Quakers and Abolition

11 The Slave Trade, Quakers, and the Early Days of British Abolition James Walvin

11 The Slave Trade, Quakers, and the Early Days of British Abolition James Walvin The rise of British popular support for abolition of the Atlantic slave trade after 1787 was rapid and totally unexpected. In its origins and during its early days, Quakers were pivotal. They were the pioneers of demands for ending the slave trade, and their influence and assistance proved vital in the transformation of abolition from a marginal, minority topic into a popular political concern. But even the founding band of abolitionist Quakers were taken by surprise by the way British abolition blossomed after 1787. The intellectual roots of abolition can be traced back much earlier and, though abolitionist sentiment, on both sides of the Atlantic, germinated over a long period of time, the most striking feature of abolition in its early years was the flowering of widespread public support for the cause. Indeed, the recent awareness among historians of the importance of abolition as a popular phenomenon has, to a marked degree, transformed our understanding both of the nature, and of the success, of abolition itself. Only a generation ago, abolition tended, by and large, to be discussed as an aspect of parliamentary affairs, or as a feature of evangelical politics. But they too have tended to be marginalized. When historians discussed the progress of abolition , it tended to be the story of abolition within Parliament. It remains true that parliamentary politics and the course of evangelicalism remain central to any understanding of how the British slave trade was ended. (After all, it was an act of Parliament that ended the trade, and it was a powerful group of evangelicals who became the main driving force behind parliamentary abolition.) But historians have come to recognize that it was the surge of public support that lodged the issue into the political arena. There was, after 1787, a rising popular distaste about the slave trade among the British public at large that ran ahead of conventional political opinion. Indeed, parliamentarians themselves recognized that the public was in advance of Parliament on the subject of the slave trade. It was the growing strength and ubiquity of public abolition that forced Parliament first to recognize the problem of the slave trade and finally to do something about it. In all this, Quakers were an 166 james walvin essential catalyst. But they too have tended to be marginalized. Yet they were both the inspiration and the organizational platform without which popular abolition could not have thrived. The man who pioneered the abolitionists’ research into the slave trade and the slave ships was Thomas Clarkson. It was his empirical investigations among slave captains, sailors, and slave ship rosters that teased out the hard facts and figures about life—and more important, of death—on board the slave ships. It was Clarkson’s social scrutiny of evidence (about tonnage, manning levels, mortality rates, and of commodities imported and exported) that shifted the entire discussion about the slave trade. In the wake of Clarkson ’s pioneering investigations, discussion about the slave trade switched to a detailed analysis of the data. Thomas Clarkson and subsequent abolitionists ensured that the debate about abolition was not merely a recitation of moral outrage or religious disapproval (though there was plenty of both) but more about the facts. And once those facts were rehearsed in public (in cheap or free literature and in packed lecture halls), they proved irresistible. It was the hard evidence, culled from the belly of the slave ships, that both shocked and persuaded. Faced by a presentation and tabulation of statistical data from the slave ships, British audiences and readers were swiftly won over to the side of abolition. Moreover, it was evidence that the slave lobby could not counter or refute. Thomas Clarkson is recognized as the remarkable foot soldier of the abolition cause. He embarked on a national one-man crusade against the slave trade, speaking across the country and traveling many thousands of miles to take the abolitionist cause to all corners of the kingdom. But he also researched the topic as he traveled. In time, he also harnessed the goods and products of Africa, which he trundled around the country in his famous chest of drawers, which he displayed to crowded audiences—in order to illustrate that Africa offered a cornucopia for normal trade.1 Here was a continent brimming with produce and commodities, and filled with potential consumers of Britishmade goods, that beckoned the ambitious British trader. In essence, Clarkson...