Resistance to slavery.

The Republicans prevailed and in 1791 the king and queen were made prisoners. Many noblemen fled the country and the city of Paris fell into the revolutionaries hands. The National Assembly issued the Declaration of Rights of Man that stated that 'men are born free and equal in rights'. The watchwords of France's new revolutionary leaders were 'Liberty! Equality! And Fraternity! These words and the French revolution in general had a profound effect on the Haitian Revolution.

Class Division & Terrible slave conditions in St Dominique

The population of St Domingue in 1789 was made up of 35,000 Whites, 25,000 Mulattoes and 450,000 slaves. The whites were not a united group. At the top were the very rich planters. Grouped with them socially were the leading civil and military officers they were known as the grands blancs. The merchant and the professional men were cut off socially from the grands blancs. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, the planters were frequently in debt to the merchants, but this was not the case in St Domingue where the grands blancs, free of obligation, despised them. The third class of whites was the petits blancs. They were the poor whites; the overseers, artisans and small shopkeepers. They often had affinities through marriage with the mulattoes, and were on top of all these divisions, all Creole whites were despised by these born in France. The mulattoes, or free coloureds, were known as affranchis in St Domingue, They were unique among the mulatto populations of the West Indies in that, not only were they very numerous, but some were also very rich. Some of them had been educated in France and some even chose to live there. The code Noir allowed the mulattoes the right of free men ,but the restrictive laws which came later, especially those of 1766, had taken away much of their freedom. They could not hold public offices or any legal position, nor could they be officers in the militia. One-third of all fertile land in St Domingue belonged to mulattoes and many of them on the side of the whites when it came to the question of freedom for slaves. On the other hand their legal and social disabilities made them closer to the slaves. The vast number of slave in St Domingue was due to the rapid expansion of the economy especially the sugar industry the condition and treatment of slaves in St Domingue was worse than in any other West Indian island, including Jamaica. It had become the extreme example of a slave economy. In the boom, planters were making much bigger profit than elsewhere, to the detriment of the slaves. They were worked excessively hard and were poorly fed. The dead rate of slaves in St Domingue in the 1780s was the highest in the West Indies. On some estates, the whole labour force had to be renewed every five years. The terrible life of the slaves was accentuated by the terrible life of the slaves was accentuated by the luxurious life of the planters, both white and mulatto. Consequently the hatred felt by slaves towards their masters was correspondingly great. When the Revolution broke out and anarchy prevailed, the slaves were determined to exterminate the whites.

The Planters revolt

In the Caribbean the planters were the first to revolt. The governors of St Domingue and the other French islands ordered them not to send representative to the Estates general. But the planters disobeyed and sent six delegates to the meeting in Paris. They became members of the new government body of France, the National Assemble. On 2 March 1790, the National Assembly granted the West Indian assemblies the right to make their own laws

The Coloured Revolt on St Domingue

The free coloureds feared that the planters would use their new powers to pass even more repressive racist law. They began to organize their own protection. In Paris they were helped by an abolitionist society, Les Amis des Noirs the Friend of Black People. A young coloured living in Paris, Vincent Oge, petitioned members of the natioal Assembly asking them to grant free coloueds the right to be represented in the colonial assemblies. The National Assembly reused and Oge left France to lead a coloured revolt against the planters. But the free coloureds in St Domingue wrer not yet ready to fight for their rights and only a few joined the young together and succeeded in defeating the small band with very little difficulty. Oge and Chavannes were captured and brutally executed.

Black Revolt

As History goes, Mackandal's followers believed that he was unvulnerable. He was caught in 1758, and he was to be publicly executed. However, he somehow managed to escape from the flames thereby perpetuating the legend. nevertheless he was caught later on and this time the French managed to execute him.

The most successful and persistent form of the slaves' protest was the "marronage". Marronage consisted of slaves running away from the plantation to hide in the mountains of the island or in its forests. From their retreat, the maroons conducted raids on the plantations and often would come at night to poison or kill their masters. One of the most famous Haitian maroons was a man named François Mackandal. He was also a houngan, or voodoo priest, from Guinea. At night, he would attack the plantations, burning them and killing their owners. During his six-year rebellion, he and his followers poisoned and killed as many as 6000 whites. In 1758, however, the French finally caught him and publicly executed him on the public square of Cap Francais (today Cap Haitien).

In 1791, as the whites and the "Affranchis" continued on their war for greater participation in the running of the colony and for equality, the Blacks entered into a full-fledge rebellion that would ultimately result in the creation of the State of Haiti and the abolition of slavery in the land.

