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Abolishing slavery in 1780
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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
I see on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ history front page that, on this day in history, the state of Pennsylvania 'abolished' slavery in 1780. However, in an apparent contradiction in terms, it seems that no actual slaves were freed by this move by the British colony, so what effect this actually had seems debatable....
I know very little about this action. Was it done by the Quakers? Is there were we can trace the Quaker opposition to slavery from? And was it just a pointless gesture? -
Message 2
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
I see on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ history front page that, on this day in history, the state of Pennsylvania 'abolished' slavery in 1780. However, in an apparent contradiction in terms, it seems that no actual slaves were freed by this move by the British colony, so what effect this actually had seems debatable....
Μύ
Pennsylvania wasn't a British colony in 1780 - the US was by then in existence by then, albeit very young. -
Message 3
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
shivfan
In "Recreations of an Historian" 1912 G.M. Trevelyan includes a piece about the remarkable exploits of John Woolman whose Journal he recommends. Dates are few in this short piece; but in July 1763 Woolman a Quaker living in an America caught up in the Seven Years War, which like all these Anglo-French wars provided an excuse for Amerindian allies to take the war-path, went among the Indians in peace to learn of their religious ideas and share his own. Perhaps his deliberate embracing of poverty and the simple life served as a shield as he walked around the wilderness on a personal lifetime mission.
He became particularly obsessed with the use of black slaves and their treatment, and made it his business to walk around Pennsylvania, which was named after the Quaker William Penn, and whose capitol was called Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. He would visit Quaker farmers as a "Friend" and discuss with them "the holding their fellow men as property". Frequently he persuaded them that it was their Christian duty to set their slaves free; and so Pennsylvania became particularly associated with the anti-slavery movement.
In 1780 the question of American independence was not yet settled: but one of the things that worried the Quakers a great deal was what kind of country would emerge. As I have suggested many times in our exchanges the Zong Affair seems to have been shaped, and even caused, by the sudden resumption of the triangular trade after an interruption of seven years, and a resumption that was now devoid of all the frustrating British regulations and controls upon all of the trade carried out by Britain's colonies. The insurers of the Zong claimed that the ship's captain had thrown the slaves overboard because the glut of slaves arriving in the Americas had driven down prices so far that they were worth less than they were insured for.
The Quakers, right from the creation of Pennsylvania, as the Pilgrim Fathers before them, had found it necessary to include amongst the pioneers of their colony those who did not share their faith, and by 1780 they must have been very concerned about the way that the Southern plantation system might spread into their own state. It seems likely therefore that to some extent this "abolition" was almost like Lord Mansfield's Somerset judgement that had already stated that according to long established English common law there could be no such thing as slavery in England, an important principle in the reign of George III when the cult of the "picturesque" in High Society extended to the fashion of having very handsome and black liveried domestic staff on show, much as in the early nineteenth century "great houses" with Scottish connections took to parading around with handsome kilted Highlanders like the heroes of Walter Scott novels.
And we have exchanged before on Scottish slavery and bondage systems as treated by Ken Follett in "A Place Called Freedom".
Cass -
Message 4
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
Of course, Stoggler, the American War of Independence had already started in 1776, though it hadn't reached a proper conclusion until 1783, I believe - silly me!
A minor correction on the Mansfield ruling, Cass - it didn't actually make slaves free in England, though the perception among pro-slavery and anti-slavery lobbies was that it did. So, technically speaking, slavery wasn't actually abolished in England until very recently, I think.
It's a mistaken assumption made by quite a few lesser historians, such as William Hague in his much-heralded and over-rated biography of 'Wilberforce'. But I refer you to Simon Schama's excellent 'Rough Crossings':
"Although it is quite true that, in the interests of a clear-cut moral and legal drama, the press and public opinion in London had all taken the freeing of Somerset to vindicate Serjeant Davy's axiom that 'as soon as any slave sets foot on English grounds he becomes free', that was not, in fact, what Mansfield had said; indeed, he had inflicted contortions on himself to avoid saying it. What he had said was that the power of a master to TRANSPORT his slave against his will, out of England and to a place where he might be sold, had never been known or recognised under Common Law. And that, indeed, was the ground on which Somerset had been liberated.
