Why slavery was abolished

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Why slavery was abolished

There are many things that have created slavery but also many things to abolish it. Historians have identified a number of factors that contributed to the abolition of slavery, but here are the most important ones that I will talk about in this essay; middle class whites, black slaves, working class whites and economics.

    The white middle class people played a huge part in the abolition of slavery. William Wilberforce was a highly respected MP; he played a huge part in the abolition by forming a group opposing slavery. He campaigned by making lots of speeches and studied the terrible conditions on board the slave ships.

    Granville Sharp was a surgeon in east London, when he met a slave named Jonathan Strong. Strong had been whipped and badly beaten by his master David Lisle. Sharp took him to hospital where he recovered. Strong was working as a healthy messenger boy when Lisle had him recaptured. When Sharp heard of this, he took Lisle to court to regain Strong his freedom.  Sharp won the case and it got him a lot of good publicity, which Sharp later used, for his further campaigns.

   William Pitt was a prime minister at the time and he also heavily opposed slavery, he got parliament to make the law that to improve conditions on the plantations in the West Indies but unfortunately this had very little effect.

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   Josiah Wedgwood was the younger son of Thomas Wedgwood. Josiah created a plaque to try and change people’s minds about slavery, the plaque was of a black slave in chains and around the sides read:

‘Am I not a man or a brother?’

 This saying helped abolish slavery because it made people realise that slaves are human beings and are men or brothers not cargo. He also joined with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp to form the society for the abolition of the slave trade.

   

   

It was not just the middle class whites ...

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