A man named Boukman, a Creole slave who was born in Jamaica, organized on August 14, 1791, a meeting with the slaves in the mountains of the North. This meeting took the form of a Voodoo ceremony in the Bois Caiman in the northern mountains of the island. It was raining and the sky was raging with clouds; the slaves then started confessing their resentment of their condition. A woman started dancing languorously in the crowd, taken by the spirits of the loas. With a knife in her hand, she cut the throat of a pig and distributed the blood to all the participants of the meeting who swore to kill all the whites on the island. On August 22, 1791, the blacks of the North entered into a rebellion, killing all the whites they met and setting the plantations of the colony on fire. However, the French quickly captured the leader of the slaves, Boukman, and beheaded him, bringing the rebellion under control. Just like Mackandal, Boukman had managed to instill in the blacks the idea that he was invincible. Thus, the French exposed his head on Cap's square to convince the slaves that their leader was really dead.

However, the ideas of the revolution, the ideas of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, had already enflamed the mind of the slaves. The death of Boukman although it had temporarily stopped the rebellion of the North failed to restrain the rest of the blacks from revolting against their condition. The Revolution that would give birth to the Republic of Haiti was under way and nothing could stop it. Toussaint Louverture was the great leader who emerged out of the mass of the revolted. He proved to be a military genius and a formidable leader. He organized the masses of the slaves into an organized army. With political manipulation, and military campaigns, he would gain more and more notoriety in the colony. During the period of 1791, to 1800, Toussaint used the French, the Spaniards and the English against one another. He managed to eliminate all his enemies until he was the only power left in St Domingue (Haiti). By 1801, he was governing the whole island by himself and proclaimed himself governor of the colony. A constitution was soon drawn that same year declaring St Domingue an autonomous French possession where slavery was abolished.

Napoleon wary of Toussaint's great power in the colony sent 82,000 of his battle proven troops commanded by his own brother-in-law seconded by able generals, a fleet of warships, canons, munitions and dogs in order to bring St Domingue under control. Two years of war ended in a stalemate. However, the French treacherously arrested Toussaint Louverture during a meeting in June 1802. He was exiled to France and died in the Fortress of the Joux high in the cold Alpine mountains of Jura in April 1803. Toussaint though had left capable generals who could carry on the struggle. With the arrest of Toussaint, Dessalines emerged as the new leader of the Haitian Revolution, bringing it to its ultimate level.The independence of Haiti in 1804 Other leaders of that period would be Alexandre Petion, François Capois named "La Mort", Henri Christophe, and Boironds Tonnerre.

Toussaint L'Ouverture

The great hero of the Haitian Revolution and a man considered one of the great revolutionaries and generals in his own time throughout America and Europe, was François Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. This man, whom all his European contemporaries compared to George Washington and later to Napolean Bonaparte, was not even part of the original revolution. When the war of independence broke out in August, Toussaint was fifty years old. Having spent his life in slavery, he was entering old age as a carriage driver. Like so many other slaves, though, the revolution fired his passion and he discovered within himself a greatness that fired the imagination of both his contemporaries and distant Europeans.

He didn't participate in the burning of the plantations or the executions of the slaveowners, but he rose to his own when he realized that the revolution could not hold unless the slaves became militarily and politically organized to resist outside pressures. His first move when he joined the revolution was to train a small military group. He then realized that the Haitian slaves, who now occupied the eastern 2/3 of Haiti (what is now the Dominican Republic), were caught between three contending European forces, all of whom wanted Haiti for themselves. The French, of course, wanted Haiti back. The Spanish and English saw the revolution as an opportunity for seizing Haiti for themselves. Toussaint's great genius was to achieve what he wanted for the slaves by playing each of these powers off of each other, for they all realized that the slaves were the key to gaining Haiti. In the end, Toussaint allied his forces with the French, and Haiti remained part of France under the consulship of Toussaint.

