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Edited by Jacy Reese Anthis. Many thanks to Zach Groff and Jamie Harris for reviewing and providing feedback. Thanks also to Sam Horsley, Coral Monroe, and Jane Roberts for assisting with research.

Abstract

Studying past social movements can provide invaluable insights for modern movement strategy. This report aims to assess (1) what factors led the British government to abolish the transatlantic Slave trade in 1807 and then human chattel slavery in 1833, and (2) what those findings suggest about how modern social movements should strategize. While many of the implications are generalizable to a variety of movements, the analysis will focus on applications to the movement against animal farming. Key implications include the need to focus on institutional change, the circumstances under which strategic reforms can facilitate the eventual elimination of the institution, and what messaging can best generate support.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Slavery — and more specifically, human chattel slavery — was not a new phenomenon in the time of the transatlantic Slave trade, which started in the early 16th century and lasted through the mid-19th century. It had long been perceived as normal, natural, and necessary, and historian Robert Fogel says it “stood above criticism for 3,000 years.”[1] Antislavery was one of the first movements to take off and to succeed in the modern push for social justice, and its history is well-documented. This makes the British antislavery movement, which preceded and ignited successful antislavery movements throughout the world, a remarkable case study for modern advocates.

This report provides a condensed history of the British antislavery movement, charting a course from its roots through the ban on the transatlantic Slave trade and culminating in the ban on human chattel slavery in the British empire. Unless otherwise specified, this report uses the term abolition to refer to the legal ban on the transatlantic Slave trade and emancipation to refer to the legal ban on human chattel slavery.[2] It uses antislavery to refer to the movement or advocates who worked on both or either effort; Slavery, capitalized, to refer to the chattel enslavement of Africans and their descendants, as well as some Native Americans, by Europeans and their descendants; Slaves, capitalized, to refer to those slaves; and the (transatlantic) Slave trade to refer to the trade in human slaves from Africa to the Americas. After providing this history, the report will draw conclusions about which strategies seemed to be most effective for the movement and propose tentative implications for the movement against animal farming.

Studying successful movements of the past can provide invaluable insights into the most effective strategies for modern movements. The two institutions of the European enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the Americas and the modern farming of nonhuman animals share the fundamental characteristic of commodification: They treated/treat sentient beings as property, rather than as individuals who had/have their own interests. Both movements also relied/rely on discrimination based on group membership — in Slavery, race, and in animal farming, species. The focus of this report is on strategic insights for the movement against animal farming, but we will discuss some insights for the broader animal rights movement, and these insights may be useful for other movements as well.

Historically, many people have compared Slavery and various forms of nonhuman commodification in rough, oversimplified, and sometimes even vindictive ways without considering the impact of that comparison on one or both oppressed populations.[3] While the comparison is typically made in an attempt to elevate nonhumans, it often has the effect of degrading black people, because broader society regards nonhuman animals as fundamentally inferior to humans. Simplistic comparisons can also fail to appreciate how racist oppression is historically predicated on speciesist oppression — the history of Slavery, for instance, is replete with assertions that black humans are as inferior to white men as nonhuman animals, and such dehumanization, however unfair to the nonhumans whose moral insignificance was silently assumed, has probably had lasting impacts on people of color and may still directly contribute to racism in society.[4] As such, crude comparisons of the similarities between each groups’ subjugation can alienate people with genetic ancestry or cultural heritage in Slavery and may subtly reinforce racism, especially when the person making the comparison is white. In addition, the comparison may even backfire and perpetuate the speciesism that people of many races have worked to distance themselves from.

This context means advocates should take care not to reduce the lived experiences of individuals in either group to their common denominator with the lived experiences of those in the other, erasing the circumstances and experiences that are unique to each of them and ignoring the contextual relationship between racism and speciesism, which has a long history of simultaneously degrading both nonhuman animals and people of color alike.

The fundamental comparison this report hinges on is that the individuals of both groups were/are sentient individuals who faced/face discrimination and were/are treated as chattel. Our purpose is to analyze and compare the movement for the welfare and liberation of commodified Africans — and their hereditarily commodified descendants — who were used for labor in the New World with that of commodified animals who are used in the food industry in order to assess the strategic implications the latter can draw from the former.

Of course, no historical document is perfectly comprehensive, and some important details may be missing from the varied histories used to compile this report. There is also significant disagreement and debate among historians about the nature and importance of some circumstances and events, such as the economic value of the transatlantic Slave trade. The interpretation of necessarily incomplete historical information is imperfect and inevitably warps the truth of what happened to some degree.

To mitigate these issues and craft as comprehensive yet brief and digestible a history as possible, this report relied on a recent and relatively comprehensive book about the movement, called Bury the Chains, and augmented that history with information from several other long-form histories taking a variety of perspectives, with clarifications and additional information sourced from parliamentary records, other contemporary publications, journal publications, and several other resources. This history will venture away from the topic of British antislavery at times, but only insofar as it’s useful to understand the strategy and outcomes of British antislavery.

While a handful of significantly less invested nations and American colonies or states achieved abolition and/or emancipation before the UK, the British antislavery movement was the first to launch into the public spotlight. The UK and US were the first of the handful of major stakeholders in the transatlantic Slave trade to abolish the trade, more or less simultaneously, and the UK compelled other major stakeholding nations including Spain, France and Portugal to abolish the trade after they did. The UK was also the second major stakeholder in Slavery to permanently emancipate its Slaves, after Spain. Perhaps most importantly, the citizens and Slaves of other nations both knew about the antislavery movement in the UK and were directly influenced by it in some important ways: For instance, William Lloyd Garrison, a major American movement leader, visited the British movement leaders to learn from them, and antislavery advocate and later Member of Parliament (MP) George Thompson gave a speaking tour in the US shortly after the UK legislated emancipation. This makes the evidence we can obtain from studying abolition and emancipation in other major stakeholding nations who adopted their reforms, abolitions, and emancipations after the UK more tenuous, because it is unclear how relatively important the UK’s movement, precedent, and direct influences were to the decisions of the nations who followed suit within a mere generation. The UK was likely in turn affected by the activism, attitudes, and legal changes in other regions with which it exchanged significant flows of people, trade, and information, so further study of other nations’ movements during and before the time of the British movement is especially valuable.



The British antislavery movement also had the particularly interesting feature of a push for improvements to the cruelties of the industry, which advocates pursued both in the near-term interest of Slaves and in the longer-term interest of eliminating the institution. Welfare reforms have also been a strong emphasis of the farmed animal movement, making this a unique opportunity to study the effectiveness of this strategy.

The anti-animal-farming movement as this report describes it is weighted towards the Western and particularly the US movement, as this is where the author has the most familiarity, so readers from other regions may see different similarities and differences between the early 19th century British antislavery movement and their own region and movement, and should adjust the applicability of this report’s conclusions to their own region’s advocacy accordingly. This report assumes the reader has some knowledge of the animal farming industry and the movement against it, and does not for instance detail the industry’s humanewashing or the movement’s reform campaign history.

Note that the history in this report will use the terms person and people to describe individuals who were regarded by the law as such at the time — as opposed to as property — rather than as a moral term to describe individuals with interests, or entities the author thinks the law should regard as persons. Both to avoid confusion about anyone’s legal status and so as to not reinforce a false dichotomy between humans and all other animals, enslaved black humans will be referred to as black humans or individuals, and similarly, nonhuman animals will be referred to as nonhuman animals, farmed animals, or individuals.

Summary of Key Implications

There are many challenges in integrating evidence from historical social movements into modern advocacy decision-making.[5] This section lists a number of strategic claims supported by the evidence in this report. Of course, one’s view of the strength of these claims should depend on all available evidence, not just the evidence provided by this case study.

• Focus more on political campaigns for institutional change than on individual consumer change. If advocating for consumer action, focus on a specific symbol of the problem (e.g. sugar as a product of Slavery) and clearly contextualize the action as supporting the political campaign.

• Run a major legislative campaign that is more agreeable to the public than eliminating the whole industry, but which will still significantly curtail it (e.g. abolishing the Slave trade instead of either immediately emancipating Slaves or making small reforms to the industry).

• Smaller reforms to the industry — whether industry- or advocate-initiated — are likely to cause more momentum than complacency, at least if (1) advocates frame them as a step towards an end goal of eliminating the entire institution, (2) advocates do not present them as more directly impactful for the victims than they are, and (3) the industry fails to fully implement them.

• To launch the issue into the public spotlight, synchronize a petition campaign with literature distribution, book publications, op-ed submissions, publications by famous people, and wearable imagery (e.g. “Am I Not a Man And a Brother?” medallions).

• Move the public spotlight onto a few individual liberated victims so they and their stories become common knowledge. Emphasize the respectable and relatable qualities in the victims.

• In their alliances advocates should focus narrowly on their shared goals rather than try to agree on all social issues, or even the other issues that are most important to them.

• It might not be effective to conduct dramatic protests and other public demonstrations before there is broad public support of the specific goal, if at all.

• Instead of demonizing the people involved with the industry, advocates should speak of them as merely unfortunate people who made what we can now see is a bad investment. Put the blame on society as a whole.

• Use secondary self-interested arguments (e.g. economic benefits) if they are sound, but keep the focus on the moral argument.

• If moral advocacy seems insufficient, look for ways to significantly reduce the size of the industry through indirect means (e.g. an agreeable wartime law that indirectly affects this issue).

