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Comments on Methodism, Abolitionism, and Popular History
- Historically Speaking
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 9, Number 2, November/December 2007
- pp. 25-26
- 10.1353/hsp.2007.0079
- Article
- Additional Information
November/December 2007 Historically Speaking 25 British Abolitionism and the Question of Moral Progress in History: Further Reflections In theprecedingtwo issues, we havepublishedessays on British abolitionism andmoral progress drawnfrom ajoint Historical Society-Templeton Foundation-sponsored conference held in London in April2007. In this issue wepublish the responses andfurther reflections of two distinguished historians: David Brian Davis on the essays on British abolitionism thatappearedin theJuly/August2007 Historically Speaking,and Eamon Duffy on the essays on moralprogress and history in the September/October2007 issue. Their commentary was supported by agrantfrom theJohn Templeton Foundation. While the London conferencefocused on the question of whether there has been moralprogress in history, anotherissue emergedduringthe discussions; vi%, thatof the relative strengths and weaknesses of popular and academic history. In addition to Davis's comments below, we callthe readers' attention to the exchange of letters between Adam Hochschild andEric Arnesenprinted in this issue. This important subject is not new to thepages of Historically Speaking, andwe willhave more discussion on writing historyfor the mass market infuture issues. Comments on Methodism, Abolitionism, and Popular History David Brion Davis I would like to comment briefly on David Hempton's invaluable essay, which focuses with much insight and sensitivity on the motivations, limitations, and convergences that led to the amazing public support of British abolitionism by the rapidly expanding population of Mediodist Nonconformists. I am first struck by the long gap in time between the Wesley brothers' confrontation with slavery in South Carolina and Georgia (where it was then illegal) in the 1730s and John Wesley's highly influential antislavery booklet, Thoughts Upon Slavery, published in 1 774. I might add that as members of the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, if they had gone on to Barbados, they would have seen "SPG" branded on countless Barbadian slaves owned by the Society! But by 1774 the influence on Wesley of Granville Sharp and Anthony Benezet dramatizes the transatlantic origins of Anglo-American abolitionism. Hempton brilliandy links together Methodists' status as Dissenters or Nonconformists and their anti-Catholic mission with the tension between Wesley's fear of political action and the impact of the French Revolution. He also stresses the significance of the Methodist yearning for overseas missions and the way antislavery presented a seeming compromise between radical tendencies and acceptance of the British social order. We still need much more thoughtful research on the latter point. I am also struck by the way visions of Christian liberation from sin could be linked to or symbolized by the slave's breaking free from chains. As far as the Methodists in the United States go, we see a gradual retreat in the early 19th century from any antislavery message or position—an assimilation of southern rationalizations. Then in 1 844 a crucial confrontation divided American Methodists, North and South. In view of this American history, John Wesley, Fellow of Lincoln Colledge Oxford, ca. mid-18th century. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ72-154]. I am all the more impressed by the crucial support Methodists gave to the British antislavery movement as they fused moral evangelical universalism with the universalism of the Enlightenment and natural rights. I wholly agree with Eric Arnesen on the historiography of British abolitionism and with his analysis of die books by Simon Schama, Adam Hochschild (whose work I read for his publisher in manuscript), and Christopher Leslie Brown (whom I was privileged to have as a student and who has now won the Frederick Douglass Prize, which I named and established some years ago). Since so many of the so-called popular historians are really academics, I do wonder how much the distinction between academic and popular history is affected by publishers. In contrast to most academic fields, a few academic historians have long turned to major trade publishers, especially when marketing books on such popular subjects as the American Civil War, World War II, or the American civil rights movement. And some university presses have a trade division. Of course, as Arnesen makes clear, best-sellingworks must be written in a special way. Still, I suspect that publishers themselves often play a key role in defining and redefining these categories. A...