Poems of the Week: The Abolition of Slavery

Our subject this week is primarily the poetry that was concerned with the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, covering a period from approximately 1750 to 1807; the later steps to emancipation which culminated in 1833 will be briefly included. The road to freedom in the United States (and the poetry involved) was somewhat later, and will be the subject of a future piece.

Paula Bardell says: “For many centuries, the cultural importance of England's black population has been largely ignored. Aside from the slave trade during the 18th and 19th centuries, black history is often neglected in schools, even though there are documents proving that black people have lived in England since Roman times. A local historian, Steve Martin, from Hackney, says that ‘In Georgian London five to six per cent of the population was of African descent.’”

“In recent years there have been a number of attempts to rectify the situation, in particular by designating the month of October as Britain's Black History Month - a remarkable breakthrough, which has highlighted the country's black heritage in a unique and enjoyable way. It was launched in 1986, largely thanks to the efforts of Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, Special Projects Officer in the Race Unit, at what was then the Greater London Council. Since then, the event has gone from strength to strength and is now eagerly anticipated by English people of all colours and creeds.”

I think that part of the issue of the ignoring of the black population in early years could be traced to the movement of different peoples into England over the centuries. As you will see, the issue of slavery within England itself should not have been an issue, and the poetry we will present here dates from the period when this underlying principle was recognized. However, Britain’s participation in the slave trade was another matter; and much of this piece will relate to this issue.

Slavery has been a component of human societies for as far back as we have records, and it is interesting to see how the subject has been dealt with in other contexts as well. We have discussed the topic peripherally in earlier articles: Thunder, Black Poetry, Aphra Behn, and William Cowper.

In ancient Greece, slave labor was an essential element of the world. While male slaves were assigned to agricultural and industrial work, female slaves were assigned a variety of domestic duties which included shopping, fetching water, cooking, serving food, cleaning, child-care, and wool-working. In wealthy households some of the female servants had more specialized roles to fulfill, such as housekeeper, cook or nurse. Because female slaves were literally owned by their employers, how well slaves were treated depended upon their status in the household and the temperament of their owners.

In addition to their official chores in the household, slave girls also performed unofficial services. For example, there is evidence that close relationships developed between female slaves and their mistresses. Given the relative seclusion of upper-class women in the private realm of their homes, many sought out confidantes in their slave girls. Euripedes' tragic character of Medea confided her deepest feelings with her nurse, who both advised and comforted her in her troubled times. Furthermore, slaves always accompanied their mistresses on excursions outside of the home. Tombstones of upstanding Athenian women often depict scenes of familiarity between the deceased and her slave companion. It is likely that a sense of their common exclusion from the masculine world of public affairs would have drawn women together, regardless of class. The only public area in which women were allowed to participate was religion.

Athens was considered in many ways to be the model for other city-states. During the 5th century B.C., approximately 100,000 slaves lived in Athens, constituting from 1/3 to 1/2 of the total population. Most Athenians, except for the very poor, owned at least one slave. These proportions were common throughout ancient Greece except in Sparta. Sparta enslaved the entire population of the city-state of Messenia. These slaves were called "helots" and they worked the land of the Spartans, performing all of the agricultural duties. The helots outnumbered the Spartans possibly by as much as ten to one. As a result, the outnumbered Spartans had to work hard to suppress the helots from revolting.

Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) is generally regarded as one of the two greatest intellectual figures produced by the Greeks (the other being Plato). In his Politics (c. 330 BCE) he discussed some of the issues of slavery; the following quotes are from a translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817 – 1893), which appeared in 1885.

”The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another's man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another's man who, being a human being, is also a possession.”

“But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature? There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”

“Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.”

“Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright, and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts both of war and peace. But the opposite often happens – that some have the souls and others have the bodies of free men. And doubtless if men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”

“There is a slave or slavery by law as well as by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention – the law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors. But this right many jurists impeach, as they would an orator who brought forward an unconstitutional measure: they detest the notion that, because one man has the power of doing violence and is superior in brute strength, another shall be his slave and subject.”

“Others, clinging, as they think, simply to a principle of justice (for law and custom are a sort of justice), assume that slavery in accordance with the custom of war is justified by law, but at the same moment they deny this. For what if the cause of the war be unjust? And again, no one would ever say he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave. Were this the case, men of the highest rank would be slaves and the children of slaves if they or their parents chance to have been taken captive and sold. Wherefore Hellenes do not like to call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term to barbarians. Yet, in using this language, they really mean the natural slave of whom we spoke at first; for it must be admitted that some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere. The same principle applies to nobility. Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country, but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby implying that there are two sorts of nobility and freedom, the one absolute, the other relative.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was deeply opposed to the idea of slavery, and wrote an excellent poem, inspired by a statue carved by a friend, Hiram Power’s Greek Slave:

They say Ideal Beauty cannot enter
The house of anguish. On the threshold stands
An alien image with enshackled hands,
Called the Greek Slave! as if the artist meant her
(That passionless perfection which he lent her
Shadowed not darkened where the sill expands)
To so confront man’s crimes in different lands
With man’s ideal sense. Pierce to the center,
Art’s fiery finger! and break up ere long
The serfdom of this world! appeal, fair stone,
From God’s pure heights of beauty against man’s wrong!
Catch up in the divine face, not alone
East griefs but west, and strike and shame the strong,
By thunders of white silence, overthrown.

(However, I should explain that the ‘Greek Slave’ here portrayed is in fact a Christian who has been captured and offered for sale by the Ottoman Turks.) So far as the developments in Europe were concerned, slavery was an institution of the Roman Empire, and picked up by the Germanic tribes who dealt with it as victims or suppliers. When those Germanic tribes reached Britain in the 5th century, they brought the practice with them, and the complete disappearance of Celtic culture from the east and south-east of Britain is strong evidence for their success. The chronicler Gildas was probably correct when he claimed that slavery was a common fate for many of his contemporaries, as the story of St. Patrick demonstrates (see our article on Saint Patrick). He was captured by pirates in the south-west of England, and spent six years in Ireland before escaping. Gildas Bandonicus, a British (that is, Celtic) monk, lived in the 6th century. In the 540s – in the most aggressive language – he set out to denounce the wickedness of his time: De Excidio Brittaniae, or Concerning the Ruin of Britain. He ended up being the only substantial source which survives from the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain, and the best source before the much more impressive work of the Venerable Bede (672 – 735), who completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People almost 200 years later (731). At any event, the Anglo-Saxons began arriving in the 470s (perhaps imported as soldiers as Gildas suggests). For some time the British fought back (this section features what appears to be the first mention of King Arthur), but by 600 the Anglo-Saxons had control of most of what became known as 'England', and the Celtic peoples were pushed to the hills of Wales and Scotland and across the English Channel to "Brittany".