A Condensed Chronological History of the British Antislavery Movement

Early History of the Movement

Slavery has taken many forms throughout human history and has existed in many human societies,[6] in addition to similar practices of serfdom, indentured servitude, or otherwise coerced labor. The Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu, dated 2100–2050 BC as the oldest legal code in existence, includes specifications for lawful slavery.[7] In 1086, 10% of England’s population was slaves.[8] When Europeans began colonizing the Americas in the late 15th century, various populations were enslaved throughout the world, including in Europe, and some regions had passed laws against human slavery or particular forms of it. In 1315, for instance, Louis X had decreed that any slave setting foot in France would be free,[9] though this was not applied to France’s colonies. In the centuries before Europeans started taking African slaves to the New World, human chattel slavery was still relatively normal and unopposed in Europe even when the slaves were other Europeans: in 1375 Pope Gregory XI ordered excommunicated Florentines to be captured and enslaved; in 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted Ferdinand of Spain’s gift of a hundred Moorish slaves and then passed them to on cardinals and nobles; famous humanist Thomas More included human chattel slavery in his 1516 vision of Utopia as an appropriate condition for the "vyle drudge," the "poor laborer," and the criminal; in 1525 Martin Luther did not appreciate serfs’ appeals for emancipation on the basis that Christ died to set men free, affirming Saint Paul’s assertion that “the earthly kingdom could not survive unless some men were free and some were slaves.” John Locke, whose assertions of the natural rights of man may have gone on to inspire antislavery advocates, provided for human chattel slavery in his draft of the 1669 Fundamental Constitution of Carolina. He also invested in the transatlantic Slave trade, and asserted that any man who found himself enslaved “by fault or act... could not complain” and could kill himself if he preferred death to enslavement.[10]

The Portuguese started the trade in African Slaves in 1442.[11] Over the next century, authorities took varying positions on the transatlantic trade and expressed varying levels of discomfort,[12] but the trade nonetheless expanded. Even the Pope condemned human slavery in 1537.[13] Evidence suggests that most Slaves taken from Africa were not free people captured by Europeans, but people who were enslaved locally,[14] originally as prisoners of war, in punishment for a crime, or as payment for debt they owed. They were not born into slavery and were originally more of a status symbol than a source of labor or tradeable value, and they had a less harsh experience than Slaves laboring in the West Indies. They could even earn their freedom or marry a free person.[15] When European colonists established trading ports and bought these Slaves for firearms and other goods, they introduced a massive local demand for Slaves,[16] so it would be misleading to merely state that they were slaves already, as some proponents of the trade did.

The British trade in African Slaves started in 1555,[17] and in the nearly three centuries before emancipation there was some confusion about the legality of Slavery within England with some judges basing rulings on the assumption that it was legal and others on the assumption that it was not. Some examples will be discussed. A 1569 case ruled that English law did not recognize Slavery.[18]

In 1676, William Edmundson, an early Quaker missionary and the founder of Quakerism in Ireland, spoke against Slavery.[19]

A case in 1677 ruled that Slaves could be held in trover. Habeas Corpus was established in 1679, with no exception for people of African descent.[20]

The first English abolitionist treatise may have been Negro's and Indians Advocate Suing for Their Admission Into the Church by Anglican clergyman Morgan Godwyn in 1680.[21]

In 1685, France adopted a Code Noir, the most comprehensive code regarding Slavery at the time, which thoroughly regulated plantation life. The law was made not to protect Slaves’ welfare but to further France’s clear separation of domestic and imperial law — it was clear that Slaves could be whipped, branded, and mutilated as punishments, but the harshest punishments required a judge’s approval.[22] The code stated that Slaves could not own property and only gave them access to court for occasional testimonies that were regarded as inferior to those of free persons. Slaves were to be baptized and thoroughly instructed in Catholicism, and while marriage was subject to their owner’s consent, Slaves’ spouses and families could not be sold separately. Owners were also permitted to manumit their Slaves, who would then receive all the rights of citizens.[23] Some officials such as a colony’s attorney general were also tasked with prosecuting particularly neglectful or abusive owners, and Slaves were allowed to complain to him, though they were punished if the judge decided their complaint was of insufficient severity or substantiation.[24]

In the British colony of Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1688, four Quakers wrote a formal document arguing against Slavery based on the Golden Rule, the equality of men regardless of race, and the Christian need to preserve liberty:

Now tho they are black, we can not conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying that we shall doe to all men licke as we will be done ourselves; macking no difference of what generation, descent or Colour they are. and those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alicke? Here is liberty of conscience wch. is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except of evildoers, wch is an other case. But to bring men hither, or to robb and sell them against their will, we stand against.[25]

Enough antislavery sentiment was stirring in the public by this time, if it hadn’t always been at least to some minor degree, that poets, writers, and other artists lightly peppered the period constituting this history with expressions of sympathy for Slaves and discomfort with or opposition to Slavery. For example, in Paradise Lost Milton wrote “but man over men / he made not lord… human left from human free,”[26] and a 1696 play Oronooko, about a royal Slave, enlightened people on the subject.[27]

In 1700 the influential New England judge Samuel Sewall, recently repentant for his involvement in the Salem witch trials, published an antislavery pamphlet.[28] He does not appear to have been taken seriously, and in fact his sanity may have been questioned for this position.[29]



In 1701, Chief Justice Sir John Holt ruled against multiple claims to property over an enslaved black man on English soil, ignoring the contrary precedent of the earlier case of Butts v. Penny. His decision stated that “as soon as a Negro comes into England, he becomes free,” and that there was “no such thing as a slave by the law of England.”[30] In 1706, he made a similar ruling that “By the common law no man can have property in another.” These judgements did not abolish Slavery within England, as Slaves were still bought and sold in the nation and later judges allowed it to continue.[31]

By this time, Western Europeans had come to disapprove of the enslavement of other Western Europeans. In addition to assumptions about Slavery still being a natural, necessary, and normal state of the world, and assertions of the economic importance of Slavery, racist rationalizations for European dominion over Africans were gaining traction, as was scientific racism.[32]

Slavery was commonplace at this time even in places that would a century later become strongholds of antislavery. In 1703, for instance, some 42% of New York households held Slaves.[33]

In 1729 two officials named Yorke and Talbot stated a formal “opinion” that Slaves did not become free upon baptism or setting foot in England, as some claimed.[34] The same year, Benjamin Franklin published Ralph Sandiford’s book attacking Slavery, entitled A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times.

In 1730 several chapters of Quakers publicly stated opposition to the transatlantic Slave trade like the Germantown Quakers had in 1688.[35]



In 1735 the founders of Georgia banned Slavery in the colony, probably primarily in the interest of security as the colony was close to the Spanish territory of Florida and Spain offered freedom to Slaves for military service.[36]

In 1749, Lord Chancellor Hardwick ruled that Slaves were chattels.[37] Baptist minister James Foster’s Discourse on Natural Religion and Social Virtue of the same year called Slavery “a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural rights of mankind” and proposed a thought experiment questioning how the English would want other nations to treat them if those nations were more powerful than England and could enslave the English.[38]



Some Quaker advocates personally criticized Slave owners. One Quaker named Benjamin Lay even harshly criticized other Quakers who were not taking a stand against Slavery. He published a text on Quaker complicity and, at a Meeting for Worship, entered clothed as a soldier with a sword, spoke at length on the evils of Slavery, and pierced his Bible, which was hollowed out and contained a bladder filled with red juice that splattered onto some Friends to symbolize the blood on Quakers' hands. He was disowned by the Quaker community.[39] Another more prominent Quaker advocate named John Woolman took a gentler approach, and stressed the importance of equality without directly addressing Slave-holders.[40] In 1754, the leadership of the international Quaker community publicly came out against the buying and holding of Slaves, and in 1758 a ban on Slave-holding was instituted in the Quaker community, preventing Slave-holding members from holding positions of authority.[41] Note that the Quakers were a small and somewhat ostracized community in Great Britain and its American colonies.[42]



Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson’s A System of Moral Philosophy, which denounced Slavery, was published posthumously in 1759.[43]

Lord Chancellor Hardwick’s successor ruled in 1762 that Slaves were free upon setting foot on English ground.[44]

The Industrial Revolution started in England around 1760, and over the next century it transformed the British economy, infrastructure, and population. Historians have credited it for facilitating political movements for labor rights, electorate expansion, social welfare, education, and other changes.[45] By the late 18th century, Britons had developed an exceptionally strong culture of democracy, confidence in citizen’s rights and liberty, and enthusiastic political interest.[46]

This likely owed to a number of converging developments, such as the improvements to roads in the already small island, which made it easier to traverse.[47] Great Britain also established the best postal service at the time, which carried not just personal communication but news, and the number of daily newspapers increased both in London and nationally, as did coffeehouses where people could purchase, read, and discuss them.[48] Libraries and bookstores became more popular, as did debate societies, and debates in both the press and Parliament became more vigorous.[49] There was also a lack of censorship, which was extraordinary for the time and gave great freedom to those papers, books, and debates, as well as to future protesters.[50] Britons had little fear of arbitrary rule, and lived under a rule of law such that even the poor, while still unprivileged by the judicial system, at least had a jury, and former Slaves could take former owners to court and win, as several did.[51] Britons were aware that they had greater liberty than the citizens of other nations,[52] which may have made individual rights and liberty a particular point of pride and identity. Few other European nations even had legislatures, and none of them were more powerful than their country’s King, unlike Great Britain’s legislature, which was also partially elected.[53] Increasing numbers of Britons were working for wages,[54] and working-class white people were probably telling the Slaves who were brought to Great Britain and working alongside them that they should be paid.[55]