"But aside from the exceptionally attentive, neither party - neither the West Indian sugar interest, which had now launched a furious lobby for legislation to recognise their property rights when in England, nor the elated crusaders for (African) freedom - took the measure of Mansfield's fastidiousness. Both sides did, in fact, think that he HAD made slavery illegal in England. Many owners continued, nonetheless, to act as if the SOmerset judgment had never happened. Auctions and sales were advertised and held, not just in London but in the provincial centres of colonial trade. Runaways were still hunted down." p61
But back to the opening post....
To me, it seems just another empty declaration, much like the perception that slaves were freed in England by the Mansfield ruling of 1772. -
Message 5
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
Here's an interesting rider to that story....
"The myth
Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807 (or 1833, or 1834).
The βtruthβ
Holding a person in slavery became illegal in the UK on 6 April 2010. Nineteenth-century legislation made slavery illegal, in stages, throughout the British Empire, but the status of slave had never existed under English common law. Therefore, since slaves did not legally exist in this country, holding a slave was never made specifically illegal β until now. Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 makes it an offence in the UK to hold a person in slavery or servitude, or require a person to perform forced or compulsory labour."
Funny, but you'd think that Hague, who is still a MP, would've known that.... -
Message 6
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
Holding a person in slavery became illegal in the UK on 6 April 2010.Μύ
Here you, Shiv, have fallen in to a public relations trap set by the last government
This 2010 legislation was brought about as the result of changes in the way people migrate and the obsession certain ministers had with human trafficking.
In fact, I doubt that it made anything illegal that was not already illegal. The previous Labour government was rather prone to excessive bouts of useless legislation in order to make a public relations statement.
Slavery was indeed abolished, at least legally, finally and forever in 1833 throughout all British held territory.
If anyone doubts this, and in acknowledgement that my personal knowledge is flawed, can they present a case of effective slavery which, between 1833 and 2010 and under British rule, had the legal authorities known about it, would have passed the legal tests of the day ?
People may have broken the law, but that is not the same as saying the law was not there. -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
shivfan
Well declaring that English law did not recognise the state of slavery of course did not end slavery, it merely made it not legally enforceable.. But not everyone lives totally according to the law.
As I know from my long French experience not everyone embraces the right to have individual Liberty and personal responsibility, as opposed to some form of bondage to a more powerful "sugar daddy". As one French historian put it French people expect the law to apply to everyone else but they expect to be the privileged excpetion..
The position of a pampered liveried domestic in a rich household had its advantages, as was appreciated by Toussaint L'Ouverture in his life before the Haitian revolution. I wonder to what extent the demise of domestic service in this country- a way of life that was not far from bondage- was due to the affronted "Working Class" male pride that felt that they should be Victorian-type heads of families with their "women folk" safely under their "lock and key". Women in domestic service could be exploited or exploiters.
In the same spirit as the Somerset judgement I wonder just how many of the slaves freed through the endeavours of John Woolman actually left the farms and estates where they were established. By and large they had been enslaved in Africa by African legal process and custom, and one wonders whether any returnees to Africa would have been treated differently to anyone transported for life from the British Isles at that time. Meanwhile the work still needed to be done, and by the time of the build up to the Civil War the "underground" through which slaves escaped from the South to the North lay through whole chains of Quaker homes, where presumably black faces were not remarkable.
In fact the cases of both Somerset and Olaudah Equianno show the disadvantages of being a lone and vulnerable black person wandering around in a world in which they might well be stolen away to somewhere where slavery was still legal.
As for sales in England there is that case in Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge" in which the "hero" sells his wife.. But was this of necessity really different from sports clubs that sell the contract that binds their players.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
<quoteAs for sales in England there is that case in Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge" in which the "hero" sells his wife.. But was this of necessity really different from sports clubs that sell the contract that binds their players</quote>
More importantly, what would the law do if, after the sale, the woman in question declared she would not abide by the result ?