Almost all the slaves traded in the early middle ages were captured in raids or warfare. It seems to have been the practice to kill the leaders of a losing army and enslave the humbler peasants and local villagers. The Vikings are the archetypal slavers in European history, enslaving victims in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area, and selling them in markets far away. For example, a number of Moors taken during a raid in Spain in the 9th century ended up in Ireland, but Ireland itself was a source of slaves for the Vikings, as was Scotland. The Vikings, however, were not the only slavers. It can be shown that the English conquest of Cornwall in the 9th and 10th centuries led to the enslavement of many of the indigenous Celts. In the same period, Edward the Elder led a combined West Saxon and Meridian army against the Danes and brought back both slaves and livestock.

In the reign of Æthelred the Unready, slave raiding and trading once more became popular, with many of the slaves ending up in Denmark. The chronicler William of Malmesbury (c. 1090 – c.1143) writes, in Chronicle of the Kings of England (1065): “When he [Earl Godwin, d.1053] was a young man he had Canute's sister to wife, by whom he had a son, who in his early youth, while proudly curveting on a horse which his grandfather had given him, was carried into the Thames, and perished in the stream; his mother, too, paid the penalty of her cruelty; being killed by a stroke of lightning. For it is reported, that she was in the habit of purchasing companies of slaves in England, and sending them into Denmark; more especially girls, whose beauty and age rendered them more valuable, that she might accumulate money by this horrid traffic.” Earl Godwin enslaved some of companions of the Ætheling Alfred in 1036; Earl Harold took slaves when he landed in the West Country from Ireland in 1052; and supporters of Earl Morcar captured 'many hundreds of people' in Northamptonshire as late as 1065.

Apart from Ireland, many slaves were taken to Europe for sale. Rouen, in Normandy, was a major trading centre for goods seized by the Vikings (the Normans were known to have used domestic slaves) and it was a convenient location for pirates to off-load captives taken in raids along the English coastline. It seems that all the big markets were slave trading centres including, perhaps, Jorvik and London.

In England, one major 'export center' was Bristol, little more than a village until the late 10th century. William of Malmesbury says that Bristol was a long-standing market: slaves were brought from all over England for eventual sale to Ireland. “You might well groan to see then long rows of young men and maidens whose beauty and youth might move the pity of the savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold” he wrote (From: J. A. Giles, trans., William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England, London: 1847. Saint Wulstan 1008 – 1095). William of Malmesbury was a native of Long Itchington in Warwickshire. He studied in the monasteries at Evesham and Peterborough, and Brihtheah, Bishop of Worcester, guided his preparation for the priesthood. Despite his strenuous resistance, he was made prior of Worcester and in 1062, Bishop of that diocese. He was closely involved in the suppression of a trade by which men were kidnapped into slavery and shipped from Bristol to Ireland.

After the Norman conquest, the slave trade came under pressure, even the king received fourpence for every slave sold. The social disruption and misery that organised slaving caused became more and more difficult to accept. At the Westminster Council of 1102, it was ruled that 'no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore men used in England to be sold like brute beasts.' (Pelteret, D, Slave raiding and slave trading in early England, Anglo-Saxon England (1981), pp99-114).

And, of course, slavery was not limited to Europe. In 1994 Bernard Lewis published Race and Slavery in the Middle East which begins:

“In 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco, as part of his government's worldwide endeavor to bring about the abolition of slavery or at least the curtailment of the slave trade, made representations to the sultan of that country asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to accomplish this desirable objective. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that ‘the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam . . . up to this day.’ The sultan continued that he was ‘not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.’

The sultan was only slightly out of date concerning the enactment of laws to abolish or limit the slave trade, and he was sadly right in his general historic perspective. The institution of slavery had indeed been practiced from time immemorial. It existed in all the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and pre-Columbian America. It had been accepted and even endorsed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as other religions of the world.”

“Both the Old and New Testaments recognize and accept the institution of slavery. Both from time to time insist on the basic humanity of the slave, and the consequent need to treat him humanely. The Jews are frequently reminded, in both Bible and Talmud, that they too were slaves in Egypt and should therefore treat their slaves decently. Psalm 123, which compares the worshipper's appeal to God for mercy with the slave's appeal to his master, is cited to enjoin slaveowners to treat their slaves with compassion. A verse in the book of Job has even been interpreted as an argument against slavery as such: "Did not He that made me in the womb make him [the slave]? And did not One fashion us both?" (Job 31:15). This probably means no more, however, than that the slave is a fellow human being and not a mere chattel. The same is true of the much-quoted passage in the New Testament, that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." These and similar verses were not understood to mean that ethnic, social, and gender differences were unimportant or should be abolished, only that they conferred no religious privilege. From many allusions, it is clear that slavery is accepted in the New Testament as a fact of life. Some passages in the Pauline Epistles even endorse it. Thus in the Epistle to Philemon, a runaway slave is returned to his master; in Ephesians 6, the duty owed by a slave to his master is compared with the duty owed by a child to his parent, and the slave is enjoined "to be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, in fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ." Parents and masters are likewise enjoined to show consideration for their children and slaves. All humans, of the true faith, were equal in the eyes of God and in the afterlife but not necessarily in the laws of man and in this world. Those not of the true faith -- whichever it was -- were in another, and in most respects an inferior, category. In this respect, the Greek perception of the barbarian and the Judeo-Christian-lslamic perception of the unbeliever coincide.”

Here is an extract from The Book of Golden Meadows (c.940 CE) by Abul Hasan Ali Al-Masu’di (ca. 895 – 957 CE). This translation is from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, edited by Charles F. Horne (1917). This from a section of the book entitled The Caliphate of Al Mahdi; Al Mahdi and the Poet Abu’l Atahiyah:

“Some historians relate that the poet Abu'l Atahiyah had conceived a passion for Otbah, the slave of Khayzuran, the chief wife of the Caliph. This young girl complained to her mistress of the gossip to which this affair gave rise. One day Al Mahdi found her seated near her mistress in tears. He questioned her, and having discovered the cause of her grief, sent for Abu'l Atahiyah. When the poet came and stood before him, Al Mahdi said to him: "You are the author of this verse concerning Otbah: 'May God judge between me and my mistress, since she shows me nothing but disdain and reproach!'" He then continued: "What kindness has Otbah ever shown you that you have the right to complain of her disdainfulness?" "Sire," answered Abu'l Atahiyah, "I am not the author of that verse, but of these:

"'O my camel, carry me rapidly;
be not beguiled by what thou deemest repose---
Carry me to a Prince to whom
God has given the gift of working miracles;
'Prince who, when the wind rises, says,
"O wind, hast thou partaken of my benefits?"
Two crowns adorn his brow
---the crown of beauty and the diadem of humility.""