A former Slave’s account of white fellow sailors telling him, when he was a Slave, that his owner could not sell him and that they would stand by him speaks to the particular support that Slaves had from working-class white people, even if a threat of severe discipline ultimately discouraged these particular sailors from assisting the man. It’s possible that working class white people’s own experiences with such injustice were a significant factor in their support of antislavery. Other accounts show white prisoners assisting in the escape of Slaves who were jailed merely to prevent them from running away, and of local white laborers raising funds for the legal defense of a former Slave who a Slaveholder was trying to return to the West Indies.[56] That many white laborers had been uprooted and exploited may have made them identify with uprooted and exploited Slaves.[57]

By around this time, in the mid-1700s, several British colonies had written laws to deter the mutilation and killing of Slaves, and some had written laws regarding minimal provisions and the management of those too sick to work, though these were likely poorly enforced and intended more for the benefit of the colonists than the Slaves.[58]



In 1761, the Portuguese ruler established a “free soil” policy freeing all Slaves who set foot in Portugal, even though there seemed to be little or no antislavery movement in the nation.[59]



British Quakers may have voted to expel any members participating in the trade in 1761.[60] In 1762, many Quakers began refusing to purchase goods made by Slave labor.[61]

In 1765 a Slave named Jonathan Strong who had been severely beaten by his owner and left for dead made his way to a free clinic run by William Sharp, whose brother Granville Sharp was shocked by his condition and asked him about his experience. William Sharp arranged for him to receive treatment at a hospital, where he recovered for four months, after which the Sharp brothers secured his employment as an errand boy. Two years later, Strong’s former owner saw him in the street, followed him home, and had Slave hunters capture him and take him to a city jail to be detained until he could sell him to a ship headed for the West Indies. Strong appealed to Granville Sharp for help, and Sharp took the case to court, where the judge discharged him because he “had not stolen anything, and was not guilty of any offence.” Strong’s former owner sued the Sharps for trespass and depriving him of his property, and to the brothers’ disappointment their lawyers quoted them the 1729 Yorke-Talbot “Joint Opinion” that a Slave was not free upon entry to England. Sharp, who was a clerk at the time and unfamiliar with the letter of the law, was dismayed and determined to defend himself, his brother, and Strong, so he thoroughly studied English law. Convinced that it did not sanction Slavery, he took his findings to lawyers at the Inns of Court who succeeded in intimidating the planter’s lawyers into backing down.[62] Sharp said Strong’s case had “wonderful & unexpected consequences both in England & America & since in France,”[63] though what he’s referring to is unclear.

An American Quaker abolitionist named Anthony Benezet published a piece titled A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies in a Short Representation of The Calamitous State of The Enslaved Negroes in The British Dominions in 1766, and by 1768 1,500 copies had been printed in England and were given to every available MP.[64] Benezet believed black humans to be equal in their capabilities and worth to white humans, which was rare even for antislavery advocates.[65]

In 1769, Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson published Institutes of Moral Philosophy which contained denunciations of Slavery.[66] Sharp published A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery; or of Admitting the Least Claim of Private Property in the Persons of Men, in England, concluding that anyone who lived in England was a subject of the King and therefore subject to habeas corpus, meaning they could not be forcibly removed to another country, and asserting the humanitarian argument against Slavery. At the time, some had pointed to abandoned laws around the medieval custom of villeinage to justify Slavery, which Sharp warned put Englishmen in danger of being condemned to bondage again.[67] While Sharp privately received letters welcoming his publication, it was only reviewed once and there was no public reaction.[68] He took on other cases and developed a reputation for helping black humans.[69]

In 1771 British newspapers were granted the right to print speeches that took place within the walls of Parliament, enabling greater public participation in political discussion, which was furthered by the publication of letters from readers.[70]

1772: Somerset v. Stewart

1772 saw the famous case of James Somerset, who had been bought in Boston and brought to England, and who sued for his freedom when his owner tried to take him to Jamaica. Somerset was being detained on a ship and Sharp secured a writ of habeas corpus from Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, ordering his release from the ship so he could be brought to court.[71] In response to the impending trial, multiple newspapers published editorials denouncing Slavery.[72] Sharp made the unconventional move of sending antislavery material to the Prime Minister.[73]

When the trial started, Francis Hargrave, one of Somerset’s lawyers, asserted that because Somerset was being held for the reason that he was owned by Charles Stewart, the question at hand was whether Slavery was legal in England, regardless of the laws and customs of the Americas. Apparently West Indian interests were financially backing Stewart and directing him.[74] Stewart’s lawyer’s pointed to the Joint Opinion, which some lawyers regarded as law, and to precedents which regarded Slaves as chattel. Mansfield was more interested in principle than precedent or in an unofficial opinion that Slaves were neither free upon baptism or entry into England.[75] Stewart’s lawyers turned to economic arguments and asserted the importance of Slavery to the proper functioning of society — centerpieces of Slavery proponents’ arguments all the way to emancipation.[76]

Interestingly, one of Stewart’s lawyers had defended escaped Slave Thomas Lewis in a similar case the year prior, at that time asserting, to the same judge, that English law did not allow men to own other men.[77] Lewis’s owner had lost him, along with the brig on which he was being transported, to a Spanish privateer, and later found and recaptured him. In the case Mansfield stressed that break in the chain of property, and the jury found the owner guilty and Lewis was released.[78]

Mansfield eventually decided that the question at hand was whether or not colonial Slave law was binding in England or positive law established Slavery in England.[79] He seemed primarily concerned with the ramifications his judgement would have either way.[80] He determined that neither villeinage nor contractual slavery applied to the present case.[81] He then suggested that Stewart resolve the matter privately by manumitting Somerset, which he did not.[82] Further press ensued, including a knowledgeable and outraged letter in the Gazetter signed only “Negro,” which addressed Mansfield directly and expressed his loss at comprehending why a man’s color was sufficient to “exempt him from the blessings of liberty.”[83] A London agent for Barbados, who had been attending the trial, hastily wrote and published his thinking, which included discontentment with the use of the term “slavery” instead of “property” and a commendation of the “solemnity” and “deliberation” of the Joint Opinion.[84]

Mansfield eventually delivered his judgement, declaring that the “odious” practice of Slavery could not exist in England as it was not supported by positive law, and that therefore Somerset was discharged.[85] While the sum and weight of influences on Mansfield is hard to asses, he did have a niece whom he cared for and protected who was born to a white family member and a black Slave.[86]

His decision implied that ownership of a human was, in its legal standing, like incestuous or polyamorous marriage: something assumed to be illegal unless made legal by positive law.[87] This stands in contrast to, for instance, the ownership of nonhuman animals, which was and still is assumed to be legal without the verification of positive law. The decision meant Slaves could now not be taken from England against their will.[88] The other several thousand Slaves in England at the time were not lawfully emancipated by the ruling,[89] despite Mansfield’s declaration that Slavery could not exist in England, and papers with opposing conclusions indicate a confused public.[90] Many lower courts after this ruled against men who tried to assert ownership over their once-Slaves, and there may have been a de facto emancipation, though at least some Slaves were still sold or recaptured in Great Britain afterwards.[91] Mansfield himself asserted that he had only determined that Slave owners could not forcibly remove a Slave from England.[92] This appears to contradict his statement that Slavery was “so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law” and his decision that as such Stewart’s case for dominion over Somerset could not be “allowed or approved by the law of England.”[93] Later, in 1785, he ruled that “black slaves in Britain were not entitled to be paid for their labour.”[94]

Neither the use of habeas corpus to bring a Slave before court nor the legal outcome of the case were very novel: Sharp and Mansfield had only just before this dealt with the similar case of Thomas Lewis,[95] who was brought to court through a writ of habeas corpus, though that case did not require Mansfield to make a broader judgement on the forcible removal of a Slave from England. Previous judges had, however, declared Slaves to be made entirely free by setting foot on English ground, which seemed to mean little as other judges had ruled otherwise. In 1762, only decade earlier, a Lord Chancellor had said the same and asserted that “a negro may maintain an action against his master for ill usage, and may have Habeas Corpus if restrained of his liberty.”[96]

The impact of the case on the antislavery movement is difficult to assess, as the movement would not take flight for another decade and a half. Perhaps it hardened Sharp’s resolve, but he had already worked on other Slaves’ cases and appeared committed to the cause. The case did draw significant public attention though, and whether owing to an opportunity to consider the institution from which they were so removed, or to a misinterpretation that the ruling freed all Slaves in England, it may have inspired many Britons to disapprove of Slavery.[97] However, two years later, at least as reported by historian Adam Hochschild, still “only a tiny minority of people in Britain openly opposed slavery.”[98] In parliamentary proceedings on emancipation it seems the case was only mentioned once, briefly and with no exchange on the subject.[99] Because of the attention it drew it may still have, however, increased the public’s private misgivings about Slavery.

It may have also influenced early Slave laws in America,[100] and was plausibly a cause of the fugitive Slave clause in the US Constitution, which may have inspired greater outrage in the US North than its citizens would have felt otherwise, though the US movement didn’t take off until quite some time after the Constitution was written.[101] It also came up in several similar US cases,[102] but to unclear impact.