The law can't free people from voluntary servitude (so far as that expression is meaning ful), but it can stand for those whose position is involuntary.
But my point in posting is my assertion that slavery was abolished everywhere under British rule in 1833 was slightly wrong, it seems, as :
"... the Act did not "extend to any of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena..." (see link below).
However, legislation was passed after that to cover these areas, and all of the United Kingdom was covered byt the 1833 act, so the 2010 legislation remains pretty well pointless. The 1998 Human Rights Act tidied the law up.
-
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
Tim Track
Going to wives and the law, it was of course the case right into the last decades of the Victorian era that the male head of a household or other establishment was THE legal representative of everyone for whom he was responsible and answerable before the law. Hence wives could not testify against husbands and "servants" against their employers. On the other hand , as an ex-teacher, one of those professions that are acceptable for documents like passport applications, I am very much aware that those outside such "collectives" had in effect no voice before the law, since they had no weight- hence the importance of the celebrities [like Ms Goldsmith]who have attended Mr Assange's court hearings.
Of course India was still legally a Moghul Empire and not part of the British Empire up until after the Mutiny/First War of Independence and the decision to bring it under Crown control.. But under the liberal influence of I believe Governor Dalhousie the Indian Princes all agreed to the abolition of slavery in 1843, ten years after this had been done within the British Empire, and as major slave owners themselves they asked for no compensation of the kind paid out in 1833.
It was probably, however, no accident that this measure, along with measures of population control that shocked the British like infanticide, human sacrifice and suttee, was followed by the great famines that so shocked western opinion right up to the great Bengal Famine during the Second World War, of which the Woodhead Commission concluded that there had been a major breakdown within the functionning of civil society.
In fact the whole Wilberforce slant- on which shivfan and I have frequently exchanged- led to this false emphasis on the legal status of the slaves that were exported from Africa. As African-Americans discovered after the Civil War, and as contemporary Russian peasants discovered with their emancipation, freedom meant sliding right down to the bottom of the ladder if they were not already there. Intelligent slave owners had a vested interest in looking after their investment, and providing some kind of board and lodging.
Two of the reasons for the success of the Abolition movement in 1833 were (a) the lessons of the British labour market where the Factory Apprentices Act had made that system less economic than the "free children", like outworkers in Lancashire there was no commitment to "keep" them all year. They were now only " hired hands" and employers could go to market to hire when they needed workers. Of course the English tradition in any case was that such wage labour was never permanent. Each year workers and employers went to the hiring fare and were taken on again, or not.
(b) The cost-advantages within the West Indies were no longer there because of massive British investment in the newly Independent ex-Spanish colonies in Latin America and the expanding Portuguese colony that became Brazil in the 1840's. Here Britain had no formal imperial responsibilities and the scale of operations was potentially much greater than in the Caribbean.
Under-investment in the West Indies became a huge problem and appears still to be so.
Cass -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 1st March 2011
Going back to the OP and the American colonies during the War of Independence, I seem to recall from ancient O Level History that there was a division between the Thirteen Colonies that declared for Independence and both British Canada and the great slave plantation colonies in the south that were less confident about dispensing with the British Crown forces not least because of the problems of slave uprisings that were a feature of the History of the British Caribbean. This may well have impacted also upon the Pennsylvania declaration, in effect declaring a "Somerset Law" preventing anyone migrating to Philadelphia, which apparently was by then the second largest "English" city in the World and hoping to bring slaves with them.. Did Thomas Jefferson for example leave all of his slaves "back home"?
And it was the American Quakers who recruited William Wilberforce to the cause of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade after independence was won and a constitution was being drafted for the new United States.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
I've found a little bit more about the Pennsylvania 1780 'abolition', which hopefully sheds some more light....
"The 1780 law was a gradual emancipation, rather than an outright abolition of slavery. Any slave born in Pennsylvania before its enactment and registered with the state remained enslaved for the rest of his/her life, any child born of a registered slave mother after its enactment had the legal status of an indentured servant until age 28, and then was free. The law applied only to Pennsylvania residents and to the residents of other states living in Pennsylvania for longer than 6 months.
