Timeline: The Abolition of the Slave Trade

It had been decades since the first mention of the issue in Parliament. In 1791, 163 Members of the Commons had voted against abolition. Very few MPs dared to defend the trade on moral grounds, even in the early debates. Instead, they called attention to the many economic and political reasons to continue it. Those who profited from the trade made up a large vested interest, and everyone knew that an end to the slave trade also jeopardized the entire plantation system. “The property of the West Indians is at stake,” said one MP, “and, though men may be generous with their own property, they should not be so with the property of others.” Abolition of the British trade could also give France an economic and naval advantage.

Before the parliamentary debates, Englishmen like John Locke, Daniel Defoe, John Wesley and Samuel Johnson had already spoken against slavery and the trade. In a stuffy party at Oxford, Dr. Johnson once offered the toast, “Here’s to the next insurrection of the Negroes in the West Indies.’’ Amid such scattered protests, the Quakers were the first group to organize and take action against slavery. Those on both sides of the Atlantic faced expulsion from the Society if they still owned slaves in 1776. In 1783 the British Quakers established the antislavery committee that played a huge role in abolition.

The committee began by distributing pamphlets on the trade to both Parliament and the public. Research became an important aspect of the abolitionist strategy, and Thomas Clarkson’s investigations on slave ships and in the trade’s chief cities provided ammunition for abolition’s leading parliamentary advocate, William Wilberforce.

Mockingly—and sometimes respectfully others called Wilberforce and his friends “the Saints,” for their Evangeli- cal faith and championing of humanitarian causes. The Saints worked to humanize the penal code, advance popular education, improve conditions for laborers and reform the “manners” or morals of England. Abolition, however, was the “first object” of Wilberforce’s life, and he pursued it both in season and out.

May 12, 1789, was clearly out of season for abolition. Sixty members of the West Indian lobby were present, and the trade’s supporters had already called abolition a “mad, wild, fanatical scheme of enthusiasts.” Wilberforce spoke for more than three hours. Although the House ended by adjourning the matter, the Times reported that both sides thought Wilberforce’s speech was one of the best that Parliament had ever heard.

Wilberforce had concluded with a solemn moral charge: “The nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us. We can no longer plead ignorance.” Having failed to obtain a final vote, the abolitionists redoubled their efforts to lay open the facts of the trade before the British people. So far, the public had easily ignored what it could not see, and there had been no slaves in England since 1772. English people saw slave ships loading and unloading only goods, never people. Few knew anything of the horrors of the middle passage from Africa.

Over time, it became more and more difficult for anyone to plead ignorance of this matter. William Cowper’s poem “The Negro’s Complaint” circulated widely and was set to music. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, by an African man named Ottabah Cugoano, also became popular reading. Thomas Clarkson and others toured the country and helped to establish local antislavery committees.

These committees in turn held frequent public meetings, campaigned for a boycott of West Indian sugar in favor of East and circulated petitions. When, in 1792, Wilberforce again gave notice of a motion, 499 petitions poured in. Although few MPs favored immediate abolition, this public outcry was hard to ignore.

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