Though Slavery was still not a mainstream topic in 1774, a planter in Jamaica devised an amelioration scheme modelled on the French Slave code and advocating strategies to promote a more self-sustaining Slave population and to give Slaves some protection from the harshest punishments. He noted the discrepancy between law and practice and supported greater enforcement.[103] He also called for stronger efforts to Christianize the Slave population,[104] something planters may have generally opposed, though perhaps not very strongly or actively, out of fear of how Christian instruction may restructure social relations and Slaves’ identities, as well as how it could make the public more sympathetic to their plight than if they remained heathens.[105] This planter, Edward Long, spoke about black humans as being as inferior to the white man as oxen or apes.[106]

The same year, Methodism co-founder John Wesley published a pamphlet denouncing Slavery,[107] and the English Society of Friends voted to expel members involved in the transatlantic Slave trade.[108]



The Continental Congress ceased trade with Great Britain and the West Indies in 1774, and the price of food in the West Indies shot up. Prices remained high throughout and after the American Revolution.[109]

In 1775 the first abolitionist society was founded, by Quakers, in the British colony of Philadelphia.[110] Thomas Paine was a founding member and wrote a letter to Americans arguing against Slavery,[111] and as his later “Rights of Man” would become famous among revolutionaries and the broader public, his support of abolition may have influenced supporters of his other views on justice to oppose Slavery as well.

With signs of rebellion in America that year, Great Britain offered freedom to Slaves of American rebels who deserted their owners to join the British army, and gave the first 300 uniforms with the words “Liberty to Slaves.” This was merely a tactical use of the Slaves, and liberty for all Slaves was not on the agenda.[112]

Emancipation was, however, brought up in Parliament for the first time in late 1775, by an MP named David Hartley, who proposed, along with a small package of items for the pacification of the rebellious American colonies, that Slaves in the empire’s colonies be given access to trial by jury. He asserted that Slavery was “contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man” and declared a desire for its uprooting and destruction, but also caution about how to proceed, and expressed his hope that each colony would start taking its own steps to abolish Slavery.[113] The motion for the package as a whole was overwhelmingly opposed.[114]

America declared its independence from Great Britain on the fourth of July in 1776, starting a war with the kingdom.[115] The Declaration of Independence established the American identity as one committed to liberty and equality.[116]

The British offer to free deserting American Slaves was later extended to Slaves who deserted rebel owners merely to cross into British territory, whether they volunteered to fight or not.[117] America initially barred black participation in its military, but shortly allowed free black men and then Slaves to enlist, with a promise of freedom for Slaves and compensation for their owners.[118]

Americans had similar governance to Great Britain and similarly poorly treated white laborers, but its antislavery movement would take longer to take off. This difference may owe in part to how Britons had a much easier time communicating with all corners of their much smaller region in a time when communication was restrained by travel by horse, but perhaps more importantly to how there were fewer Slave owners residing in Great Britain than in its colonies and, relative to the colonies, virtually no Slaves.[119] White people within Great Britain were for the most part uninvolved in or only indirectly invested in Slavery, and were not nearly as used to the sight of it. Despite the proslavery camp’s enduring primary argument of the necessity of Slavery to Great Britain’s economy, a threat to Slavery may have felt like less of a threat to people’s way of life in Great Britain than it did in the Americas, where the Slaves were.

Great Britain was also set apart by its practice of naval impressment. Since the 1600s, its ports had been patrolled by armed press gangs, who would capture men without warning — on the streets, and even from their homes — and take them onto a naval vessel where they were compelled to work as crewmen, for unregulated durations. Great Britain dominated the Atlantic because its naval fleet was massive, and in times of war at least a third to half of the navy’s crewmen had been pressed into service.[120] This meant that British men — mostly of the working class, though those from more privileged classes were not always protected — feared being kidnapped and forced to labor against their will in terrible conditions that included severe corporal punishment and foreign illnesses with high mortality rates.[121] Impressment was so common that some merchant ships dropped off their able-bodied crewmen on remote parts of the coast and came to port with only their elderly or disabled sailors, who were unlikely to be pressed. These men also escaped when they could, and many fought back just as Slaves did.[122] In the American Revolutionary War, press gangs kidnapped over 80,000 men, which resulted in riots in at least 22 ports.[123] We can imagine how these working class white men might sympathize with the plight of Slaves who experienced similar kinds and severities of hardships, and more.

Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations claimed that the economy would be more prosperous if it used cooperative instead of compulsory labor.[124]

Also in 1776, Granville Sharp publicized knowledge he had acquired that Spain’s island of Cuba gave its Slaves Sundays and other Catholic holidays off, and enabled them to use those days to work for pay, which they could eventually use to purchase their freedom, either directly or in degrees, and he claimed that the policy encouraged the local economy.[125] He failed to note that in reality Cuban Slaves seeking freedom had to seek out a judge to represent them, and that judge along with two appraisers representing the Slave’s owner would determine the price of their freedom, after which the Slave would have to make an initial deposit before starting to receive some wage for the work they would then perform until they secured enough to purchase their freedom.[126] Very few ever did. Cuba did, however, have compulsory manumission for Slaves judged to have been extraordinarily mistreated,[127] and other forms of manumission and self-purchase existed throughout the Spanish colonies.[128] Voluntary manumission was also fairly common in Spanish colonies.[129]



The same year, Quaker societies in England and Pennsylvania required members to free their Slaves or be expelled.[130]



In 1777, during the American Revolution, Vermont’s constitution abolished human chattel slavery in the state.[131]

In Scotland in 1778, a judge ruled that Slavery was not recognized “by the laws of this Kingdom,” that “the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country,” and that Scotland’s Criminal Procedure Act of 1701, essentially a habeas corpus act, protected the plaintiff "from being sent out of the country against his consent." The ruling was upheld by the Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme civil court.[132]

In 1779, Sharp recounted that in his private conversations with members of the House of Lords, the majority of them expressed “[a]bhorence” of the transatlantic Slave trade and “a desire to suppress it.”[133]

In 1780 Pennsylvania legislated gradual emancipation, providing that children born to Slaves from then on would be required to work as indentured servants for their mother’s owner until age 28, at which time they would become free.[134]

In 1781 Jamaica passed a weak Consolidated Slave Act that would only be in effect for three years.[135] It restricted Slaves’ work days to 11 hours and mandated a day off every other week.[136]

That year when a Slave ship called the Zong had been at sea longer than anticipated, and Slaves were sick and dying in high numbers, the captain threw 133 of his human cargo overboard in order to claim insurance on them for today’s equivalent of roughly $4,000 each, which would be covered by jettison law if he claimed the ship faced a water shortage.[137]

The Zong’s owners successfully brought the claim for their lost property to court in 1783 with Lord Mansfield presiding and little attention from the press and public.[138] Sharp and Olaudah Equiano — a manumitted Slave and abolitionist who bore several names over the course of his time as a Slave, including Gustavus Vassa, his last Slave name and the name he became known by locally[139] — unsuccessfully tried to bring press attention to the case and to make the courts treat it as murder. According to Sharp, the Zong owners’ lawyer said it was “madness” for Sharp to attempt to bring a criminal prosecution, as “the Blacks were property.”[140]

1783 also saw a Massachusetts judiciary ruling that its constitutional declaration, put down three years prior, that all men are born free and equal, had the force of immediately abolishing Slavery, which the state did.[141]

Also in 1783, William Wilberforce, a Tory Member of Parliament who later became the Parliamentary leader of abolition, met a man named James Ramsay, and had what may have been his first serious conversation about the institution of Slavery.[142] Ramsay was a ship’s doctor who had witnessed the conditions on a Slave ship in 1759 and lived in a French colony in the West Indies for some time as a minister, preaching to enslaved individuals and welcoming them into his home, to the outrage of local planters.[143]

Great Britain accepted America’s independence in 1783 after eight years of war.[144] American and British negotiators agreed that the American Slaves the British had freed and enlisted would be returned to their American owners,[145] but the British and American commanders disputed this for some time and the Slaves’ recapture never came to pass, though four decades later Great Britain paid the Slaves’ owners or their heirs half the value of their appropriated property.[146] The 1780s saw an increase in the black population in Great Britain and particularly in London, as many of those freed Slaves came to England. They seem to have been accepted as members of the community, though not as equals — for instance, white people were privileged in hiring and many black people remained in poverty.[147] But the public may have had significant sympathy for the black community as many were veterans, a status they respected.[148]

Great Britain’s loss of America inspired a wealth of patriotic arguments against Slavery, perhaps because Britons felt a need to prove their commitment to principles of liberty after America liberated itself from them and founded itself on principles of liberty.[149] This may have been compounded by some American antislavery advocates and states which had passed abolition or emancipation asserting that the liberation of their Slaves followed from their own struggle for liberation.[150] Half of Great Britain’s Slaves, who were in the American colonies, were also now American property and only 20% as many Slaves were being shipped to British colonies.[151]

1783 was also the year in which British Quakers presented the first petition against the transatlantic Slave trade to the House of Commons.[152] The response was friendly but insubstantial, and the petition was essentially neither met with support nor opposition — or even much discussion — in Parliament, the press, or the public.[153] A peer in the House of Lords stated that the goal “did credit” to the Quakers but was “impossible” as the trade had, “in some measure, become necessary to almost every nation in Europe.” Another said he went "heart and hand with the petitioners, and wished that something might be done towards abolishing an infamous traffic that disgraced humanity, whilst it heaped misfortunes on a devoted race of our fellow-creatures." He moved for the petition to lie on the table, which passed "without opposition."[154] Quakers had long since taken up opposition to Slavery and had experience agitating for their own causes,[155] but they were politically ostracized and socially marginalized by a largely Anglican community.[156]

The Quakers also published The Case of Our Fellow Creatures, the Oppressed Africans, respectfully recommended to the serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great Britain by the people called Quakers, which argued that the abolition of the Slave trade was “required by the calls of justice and humanity, but is also consistent with sound policy.”[157]

The next year William Wilberforce began to reflect on his life, and with the advice of his reverend John Newton and his college friend and now Prime Minister William Pitt, left off many of the indulgences of his upper-class lifestyle and began devoting himself to causes he believed to be righteous even if they were unpopular.[158]