Toussaint by all accounts was a brilliant and charismatic statesman and leader. Although Haiti was nominally under the contol of France, in reality the Haitian Consul ran the island as a military dictator. Despite the fiery vengeance that animated the beginning of the revolution, Toussaint managed to maintain a certain level of racial harmony&emdash;in fact, he was as well-loved by the French on Haiti as he was by the freed slaves. His reign, however, came to an end with the rise of Napolean Bonaparte in France. Aside from the fact that Bonaparte did not like sharing power, he was also a deep-seated racist who was full of contempt for blacks. Napolean sent General Victor Leclerc with over twenty thousand soldiers to unseat Toussaint, who then waged guerilla warfare against the French. Eventually he made peace with the French and retired from public life in 1802 on his own plantation. In 1803, the French tricked him into a meeting where he was arrested and sent to France. He died in prison in April of 1803.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

With the death of Toussaint, the revolution was carried on by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Unlike Toussaint, he was angry over his treatment as a slave and was determined not to allow its return. The war fought between Leclerc and Dessalines was, on both sides, one of the most horrifying struggles in history. Both resorted to atrocities. Leclerc was desperate, for his men were dying of yellow fever and the guerilla attacks took a surprising toll. So he decided to simply execute blacks whenever and wherever he found them. The slaughter that he perpetrated on non-combatants would not really be equalled until World War II; Leclerc's successor, Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, simply continued this policy. Dessalines responded that every atrocity committed by the French would be revisited on the French. Such was how the war was waged. As the fighting wore on, Dessalines ordered the summary execution of all Europeans that opposed the new revolutionary government. During this time, Napolean's government did little to help the harried French troops.

Finally, on November 28, 1803, Rochambeau surrendered and Dessalines declared Haiti to be a republic. He took the French three-colored flag and removed the white from the flag to produce the bi-colored flag of Haiti, the second republic of the Western hemisphere.

The Organised Campaign in Britain

British anti-slavery was one of the most important reform movements of the 19th century. But its history is not without ironies. During the course of the 18th century the British perfected the Atlantic slave system. Indeed, it has been estimated that between 1700 and 1810 British merchants transported almost three million Africans across the Atlantic. That the British benefited from the Atlantic slave system is indisputable. Yet, paradoxically, it was also the British the primary colonial power who led and influenced the others (France etc) in the abolition of slavery

The history of British anti-slavery can be divided into a number of distinct phases. The first of these stretched from 1787 to 1807 and was directed against the slave trade. Of course, there had been initiatives before this date (such as the Mansfield Judgment). The Quakers, for instance, petitioned Parliament against the slave trade as early as 1783 and a similar petition was submitted in 1785, this time from the inhabitants of Bridgwater in Somerset. But by and large these were piecemeal efforts, involving a relatively small number of people. It was the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, organised in May 1787, which set the movement on its modern course, evolving a structure and organisation that made it possible to mobilise thousands of Britons.

Abolishing the slave trade

The Johothan Strong and James Somerset cases:

In 1765 Granville Sharp's while visiting his brother a doctor, noticed a young black man waiting in the queue who had been badly beaten, as it turned out, by his 'master', David Lisle. Lisle had beaten the young man, whose name was Jonathan Strong, with the butt of his pistol and had thrown him into the street as if for dead. The brothers undertook to care for Strong and, after two years, he seemed fully recovered. At this point Lisle caught a glimpse of him and realised that the slave he had left for dead could still make him a tidy profit. Unknown to Strong, Lisle sold the young man to a Jamaica planter called James Kerr for £30. He then arranged for Strong to be kidnapped and sent back to the Caribbean. Strong appealed to his previous benefactors, and Sharp brought his case up before the Lord Mayor of London. The mayor agreed that Strong had committed no crime and should thus be set free.

James Somerset was the property of Charles Stewart, a customs officer from Boston, Massachusetts, then a British colony in North America. Stewart brought Somerset to England in 1769, but in 1771 Somerset escaped. He was recaptured in November and imprisoned on a ship bound for Jamaica, also a British colony. At this point, Sharp intervened and the captain of the ship was ordered to produce Somerset before the court of King's Bench. The judge, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, ordered a hearing for the following January. In fact, following an adjournment, it was not until February 1772 that the case was heard. In the meantime, it had attracted a great deal of attention in the press, and members of the public were forthcoming with donations to fund lawyers for both sides of the argument. When the case was heard, five advocates appeared for Somerset, speaking at three separate hearings between February and May. These lawyers included Francis Hargrave, a young lawyer who made his reputation with this, his first case. Essentially, it was argued that, while colonial law might permit slavery, those laws did not apply in England, nor could such an important law exist in England unless it had been specifically enacted by Parliament. This had not taken place. Moreover, English contract law did not allow for any person to enslave himself, nor could any contract be binding without the person's consent. The arguments thus focused on legal details rather than humanitarian principles. When the two lawyers for Charles Stewart put their case, they argued that property was paramount and that it would be dangerous to free all the black people in England. Lord Mansfield, having heard both sides of the argument, retired to make his decision, and prevaricated for over a month. Finally, on 22 June 1772, he made his ruling: "no master was ever allowed here to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatever". Somerset was discharged, and his supporters, who included both black and white Londoners, immediately celebrated a great victory. In fact, the victory was less than complete. Mansfield had not ruled that slavery was illegal in England, merely that no one had a right "to take a slave by force to be sold abroad". Slavery still existed in England.

