend Britain, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral of the Red. Middleton (who was made Lord Barham) would now run the sea war against Napoleon.

The far-flung naval campaign against the French that would culminate in the Battle of Trafalgar “hinged on decisions in the Admiralty that required strategic skill, administrative knowledge, strong nerves and swift judgement.” Middleton, who was now 80, had all these, and he had rapport with Lord Nelson, the small, frail, indomitable man who was leading the British fight at sea.

Middleton and Nelson developed a daring new battle plan to attack the French and Spanish fleet, and prevent it from invading Britain. Early on a foggy November day in 1805 Middleton was awoken with the news, "My lord, we have gained a great victory, but Lord Nelson is dead."  The Battle of Trafalgar was over.

The final push        

A few months later, in January, William Pitt died, leaving a pile of debts, a testimony to his refusal to profit from public service. Wilberforce called Pitt fair, magnanimous, and always ready to recognise the truth. “For personal purity, disinterestedness, integrity, and love of his country, I have never known his equal.” Wilberforce succeeded in paying off Pitt’s debts, then turned to the new Government for help in winning abolition. The new PM was William Grenville, one of the three young men who had sat under the oak tree (with Wilberforce and Pitt) and had sworn to end the slave trade.

James Stephen had married Wilberforce's sister after an early career as a philanderer. He had spent a decade on St Kitts, and was horrified by the savagery visited on the slaves. Determined to end slavery he had returned to London, and become a brilliant maritime lawyer. Stephen was aware that many Africans and goods sailing under neutral flags were being carried to colonies belonging to France. He suggested to Wilberforce that there was another way to end the trade by couching it in patriotic language. Britain was at war with France. Propose that Parliament pass a bill that allowed Britain to seize ships trading with colonies hostile to Britain. Navy men, who would benefit by reaping the captured prizes, would support the plan, and so would many MPs.

Grenville gave the bill his support, and the Foreign Trade Slave Act passed swiftly through both Houses, with the planters realising only very late that many of those neutral ships were carrying Africans to the West Indies. Charles James Fox, a flamboyant character who was sharing the ministry with Grenville, now moved for general abolition, and his bill passed, but the King had not approved it when Fox’s death delivered another set-back, and Grenville had to call a general election.

After an absence of nine years, a rejuvenated Clarkson reentered the fray, and once more rode through the country. He met with extraordinary success. Though the pro-slave forces spent £thousands on newspaper advertisements and opposing speakers, petitions calling for abolition flooded Parliament. Wilberforce wrote and published a book that restated the formidable evidence against the slave trade.

Joining him were men who had served with the British Army in the West Indies, and who were appalled by what they had seen. Major General George Walpole had fought the Maroons, the descendants of fugitive slaves, in Jamaica. He had finally defeated them, and had gone to their camp unarmed to negotiate. He gave them his word on behalf of the government that they could continue to live as free people in Jamaica, but the governor of the island broke his promise. Walpole had gone back to Britain to wage a public campaign to force the government to honour the promise he had made. He was now in the House, supporting abolition. So was Sir John Doyle who spoke with contempt of the viciousness of slavery.

On January 2, 1807 Grenville introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade in the House of Lords. He rose to make an impassioned speech, declaring that members should have ended the trade long ago and forcefully telling them that the slave trade was contrary to justice, humanity, and sound policy. Despite feeling that ending the trade was a quixotic act of national self-sacrifice, the Lords passed the bill by unexpectedly enormous majorities, and on February 23, Viscount Howick (Charles Grey) moved its second reading in the House of Commons.

On February 24, 1807, the House of Commons passed the bill to abolish the slave trade by an overwhelming majority of two hundred and eighty-three. Wilber sat in the House with his head bowed and tears streaming down his face. He was thinking, perhaps, of the long road to abolition and those who had traveled with him. Pitt and Equiano, Lady Middleton, James Ramsay, and Charles Wesley had passed “into the light”, but the slave trade was finally at an end.

On March 25, the King gave his assent. Hearing the news, John Newton died a happy man. Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson and the Quaker friends, Hannah More, Charles Middleton and much of Britain celebrated. But there remained one crucial last task, and it was to the Royal Navy that the task fell.

Middleton, the young boy who had begun as a servant to a captain and had become Admiral of the Red, had done his work well. To wish the end of the trade or even to legislate the end was one thing. To stop it required the Royal Navy. It would be a hard and dangerous job.

Abolishing Slavery
THE FELLOWSHIP, Part 5
At Sea

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