"Their Own Happiness": The Ownership of Enslaved Africans' Emotions in William Warburton's SPG Sermon

This essay examines the condemnation of chattel slavery that William Warburton delivered in the anniversary sermon of 1766 for the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This sermon, which was the first in the SPG's history to express outrage, rather than just sorrow, over slavery, merits attention for its contributions to abolitionist rhetoric, philosophies of feeling, and anti-racist thought. One of the most important contributions Warburton made was to assert enslaved Africans' ability to know their feelings, using those feelings to make decisions conducive to their own welfare. The sermon shows how Locke's writings on mental perception, emotions, and individual liberty combined with an Anglican missionary agenda and British imperial vision after the Seven Years' War to attack not only slavery but also assertions of Africans' mental inferiority.