Abolishing Slavery

6

The slaves in the West Indies learned to read, and
their reading inspired their efforts to become free.
They became a vital part of the fellowship to abolish slavery.

The Fellowship
Abolishing Slavery at Last

Rev. John Smith, Quamina, Elizabeth Heyrick, Sophia Sturge, George Stephen, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Sharpe, Charles, Lord Grey, Lord John Russell &
Henry Brougham

In the 1820s, only William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson survived of the original fellowship. But their fellowship to abolish slavery was about to expand – to include the children of those who had fought to end the slave trade, British women from all walks of life, two reformist Lords, and the slaves themselves.

Ending the trade in slaves in 1807 had not freed the slaves, as had been hoped. Africans were no longer carried as slaves to the British West Indies, but the babies born to slaves grew up to be slaves. The work was hard and long even for women far advanced in pregnancy, and the whip enforced the work regime. The Rev. John Smith, a missionary in what is now Guyana wrote, “The first thing as usual which I heard was the whip. From ½ past 6 until ½ past 9 my ears were pained by the whip. Sure these things will awaken the vengeance of a merciful God.” The government in London was trying to keep track of how slaves were treated. Extrapolating from the recorded figures, it is estimated that slaves were receiving two million lashes a year, a figure that can only be described as revolting.

Fire and brimstone

And the slaves did revolt. They had inspiration: the cruelty and injustice of their slave owners and the successful revolt of slaves in the French colony of Saint Domingue, where blacks eventually established the country of Haiti in 1804. Judaeo-Christian scriptures also moved them, especially Moses leading the enslaved people of Israel out of Egypt and the New Testament’s instruction that every person – man and woman, slave and free – was equal before God. Jesus had advised “turning the other cheek” when your cheek was slapped, but to enslave another was to do more than slap a cheek, and the slaves could not believe that Christ wanted them to suffer and die unto the last generation without defending themselves. (Had Jesus not thrown the hawkers and money-changers out of the temple?) Though it has become a meme in some sections of western society that violence and war are never justified, that it is always better to be a victim than to fight or defend oneself, this was not the position of the slaves or many of their ministers.

In churches established by Methodist, Anglican, and Presbyterian missionaries from Britain, Africans were treated as equals, were taught to read and write, against the orders of the planters, and were given positions of respect as deacons. “The Christian message had power, and so did the ritual, which sometimes echoed elements of African religion. The hymns, the prayers, the call-and-response cadence of the church service, the vision of the Promised Land, all spoke of a human dignity starkly different from the world of slave labor.”

Denunciations of slavery by the British also inspired the slaves in the West Indies. In Guyana, in 1823, the slaves read and heard about the formation of a new anti-slavery society in London. Rumours flew in the port between coffee and sugar warehouses and the "palm-shaded white mansions with red tile roofs, their courtyards planted with orange, lemon, and banana trees.” The Rev. John Smith had a chapel attended by Quamina, who was his deacon and whom he had taught to read. Under Qamina's leaadeship, members of the chapel planned a massive sit-down strike to demand wages. Joined by 9,000 other slaves, they met the governor on the road. When he asked what they wanted, they said, “our rights”. They had no guns, only knives and cutlasses. They resisted for a month, and set plantations on fire before being mowed down by soldiers with guns.

Smith, who had refused to take up arms against them, was arrested as the ringleader, and put on trial. “From jail, where he was gravely ill with tuberculosis, he smuggled out a message: 2 Corinthians, 4:8-9." The slaves understood – “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” The court sentenced him to be hanged. He died of pulmonary consumption before he could be executed. This revolt was put down, but slaves were planning revolts in Jamaica.

Women to the rescue

News of John Smith’s trial and death outraged the British people. Thomas Clarkson, now 63, was already on the road, reenergized and mobilizing public opinion. He and William Wilberforce and a younger generation had established the abolition society that so heartened slaves in Guyana. Clarkson traveled 10,000 miles in 12 months, gathering supporters. The pro-slavery interests immediately prepared a barrage of newspaper advertisements and pamphlets, but by the time Clarkson was done, more than 200 abolition groups had organized around the country, and 777 petitions were piled on the table in Parliament.

The society had called for gradual abolition, and Parliament responded to the petitions gradually, but the people of Britain did not want gradual abolition; they wanted slavery ended immediately. The problem was that Parliament was controlled by a small number of men elected by a small number of enfranchised voters. It could be argued that the right to vote was more restrictive than it had been in Montfort’s time in the 13th century when any man in the counties who had 40 shillings could vote for a representative to Parliament. In the 1820s, only men with considerable property could vote. To stand as MP required an income of £300 or £600 pounds a year, an enormous sum then. Aggravating the situation, voting districts were hopelessly corrupt or out of date. Manchester had no representatives in Parliament at all, while Old Sarum, which had almost no inhabitants, had two.

Unsupported in Parliament, the abolition movement drifted until Elizabeth Heyrick burst on the scene. Elizabeth had made a tempestuous marriage (her husband was always "her plague" or "her darling"). After he died she became a Quaker, and in 1824 she published a pamphlet that called for Immediate, not Gradual Abolition. “The West Indian planters have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question,” she wrote. “The abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen. . .” She defended the slave insurrections – “Was it not in the cause of self-defence from the most degrading, intolerable oppression?” As a result of her clear, passionate call, more than 70 women’s groups sprang up across Britain, and began organizing for abolition.