For the next three years, a committee of six Quakers continued to agitate against Slavery, focusing most of their efforts on people of influence.[159] They published pamphlets, canvassed Members of Parliament, distributed literature and sermons to clergy, officers, bankers, investors, insurers, local magistrates, and school headmasters, and printed classified notices detailing the conditions of the transatlantic Slave trade in the London and provincial press. They were still largely met with indifference and assertions that it wasn’t the time to tackle the issue, often wrapped in compliments to their compassion.[160]

In 1784 Grenada planters endorsed a law giving each parish in the colony three “guardians” who would inspect plantations and receive complaints from Slaves. It also provided some protections for the old and infirm including standard clothing, food, and shelter requirements; prohibited planters from working Slaves at night with some exceptions; imposed fines for mutilation; gave labor exemptions to female Slaves who bore six or more children; and gave tax rebates to planters whose plantations saw such "natural increase." The guardians were unfortunately just other planters who had no interest in hearing Slaves’ complaints, and British commissioners of enquiry later found the law entirely unenforced.[161] Jamaica’s 1781 Consolidated Slave Act expired that year, and was not renewed. Laws were passed, however, to provide hunting parties for runaway Slaves and to punish Slaves who stole horses or cattle by death.[162]

James Ramsay’s 1784 Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, which advocated for welfare reform, achieved great notoriety among planters and received substantial positive press.[163] The British had been aware since the 1760s that Spanish South American colonies had offices of Slave protectors to mediate disputes between Slaves and their owners — one of the changes Ramsay proposed Great Britain adopt — but were apparently uninterested in implementing such laws themselves.[164] James Phillips, the abolitionists’ printer, shortly published another essay by Ramsay on the positive consequences for Great Britain of ending the trade,[165] which was of little interest to the press, though the press did publish some letters in the ensuing drama between himself and several planters who slandered and attacked him.[166]

That year Dr. Peter Peckard, a clergyman who had heard of the Zong case the year before and was disturbed by it, condemned the whole transatlantic Slave trade in a sermon, and the next year, after he became Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, he assigned a prestigious Latin essay contest the question, “Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?”[167] A divinity student named Thomas Clarkson, who had no extraordinary prior knowledge of Slavery, entered the contest merely with an ambition to win, but through his research he became intensely uneasy with the institution. He won the contest, and with his thoughts now consumed by Slavery, he decided someone had to stop it.[168]

Neither Sharp nor the Quakers promoting antislavery received enough public notice to be known to Clarkson at the time. A Quaker and family friend of Clarkson’s, who had heard of his essay, approached him and introduced him to the Quaker group of abolitionists in London, including their printer, who published Clarkson’s essay.[169] They recruited Clarkson — an Anglican — to be their public face, and enlisted Sharp as a chairman to sign their letters to Members of Parliament, knowing both men would be taken more seriously than the Quakers.[170] From then, Clarkson was a tireless and radical advocate, and travelled throughout Great Britain regularly to acquire information and witnesses and to organize supporters.

In 1783 the Marquis de Lafayette had asked George Washington, his old commander, to join him in purchasing land where Slaves could work as free tenants, in the hope that Washington’s participation would set a precedent for such action. Three years later, the Marquis and his wife bought two plantations and their Slaves, freed them, gave them land, and taught them to become independent farmers.[171] Their effort to establish such practice as a norm appears to have been unsuccessful.



Around this time, many charitable societies and committees were springing up in London, and in 1786 a Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was established by a philanthropist and pamphleteer who held various eccentric opinions.[172] Several notables donated to the relief committee, and its most generous funders were abolitionists who regarded black relief as part of the abolitionist cause.[173] The committee devised a plan to resettle former Slaves in a colony in Africa, which for abolitionists including Sharp sounded like a brilliant plan that would both help poor former Slaves and prove that Africa had resources beyond Slave laborers.[174] If the plan were to succeed, it could provide a vision of a future after emancipation. For some, removing black people from England was also motivated by racism.[175]

The House of Commons asked the King in 1786 to provide for such a relocation.[176] Sierra Leone was decided as the destination because a supporter who lived there claimed the land was exceptionally fertile. Apparently no one thought it was an issue that Sierra Leone was a major Slave trading center, nor it would seem did they bother to verify this supporter’s claim with the many other British settlers and traders who were familiar with the region and who presumably would, given the reality of the region, paint a less utopian picture. Sierra Leone’s Slave trade activity worried the free black people who were otherwise interested in relocation, but after both the founder of the project and the local proponent fell ill and died, Sharp was left in charge, which alleviated their worries as he had by that time established himself as a committed antislavery advocate. Parliament agreed to provide transport and three month’s worth of supplies.[177] Sharp laid out detailed plans for the organization of the colony, Olaudah Equiano was enlisted as a commissary — and fired last-minute after an argument with the white superintendent — and the next year 459 passengers boarded the ships — two dozen or so of whom deserted last minute with Equiano — including seventy prostitutes who were married to the black men,[178] presumably to rid London of them, and several white people who were recruited for their skills.[179]

Their destination was not nearly as bountiful as promised; the white settlers did not recognize the black elected leadership; and they arrived to heavy rains which both prevented them from planting seeds in already difficult ground and brought malaria. More than a quarter of the settlers died in the first four months.[180] As supplies wore thin, many settlers, black and white, abandoned the settlement to seek jobs in the local economy — which was dominated by the Slave trade. Sharp was furious with them, particularly the former Slaves, for going to work in the Slave trade, even though they didn’t have much if any alternative.[181]

The ideological divide on Slavery between the US North and South was by this time well established, and as the framers were writing the Constitution, they engaged in significant arguments around Slavery,[182] which Britons may have been privy to. Under the threat of the Southern states refusing to join the Union, it was ultimately decided that the Constitution would give Slave states excess representation — known as the Three-Fifths Compromise — and require that fugitive Slaves be returned to their owners, in addition to protecting the trade in Southern states for the next twenty years.[183] The Continental Congress did ordain, however, that new states in the Northwest Territory would ban Slavery.[184]

1787: Formation of the Abolition Committee

In late 1787 Jamaica passed a new Consolidated Slave Act, to take effect the following year, based on Edward Long’s proposals from a decade earlier. The law included minimum requirements for food, shelter, and clothing, a mandate for Slaves to have an acre of land for growing their own food, protections for the old and the ill, Christian instruction, and a limit of ten lashes for corporal punishment, and provided that the mutilation of a Slave would result in the loss of ownership of that Slave, in addition to which killing a Slave was made a felony, and Slaves were given modest access to courts. The reforms were primarily intended to make Slavery more efficient and sustainable.[185]

While Sharp wanted antislavery advocates to publicly advocate for full emancipation, the other London advocates — who almost universally ultimately wanted full emancipation[186] — thought abolishing the transatlantic Slave trade was more achievable, both because emancipation would involve interference with colonial legislature and because property rights were enormously important in British law and tradition. They were also convinced that putting an end to the trade would either result in the gradual demise of Slavery given Slaves’ high death rates or compel planters to treat their Slaves so much more like free laborers that emancipation would be easy to campaign for from there.[187] Thomas Clarkson later said the decision to call for abolition instead of emancipation was made

… not on the ground that Slavery was less cruel, or wicked, or impolitic, than the slave trade, but for other reasons. It was supposed, that, by effecting the abolition of the slave trade, the axe would be laid to the root of the whole evil:—for what was more reasonable to suppose, that, when masters could no longer obtain slaves from Africa or elsewhere, they would be compelled, by a sort of inevitable necessity, or by a fear of consequences, or by a sense of their own interests, to take better care of those whom they might then have in their possession.[188]

They established the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade — also known as the Abolition Committee — in 1787.[189] At this time, the very few people calling for abolition or emancipation were either seen as eccentric or naively idealistic.[190] Clarkson reached out to Wilberforce, who despite his deep conservativeness[191] expressed earnest interest in the cause, noting that he had thought about it often.[192] After some time inquiring into the issue further, Wilberforce cautiously agreed to bring a measure for abolition forward in Parliament.[193] Wilberforce was thought of as an exceptionally eloquent speaker with a “melodious” voice.[194]

In 1787 the committee collected information about the atrocities of Slavery, held lectures, had some letters published in the press,[195] published a newsletter,[196] and distributed print material.[197] Renowned potter Josiah Wedgwood created the famous image of a black man in chains, pleading on his knees, surrounded by the words “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” which became the emblem of the cause, not only used on printed material but also sported openly by supporters on ornaments, medallions, shoe buckles, hair pins, cufflinks, pendants, and bracelets.[198]

In parallel in 1787, a former Slave named Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, who was unassociated with the committee, published a book titled Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, which the public took so much interest in that it went through three printings that year and was translated into French.[199]

Clarkson travelled to the major Slave ports of Bristol and Liverpool to acquire information on the Slave trade.[200] On his way he learned of how traders were often very cruel people, including to white sailors, possibly owing more to the corrupting influence of their experience than to a selection effect. He heard of several officers who murdered white sailors, and tried and failed multiple times to prosecute such officers.[201]

On his travels, Clarkson found that the Slave trading port of Liverpool was very hostile to — and physically unsafe for — abolitionists.[202] But in Manchester, where the Industrial Revolution was sprouting, despite significant economic involvement with the trade — they sold a great deal of goods to Slave ships, namely cloth, which was made from Slave-picked cotton — one in five people signed a petition for the abolition of the trade.[203] Bear in mind that only men could sign.[204] Soon after, in early 1788, Manchester advocates sent letters to the chief magistrates of every major town in Great Britain as well as to other influential persons, and spent a significant sum to advertise their petition in newspapers.[205]