Al Mahdi sat silent for some time, looking at the ground which he tapped with his staff; then he lifted his head and continued: "You have also said:

"'What does my mistress think upon
when she displays her charms and allurements?
There is among the slaves of Princes
a young girl who conceals beneath her veil Beauty itself.'

"How do you know what she conceals beneath her veil?" the Caliph asked. Abu'l Atahiyah replied in the same dattering style:

"Royalty has come to do him obeisance,
and trailing her robe majestically,
She only is fit for him, as he for her."

But as the Caliph continued to ply him with questions Abu'l Atahiyah became embarrassed in his answers, and was condemned to expiate his temerity by a flogging. He had just undergone his punishment when Otbah met him in this piteous plight. The poet reproached her thus: "Praise be to thee, Otbah! It is because of thee that the Caliph has shed the blood of a man already dying of love." Tears started to Otbah's eyes; she ran sobbing to her mistress, Khayzuran, and there met the Caliph. He asked why she wept, and hearing she had seen the poet after his flagellation, consoled her; then he caused a sum of fifty thousand dirhems to be given to the former. Abu'l Atahiyah distributed them to all those whom he met in the palace. Al Madhi, being informed of his generosity, asked him why he had thus disposed of the money he had just received from the Caliph. The poet answered: "I did not wish to profit by what my love had won." Al Mahdi sent him fifty thousand more dirhems, making him swear not to employ them in fresh benefactions.

Another historian relates that Abu'l Atahiyah, on a certain New Year's Day, presented Al Mahdi with a Chinese vase containing perfumes. On the vase were engraved these verses:

"My soul is attached to one of the good things of this world;
the accomplishment of its desires
depends on God and Al Mahdi, his Vicar.
I despair of obtaining my object,
but thy contempt of the world
and all which it contains reanimates my hope."

The Caliph thought of giving him Otbah, when she said to him. "Prince of the believers! would you, in spite of my privileges, my rights, and my services, bestow me upon a pottery merchant---a man who makes money out of his poetry?" Al Mahdi then sent a message to the poet: "As to Otbah, you will never obtain her, but I have ordered the vase you sent to be filled with money." Soon afterward Otbah, passing by, found the poet disputing with the clerks of the treasury, and maintaining that by "money" the Caliph meant gold dinars, while they alleged that he only intended silver dirhems. "If you really loved Otbah," she said to him, "you would not think of the difference between gold and silver."

Here are some items concerning the sale of slaves over a period of three and a half millennia:

Contract for the Sale of a Slave, Reign of Rim-Sin, c. 2300 B.C.
In this transaction the sellers simply guarantee to make no further claim upon the slave. It dates from about 2300 B.C., and is interesting as an index of the legal development of that far-off time.

Sini-Ishtar has bought a slave, Ea-tappi by name, from Ilu-elatti, and Akhia, his son, and has paid ten shekels of Silver, the price agreed. Ilu-elatti, and Akhia, his son, will not set up a future claim on the slave. In the presence of Ilu-iqisha, son of Likua; in the presence of Ilu-iqisha, son of Immeru; in the presence of Likulubishtum, son of Appa, the scribe, who sealed it with the seal of the witnesses. The tenth of Kisilimu, the year when Rim-Sin, the king, overcame the hostile enemies.

Contract for the Sale of a Slave, Eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 597 B.C.
This tablet affords a good example of the sale of a slave. In this case the persons who sell guarantee that the slave will neither become insubordinate, nor prove to be subject to any governmental claims, nor prove to have been emancipated by adoption. The word rendered "emancipation" means literally "adoption," but adoption by a freeman was an early form of emancipation. This sale is from the reign of the Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, dating from 597 B.C.

SHAMASH-UBALLIT and Ubartum, children of Zakir, the son of Pashi-ummani, of their free-will have delivered Nanakirat and her unsveaned son, their slave, for nineteen shekels of money, for the price agreed, unto Kaçir and Nadin-Marduk, sons of Iqisha-aplu, son of Nur-Sin. Shamash-uballit and Ubartum guarantee against insubordination, the claim of the royal service, and emancipation. Witnesses: Na'id-Marduk, son of Nabu-nacir, son of Dabibi; Bel-shum-ishkun, son of Marduk-zir-epish, son of Irani; Nabu-ushallim, son of Bel-akhi-iddin, son of Bel-apal-uçur. In the dwelling of Damqa, their mother. And the scribe, Nur-Ea, son of Ina-Isaggil-ziri, son of Nur-Sin. Babylon, twenty-first of Kisilimu, eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.

Bill of Sale for Purchase of one "Aissa", 1248:
In the thirteenth century Saracen slaves were being sold in Marseilles. The character of the transactions and the price at which a slave girl might be sold are indicated in the documents.

May the nineteenth, in year of the Lord 1248. We, William Alegnan and Bernard Mute, of Cannet, have sold jointly in good faith and without guile to you, John Aleman, son of Peter Aleman, a certain Saracen maid of ours, commonly called Aissa, for a price of nine pounds and fifteen solidi in the mixed money now current in Marseilles.

The issue of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and America became important mostly because of the need for low-cost labor in the largely agricultural economies of the West Indies and North America.

In the early part of the 17th century, British merchants and Parliament had frowned on the idea of slavery being acceptable in any part of their empire. However, as trade with the Caribbean colonies began to grow it became obvious that there was a shortage of labour, which would need to be rectified to ensure profits could be maintained. In 1662 Parliament granted a charter to a newly formed company – The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa – which allowed and encouraged them to involve themselves in the slave trade. To the great dissatisfaction of merchants from other cities, however, the charter provided exclusive rights to the Company, which effectively meant the merchants of London. For various reasons, the Company was not successful, so in 1672 a new company was formed: The Royal African Company. Once again, it comprised merchants from London and was granted exclusive rights.