“Why petition Parliament at all, to do that for us, which. . .we can do more speedily and effectually for ourselves?” they asked, and they started a sugar boycott that included not just sugar but all purchases from shopkeepers who sold sugar. In the parliamentary elections of 1826, the “Ladies Associations” called for men to support only those candidates who supported freeing the slaves now. They canvassed communities house by house. “One woman, Sophia Sturge, personally called on three thousand households.” They circulated petitions, raised money, coaxed and lectured and filled up meeting halls.

Yet they could not get Parliament to free the slaves. Nothing would budge the votes of the smooth-talking pro-slavery block of 50 MPs. They refused to admit it was wrong to own human beings and they could not understand James Ramsay’s economic argument that they would get more and better work from men and women who were free and paid. They could not see this even though there were free blacks in the West Indies who proved it daily.

In May, 1830, two thousand people met in London at Freemasons’ Hall. Wilberforce, now stooped with age, and wearing a metal girdle to keep from slumping, was there, as was Clarkson. James Stephens, the maritime lawyer whose ideas had been so effective in ending the slave trade in 1807 had died, but his son, George Stephen, was attending, as was big Thomas Buxton, the prime supporter of gradual abolition in Parliament. Despite shouts of “Order!” one of the audience moved “That from and after the 1st of January, 1830, every slave born within the King’s dominions shall be free.” The crowd erupted for minutes in cheers, and the amendment passed unanimously. Within the year Stephen and his friends were paying six speakers to travel and rouse the country. Their speeches stirred thousands. But Parliament still refused to act. It was now clear that Parliament itself had to be reformed before abolition could occur.

Reform, insurrection, and election

Charles, Lord Grey, has been working for 40 years to get voting reforms enacted by Parliament. Standing with him were Henry Brougham and Lord John Russell, who were equally determined to make Parliament more representative. When Grey became Prime Minister, Russell rose in the House of Commons to move the first Reform Bill. He was greeted with hoots of scorn and laughter.

But middle class and working class Brits supported the bill. After a national uproar and new elections, Lord Grey returned as PM, and Henry Brougham became Chancellor. The reform bill was moved for a second time, and the newly elected House of Commons passed it by one vote. The bill then went to the House of Lords, which rejected it. Newspapers announced the result in pages bordered in black. Brits all around the country announced they would go on strike and refuse to pay taxes.

Lord Grey and Henry Brougham advised the King that the country was on the verge of revolution, and told him to name members to the House of Lords who would pass the Reform Act. An ashen-faced William IV privately advised those Lords who opposed the bill to abstain and allow it to go through. The Lords did, with the result that middle class Brits and industrial towns gained greater representation in Parliament. Pocket boroughs, owned by the rich, and rotten boroughs, with few voters, were swept out, and the vote was given to all men who owned property worth 40 shillings a year or who leased £50 worth of property. If only abolitionists could be elected to this reformed parliament, the abolition of slavery would become reality.

Meanwhile, insurrections had broken out among slaves in Jamaica. They had read and heard of the revived antislavery movement. As William Taylor, a former plantation owner remarked, “I cannot understand how you can expect [slaves] to be quiet who are reading English newspapers.”

One slave who was a newspaper and Bible reader was Samuel Sharpe. He was convinced that God had promised the slaves their freedom. He believed that the King would free them, and that the planters would try to kill them. A charismatic man, Sharpe began talking to other slaves at prayer meetings. On Christmas Day, 1831, the slaves learned to their grief that the King had not freed them, and their anger took the form of a revolt that burned down more than 200 plantations and sugar cane warehouses. Built on ridges, the houses acted as signal beacons.

Soldiers barely managed to repress the rebellion of 20,000 slaves. Sharpe was hanged. Before he died, he told Henry Bleby, a missionary who visited him in jail, “I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery.” Sharpe’s defiance became a watchword in Jamaica. White planters burned down churches, and beat and tarred Bleby, who was barely saved by black supporters from being set on fire.

The missionaries returned to Britain, holding up spiked punishment collars and Bleby’s tarred handkerchief. They testified that the slaves, fellow Christians, were flogged when they were caught praying. To realists it seemed crystal clear that only abolition could save Jamaica. But those with vested interests in slavery continued to oppose abolition.

Onward

In the months before the expanded electorate chose a new Parliament in December, 1832, anti-slavery campaigning intensified. Britain had industrialized. The campaigners no longer travelled by horse but by steam engine. The campaigners printed the names of candidates in newspapers and on posters as anti, doubtful, or recommended with perfect confidence. The abolitionists met every morning for breakfast in the Guildhall Coffee House to make plans for operations inside and outside Parliament.

The December elections swept half of those who had supported slavery out of Parliament, but it was still not clear whether Parliament would act. Wilberforce, now dying, penned one last petition. The debate in Parliament lasted three months. In July 1833, MPs mustered every vote. On 26 July the Abolition of Slavery bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons, and the House rushed a messenger to Wilberforce's house. They told Wilber that slavery in British colonies would be abolished, and on 29 July he died a happy man.

They have had to make a practical deal that infuriated many abolitionists, however. They have had to agree that the British Government will pay the slave owners for their freed slaves, and that the slaves will be apprenticed before being freed on 1 August 1838.

Only Great Britain had abolished slavery. It continued to exist in the southern United States, in the Caribbean colonies of other European countries, in most of South America, in Russia, most of Africa, and in the Islamic world.

On the night of 31 July thanksgiving celebrations in churches all over the British Empire celebrated the “burying of the chains” and the freeing of 800,000 men, women, and children.

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