The same month John Newton published an opinionated and informative pamphlet titled Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade. Newton had several decades prior been impressed into the navy and he was a Slave trader for some time. Now he was a renowned preacher and hymn writer, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” a decade before this, which would later become an emblem of civil rights in the US.[206] He had not expressed opposition to Slavery in the thirty-four years since leaving the trade — including at the time when he wrote “Amazing Grace,” contrary to popular fiction — so his pamphlet may be an indicator of a sudden awakening of concern in Great Britain. The pamphlet was immediately popular, and the Abolition Committee sent a copy to every Member of Parliament.[207] The committee also published an interview with a doctor Clarkson had met who had been on several Slave ships much more recently.[208]



Debate societies had hardly touched the topic of Slavery before, but in February of 1788 half of London’s public debates were about abolition.[209] At two of those seven events, a former Slave spoke — likely Equiano or Cugoano, who published several antislavery letters in London newspapers that month.[210]

Press mentions of the “slave trade” or “African trade,” as well as “abolition,” which were all previously very scarce, exploded that year, and thereafter continued to appear with substantially greater frequency than before.[211] A news and gossip magazine called Gentleman’s Magazine, which had not published a single word on Slavery in 1787, mentioned it 68 times in 1788.[212] The Zong massacre now became better known to the public, as abolitionists used it to raise awareness for their cause.[213] A painting disapproving of the transatlantic Slave trade was also put on display in the prestigious Royal Academy.[214] Deciding they needed international advocacy to solve an international problem, the Abolition Committee had their pamphlets translated into the languages of the other nations involved in the transatlantic Slave trade. They sent letters to these other powers, and an American sympathizer sent a copy of Clarkson’s essay to the governor of every US state. The committee appears to have been very committed to meticulous organization and efficiency.[215] They also sent newsletters to supporters and appeals for further contributions from donors, which was new at the time, like much of what they did, as charitable interest groups were unheard of.[216]

Petitions received by Parliament in 1788 for either the abolition or reform of the transatlantic Slave trade outnumbered all other petitions presented that year. While previously most petitions to Parliament had come from people with status, 70% of the 1788 petitions against the trade were simply from “inhabitants” of a town or city, and that share would increase as the abolitionist campaign went on. Two dozen of these petitions were created at local public meetings, one explicitly inviting “the rough sons of lowest labor” to sign, marking a new age of broad public mobilization.[217] Some people, such as Adam Smith, had put forward free-market economic arguments against Slavery,[218] but judging by the moral arguments that appear to have characterized both support for abolition in Parliament and support in public discussions on abolition, as well as the fact that the grassroots campaign was organized by the deeply morally-driven Clarkson, the petitions probably focused on the moral issue.

Fearful of the abolitionist campaign achieving its goals, British merchants threatened to take their business to other nations, and moved significant capital to France that year.[219]

Though the white abolitionists of the Abolition Committee knew Equiano and other former Slaves in London, there are no records of former Slaves strategizing with them or being interviewed for their stories. In general, antislavery advocates appear to have seen themselves more as lifting Slaves out of their abject misery than raising black humans to equality.[220] Their elite Parliament may also have been easier to move through pity than a plea for equality.[221] Nonetheless, Equiano had become a public figure, writing a number of strong letters to London newspapers, and signing — and likely also drafting — a few letters from groups of black men in London. He spoke resolutely and did not temper his opinions for his audience, even praising interracial marriage, which white abolitionists would not endorse.[222]

Wilberforce was unable to raise the question of the transatlantic Slave trade in Parliament in the 1788 session due to illness.[223] But Sir William Dolben, another MP who was a friend of Wilberforce’s, took a group of MPs to see a Slave ship on the Thames, and a Slave Trade Act was subsequently passed 56-5.[224] This was the first regulation of the British trade. It limited the number of Slaves a ship could transport, required every ship to have a doctor, and required every ship to record the deaths of Slaves and crew. The Abolitionist Committee worried that this would subvert the idea that the trade was fundamentally unjust. The act was weakened by amendments and often evaded.[225]

Abolitionists also applied pressure for official investigation of the trade, which resulted in ongoing hearings for a year. Though those hearings took place before the Privy Council’s Committee on Trade and Plantations, which had limited political power, they put substantial information about the trade on public record. People who had worked in the trade in various capacities gave testimony, some advocating for and others against the trade. Though the president of the committee was supportive of Slavery, he was thorough in retrieving information.[226] At that time, no other country’s government had investigated the trade. Clarkson brought a case of Slave subjugation tools like shackles, a punishment collar, and a speculum oris, as well as samples of African goods like wood specimens, cinnamon, cloth, and ornaments, to the hearings, along with a rope knotted into a large ball to illustrate how some sailors were beaten to death. The Privy Council did not call on any former Slaves to testify, but Equiano wrote a long letter to the committee’s president and published it in a London newspaper. Clarkson travelled far and wide to find witnesses to the horrific conditions of the transatlantic Slave trade, but many would not give their names for fear of not being able to work in the trade again.[227]

On his travels throughout Great Britain, Clarkson helped establish local abolitionist committees. The chairman of the Plymouth committee produced the famous diagram of the Brookes ship, which the London committee reworked and expanded, actually showing fewer Slaves than the ship was recorded to have carried. The diagram was printed in newspapers, magazines, books, and pamphlets, and seven thousand posters of it were printed and hung in homes and pubs,[228] making it one of the first images to be widely reproduced for a political purpose.[229]

The rise of abolitionist sentiment and the success of the extremely limited Slave Trade Act alarmed those with interests in the trade. In addition to arguments about the economic significance of the trade and the risk of it being taken over by — and thus giving great power to — Great Britain’s enemies, they made dismissive, dishonest, and nonsensical arguments.[230] For instance, several proslavery advocates tried to shut down the debate over abolition by insisting that Slaves would revolt and kill all the white people they outnumbered on the West Indian islands at merely hearing of the debate.[231] In one hearing a proslavery advocate claimed of Slaves taken from Africa that “Nine out of Ten rejoice at falling into our Hands,”[232] an instance of what advocates today often refer to as humanewashing.[233] Another dismissed Ramsay’s horror at Slaves being burnt alive by noting that they were strangled beforehand.[234] A famous admiral said Slaves were never flogged as hard as white schoolboys, and a former captain presumably either exaggerated significantly or lied outright when he described the Slaves of his ship receiving lavish amenities on board including cordials, pipes and tobacco, instruments, and attendants to wipe their sweat off with towels.[235] Wilberforce explicitly addressed this claim in Parliament.[236] Slave ship captains also maintained that they only bought black humans who were already slaves in Africa,[237] which as noted in the Introduction is probably mostly true in the most literal sense, but is a significant distortion of reality as Slave traders drove the demand for that supply of Slaves.

In apparent response to this sudden swell of momentum against Slavery, Caribbean land prices were dropping and fewer new plantations were opening. The West India Committee — the political lobby for merchants and planters with interests in the Caribbean and the chief proslavery lobby — started levying significant taxes on its members’ imports in order to fight the rising tide of abolitionism,[238] and Slave prices were rising due to fear the supply would be cut off.[239]

The Privy Council issued an 850-page report with testimony from both sides three weeks before Wilberforce was to raise the issue of the abolition of the transatlantic Slave trade in Parliament in 1789.[240] Most MPs did not read the report.[241] The abolitionists lobbied both houses of Parliament, and abolition seems to have been the hottest topic of conversation that session. The abolitionists also enlisted the help of poets, including the renowned William Cowper, whose poem “The Negro’s Complaint” was set to music and spread quickly throughout the country.[242] The proslavery camp launched a less successful musical play called The Benevolent Planters,[243] along with a campaign of pamphlets depicting Slave owners as benevolent caretakers.[244] Ramsay published an Address to the Publick, on the Proposed Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and continued to receive attacks on his character, including from MPs.[245] In Wilberforce’s eloquent speech to Parliament, he made no attacks on any Britons — but did speak harshly of the Africans supplying the trade — and said “We ought all to plead guilty.”[246] While he said cutting off the trade would lead to better treatment of Slaves in the colonies, and a resulting prosperity on those plantations, he did not mention the hope the core abolitionist group held that abolishing the trade would lead to the end of Slavery as a whole. To the popular concern that France would take up any trade Great Britain abandoned, he declared that such logic would have to justify committing other crimes that may otherwise be committed by another person. The proslavery lobby convinced the House of Lords to push the bill back to hold their own hearings.[247]

Clarkson had planned to travel again to collect new witnesses and organize more supporters, but then the Bastille was stormed and talk of democracy was in the air in France, so the British abolitionists decided someone should coordinate efforts with French abolitionists, and he headed for Paris.[248] Soon after he arrived the French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.[249] One of its contributors was the Marquis de Lafayette.[250] French newspapers accused Clarkson of being a British spy, published his address in Paris, and accused the local abolitionist group of arming black people in the colonies. The French abolitionists discovered two spies in their ranks, likely the responsibility of the French planter lobby, and faced a few other troubles. The lobby also sent an agent to London to spy on abolitionist activities there.[251] After half a year of organizing with poor success, it was clear to Clarkson and the French abolitionists that France was too absorbed in its massive revolution to concern itself with the transatlantic Slave trade, and that the Rights of Man was only meant for white men.[252]

Also in 1789, Spain drafted a law to regulate Slavery in all its colonies. Though the law merely outlined existing common practice more than it proposed greater restriction, planters resisted and succeeded in preventing the proposed law from being implemented.[253]