The slave trade now began in earnest, with many powerful merchants such as Edward Colston (1636 – 1721) engaging wholeheartedly in shipping slaves from Africa. They had forts built on the West African coast to protect their trade and to provide holding pens for slaves. Any other slave traders, or interlopers, had to pay a tax of 10% to the Royal African Company. Between 1680 and 1686 an average of 5000 slaves a year were transported to the Caribbean. However, after much opposition from groups of merchants like Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers, Parliament repealed the monopoly on slavery in 1698. The Royal African company tried hard to win back their exclusive rights to the slave trade, but were unable to do so. By 1750, the Company was wound up when it became a full partner in a new company of merchants trading with Africa. Long before the establishment of Jamestown, English captains had made occasional profits in the rising trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bur during the early years of the 17th century, the English generally viewed the trading of human lives with a certain degree of contempt. By 1640, however, with the growth of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and the corresponding need for labor, the views of the English had changed. They, too, would become regular participants in the trade.

In 1660, the English government chartered a company called the "Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa." At first the company was mismanaged, but in 1663 it was reorganized. A new objective clearly stated that the company would engage in the slave trade. To the great dissatisfaction of England's merchants, only the Company of Royal Adventurers could now engage in the trade. The Company did not fare well, due mainly to the war with Holland, and in 1667, it collapsed. But out of its ashes emerged a new company: The Royal African Company. Founded in 1672, the Royal African Company was granted a similar monopoly in the slave trade. Between 1680 and 1686, the Company transported an average of 5,000 slaves a year. Between 1680 and 1688, it sponsored 249 voyages to Africa.

Still, rival English merchants were furious. In 1698, Parliament yielded to their demands and opened the slave trade to all. With the end of the monopoly, the number of slaves transported on English ships would increase dramatically – to an average of over 20,000 a year.

By the end of the 17th century, England led the world in the trafficking of slaves.

Bristol dominated the English slave trade during the latter part of the 17th and the early part of the 18th centuries. Here is an extract from a site called Bristol Slavery.

Trading in slaves revolved around three separate strands of a complete voyage: the Outward Passage, the Middle Passage, and the Return Passage.

The complete round trip took about 12 months and the conditions on board were hard and dangerous. Many captains of slave ships (or 'blackbirds' as they were sometimes called) had a reputation for cruelty, and both crew and African slaves suffered.

The Outward Passage
For the Bristol merchants the slave trade seemed an "open sesame" to prosperity. For example, the Warmley Brass Company, owned by the Goldney and Champion families, exported "Guinea" cooking pots. The outward voyage from Bristol was made with trinkets, beads, copper rods, cotton goods, guns and alcohol which were to be traded for slaves off the coast of West Africa.

This is part of a record kept by a Bristol merchant of a cargo list for a ship going to Africa from Bristol in the 18th century.

An estimate for a cargo to purchase 250 Negroes at Bonny
80 rolls of blue chintz cloth
100 rolls of cotton cloth with fine small stripes (small)
100 rolls of cotton cloth with fine small stripes (large)
100 cotton rolls with red and blue mixed stripes
30 cloths blue and white checked
300 muskets bright barrels
300 muskets black barrels
40 pair common large pistols
2 tons lead in small bars
14 tons iron 1000 copper rods
80 cases bottles of brandy
5 cases pipe beads

All goods could be traded profitably although African slave traders were not to be treated lightly and would drive a hard bargain. According to the French merchant Jean Barbot, who spent some time on the Gold Coast in the late 17th Century, the people there had at first been swindled because it never entered their thoughts that white men would cheat them.

However, they soon learned better and became very careful traders. Both sides cheated when they could, as the trade was rough and unregulated, with blackmail and deceit more common than honest dealing. There was one French captain who bought a large quantity of gold and sailed home congratulating himself on having made a fortune in exchange for his trashy goods, only to discover, when he arrived home, that he had actually bought a worthless load of old brass filings.

Slaves were held in holding forts on the coast until slave ships arrived to transport them across the Atlantic Ocean. One such fort was Cape Coast Castle which was the headquarters of the English Royal African Company, eight miles along the coast from El Mina. An impressive and impregnable building in its prime, it could hold a thousand slaves in its dungeons. "The keeping of slaves thus underground", a Frenchman remarked, "is a good security to the garrison against any insurrection."

The Middle Passage
The voyage that carried Africans into slavery across the Atlantic Ocean was called the "Middle Passage", and it is this part of the trade that aroused the anger of those opposed to slavery.

Having arrived at the African coast captains were anxious to make their stay as short as possible to avoid disease and mutiny. Slaves were taken from the holding forts, shackled together in pairs with leg-irons and carried to the ships in dugout canoes. Once aboard they were branded with a red-hot iron, like cattle, to show who owned them; and their clothes were removed.

Slaves were housed in the ship's hold like any other cargo. The men were kept in chains while women and children were allowed to go free. Slaves lay on specially built shelves with about 0.5 metres of vertical space, the men still fettered in pairs. As long as they were in the hold slaves had to remain lying flat on their backs. Once the available spaces were filled the captains would set sail.

Once at sea, the slaves were brought up out of their steamy dungeon each morning. The men's' leg-irons were linked to a chain running down the centre of the ship's deck to prevent them jumping overboard.

On some ships they were made to dance for exercise. The slaves would receive their meal, usually a kind of porridge made from maize or millet. A second meal might be provided in the afternoon, usually the same as the first. While on deck a good captain had the slaves washed down with warm vinegar and scrubbed. Some did not bother and in rough weather the slaves would not be allowed out at all.

Shackled in darkness and filth, seasickness and disease were rife. The heat in the hold could be over 30°C and the slaves would have no access to toilets or washing facilities. So foul was the smell of slave ships that other vessels took care to steer well away from them.

In such conditions disease spread, and many slaves died. It was not rare for hundreds to die in an epidemic; occasionally every African on board was dead by the time the ship entered Caribbean waters. Their bodies would be thrown overboard. Slaves were valuable cargo so a good captain would do his best to keep as many alive as possible. But many slave captains were notorious for their cruelty. The actual voyage could take from 6 weeks to three months. It has been estimated that between 9-11 million people were taken from Africa by European traders and landed alive on the other side of the Atlantic. But as the average loss was 1/8 of all slaves it can be estimated that a further 1½ million Africans are buried in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas.

At the end of the voyage came the "sale" of the cargo. Africans were inspected for physical faults and auctioned like meat in a meat-market. Families were split up forever and life as a plantation slave would begin.

Meanwhile, the captains totted up the profits and the crew began cleaning out the ship to take on a cargo of colonial produce, which had to be carried in better conditions than the slaves had endured. As soon as the ship was ready and loaded, the final part of the Trade Triangle, The Return Passage, could begin.