The abolitionist movement:

The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (formed in 1787) or, to be more precise, the Society's guiding London Committee, was the prototype of the 19th-century reform organisation. Its self-appointed task was to create a constituency for British anti-slavery through the distribution of abolitionist books, pamphlets, prints and artefacts. The Committee also had its own network of local contacts ('agents' and 'country committees') scattered across the length and breadth of the country. And, finally, there was Thomas Clarkson, a sort of 'travelling agent', who provided a vital link between London and the provinces, organising committees, distributing tracts and offering advice and encouragement to hundreds of grass-roots activists.

These different activities culminated in two nationwide petition campaigns. In the first of these, in 1788, over 100 petitions attacking the slave trade were presented to the House of Commons in the space of just three months. The campaign of 1792 was more ambitious still. In all, 519 petitions were presented to the Commons, the largest number ever submitted to the House on a single subject or in a single session, but just as important as the size of the campaign was its range and diversity. While the industrial north provided the most enthusiastic support for abolition, every English county was represented in 1792, in addition to which Scotland and Wales made significant contributions.

Through the means of mass petitioning William Wilberforce, who led the campaign in the Commons, hoped to exert pressure on Parliament to abolish the slave trade. The strategy almost worked; in 1792 the House resolved by 230 votes to 85 that the trade ought to be gradually abolished. But petitioning on this scale was always likely to cause alarm in the minds of men with one eye on events in France. Ultimately, radicalism was to prove the Achilles heel of the early abolitionist movement. The rising tide of revolutionary violence in France and, with it, the growth of political reaction at home, inevitably took its toll. In 1793 the Commons refused to revive the subject of the slave trade, effectively reversing the resolutions of the previous year.

Extending the campaign:

Ironically, however, war in Europe helped to prepare the way for final victory. The acquisition of new territories in the West Indies, notably Trinidad, Berbice, and Demerara, led many of the old planter élite, who were increasingly fearful of competition, to desert the anti-abolitionist ranks. Capitalising on this change of heart and the entry into Parliament of a batch of new liberal Irish MPs, the abolitionists in 1804 renewed their campaign. In 1805 a Bill providing for the abolition of the slave trade to conquered territories triumphantly passed both Houses. In March 1807 The Act to Abolish The Slave Trade was passed.

After 1807 British anti-slavery entered a new phase. The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade gave way to the African Institution, whose principal aim was to ensure that the new legislation was enforced and that other countries followed Britain's example. The first of these objectives was soon realised. Persuading other countries to join Britain in outlawing the slave trade proved more difficult, however. Despite the efforts of the African Institution, and those of British ministers, the Congresses of Paris (1814) and Vienna (1815) both failed to reach specific agreement, not least because of French opposition. The results of the Aix la Chapelle Congress in 1818 were equally unsatisfactory.

The failure of the British to sway foreign powers forced abolitionists to rethink their ideas. So, too, did reports from the West Indies which suggested that conditions on the plantations had hardly improved since 1807. The situation seemed to call for more direct action, namely an attack on the institution of slavery itself.

The Anti-Slavery Society:

An anti-slavery meeting in Exeter Hall, London

In 1823 some of the leading members of the African Institution, including, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Zachary Macaulay, organised a new body, the Anti-Slavery Society. Modest in its ambitions, at least by later standards, the Anti-Slavery Society called for the adoption of measures to improve slave conditions in the West Indies, together with a plan for gradual emancipation leading ultimately to complete freedom.

Like the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Anti-Slavery Society was a national organisation with its own network of local and regional auxiliaries. And like earlier organisations, its leaders endorsed mass petitioning. In fact, between 1828 and 1830 Parliament was deluged by over 5000 petitions calling for the gradual abolition (and mitigation) of slavery. But progress in the Commons was slow and halting. Finally, in 1831 some of the Anti-Slavery Society's younger and more radical elements organised the Agency Committee (which formally separated from the parent body in 1832). Revivalist in tone, the Agency Committee took abolition out into the country. More controversially, it also committed itself to the unconditional and immediate abolition of slavery.

