Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation, and: British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (review)

60CIVIL WAR HISTORY The book is marred by frequent typographical errors and bad writing . One example of the latter will have to suffice. Early in the volume, (p. 15), Schultz writes that the Act of 1789 "provided that girls were to go to school with boys and to study the same subjects." From this, I assumed that a coeducational system was established. In a later chapter (p. 117) one reads that girls "had to leave the schools in the middle of October to make room for boys returning from agricultural and industrial pursuits." Evidently, girls were taught separately. A word of caution should also be offered about an outline map of the city which is reprinted several times to illustrate various data. During the period covered by this book, Boston did not have the contours which it has now. It was practically an island attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, the present-day Washington Street. Back Bay was built to the west of the isthmus. On this map, Back Bay is located on either side of Washington Street. The outline of Back Bay appears as if it actually existed in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s. For that matter, Beacon Hill is misplaced to the north of its actual location. These may not be important points in themselves, but they are symptomatic of the carelessness that characterizes the work. Harold Schwartz Kent State University Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation. By Betty Fladeland. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Pp. xiv, 478. $11.50.) British Antislavery, 1833-1870. By Howard Temperley. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972. Pp. xvii, 284. $12.95. ) "The transatlantic philanthropists," Edward Abdy, the British traveler to America, called the Anglo-American foes of slavery. From the American Revolution through Reconstruction a theme of Anglo-American cooperation runs through the history of the struggles against the Atlantic slave trade, Negro slavery, and for the uplift of blacks. Only sketchily told before, this important Anglo-American theme is now systematically related in Betty Fladeland's Men and Brothers. The English historian Howard Temperley, concerned with British antislavery, supplements the theme, both by offering a study of a parallel movement and by treating aspects of the Anglo-American connection. The British and American antislavery movements had much in common and interacted upon one another. But first it should be recognized that the problem of emancipation in the United States was far different from that in the United Kingdom. In the English instance the slaves were living at great distance from the mother country, were of waning importance as an economic factor in the imperial economy, and small in number compared to the American figure (800,000 in 1833 vs. 2,000,000 in 1830 and 4,000,000 in 1860). Moreover, Parliament faced BOOK REVIEWS61 no impediment of states rights in freeing slaves in the West Indies and Mauritius; the Empire feared no danger of disruption in the event of emancipation; and the institution did not divide political parties. Distance lent enchantment to British antislavery activities. Freedmen in the islands presented no danger to metropolitan England of insurrection , of exodus to "this other Eden," and of racial amalgamation. Sugar grown by black slave labor had lost its eminence in an industrializing economy. Parliament in 1833 in abolishing slavery omitted British India and Ceylon where there were difficulties of vast magnitude. It enjoyed popular sanction for compensation to slaveholders and for apprenticeship . As matters worked out, apprenticeship rather promptly broke down, sugar production declined, and in the year the American Civil War ended Jamaica Negroes, following an old tradition, rose in revolt, only to be brutally dealt with by measures that included the burning of villages and the slaughter of about four hundred blacks. If British and American abolitionists encountered different obstacles, they drew inspiration from a common background and often labored through reciprocating means. They were impelled by religion, humanitarianism , the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. As Anne T. Gary pointed out years ago the Quakers were an important AngloAmerican antislavery force. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the American Anthony Benezet was a one-man coordinator of an Atlantic -wide antislavery crusade. Though...