The Return Passage
Having loaded the ships with sugar, tobacco and rum paid for from the proceeds of the sale of slaves, the captains would try to set sail for England on the final part of their triangular voyage before the Hurricane season began in mid-July. This was to avoid the much higher insurance rates demanded for ships leaving at more "dangerous" times of year. Captains would always wish to be fully loaded, to ensure greater profit, but this might not always be the case if time was short.

The journey home, following trade winds, could be expected to take between 6-8 weeks. The journey was not without the dangers associated with Atlantic storms prevalent at that time of year. A ship that sank, or was wrecked near the English coast, could mean disaster for a single owner. This was the reason most Merchant Venturers shared the risk, and therefore the profit, by investing jointly in the trade.

Before the slave trade assumed such importance for America, laborers were brought across, largely from England, on the promise of work. Their employment was as indentured servants, and the transformation from indentured servitude (servants contracted to work for a set amount of time) to racial slavery didn't happen overnight. There are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. But in 1640, the Virginia courts sentenced one black servant to slavery . . .

Three indentured servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes -- a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th-century Virginia. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude -- one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the black man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." John Punch no longer had hope for freedom.

It wasn't until 1661 that an explicit reference to slavery entered into Virginia law, and this law was directed at white indentured servants -- at those who ran away with a black servant. The following year, the colony went one step further by stating that children born would be bonded or free according to the status of the mother.

The transformation had begun, but it wouldn't be until the Slave Codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed. In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly removed any lingering uncertainty about this terrible transformation; it made a declaration that would seal the fate of African Americans for generations to come:

"All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened."

The code, which would also serve as a model for other colonies, went even further. The law imposed harsh physical punishments, since enslaved persons who did not own property could not be required to pay fines. It stated that slaves needed written permission to leave their plantation, that slaves found guilty of murder or rape would be hanged, that for robbing or any other major offence, the slave would receive sixty lashes and be placed in stocks, where his or her ears would be cut off, and that for minor offences, such as associating with whites, slaves would be whipped, branded, or maimed. (This last section is from PBS.)

Liverpool was an insignificant port town in north-west England until the late 17th century. As commercial trade with America and the West Indies increased so Liverpool began to thrive and expand. In 1715 the first wet dock in Great Britain was constructed and the city became a rich metropolis thriving on the slave trade and privateering. During the mid-19th century its population grew rapidly as numerous Irish immigrants settled in the port looking for work. After the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century Liverpool became the foremost British port for American trade and passenger service.

The Merchants of Liverpool first began to get involved in the slave trade in the 1690's. The first recorded ship to transport slaves was the "Liverpool Merchant" in 1700 when it carried 220 slaves to Barbados. Thomas Golightly (1732 – 1821), a Justice of the Peace and Mayor of Liverpool from 1772 – 3, traded slaves up until the last minute in 1807, when the transportation of human cargo was made illegal. The last public sale of enslaved Africans is thought to have taken place in Liverpool in 1779.

Liverpool was a major slaving port and its ships and merchants dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the 18th century. The town and its inhabitants derived great civic and personal wealth from the trade which laid the foundations for the port's future growth.

The growth of the trade was slow but solid. By the 1730s about 15 ships a year were leaving for Africa and this grew to about 50 a year in the 1750s, rising to just over 100 in each of the early years of the 1770s. Numbers declined during the American War of Independence (1775-83), but rose to a new peak of 120-130 ships annually in the two decades preceding the abolition of the trade in 1807. Probably three-quarters of all European slaving ships at this period left from Liverpool. Overall, Liverpool ships transported half of the 3 million Africans carried across the Atlantic by British slavers.

The precise reasons for Liverpool's dominance of the trade are still debated by historians. Some suggest that Liverpool merchants were being pushed out of the other Atlantic trades, such as sugar and tobacco. Others claim that the town's merchants were more enterprising. A significant factor was the port's position with ready access via a network of rivers and canals to the goods traded in Africa - textiles from Lancashire and Yorkshire, copper and brass from Staffordshire and Cheshire and guns from Birmingham.

Although Liverpool merchants engaged in many other trades and commodities, involvement in the slave trade pervaded the whole port. Nearly all the principal merchants and citizens of Liverpool, including many of the mayors, were involved. Thomas Golightly is just one example. Several of the town's Members of Parliament invested in the trade and spoke strongly in its favor in Parliament. James Penny, a slave trader, was presented with a magnificent silver epergne in 1792 for speaking in favor of the slave trade to a Parliamentary Committee.

It would be wrong to attribute all of Liverpool's success to the slave trade, but it was undoubtedly the backbone of the town's prosperity. Historian David Richardson suggests that slaving and related trades may have occupied a third and possibly a half of Liverpool's shipping activity in the period 1750 to 1807. The wealth acquired by the town was substantial and the stimulus it gave to trading and industrial development throughout the north-west of England and the Midlands was of crucial importance.

The last British slaver, the Kitty's Amelia, left Liverpool under Captain Hugh Crow in July 1807. However, even after abolition Liverpool continued to develop the trading connections which had been established by the slave trade, both in Africa and the Americas.

Around this time, those who had become deeply disturbed about the obvious evils of the slave trade, looked more closely at the British legal background. Here is a brief summary (from a site about pre-Civil War slavery), which ends with the very important Mansfield judgment of 1772:

“In 1102 a council held in London saw fit to decree: 'Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals.'"— For centuries, there is no record of noncompliance.

Then in 1569, an enslaving incident was attempted in England under Queen Elizabeth I. The 'master' attempted to beat the 'slave.' This violence was deemed then, as now, 'assault and battery.' A lawsuit ensued. In that case, Matter of Catrwright, 11 Elizabeth; (1569), a court found slavery unconstitutional, saying, "England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in."

This precedent was confirmed two centuries later. In Shanley v Hervey, March 1762), a court said that:

“As soon as a man puts foot on English ground, he is free: a Negro may maintain an action against his master for ill usage (modern term, reparations) and may have a Habeas Corpus, if restrained of his liberty." Three years later, in Smith v Brown and Cooper (1765), Chief Justice Holt said "that as soon as a negro comes into England, he becomes free: one may be a villein [serf] in England, but not a slave."

These precedents should have ended slavery. But like any crime, it kept on recurring.

And since slavery kept recurring, just as civil rights violations did in the U.S. despite the constitution, a "class action" in-effect case came about. This "class action" case was filed via a writ of habeas corpus.