For obvious reasons, the Agency Committee was ideally placed to exploit the struggle over the reform of Parliament and to win over voters newly enfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. Its efforts paid off. The first reformed Parliament was clearly sympathetic to abolition; perhaps just as important the Cabinet was ready to accept emancipation. In May 1833 Lord Stanley presented a plan to Parliament which finally passed into law on August 29. In essence, the new legislation called for the gradual abolition of slavery. Everyone over the age of six on August 1, 1834, when the law went into effect, was required to serve an apprenticeship of four years in the case of domestics and six years in the case of field hands (apprenticeship was later abolished by Parliament in 1838). By way of compensation the West Indian planters received £20 million pounds.

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Outstanding personalities

Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)

Biography

Thomas Clarkson was among the foremost British campaigners against both slavery and the slave trade. He was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, on 28 March 1760 and educated at the grammar school there where his father, the Rev. John Clarkson, was headmaster. In 1775, he went to St. Paul's School in London where he excelled. He went up to Cambridge in 1780 where he was an outstanding student. His awareness of slavery originated in an essay, originally written in Latin, as an entry in a Cambridge University prize competition, which it won. (In fact, Clarkson had already won a BA competition, and he wanted and became the first person to win the MA competition as well.) The question - and there was only one - was "is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?"

In May 1787, Clarkson was one of the twelve men who formed the Committee for Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Clarkson took on the role of fact-finder, and for the next two years rode around the country gathering evidence against the trade. In some places, notably the major slave-trading ports of Bristol and Liverpool, this was a dangerous activity, not least because Clarkson tried openly to gather support for the abolition campaign. On his periodic returns to London, Clarkson passed his evidence to the Abolition Committee, who arranged for the campaign to be taken to parliament where William Wilberforce was leading the effort to outlaw the trade. In February 1788, a committee of the privy council started to take evidence on 'the present state of the African trade'. While Wilberforce steered the campaign through parliament, Clarkson continued to produce new evidence, evidence which Wilberforce put to good use in his famous speech of 12 May 1789. Meanwhile, Clarkson made much of his evidence available to the wider public as well as to parliament: between 1787 and 1794, he wrote several books or pamphlets opposing the slave trade. His energies were not just confined to Britain. In the autumn of 1789, he went to Paris where he attempted (with little success) to persuade the new government of France to abolish the slave trade. As he pointed out in the many letters he wrote to Mirabeau on the subject, and which were later published, the revolutionary ideals of liberté, fraternité, and égalité meant little if they were not extended to the slaves. Clarkson's energy was unabated on his return to London early in 1790. He contined to work hard in London and, later that year, resumed his travels throughout Britain, travels which he kept up for several years. In the meantime, the parliamentary campaign was not going well. [See the Wilberforce page for more details] Public interest in abolition declined as well. Clarkson threw himself into the task with increased vigour, but it could not last. In July 1794, he suffered a physical breakdown brought on by overwork. Completely burned-out, and having spent most of his money, he was forced to retire from the campaign.

The abolition campaign lay dormant until the early years of the nineteenth century. In 1803, Clarkson returned to the committee and, in the following year, its efforts were renewed with a new campaign. Clarkson once again toured the country gathering evidence while Wilberforce again introduced the Abolition Bill before parliament. The Bill fell in 1804 and 1805, but gave the abolitionists an opportunity to sound out support. A public campaign once again promoted the cause, and the new Whig government was in favour as well. In January 1807, the Abolition Bill was again introduced, this time attracting very considerable support, and, on 23 February 1807, parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of abolition of the slave trade. Clarkson was celebrated as a national figure and a model of

philanthropy. In 1808, on the crest of this wave, he wrote the comprehensive History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade..

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

Biography

William Wilberforce is perhaps the best known of the abolitionists. He came from a prosperous merchant family of Kingston-upon-Hull, a North Sea port which saw little in the way of slave trading. (His birthplace is now preserved as the Wilberforce House Museum.) At twenty-one, the youngest age at which one could be so elected, he was returned to Parliament for his native town. Four years later he was again returned to Parliament, this time for the county seat of Yorkshire which was large and populous, and which therefore required an expensive election contest. The advantage was that the election, being genuinely democratic, conferred a greater legitimacy to the two Members which that county returned to Parliament. Wilberforce's early years in Parliament were not untypical for a young back-bencher. He was noted for his eloquence and charm, attributes no doubt enhanced by his considerable wealth, but he did not involve himself at first with any great cause. A sudden conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1785 changed that and from then onwards he approached politics from a position of strict Christian morality. He did not officially join the Abolition Society until 1794.