Insistent that his plan for the Sierra Leone colony succeed, Sharp sent another ship of black and white settlers, many of whom abandoned the settlement, like those before them, to seek food and shelter with the Slave trade — the only work the local economy made available to them. The relief committee and the government had no further role in the colony after its original settlers first arrived, so Sharp and other abolitionists established a private corporation, the Sierra Leone Company, to continue trade with the colony, which was unprofitable. A British navy ship fired a shot that set a neighboring Sierra Leone village on fire, and its chief gave the British settlers three days to evacuate. After three days he burnt the settlement to the ground, and remaining settlers were evacuated on the canoes of Slave traders.[254]

Equiano also wrote an autobiography in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, which quickly became a bestseller in England and a popular read abroad, and was published in several editions and translations.[255] Many MPs, dukes, professors, and other persons of influence ordered a copy.[256] Equiano prefaced each new edition with endorsements and lists of prominent patrons. The book appealed to the Queen of England to grant Africans “the rights and situation of men.”[257] It bothered little with descriptions of the middle passage or what were by then publicly familiar economic arguments against the trade, and mostly spoke of his own journey from freedom, to Slavery, and into freedom again. He made use of the most popular forms of literature at the time — stories of adventure, riches-to-rags-to-riches, and finding God.[258] He also presented himself as a courageous and compassionate hero taking risks to help those still trapped as he had been.[259]

Equiano toured the country to speak about his book, and tens of thousands of Britons were able to see Slavery through the eyes of a former Slave.[260] He even went to the Slave port of Bristol, which seemed dangerous for any black person or abolitionist.[261] As he would find, new and growing manufacturing cities were especially favorable to antislavery.[262] He was also well-received in Ireland, where the people felt oppressed themselves and were advocating for better representation.[263] White Britons, who largely thought of Africans as illiterate heathens, now saw an African who had earned his freedom through skillful tradesmanship and the hard work British culture valued, who was literate, Christian, intellectually curious, patriotic, and compassionate towards white sailors, and who had learned to play the French horn. He also flattered his British readers, even stroking their white supremacism by noting that the British “did not sell one another, as we [Africans] did” and saying he was “astonished at the wisdom of the white people in all things I saw.”[264]

In 1790, particularly around the time of Parliament’s sitting, Wilberforce had many visitors, and hosted a dinner once a week for his abolitionist friends, who also met often at the Parliament Coffee House.[265]

That round of Parliamentary hearings ended in early 1791, and in the few weeks they had, the abolitionists distilled 1,700 pages of House of Commons testimony and the 850 pages of Privy Council testimony into a 648-page account to give to every MP before the next debate in the Commons. A Slave revolt broke out on the British colony of Dominica, which proslavery advocates blamed on abolitionists because Slaves had heard about proceedings in Great Britain and now, according to the proslavery camp, had ideas about their rights. Clarkson would later be accused of supplying them with ammunition. At the debate, as he commonly did, Wilberforce insisted that ending the trade would help the plantation economy.[266] One proslavery MP asserted that Africans didn’t object to the trade, and another that they couldn’t be miserable because they showed an appreciation of fine things. Two days of debate ended in a 163-88 vote against the abolition of the transatlantic Slave trade.[267]

Vincent Ogé, a free biracial man from France’s St. Domingue (later Haiti) who had met Clarkson in France two years earlier and told him of his intention to organize a revolt on the island, was finding it difficult to return to the West Indies because the French planter lobby was watching his movements and preventing him from leaving. Clarkson gave him some money to pay his way.[268]

Clarkson further distilled the testimony the abolitionists had given to the MPs into a book a quarter the size, and went travelling again to distribute copies.[269] The book was a dense mine of information, and was intended to let the evidence speak entirely for itself. Investigative journalism like this was entirely new at the time.[270] The copies also made their way to Slaves, and an alarmed Governor’s Council of Jamaica reported that it contributed significantly to Slaves’ notions of freedom.[271]

Women could not participate in politics, but in response to Parliament’s rejection of abolition, they came up with another way to harm the transatlantic Slave trade: a boycott of sugar from the West Indies.[272] Boycotts were unheard of at the time and the term wouldn’t appear until a century later.[273] It’s unclear whether these boycotters even knew of the small number of Quakers who abstained from all Slave-made goods. The boycott was encouraged through purchasable pamphlets, one of which sold seventy thousand copies in four months.[274] Clarkson estimated that 300,000 people were refusing West Indian sugar, a number which may have actually been up to half a million or more.[275] This would mean approximately 4-6% of the population of Great Britain participated in the boycott,[276] and it seems those participants had outsized impacts as sales of sugar from the colonies dropped by a third to a half. This may owe to higher participation among wealthy individuals who consumed more sugar than those less well-off. Sales of sugar from India increased dramatically. Some shops advertised sugar and other goods produced by “freemen.” This focus on the consumer product of Slavery may have helped Britons understand their connection to it. Some pamphleteers sought to amplify that understanding by for instance saying that putting one lump of sugar in a cup of tea would result in a Slave’s groan, the next in a whipping.[277] One proslavery advocate published a pamphlet asserting on medical authority that the consumption of sugar was “a necessary of life; and great injury have many persons done to their constitutions by totally abstaining from it.”[278] Note that while sugar was Great Britain’s largest import, Slaves harvested other products that Britons were aware of and did not boycott, including tobacco, coffee, and cotton.[279]



While Clarkson privately supported the boycott, Wilberforce worried it was too radical.[280]

In 1791, Clarkson recruited a ship’s surgeon named Alexander Falconbridge, who had two years earlier written An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa,[281] to re-establish the original Sierra Leone settlement on behalf of the Sierra Leone Company.[282]

By the rejection of the abolition bill in 1791, many small Slave revolts had taken place throughout the West Indies and had been quickly suppressed, including a rebellion of free biracial people in St. Domingue later that year, which was started among others by Vincent Ogé, the man whose travel Clarkson had financially supported.[283] In August, the island’s Slaves rose up again in what would become known as the Haitian Revolution,[284] the only instance of rebelling Slaves achieving colony-wide freedom. Many Slaves throughout the colonies had overheard talk of the “rights of men” and knew about Wilberforce and the abolitionists in Great Britain, and the Slaves of French-controlled St. Domingue were mostly born free in Africa and so had known freedom, in addition to which likely many had fought in wars before.[285] Hearing about the French Revolution and seeing some of its influence on rebellious local white laborers[286] may have encouraged them and the free black people of the island to revolt. A Slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture led the guerilla militia of Slaves. When the violent rebellion broke out in the North of St. Domingue, France reversed a very recent decree allowing some biracial men to vote, which compelled biracial people in the South to rebel.[287]



Other famous revolts that had already happened and failed in the British West Indies by this time include Jamaica’s First Maroon War of 1731 and Tacky’s War, also in Jamaica, in 1760. Other revolts of various scales would start and fail — in the colonies and aboard ships, sometimes succeeding in the latter case[288] — before abolition and emancipation.

The planters of St. Domingue offered the colony to England.[289]

1792: Gradual Abolition Passes in Commons, Postponed by Lords

In 1792, Great Britain was abuzz with enthusiasm for abolition, and the sugar boycott reached its peak.[290]



Presumably to quell the rebellion on St. Domingue, France changed its mind on black rights again and gave full rights to all free black people. St. Domingue plunged into further disorder when white royalists and republicans in the colony started a civil war. The republicans promised freedom to Slaves who joined them.[291] The rebellion came to the attention of Britons, who were horrified by it, in early 1792, several months after it started.[292] St. Domingue produced a third of the world’s sugar and more than half of its coffee, among other crops, with double the annual production of all the British islands combined. The colony accounted for a third of France’s foreign trade, and matched America’s. It was the transatlantic Slave trade’s largest market.[293] Because of the sharply decreased production in St. Domingue, the sugar boycott back in Great Britain declined as the price of other colonies’ sugar shot up, undercutting the boycott’s goals.[294] 1792 also saw the highest traffic in the British transatlantic Slave trade to date, and profits for England were high.[295] This may owe not just to the trade’s success but also to the threat of abolition, which was probably amplified in people’s minds by the rebellion in St. Domingue.