An alien, non-citizen of England, James Somerset, was taken by his "master" Charles Stewart, from the colonies to England. To challenge his enslavement, his lawyers used that well-established common law writ (habeas corpus) to challenge his enslavement (essentially, detention without charges being filed). “A person can obtain a writ of habeas corpus without being a citizen, as it covers anyone unlawfully detained.” That case, Somerset v Stewart, (King's Bench, June 1772), sponsored by British abolitionists including Granville Sharp (1735 – 1813), via Judge William Murray, Lord Mansfield, reconfirmed that ‘there neither then was, nor ever had been, any legal slavery in England.’”

The English poems relating to abolition date from about 1773, immediately after the Mansfield judgement.

An important figure in the anti-slavery movement in England was Thomas Clarkson. Thomas Clarkson was born in Wisbech in 1760. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was afterwards ordained as a deacon.

In 1785 Cambridge University held an essay competition with the title: "Is it right to make men slaves against their wills?" Clarkson had not considered the matter before but, after carrying out considerable research on the subject, submitted his essay. Clarkson won first prize and was asked to read his essay to the University Senate. On his way home to London he had a spiritual experience. He later described how he had "a direct revelation from God ordering me to devote my life to abolishing the trade."

Clarkson contacted Granville Sharp who had already started a campaign to end the slave-trade. In 1787 Clarkson and Sharp formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the twelve members on the committee, nine were Quakers. Influential figures such as John Wesley and Josiah Wedgwood gave their support to the campaign.

Thomas Clarkson was given the responsibility of collecting information to support the abolition of the slave trade. This included interviewing 20,000 sailors and obtaining equipment used on the slave-ships such as iron handcuffs, leg-shackles, thumb screws, instruments for forcing open slave's jaws and branding irons. In 1787 he published his pamphlet, A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition. Clarkson was a brilliant writer and it is claimed that Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) was so impressed with his writing style that she claimed after reading one of his books that she was "in love with its author". Here is a brief extract of an interview with a sailor who worked on one of the slavers; this was published in 1789 in his Essay on the Slave Trade:

“The misery which the slaves endure in consequence of too close a stowage is not easy to describe. I have heard them frequently complaining of heat, and have seen them fainting, almost dying for want of water. Their situation is worse in rainy weather. We do everything for them in our power. In all the vessels in which I have sailed in the slave trade, we never covered the gratings with a tarpawling, but made a tarpawling awning over the booms, but some were still panting for breath.”

Clarkson visited Liverpool to deliver a speech about the abolition of the slave trade, and, as one might expect, was not greeted too kindly. Here is a brief report by him of his reception:

“The town's talk of Liverpool was much of the same nature as that of Bristol on the subject of (the slave) trade. Horrible facts concerning it were in everybody's mouth. The people too at Liverpool seemed to be more hardened, or they related them with more coldness or less feeling.

I began to perceive that I was known in Liverpool as well as the object for which I came. They who came to see me always started the abolition of the slave trade as the subject for conversation. Many entered into the justification of this trade with great warmth, as if to ruffle my temper . . . . Others said they had heard of a person turned mad, who had conceived the thought of destroying Liverpool and all its glory. The temper of many of the interested people of Liverpool had now become still more irritable and their hostility more apparent than before. I received anonymous letters entreating me to leave it or I should otherwise never leave it alive. The only effect which this advice had upon me was to make me more vigilant when I went out at night.

There was a certain time when I had reason to believe that I had a narrow escape. I was one day on the pier head with many others looking at some little boats below at the time of a heavy gale. I had seen all I wanted to see and was departing when I noticed eight or nine persons making towards me. I was then only about eight or nine yards from the precipice of the pier, but going from it. I expected that they would have divided to let me through them; instead of which they closed upon me that they had a design to throw me over the pier head. Vigorous on account of the danger, I darted forward. One of them against whom pushed myself, fell down. Their ranks were broken and I escaped not without blows amidst their imprecations and abuse.”

After the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 Clarkson published his book History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Clarkson was not satisfied with the measures passed by Parliament and joined with Thomas Fowle Buxton to form the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. However, Clarkson had to wait until 1833 before Parliament passed the Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom. William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet to Clarkson after the 1807 passed; Sonnet to Thomas Clarkson on the final passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March, 1807:

Clarkson! it was an obstinate Hill to climb;
How toilsome, nay how dire it was, by Thee
Is known,--by none, perhaps, so feelingly;
But Thou, who, starting in thy fervent prime,
Didst first lead forth this pilgrimage sublime,
Hast heard the constant Voice its charge repeat,
Which, out of thy young heart's oracular seat,
First roused thee.--O true yoke-fellow of Time
With unabating effort, see, the palm
Is won, and by all Nations shall be worn!
The bloody Writing is for ever torn,
And Thou henceforth shalt have a good Man's calm,
A great Man's happiness; thy zeal shall find
Repose at length, firm Friend of human kind!

Thomas Clarkson retired to Ipswich, Suffolk, where he died on 26th September, 1846.

Of course, the major political voice in England at the time was that of William Wilberforce (1759 – 1833). Elected to the House of Commons at the very young age of twenty-one, in 1787 Wilberforce became, at the suggestion of the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, the parliamentary leader of the abolition movement, although he did not officially join the Abolition Society until 1794.

The story of Pitt's conversation with Wilberforce under an old tree near Croydon has passed into the mythology of the anti-slavery movement. However it happened, the result was that Wilberforce returned to London having promised to look over the evidence which Thomas Clarkson had amassed against the trade. As he did so he clearly became genuinely horrified and resolved to give the abolition movement his support. Working closely with Clarkson, he presented evidence to a committee of the Privy Council during 1788. This episode did not go as planned. Some of the key witnesses against the trade were apparently bribed or intimidated and changed their story, testifying in its favour. In the country at large abolitionist sentiment was growing rapidly. While the George III’s illness and the Regency Bill crisis no doubt supplanted the slave trade as the chief topic of political conversation in the winter of 1788-9, by the spring the king had recovered and abolition was once more at the top of the agenda. It was under these circumstances that Wilberforce prepared to present his Abolition Bill before the House of Commons. This speech, the most important of Wilberforce's life to that point, was praised in the newspapers as being one of the most eloquent ever to have been heard in the House. Indeed, The Star reported that "the gallery of the House of Commons on Tuesday was crowded with Liverpool Merchants; who hung their heads in sorrow - for the African occupation of bolts and chains is no more".