Wilberforce was the main voice of the abolitionist in parliament and during his lifetime he became well known for his perennial attempt to pass slave related resolutions through parliament.

Granville Sharp (1735-1813)

Biography

Granville Sharp was born on 10 November 1735 in Durham, North-East England. His father, an archdeacon with a small income, sent Sharp to be educated at the local grammar school but, at the age of 15, Sharp was apprenticed to a London Quaker linendraper, the first of a number of linendrapers from various Christian sects (he also worked for an atheist). Sharp taught himelf Greek and Hebrew in his spare time and, by 1758, had moved out of linendraping and into a minor post, the first of many, as a clerk in the civil service. In the late 1750s and early 1760s Sharp worked on his antiquarian, theological, and linguistic hobbies, publishing the first of his many works in 1765. From this point on, rarely a year went past without Sharp publishing one or more works, often on rather arcane topics.

Sharpe was one of those individuals who made an early dent in the institution of slavery. His two famous cases involving Johothan Strong and James Somerset caused problems for the West Indian interest groups plantocracy.

In 1787, he was one of the committee of people, mostly Quakers, who set up the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Seen by the committee as "the father of the movement", he was appointed chairman. In this role he continued as an active campaigner, working closely with Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, and personally lobbying both William Pitt, the Prime Minister, and Charles James Fox, the leader of the opposition. He also corresponded with leaders of the French abolition society, Les Amis des Noirs.

John Wesley (1703-1791)

Biography

John Wesley, the celebrated preacher and founder of the Methodist Church, was a life-long opponent of slavery. His biography is well known, and is told in many places, both on the web and in many published works, so this article will focus mainly on his activities as a campaigner against slavery. His opposition to slavery and the slave trade began long before the issue had received widespread attention, and was sustained throughout his life. Indeed, his attitudes to slavery were formed early. In 1736-7 Wesley visited the then British colony of Georgia in North America where he came into contact with slaves. At the same time, he read Thomas Southerne's play Oroonoko, which was based on Aphra Behn's novel of the same name, and which related the tragedy of Oroonoko, an African prince kidnapped and sold into slavery. On his return to England, he passed the time on the long transatlantic voyage by teaching a young black man, presumably a slave, how to read and write.

These experiences fostered in Wesley an abhorrence of slavery, but it was not an abhorrence he felt able to act upon. In his journal, Wesley records meeting with people involved in the slave trade - including the slave-ship captain John Newton, now more famous as the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace". Newton's conversion to Christianity was later followed by a conversion to anti-slavery, but it is not recorded if he and Wesley discussed the issue. In 1772, the Somerset case, brought before the courts by Granville Sharp, put slavery in the news. Wesley, putting aside Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey (a book he described as marked by: "oddity, uncouthness, and unlikeness to all the world") took up instead Some historical account of Guinea, a work of anti-slavery by the Philadelphia Quaker, Anthony Benezet. Wesley recorded his thoughts in his journal:

Wed. 12.-In returning I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the Slave-trade. I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mahometan countries.

Clearly Benezet's work, and Lord Mansfield's deliberations in the case of James Somerset, gave Wesley some disquiet for, two years later, in 1774, he issued a short pamphlet called Thoughts Upon Slavery which went into four editions in two years. The pamphlet follows Benezet's work in many respects, discussing African topology and society, the method of procuring and transporting slaves, and the brutality of plantation life before advancing legal and moral arguments against both slavery and the slave trade. Wesley shows "that all slavery is as irreconcileable to Justice as to Mercy" before concluding, first with a direct address to the slave-trader and slave-owner, and finally with a prayer. The direct address is worth reproducing at length, as Wesley attacks the slave-trader with considerable passion:

Are you a man? Then you should have an human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands.

Wesley remained actively opposed to slavery until his death. In August 1787, he wrote to the Abolition Committee to express his support, and he pledged to reprint Thoughts Upon Slavery in "a new large edition". For some reason this fifth edition did not appear until 1792, a year after Wesley's death. In 1788, when the abolition campaign was at its height, he preached a sermon in Bristol, one of the foremost slave trading ports. In such a location, at such a time, an anti-slavery sermon could not have been preached without considerable personal risk to the preacher. Indeed, during the sermon a disturbance took place which Wesley recorded in his journal:

About the middle of the discourse, while there was on every side attention still as night, a vehement noise arose, none could tell why, and shot like lightening through the whole congregation. The terror and confusion were inexpressible. You might have imagined it was a city taken by storm. The people rushed upon each other with the utmost violence; the benches were broke in pieces, and nine-tenths of the congregation appeared to be struck with the same panic.