"Domestic slaves owned by members of Congress were specifically exempted from the 1780 law. Congress was the Federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and met in Philadelphia until 1783. The Constitution, drafted in 1787, created a new Federal government of three branches - the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial. In April 1789, Washington was inaugurated in New York City as the first President under the ratified Constitution. The national capital moved to Philadelphia the following year, but the exemption to the Pennsylvania law remained the same. Attorney General Edmund Randolph (a member of the Executive branch) was unpleasantly surprised in April 1791 when the slaves he had brought with him to Philadelphia the previous fall demanded their freedom. Under the 1780 law, he had no choice but to free them. Randolph warned Washington to get his slaves out of Pennsylvania before they too could establish a 6-month residency.
"Washington, like other slave-owners, took advantage of a legal loophole and rotated his slaves out of the state. An amendment to the 1780 law was introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1794 to expand the exemption to domestic slaves owned by all officers of the Federal government. (Its introduction may have been related to Philadelphia's efforts to retain the national capital, especially after the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic.) The amendment was defeated."
It seems to me that the exemptions eventually defeated this well-meaning legislation.... -
Message 12
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
As an interesting side, while American heroes George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were proud slave-owners, villified American villain Benedict Arnold was offering black slaves their freedom if they fought alongside the British....
"The battle between the rebelling colonies and the British over control of the slave population continued into the last days of the war. As portrayed in Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary City, even during the British occupation of Williamsburg in 1781 Benedict Arnold was promising freedom to blacks who joined the British side. Promises such as this continued to feed debates among slaves themselves as to wether or not to run away."
Funny, but as far as the abolition of slavery in the United States is concerned, Benedict Arnold was more of a 'hero' than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.... -
Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
shivfan
Thanks for those futher details.. The question of residency and entitlement also had applied to the working conditions of waged labour in England from the settlement laws of the reign of Charles II. By ancient tradition any serf who managed to live in a town for a year became a freeman, though of course if he ended up working for any kind of "master" he became his "servant" and could be arrested if he tried to run away- laws that were still being applied in the early nineteenth century.
The new Settlement Laws that endeavoured to stabilise England after the violence of the Civil War gave people a right of settlement within any parish that they were born into, or had been resident for a year. So work contracts for the 'employing class', who also contributed most to the Poor Rates, were for only 51 weeks of the year. The week's holiday became a time for "fairs" which had long mixed business with pleasure, and both workers and bosses went to the hiring fairs with the hope of new contracts with the same or better bosses or workers- a bit like the transfer window in modern football.
Going back to Philadelphia I wonder whether this issue impacted upon the decision to choose Washington as the federal capital, avoiding the British solution of having a combined capital and metropolis..
It makes me think that it is about time that I read my copy of Niall Ferguson's "Colossus"- his history of the USA.
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
shivfan:
It seems to me that the exemptions eventually defeated this well-meaning legislation....Μύ
'Twas ever thus. -
Message 15
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
shivfan:
Funny, but as far as the abolition of slavery in the United States is concerned, Benedict Arnold was more of a 'hero' than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson....Μύ
As if that made him a proto-Sherman.
Britain wasn't about to abolish slavery in her empire and certainly wouldn't have if they'd put down the American rebellion. -
Message 16
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Cass,
Going back to Philadelphia I wonder whether this issue impacted upon the decision to choose Washington as the federal capital, avoiding the British solution of having a combined capital and metropolis..Μύ
That and distance. Plus an agreement for the Federal government to assume remaining WoI debts of individual states which by that time were still owed by northern states, the southern states having already paid theirs. -
Message 17
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Britain wasn't about to abolish slavery in her empire Μύ
Errr, yes it was. -
Message 18
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
shivfan:
Funny, but as far as the abolition of slavery in the United States is concerned, Benedict Arnold was more of a 'hero' than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson....Μύ
As if that made him a proto-Sherman. Britain wasn't about to abolish slavery in her empire and certainly wouldn't have if they'd put down the American rebellion.Μύ
Sorry, Camry, you're right - I phrased my sentence clumsily, and incorrectly....