The newspaper was premature in sounding the death knell of the slave trade. After the 1789 speech parliamentary delaying tactics came into play. Further evidence was requested and heard over the summer months and then, on 23 June 1789, the matter was adjourned until the next session. Wilberforce left town, holidaying at Buxton with Hannah More, confident that the next session would see a resolution of the debate and abolition of the trade. It did not and by January 1790 the question was deemed to be taking up so much parliamentary time that consideration of the evidence was moved upstairs (as parliamentary jargon has it) to a Select Committee. Evidence in favour of the trade was heard until April, followed by evidence against. In June Pitt called an early general election. Wilberforce was safely returned as a Member for Yorkshire, but parliamentary business was disrupted. Despite being behind schedule, Wilberforce continued to work for an abolition which it appeared the country wanted. News of the slave rebellion in Dominica reached Britain in February 1791 and hardened attitudes against abolition, but Wilberforce pressed on. After almost two years of delay the debate finally resumed and Wilberforce again addressed the Commons on 18 April 1791.

When, on the following night, the House divided on the question of abolition fewer than half of its Members remained to vote. Because of this or not, the Abolition Bill fell with a majority of 75 against abolishing the slave trade. Wilberforce and the other members of the Abolition Committee returned to the task of drumming up support for abolition both from Members of Parliament and from ordinary people. More petitions were collected, further meetings held, extra pamphlets published, and a boycott of sugar was organised. The campaign was not helped by news of the revolutions in France and Haiti. Perhaps sensing that a hardening of attitudes was becoming increasingly likely Wilberforce again brought the question of abolition before the House and, almost a year after the previous defeat, on 2 April 1792, once more found himself addressing the House of Commons. Every account we have of this speech shows that it was an intense and lengthy emotional harangue. Public feeling was outraged and, on this occasion, so was the feeling of the House. But not quite enough. Henry Dundas suggested an amendment to the Abolition Bill: the introduction of the word 'gradual'. The bill passed as amended, by 230 votes to 85, and gradual abolition became law, the final date for slave trading to remain legal being later fixed at 1796. But this gave the 'West India Interest' - the slave traders' lobby - room to maneuver. Once again parliamentary delaying tactics came into play, further evidence was demanded, and it became clear that gradual abolition was to mean no abolition.

The last letter that John Wesley wrote was to William Wilberforce. The letter concerns his opposition to slavery and encouragement for Wilberforce to take action for change:

Balam, February 24, 1791

Dear Sir:

Unless the divine power has raised you us to be as Athanasius contra mundum (Athasius against the world), I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be fore you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.

Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a "law" in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?

That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir,

Your affectionate servant,
John Wesley

This event marked a turning point in the fortunes of the abolition campaign. Partly because of a hardening of attitudes caused by the outbreak of war with France, and partly because of determined resistance from the West-India Interest there was a collapse in public enthusiasm for the cause. Some abolitionists withdrew from the campaign entirely. Wilberforce did not, but his speeches fell on ever deafer ears. Although Wilberforce reintroduced the Abolition Bill almost every year in the 1790s, little progress was made even though he remained optimistic for the long-term success of the cause.

If the first two years of the new century were particularly bleak ones for the abolition movement, the situation was rapidly reversed in 1804. The popularity of abolitionism grew as Napoleon's hostility to emancipation became known. Members of Parliament, especially the many new Irish members, increasingly tended toward abolition. The Abolition Society reformed with a mixture of experienced older members and new blood. Wilberforce assumed his old role of parliamentary leader, and introduced the Abolition Bill before parliament. The Bill fell in 1804 and 1805, but gave the abolitionists an opportunity to sound out support. In 1806, Wilberforce published an influential tract advocating abolition and, in June that year, resolutions supporting abolition were passed in parliament. A public campaign once again promoted the cause, and the new Whig government was in favour as well. In January 1807, the Abolition Bill was once again introduced, this time attracting very considerable support, and, on 23 February 1807, almost fifteen years after Dundas had effectively wrecked abolition with his gradualist amendment, Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of abolition of the slave trade. During the debate the then Solicitor-General, Sir Samuel Romilly, spoke against the trade. His speech concluded with a long and emotional tribute to Wilberforce in which he contrasted the peaceful happiness of Wilberforce in his bed with the tortured sleeplessness of the guilty Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1823, he published another pamphlet attacking slavery. This pamphlet was connected with the foundation of The Anti-Slavery Society which led the campaign to emancipate all slaves in British colonies. Leadership of the parliamentary campaign, however, was passed from Wilberforce to Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786 – 1845). Wilberforce’s last public appearance was at a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1830, at which, at Thomas Clarkson's suggestion, he took the chair. In Parliament, the Emancipation Bill gathered support and received its final Commons reading on 26 July 1833. Slavery would be abolished, but the planters would be heavily compensated. 'Thank God', said Wilberforce, 'that I have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery'. Three days later, on 29 July 1833, he died. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Hannah More, who accompanied Wilberforce in 1789, wrote a lengthy poem Slavery in 1788, and it will be our first Poem of the Week – the complete poem is rather too long for our purposes here, so I have extracted a number of stanzas which I hope make her point.

Thomas Day (1748 – 1789) was born in London and as a child was said to have been exceptionally kind to animals, and generous to the poor. As a student at Oxford University, he came under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778). He became close friends with Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744 – 1817) (the father of Maria Edgeworth (1767 – 1849)) who shared his enthusiasm for Rousseau's educational theories, and in a famous and eccentric experiment, Day decided to educate two orphan girls on Rousseau's principles in the hope that one of them would make him a suitable wife. Predictably, the experiment failed. The girls, by now young women, were given allowances to enable them to live a comfortable existence. One of the two later married Day's friend John Bicknell. In 1773, Day moved to London to study law (which he never practiced). In May, a newspaper article about a slave who had committed suicide rather than be sent to labour in the plantations inspired Day and Bicknell to produce The Dying Negro. The poem was the earliest direct literary attack on slavery and the slave trade, and can be seen, in part, as a response to the lukewarm enforcement of the famous Mansfield decision of the previous year. The poem itself is a long one, influenced by the polite genre of sensibility, but also representing Africans as noble savages, uncorrupted by the "sordid gold" of "Christian traffic". These themes are united early on in the poem when Day argues that:

In their veins the tide of honour rolls;
And valour kindles there the hero's flame,
Contempt of death, and thirst of martial fame:
And pity melts the sympathising breast.

In fact, the poem is a suicide note in verse which alternately considers the dying slave's feelings, and the system that led him to suicide. To illustrate the latter, the poem outlines some hard facts about the lives of plantation slaves, slaves who:

Rouz'd by the lash, go forth their chearless way
And while their souls with shame and anguish burn,
Salute with groans unwelcome morn's return.

