'A Less Favourable Specimen': The Abolitionist Response to Self-Emancipated Slaves in Sierra Leone, 1793–1808

When on 23 February 1807 the bill to abolish the slave trade passed the house of commons, William Wilberforce was exultant. 'Well, Henry', he playfully demanded of his cousin and close colleague Henry Thornton, 'what shall we abolish next?' To which Thornton replied, 'The Lottery, I think.'¹ This scene of pious self-congratulation has been replayed over and over in the literature on abolition, yet rarely has it been questioned for what it reveals of the moral ambivalence of these two evangelical heavyweights. This exchange was not simply a rare moment of jocularity; the lottery was the institution most likely to galvanize the abolitionist zeal of the Clapham Sect, whereas the terrible institution of slavery was simply not on their agenda.²

The very next day Wilberforce spoke forcefully against a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery, arguing that slaves must first be trained for freedom. He reiterated the view that he had articulated in the Commons in 1804 that enslaved Africans were not 'fit to receive freedom', and so it would be 'madness to attempt to give it to them'.³ Wilberforce spoke with conviction as a result of his experience as a director of the Sierra Leone Company, which had established a settlement for freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. Henry Thornton was the company chairman and several fellow evangelical abolitionists also served as directors. It is in their response to the emancipated slaves of Sierra Leone that their ambivalence toward enslaved Africans can most clearly be seen.⁴

A settlement for runaway slaves had been the brainchild of Granville Sharp, champion of James Somerset and the Zong case.⁵ A passionate anti-slavery advocate, Sharp was one of the founders of the anti-slavery committee in 1787, which became, rather to his dismay, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (or London Committee).⁶ Into the creation of a 'Province of Freedom' he poured all his deepest convictions about humanity and justice among people of all races. Even though the people to be settled there were mostly illiterate and had suffered the demoralizing experience of slavery, Sharp believe they would be as capable of self-government as any. His plan for governance allowed all males over 16 a vote in the common council where power would reside. Households were divided into tens, called tithings, each of which would elect a tithingman, while every 100 households would choose a hundredor. Each person over 16, regardless of sex, was entitled to a one-acre town lot and a small farm, but overall the land was the responsibility of the community as a whole, with a majority vote to dispose of it. As he conceived it, the 'Province of Freedom' should be quite independent, where the settlers could make any laws not inconsistent with Britain's, hold their own courts and elect their own leaders.⁷

It was the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, under the chairmanship of Henry Thornton, which put Sharp's plan into action. In May 1787 it hastily settled some 340 black refugees from North America on land at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River, which had been 'purchased' from a local chief of the Koya Temne.⁸ However this settlement did not turn out as Sharp had envisaged. It was an unmitigated disaster.⁹ When early in 1791 a rescue mission arrived in Sierra Leone, it found only 46 survivors who had been driven out of the settlement by the local chief and were clinging to life on a swampy island in the river mouth. Sharp's anguished appeals for government assistance fell on deaf ears, so he then turned to his abolitionist friends to provide a stable economic base for his 'poor little ill-thriven swarthy daughter, the unfortunate colony of Sierra Leone'. The new plan was to establish a trading enterprise in Sierra Leone that would be an alternative to the abhorrent slave trade, as well as a base for spreading christianity throughout the heathen continent. He recruited Thornton, together...