Of course, Britain had no intention of abolishing slavery. But whatever their motives, the truth of the matter is that thousands of black people in the American colonies saw the British Loyalist army as their ticket to freedom, and rightly so. Those who escaped from the slave plantations of Patriot plantation owners such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and made it to British lines, secured their freedom.
Lord Dunmore's declaration, which was repeated by others later, including Benedict Arnold in 1781, added to quite a substantial influx of black slaves fleeing from American estates to fight on the side of the Loyalists. And of course, Dunmore had no intention of freeing the slaves of white Loyalists. 'Rough Crossings', Simon Schama p75.
Schama estimates that 2-3,000 blacks secured their emancipation that way, and while it doesn't represent all the slaves in America, it's still a significant number. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 'maligned-traitor' Benedict Arnold played a role - regardless of his motives - in their freedom, while 'heroes' such as Washington and Jefferson tried to deprive them of such freedom.... -
Message 19
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
shivfan
Did the slaves of white loyalists have the option of joining the forces in order to gain their freedom?.. The idea of recruiting from those deprived of their freedom goes back at least to the seamen recruited to complete the manning of Columbus' fleet, and the British Army "scum of the earth" was reputedly often found in prisons- presumably they were not returned to them once they had served their country.
Dr Johnson observed that he could not understand anyone in prison opting for the British Navy. Being on board a naval vessel was like being in gaol, with the added risk of drowning.
I seem to remember that there was an armed services connection in the lowering of the age of adulthood to 18. Young men who had fought and had their peers killed for "the Nation" were thought to merit being given adult rights and responsibilities.
Cass -
Message 20
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
No, it doesn't seem that Dunmore gave Loyalist slaves that option....
According to Schama, he arrived at that 'brainwave' when a couple of vital battles had been lost, and he needed new recruits. However, that backfired on him, because until then the American colonists were split between camps of Patriots and Loyalists. A lot of Southerners distrusted the Patriots of New England, but Dunmore's declaration drove them into the Patriots' camp. -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Thanks shivfan
I had assumed that he could only have done it to his own slaves. Did he have any?
Presumably the work of John Woolman, if it had resulted in African-Americans living as free workers on Quaker plantations, may have resulted in some of those possible recruits also embracing the pacifism that has been such an important part of the faith of the Friends.
Were there any Quaker combatants in the war of 1776-1783, or the subsequent Civil War? I saw a documentary about Joan Baez last year and her own Quaker heritage, but I forget what attitude her father had taken to the "draft" during the Second World War and Korea.
Going back to Dunmore, as with Great Britain and its ally the USSR during the Second World War, or more poignantly the UK and China today, it is always difficult to take action about the Human Rights policies of your own allies/friends if you value what they can bring to the joint cause.
But of course offering inducements in order to undermine your foes is another matter.
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Dunmore? I don't think he had any slaves, but I stand to be corrected....
I was under the impression that he was one of those soldiers who were sent by Britain to the colonies to put those upstarts in their place, if you know what I mean.
I have to admit, I know very little about the Quakers actual involvement in the War, so that would be interesting to hear more about. But talking about Patriots, do you remember that historically-inaccurate Mel Gibson movie, 'The Patriot'? I was reading something somewhere that the character that the Mel Gibson hero was based upon was actually a slave owner who took delight in raping his female slaves, and who often went hunting and shooting Red Indians for fun. Nice.... -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
shivfan
I am not sure just how much "on mission" the British forces were in the Eighteenth Century. The officer class had often been brought up as part of a miitary brotherhood that crossed national divides. This endured into the Sandhurst training of David Niven so that at the outbreak of the 2WW he left Hollywood to resume his military career, but first arranged with a great German actor friend based in New York to rendezvous for a week's holiday- yaughting and golf- at a mutual friend's, an aristocrat in the South of Italy- before the two "warriors" shook hands and wished each other the best of luck. Niven's friend died on the Eastern Front.