Wesley ascribed the confusion to "some preternatural influence. Satan fought, lest his kingdom should be delivered up." A more likely cause, perhaps, was a plot by slave-traders, anxious to disrupt a piece of abolitionist rhetoric being sounded deep in their territory. How strong this rhetoric was is impossible to tell as the 1788 sermon has not survived. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that it was based in some measure on his pamphlet Thoughts Upon Slavery which was strongly argued. Wesley maintained an interest in the abolition movement until the end:

Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845)

Biography

Thomas Fowell Buxton was born in Essex in 1786. He went to school in Kingston-upon-Thames, where he was unhappy, and later in Greenwich. In 1801 he returned to East Anglia, this time to Norwich where, although an Anglican, he became friends with the Quaker Gurney family. He studied at Trinity college Dublin from 1803 to 1807, and graduated with great distinction. In 1807 he married Hannah Gurney and the following year he became a partner in the Truman Brewery. Inspired by the Quakers, he became an advocate for social reform. In 1816, when much of the population of Spitalfields in London was starving, he joined and became one of the most forceful voices in the campaign for their relief. Between 1816 and 1820, working with Elizabeth Fry, he campaigned for prison reform and, after 1820, became involved in the campaign to abolish capital punishment. Unfortunately, that campaign was not to prove successful until the 1960s. In 1818, he became MP for Weymouth in Dorset, a seat he held until 1837.

The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, but many wished for a complete abolition of slavery. Working with William Wilberforce, Buxton founded the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1823. Two years later, on Wilberforce's retirement, Buxton assumed the leadership of the campaign in Parliament. He campaigned tirelessly until the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 that ended slavery in Britain and its colonies. Nonetheless, slavery was still a major activity in many parts of the world. In 1839, Buxton published The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy which advocated diplomacy with African nations to end the slave trade. The British government accordingly sent a mission to Niger but, in Buxton's view at least, it was a failure. Reputedly worn out by the affair, Buxton died in 1845

Organised Campaign in France

In 1794 the National Convention in France abolished slavery.It was decided that the revolutionary slogan 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' applied to all people whatever their colour.

However in 1802 Emperor Napolean Bonaparte sent his forces to the Caribbean to restore slavery. This was eventually accomplished on all islands except Haiti, because Toussaint's army was too strong and organised.

Prior to these events In 1787 the Societe des Amis des Noirs (The Society of Friends of Negroes) which was modeled of its English counterpart was formed.

After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 it pressured the other colonial power into following it's lead. In fact in 1815 during the signing of the treaties which ended the Napoleonic Wars it was agreed that the slave trade should be abolished.

Unfortunately the agreement was often broken and it was not until 1830 when Louis Phillipe came to power via revolution that France abolished the slave trade.

In the meantime the importance of cane sugar from the colonies was lessening because of sugar-beet farming in France. This meant the weakening of the west India interest in French politics which facilitated the rapid growth of an abolition movement. In 1834 a new Society for the Abolition of Slavery was formed in Paris. It modeled itself on the British Society which had successfully campaigned for emancipation.The main spokesman of the Society was Victor Schoelcher.

The Society achieved a minor victory in 1836 when it was decreed that any slave setting foot in France Must be set free.

In 1838 the society drafted an emancipation bill but this, was defeated by the West Indian Interest in Parliament.

In 1848 a bill proposing the abolition of slavery was proposed by Scholcher.

The bill was supported by the new Government and slavery was abolished in all French territories.

Differences between the British and French Anti-Slavery Campaign

Religion was the main difference between the British and French Anti-Slavery campaign. Several non-conformist religious leaders, who, believed that all men were equal in the sight of god, drove the British movement. While in France the movement was purely political (secular). The populace in France wanted a change in their circumstances. They wanted liberty from the church and nobles and they therefore identified with the slaves who were under greater bondage.

Achievements or milestones in the French anti-slavery movement always occur in step with a revolutionary change in France. The uprising and eventual independence of Haiti was sparked by the French revolution and

the Abolition of the slave trade in 1848 occurred after king Louis Philippe was replaced (overthrown) by a Republican Government.

Caribbean Reaction

The reaction in the Caribbean to the anti-slavery movement varied according to your position in the slave /colonial society. The reaction of the slaves was vastly different from that of the planters.