The West India Committee launched a media campaign, publishing articles and responding to abolitionist publications, vastly outspending abolitionists. They distributed proslavery books to libraries and “in the Country, particularly at Cambridge”; printed eight thousand pamphlets depicting Slave families as each having “a snug little house and garden, and plenty of pigs and poultry”; and had a pamphlet written asserting that sugar was a “nutritious, vegetable substance” that possessed “a power of correcting the ill effects arising from a too free use of animal food.”[296]

The Sierra Leone Company arranged for the immigration of 1,196 black men, women and children from Nova Scotia to the Sierra Leone settlement.[297] They had relocated to Nova Scotia after serving in the British Army.[298] Several of them had originally been captured by or sold to Slave traders in Sierra Leone. The company’s directors still relied far more on optimism and fantasy than on the knowledge they now had an abundance of in providing for these new settlers, and as with previous settlers, things did not go well.[299]



After the death of Falconbridge, the surgeon who was sent to Sierra Leone, his wife published an account of her travels to Sierra Leone, including her voyage to the Caribbean on a Slave ship, and despite the death on board of twelve Slaves before the ship had even departed,[300] she asserted that the Slaves were well provided for and treated with “utmost kindness and care” and remarked that Slave owners wouldn’t treat Slaves poorly anyway if just out of a selfish interest to keep them healthy enough to be useful.[301]

The first popular feminist manifesto, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women — which included a recognition of the fundamentally similar “prejudices” faced by women and Slaves — was also published in 1792.[302]

The same year, the King of Denmark decreed that the trade would be banned as of 1803, making Denmark the first European colonial power to legislate abolition,[303] though the nation had such little stake in the transatlantic Slave trade that no public movement against it was needed to compel that decree.[304]

In England, 1792 also saw the first trial for the murder of captives on a Slave ship, which resulted in the captain’s acquittal.[305] The trial received significant press, suggesting public interest not only in Slavery but also the question of whether “blacks” were people who could be “murdered.”[306] A series of stories about the captain’s cruelty towards captured women elicited sympathy in the public,[307] and the case was always contextualized by the debate on the transatlantic Slave trade.[308]

That year, Parliament received 519 petitions and 390,000 signatures for the abolition or reform of the trade — five times as many petitions and over six times as many signatures as the already extraordinary 1788 drive.[309] The number of people who signed their support of the petitions surpassed the number of the nation’s eligible voters. Only four petitions were submitted in favor of the trade.[310] Wilberforce followed his speech at the trial with a call for a vote on the bill he had proposed two years earlier.[311] Banastre Tarleton, one of the main proslavery MPs, accused the abolitionists of extorting signatures and lying about the horrors of the trade.[312] He also claimed the mortality rate on the middle passage was only 4.5%,[313] in contrast to Wilberforce’s claim of 12.5%.[314] The Duke of Clarence, a member of the House of Lords and the third son of King George III, asserted that he was “an attentive observer” of the state of the Slaves and claimed they “were not treated in the manner which had so much agitated the public mind,” dismissing the wealth of evidence Parliament now had as insufficiently “full and substantial” without bringing forward his own evidence, and then repeating the standard argument and widely-held belief that the empire’s economy, navy, and colonies required the continuance of the transatlantic Slave trade.[315] Another member of the Lords declared the Slaves appeared so happy he wished he were a Slave.[316]

An Irish statesman named Edmund Burke, who in 1780 had written but apparently not shared a potential British Slave code for the regulation and gradual elimination of not just the trade but of Slavery itself, shared the code with the Home Secretary and Scottish MP boss Henry Dundas.[317] Dundas declared himself in favor of abolition and eventually emancipation, but “gradually” and without specification of how he saw that happening.[318]

To the argument that other nations would take on the share of the trade Great Britain relinquished, Prime Minister William Pitt — who had been friends with Wilberforce since they studied together at Cambridge[319] — argued that other nations did not have the resources to acquire what Great Britain would be leaving behind, least of all France, their main rival, while they were trying to quell revolutions in St. Domingue and at home. He pointed out that there would likely be no time when all the powers in the trade would agree together to abolish it, and asserted that Great Britain, as the dominant player in the trade, not only had the most guilt but would in abolishing the trade set an example other nations would look up to. To the objection that Africans would never achieve civilization, he offered that ancient Romans, on finding the people of England committing human slavery and sacrifice, could just as well have asserted that they would never achieve civilization.[320]

The Commons voted against the immediate abolition of the trade 158-109, but passed a proposal for its abolition effective January 1, 1796, by a 151-132 vote.[321] The House of Lords — which is comprised of appointed and hereditary nobility — had no interest in abolition, and stalled with their own hearings, which were dominated by Slave interests, until Parliament adjourned for the year, killing the bill.[322]

The French Revolution made the British government nervous, as news came to London of massacres of aristocrats, clergy, and royalists, and the capture and now execution of King Louis XVI.[323] Great Britain entered the war against France in 1793 and Wilberforce brought his bill to the Commons a mere two weeks after the declaration of war. It failed 53-61.[324] This decreased support may owe in part to a lull in interest given urgent priorities of war, and in part to the possibility of Great Britain’s stake in the transatlantic Slave trade increasing substantially if it could take over French colonies.[325] Two months later Wilberforce brought forward a bill for the abolition of the trade to foreign powers, which failed 29-31, and the Commons denied to hear a bill for the abolition of the trade to British colonies.[326] Great Britain sent troops to invade St. Domingue in an attempt to seize the colony from France.[327]

The abolitionists were growing more disheartened, and Clarkson was experiencing severe anxiety and burnout.[328] The French Revolution also ignited a public scare and erosion of civil liberties in Great Britain. A friend of Clarkson’s was charged with treason for gathering people with guns to defend his house against a mob[329]; debate societies were shut down, as was a working-class organization that advocated universal male suffrage; troops stopped peaceful demonstrators planting a tree representing liberty; and radical groups were infiltrated by government spies.[330] Progressive politics were severely repressed, and abolitionist committees stopped meeting.[331]



Proslavery advocates blamed the continuing rebellion in St. Domingue on abolitionists, and Clarkson was one of the few abolitionists bold enough to defend the rebels by pointing out that slaves had rebelled since ancient Greece and Rome, and by asserting they had been stripped of the “Rights of Men.” It seemed the only politicians willing to support abolition now were those also willing to support republicanism.[332]



Despite this, it’s possible that Wilberforce’s bill would not have failed in the Commons each year if it weren’t for poor organizing, though it still would have failed in the House of Lords. Debate attendees had voted unanimously in favor of abolition before the debate societies were shut down.[333] At a meeting of metalworkers led by an orator who was soon convicted of conspiracy, thousands of metalworkers endorsed both republican reform and emancipation for Slaves.[334]

In St. Domingue in the fall of 1793, some Slaves were declared free, after which all Slaves in the North were emancipated, though this changed their lives little as they were still bound to their owners. Then a Civil Commissioner with apparent sympathy for the French Revolution and emancipation freed his Slaves and encouraged other planters in the West to do the same, which they did. In early 1794 France emancipated all of its Slaves, prompted by the revolt in its prized St. Domingue, weak control of the colony, and incursions by Great Britain and Spain in the colony, though the Slaves continued their resistance because their lives were hardly improved.[335]

In early 1794, the Commons passed a ban on the trade in Slaves to foreign powers 56-38,[336] but the Lords presumably postponed it because nothing came of it.[337]

A month later, the United States Congress restricted American participation in foreign Slave trading to the best of its ability without violating the constitutional limitation on abolishing the trade.[338]

The British Army started buying Slaves in 1795 which increased Great Britain’s interest in the trade. Prime Minister Pitt stopped talking about abolition around this time,[339] and the Seditious Meetings Act passed that year restricted public meetings to fifty people,[340] halting public Slavery meetings and limiting antislavery activity for the next decade.[341]

A colony of free black people in Jamaica revolted after their leaders were seized en route to discuss grievances with local officials.[342] The governor of Jamaica advocated the use of bloodhounds to subdue the rebellious Slaves, which the British public, along with the King and many MPs, opposed so thoroughly that the governor’s friends in Parliament felt compelled to not defend him.[343]

War was taking a significant toll on enlisted British men, and survivors returned home with stories of the terrible conditions of Slaves used in the military, and of Slaves fighting to free themselves.[344]

In 1796, Wilberforce’s bill failed in the Commons 70-74. It seems would have passed if a handful of supportive MPs were not attending the opera, a trip allegedly sponsored by Slavery supporters.[345]

St. Domingue’s uprising had inspired revolts in other colonies and American states, and a British General fighting self-freed Slaves on St. Lucia attempted to make peace with them by offering a vaguely reformed enslavement with “kind treatment and good feeling,” but they knew better, and ultimately only surrendered on the condition they would never be enslaved again.[346]

The humanewashing of the trade continued from traders. Wilberforce’s brother-in-law witnessed this as a passenger on a ship owned by Banastre Tarleton. The captain demonstrated the humanity of his trade by quietly uttering unintelligible words to two small groups of Slaves, who both responded with the same three cheers and a laugh — presumably meaning that he told them to do that, likely under threat — and the captain said this should convince him that Wilberforce’s accusations of the cruelty of the trade were wrong. Wilberforce’s brother saw the Slaves chained, living in filth, trying to revolt, and attempting to kill themselves.[347] While much of the industry’s humanewashing was, like this, either intentional misrepresentation or a combination of that and misbelief, some proslavery advocates seem to genuinely believe that Slavery was in the interest of Africans as a civilizing force.[348]

It seems there were also a few ships and plantations that were less bad than the others, or at least that it was easy for a naive eye motivated to see them that way to do so. An army physician arriving in Barbados wrote that “cheerfulness and contentment prevailed” on a Slave ship that just arrived, detailing that he found the Slaves were fed, fit, and clean, and that the Slaves on the first plantation he visited appeared happy as well.[349] But with more exposure to Slavery, his impression changed, and like many soldiers who came to the colonies with no attachments to the institution, he did not like what he saw.[350]

By the time Great Britain captured Trinidad from Spain in 1797, antislavery sentiment had grown strong in Great Britain again, and both Parliament and the Colonial Office were debating the abolition of the trade and the amelioration of the harsh conditions faced by Slaves in the West Indies. The British were exposed to the Spanish laws and customs of their new island, whose slaving tradition was regarded as more benevolent. The island had, for instance, a Protector of Slaves, and liberal manumission practices.[351] Iberia had maintained its links with ancient Roman chattel slavery custom through the Middle Ages, so the Spanish slave code acknowledged slaves’ humanity and emphasized the possibility that they could regain their freedom.[352] It regarded slavery as an unfortunate, but necessary, fact of life, and as a stage in a person’s life, rather than their and their progeny’s permanent condition. This set it apart from other empires’ laws, which had been developed in the context of the transatlantic trade. Spanish slave laws were also not based in race, and prohibited Slave owners from altering slaves’ contracts, opposing a Slave’s marriage, or separating a lawfully united husband and wi