The horrors of the plantation, and the treacherous manner in which the Dying Negro was abducted from Africa, are told at some length before being contrasted with the domestic tranquility he found in England. The way in which he won the love of the servant girl he planned to marry is told in strongly sentimental terms:

Still as I told the story of my woes,
With heaving sighs thy lovely bosom rose;
The trick'ling drops of liquid chrystal stole
Down thy fair cheek, and mark'd thy pitying soul;

This heart-warming domestic scene does not last long. The poem concludes with an angry passage in which the dying slave prays despairingly to the God to whom, with his baptism, he had recently turned. Like Christ himself the slave asks God why he appears to have forsaken him: 'when crimes like these thy injur'd pow'r prophane, / O God of Nature! art thou called in vain?' The closing lines of the poem contain a call for revenge, and with his dying breath the poem's narrator asks God to arrange that the slave ship on which he has committed suicide will sink, and all its crew will drown. In that moment, he hopes, the slavers' prayers will also go unanswered - the final couplet of the poem asks that; 'while they spread their sinking arms to thee, / then let their fainting souls remember me!'

The poem was extremely successful, and a second edition appeared in 1774. This edition was expanded and revised, and contained an essay opposing slavery, formally dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The essay contains an attack, among the first of its kind, on the hypocrisy of the British colonists in America. Day argues that it is for the benefit of the American colonists that 'the Negro is dragged from his cottage, and his plantane shade' and that thus 'the rights of nature are invaded'. He then emphasises the hypocrisy: 'yet such is the inconsistency of mankind!' he argues, that 'these are the men whose clamours for liberty and independence are heard across the Atlantic Ocean'. As long as the colonists keep slaves, Day argues, these are "wild inconsistent claims". Very early on in the American Revolution, two years before the Declaration of Independence, Day is already making a case that was to be restated by abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic right up until the thirteenth amendment was passed in 1865. The poem continued to be popular, and a third edition was issued in 1775. This was further expanded, and is now the definitive edition. Reprints of the poem continued to appear into the nineteenth century. (This biography and the summary of the poem are from an article by Brycchan Carey 2001-2002.)

Recently, one of our pieces here was on the poet William Cowper (1731 – 1800). You may remember that a major influence on his life was the Reverend John Newton (1725 – 1807). Newton was a remarkable man. For part of his life he was the captain of a slaver, until, on May 10th, 1748, the ship encountered a violent storm, and disaster seemed inevitable. He called on God for help, and in fact the ship escaped the storm. From this point on, he was a devout Christian.

Newton wrote of his experiences in his autobiography An Authentic Narrative published in 1764. In the same year, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He accepted the curacy of Olney, where he lived until 1780 when he became Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London.

Newton himself is now best known for his hymn Amazing Grace; here is the first stanza:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Later, Newton became active in the antislavery movement. Cowper himself wrote a number of poems relating to slavery – Charity (1782); The Task (1784); The Negro’s Complaint (1788); Pity for Poor Africans; The Morning Dream (1788); and Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce, or, The Slave Trader in the Dumps (1788). My second poem of this week is extracts from his long poem Charity, written in 1772, the year before the Mansfield judgement. Here is a section from his poem The Task, written in 1784:

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home - then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

I came across an interesting anonymous work, that nevertheless gives an idea of the level of public debate. I have used only a short extract of the poem itself, but here is the introduction almost complete, and my extract from the poem:

The Gentleman's Magazine was the biggest selling publication of the late eighteenth century. It was read (or at least bought) by anyone with any pretensions to gentility. It contained news, reviews, features, and original writing and, as one would expect, the debate over the slave trade featured prominently in its pages. Despite the fact that the magazine was in general opposed to abolition of the slave trade, its editors, always hiding behind the pseudonym "Sylvanus Urban", nonetheless allowed a number of poems, mostly favouring abolition, to be featured in its poetry section or to be reviewed in the reviews section. This poem is a supposed additional speech spoken by the character of Mungo in Isaac Bickerstaffe's The Padlock: a comic opera: as it is perform'd by His Majesty's Servants, at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane (London: 1768). Mungo was played by Samuel Dibdin, who performed in blackface. Mungo was a comic figure, a stereotypical black slave, who could be counted on to raise laughs in the eighteenth-century London theatre. Indeed, so popular was the play that the name "Mungo" soon came to be applied in a derogatory way to all black people, as can be seen in many popular prints and newspaper articles of the time. This anonymous poem aims to subvert the comedy and re-establish Mungo as a serious character: as a man. The text given here comes from The Gentleman's Magazine for October 1787.

But I was born in Afric's tawny strand,
And you in fair Britannia's fairer land.
Comes freedom then from colour? Blush with shame,
And let strong Nature's crimson mark your blame.
I speak to Britons—Britons, then, behold
A man by Britons snar'd and seiz'd, and sold.
And yet no British statute damns the deed,
Nor do the more than murderous villains bleed.
O sons of freedom! equalise your laws,
Be all consistent—plead the Negro's cause;
That all the nations in your code may see
The British Negro, like the Briton, free.
But, should he supplicate your laws in vain,
To break for ever this disgraceful chain,
At least, let gentle usage so abate
The galling terrors of its passing state,
That he may share the great Creator's social plan;
For though no Briton, Mungo is a man!

William Blake wrote a poem not directly aimed at slavery, but certainly against the justification based on the lower status of black people in God’s eye. It is from the group of poems called Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, and is entitled The Little Black Boy:

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O, my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

'And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

'For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."'

Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

My last poem for this week celebrates the emancipation of the slaves in Great Britain in 1833, and is by John Harris. John Harris was born in 1820 in Bolenowe, a small village not far from Camborne, in Cornwall. His father was a miner at Dolcoath Tin Mine where young John also started at the age of 10. He began writing poetry as a child, usually in the open air where he was inspired by nature. After 20 years working in the mine, one of his poems was eventually published in a magazine. It attracted notice, and he was encouraged to produce a collection, which was published in 1853. Shortly after, he obtained a position as a Scripture Reader in Falmouth, where he stayed until his death in 1884. He published several volumes of poetry, including his masterpiece, the loco-descriptive poem Carn Brea. This week’s poem is The Fall of Slavery, published in 1838.

So, in this week’s article we have looked at the history of slavery, and particularly the development of the hideous slave trade from Africa to the West Indies and North America; and the endeavours to abolish it, leading to the emancipation of slaves in Great Britain. In this, a major role was played by Christian evangelists, and many poets presented their perceptions to a more general audience. I believe that the poetry and such other literary work such as that described in our piece on Aphra Behn played no small part in the eventual elimination of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation in 1833. The path to the same result in the United States took rather longer, and a different cast of characters was involved; this will be the subject of a future piece in this series.