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Abolition

There were two Abolitionist Acts, one to abolish the slave trade, the other to abolish slavery. The first was the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade that was passed in Parliament in 1807; the second was the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The Act of 1807 was ineffective in stopping the slave trade even to British colonies, for many rogue British ships continued transporting slaves for high profits. If they were pursued by a ship from the Royal Navy, they could hoist a foreign flag and declare themselves independent of British jurisdiction, or they could dump their human cargo overboard. Ships from other nations were still engaged in slave transport. A quarter of a century later, the Emancipation Movement brought about the Act of 1833, which would have been more effective if it had had fewer clauses of exception. The plantation owner would argue want of housing or other essentials for the care of a slave if liberated. The largest exception went to the East India Company, which was also the largest house of foreign trade and major source of British revenue. The East India Company was allowed to keep slaves for another 10 years, until 1843. It was not just the plantation owners but the British economy as a whole that was dependent on slave labor.

Although distinguished from those who had been abducted in Africa and sold into slavery in the colonies, an estimated 1400 black people were held in servitude in England until 1772. William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, presided over the case of James Somerset, a slave owned by Charles Stewart, an American customs officer, who had arrived in England on business. Somerset ran away, but was recaptured and bound as a slave to be sent to Jamaica. When he was brought to trial, Granville Sharp and a number of other abolitionists attended the case, determined to secure a judgment that would abolish slavery. Observing that no law of England approved slavery, Mansfield ruled that Somerset must be discharged. While the Somerset case confirmed that it was illegal to hold slaves in England, Mansfield's judgment was by no means an end to slavery (Heward 1979: 139-140).

Slavery was justified by claims that the Africans were sub-human, uneducable, incapable of functioning on their own. Against this greed-motivated hypocrisy, the persistent efforts of a few dedicated leaders gradually made progress. Thomas Clarkson, an influential abolitionist, wrote on the injustice of slavery in 1785 as a student at Cambridge, and subsequently published his Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade (1788). He went aboard an African trading ship, The Lively. Not a slave ship, it carried African carvings and other artifacts. The craftsmanship made it obvious that the claims of the slave traders were false; these were an intelligent and artistic people. Clarkson collected and began exhibiting more examples of their art. He filled his work with evidence of their creative skills, and with accounts of the cruelty to which they were subjected. From the sailors he interviewed, Clarkson published An Essay on the Slave Trade (1789), based on the narrative of a sailor who had served aboard a slave ship.

To overcome the lies that had been circulated to justify enslavement of captive Africans, Clarkson's strategy was to emphasize their intelligence and expose the cruelty of their treatment. During the 20 years in which the Abolitionists labored to halt the slave trade, other authors joined the campaign. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, lent evangelical authority to the movement. The abolitionist presence in Parliament was provided by William Wilberforce, who commenced his long political career when elected Member of Parliament at the age of 21. Their company was joined by Hannah More, a remarkably successful moral teacher and philanthropist. Her poem, Slavery (1788), described a captive separated from her children and enchained as a slave, treated as less than human simply because of her skin color. Robert Southey, in "The Sailor, Who Had Served In The Slave Trade"(1799), tells of the moral anguish of a sailor from a slave ship who had been forced by his captain to flog a woman who subsequently dies from her wounds.

Returning from France at the end of November 1792, Wordsworth found that concern in England over the slave trade almost rivaled interest in the Revolution:

When to my native land,
After a whole year's absence, I returned,
I found the air yet busy with the stir
Of a contention which had been raised up
Against the traffickers in Negro blood,
An effort which, though baffled, nevertheless
Had called back old forgotten principles
Dismissed from service, had diffused some truths,
And more of virtuous feeling, through the heart
Of the English people.

Wordsworth, whose mother was a Cookson, remained close friends with the Cooksons of Kendal and joined their effort in gathering local signatures for the national Petition for the Abolition of the Slave Trade to be submitted to Parliament. Early in 1806 he requested that Elizabeth Cookson send a sheet of parchment for the signatures, so that his petition "might be forwarded at the same time" as Thomas's petition from Kendal. When the Abolition Act was passed, Wordsworth wrote a sonnet, "On the final passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March, 1807," praising Clarkson for his success after two decades of gathering the necessary support: "Clarkson! it was an obstinate Hill to climb: / How toilsome, nay how dire it was." The Act of 1807 was also an occasion for another sonnet, in which Wordsworth reflected on the fate of Toussaint L'Overture, "the most unhappy man of men!" After the Haitian Revolution (1794-1797), L'Overture organized a constitutional government (1801). He was betrayed by Napoleon, who sent his troops to seize control of the island. L'Overture was arrested and shipped to France where he died in prison (April 7, 1803). "Take comfort," Wordsworth wrote, "Thou hast left behind / Powers that will work for thee."

The act abolishing the slave trade had no sooner passed (1807) than agitation for the abolition of slavery commenced. As a record of the 20-year endeavor, Clarkson wrote a History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808). In reviewing Clarkson's book, Coleridge predicted the need for extensive re-education (see Sympathy). The theater had already served as an effective platform to win public sympathy with such plays as George Colman's Inkle and Yarico (Haymarket, August 4, 1787) and Obi; or, Three Finger'd Jack (Haymarket, July 2, 1800); and John Cartwright Cross's King Caesar; or, The Negro Slaves (Royal Circus, September 16, 1801). The endeavor was continued with Kaloc; or, The Slave Pirate (Sadler's Wells, August 9, 1813), an aquatic melodrama that traces a captive's escape from slavery and subsequent maritime adventures. Written by the prolific playwright Charles Dibdin, Jr., Kaloc was performed at Sadler's Wells until the emancipation. Thomas Morton's The Slave (Covent Garden, November 12, 1816) and the anonymous dramatic indictment, The African; or, Slave Trade Cruelty (Coburg, January 6, 1823) furthered the effort to gain public support for the abolition of slavery.

Under increasing pressure to end slavery, plantation owners protested that without slave labor the sugar plantations could not operate. The sugar boycott in England did little to hamper their prosperity, a fact that prompted Maria Edgeworth to ridicule the effort in 1789. Because sugar cane remained the major crop sustaining the plantation owners, replacing slaves with paid laborers meant a radical shift in the economy. Amelia Opie's anti-slavery poem, "The Black Man's Lament; or How To Make Sugar" (1826), relates the life of a slave in a narrative originally intended for children. In a simple style that attracted a wider readership, Opie describes the hunt of the slave traders, their capture of an African, his voyage in chains on a crowded slave ship, and his arrival in the West Indies where he is forced to labor among the sharp leaves of the sugar plants.

Thomas De Quincey, writing for a Tory readership in his two-part essay, "West India Property" (June 14 and 28, 1828), responded to charges that the plantation owners were resisting and forestalling all efforts at change. His sympathies were with the slave holders rather than with the slaves. Upholding the argument of the colonists concerning loss of income and property, he advocated a gradual process of liberation. On the one hand, De Quincey argued that "the moral improvement of the negroes is in the highest degree satisfactory"; on the other, he suggested that the process of re-education still had a long way to go. Hampering Christian teaching were the persisting masquerade rituals of Obeah men calling on the dead.

When Parliament finally passed an act abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, it was compromised by notable exceptions in order to protect the economy of Britain's largest investments. Slavery was allowed to continue in "Territories in the Possession of the East India Company," the "Island of Ceylon," and "the Island of Saint Helena." These exceptions were not eliminated until 1843.

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