Planters reaction

The West India interest which included planters domiciled in Britain in the was a very powerful force in British politics. In fact they had directy controlled between forty to fifty votes in the latter half of the 18th century.

(However there influence was reduced by the beginning of the 19th century by the rise in power of the East India interest and the Industrialist.)

Realising that emancipation would follow sharply on the heels of the abolition of the slave trade the West India Interest tried to postpone the process by drafting the amelioration proposal which was eventually adopted by the British Government.

The views of the planters in the West Indies differed vastly from their counterparts in Britain. The planters especially those in Jamaica, took the attitude that if abolition was coming the slaves must be made to suffer for it.

In fact, some of the worst atrocities in the history of slavery took place in the first thirty years of the nineteen century.

The planters not only targeted their slaves but they also persecuted the non-conformist missionaries. The missionaries doctrines which said that all men were equal under god was contrary to the very existence of slavery and this infuriated the planters.

The treatment of both the slaves and the non-conformist missionaries helped to sway public opinion in Britain against the planters, the BRUTAL suppression of the 1831-2 Slave Revolt in Jamaica and the treatment of the execution of the Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe and the treatment of William Knibb added extra impetus to the abolition of slavery.

Slaves Reaction

There were several slave rebellions that took place in the early nineteen century. These included.

816 Barbados

This revolt lasted only two days .The main reasons it occurred was that the slaves had heard about the campaign in Britain to abolish slavery and they felt that their masters were withholding their freedom.

The revolt resulted in the death of many slaves.

831 Jamaica

The revolt started on December 27 and involved as many as fifty thousand slaves.

A Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe had read articles from England which indicated that emancipation was close and wage labour would come to Jamaica. He tried to organize a peaceful protest in order to gain benefits and wages for the slaves, but the confrontation ended in a rebellion.

Fifteen whites and four hundred slaves were killed during the fighting. While one hundred others including Sharpe was executed.

Most, if not all slave rebellion that took place in the early nineteen century was fueled by news out of Britain about the possible liberation of the slaves and the feeling that the planters were trying to prevent it.

The teachings of the non- conformist missionaries also contributed to the feeling of discontent that the slaves had about their plight and thus helped to spark these revolts.

In the end these rebellions helped to hasten the passing of the Emancipation Bill, because it made the British public aware that the slaves wanted their freedom and it also made sugar from the West Indies more expenses relative to sugar from India which did not use slave labour.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Claypole & John Robottom

Caribbean Story Book One

Third edition Published in 2001

Carlong Publishers

P.O. Box 489

Kingston 10

33 Second Street

New Port West

Kingston, Jamaica

James Carnegie & Patricia Patterson

The People Who Came Book Two

Carlong Publishers

P.O. 489

Kingston 10

33 Second Street

Newport West

Kingston, Jamaica

Clinton V. Black

History of Jamaica

Collins Clear-Type Press

London and Glasgow

R. Greenwood and S. Hamber

Emancipation to Emigration

Macmillan Education Publishers

London and Basingstoke

Kamau Brathwaite and Anthony Phillips

The People Who Came Book Three

Carlong Publishers

P.O. 489

Kingston 10

33 Second Street

Newport West

Kingston, Jamaica

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Data downloaded from the internet

* An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin Dissertation, which was honoured with the first prize in the University of Cambridge, for the year 1785 (London: T. Cadell and J. Phillips, 1786)

* A summary view of the slave trade (London: J. Phillips, 1787)

* An essay on the impolicy of the African slave trade (London: J. Phillips, 1788)

* An essay on the comparative efficiency of regulation or abolition, as applied to the slave trade. Shewing that the latter only can remove the evils to be found in that commerce. (London: J. Phillips, 1789)

* The substance of the evidence of sundry persons on the slave-trade (London: J. Phillips, 1789)

* Letters on the Slave-Trade, and the state of the natives in those parts of Africa, which are contiguous to Fort St. Louis and Goree, etc. (London: J. Phillips, 1791) [Letters to Mirabeau]

* History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, 2 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808)

* Thoughts on the Necessity for improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies, with a view to their ultimate emancipation; and on the practicability, the safety, and the advantages of the latter measure, (London: Richard Taylor, 1823)

* Strictures on a Life of William Wilberforce (London: Longman and Co, 1838)

* A Letter to the Clergy of the Various Denominations, and to the Slave-holding Planters, in the Southern Parts of the United States of America, (London: Johnston & Barrett, 1841)

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