As for the rank and file many were "scum of the earth" and really only in it for the adventure. Apparently during the American War the British troops were still often singing the words that Ned Botwood had set to the French National anthem during the Seven Years War.
The first verse sets the tone:
"Come each death-doing dog who dares venture his neck
Come follow the hero who sails for Quebeck
Jump aboard of the transports and loose every sail
Pay your debts and the tavern by paying leg-bail
And ye that love fighting shall soon have enough
Woolf commands us my friends we shall give them Hot Stuff."
I think that there were, however, exceptions to this pattern . The Scots and the Irish were famed for being "warlike" and taking an extra pride in their capacity to fight to the death for "their honour", shaped by long traditions of feuding that demanded blood and counter-attrocity.
So one of the colourful "braveheart" incidents of the American War involved the Highland unit raised by Allan MacDonald, husband of the Flora, who had sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie of "speed bonny boat" fame.
The MacDonalds had been allowed to emigrate to the Americas on condition of swearing an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverians and they had arrived c1775. Allan's cousin was a 'half-pay officer from the British Army who raised a company of Highlanders to fight for the King in the North of the colonies. He wrote to Allan in North Carolina suggesting that he should do the same. It would after all be a way to earn some money in order to "set them up".
It was Allan's unit that was ambushed and mown down in the massacre of Moore's Creek, when the Highlanders tried to rush a bridge from which the Patriots had removed the planks at the centre and had greased the timbers, and then lay in ambush.
It was the kind of dirty war that often seems to have involved people from the Celtic extremities of the British Isles who were perhaps at least as prone as Africans to be the butt of prejudice and treated almost as "lower than the apes".
Cole and Postgate's "The Common People" written in the thirties starts with Culloden and their description of the end of a way of life that they say went back almost to "the time of the apes".
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Errr, yes it was.Μύ
Errr, no it wasn't. Not for another 50 years. -
Message 25
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Errr, no it wasn't. Not for another 50 years.Μύ
Errr, yes.
The campaign for the abolition of slavery in Britain was already under way by the 1780s. The slave trade across the Atlantic was forbidden by the UK in 1807, n0t 1833.
The campaign took decades to come to fruition, but the slave holders in the Americas did were not un-aware of it and would have acted accordingly.
So my point is that, whatever date the institution of slavery was finally abolished, you can expect the rising sentiment in Britain to have affected decisions in the Americas. -
Message 26
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Errr, yes.
The campaign for the abolition of slavery in Britain was already under way by the 1780s. The slave trade across the Atlantic was forbidden by the UK in 1807, n0t 1833.
The campaign took decades to come to fruition, but the slave holders in the Americas did were not un-aware of it and would have acted accordingly.
So my point is that, whatever date the institution of slavery was finally abolished, you can expect the rising sentiment in Britain to have affected decisions in the Americas.Μύ
Errr, no.
50 years is a long time for a movement to take effect. American slave-owners didn't "act accordingly" because the early abolition movement had patently no influence on the British war aims or strategies in the War of American Independence. Nor in the War of 1812, for that matter. -
Message 27
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Friday, 4th March 2011
. American slave-owners didn't "act accordingly" because the early abolition movement had patently no influence on the British war aims or strategies in the War of American Independence. Nor in the War of 1812, for that matterΜύ
It was never claimed that British war aims were governed by anything to do with slavery. British war aims were governed by not losing the rebellious territories. Nothing else.
It was the war aims of the traitors, or at least some of them, that was governed, to some degree, by their attitude to the possibility of abolition. The war of 1812 is utterly irrelevant to this debate.
The point is that the colonists would have seen the influence of abolitionists in Britain. -
Message 28
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Actually the most direct impact on the British Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the use of the Royal Navy to stop the trade, seems to have been a general realisation in the Americas that breeding slaves was the best policy for the future.
This of course meant abandonning the 'de facto' and 'je jure' cause of the slave status based upon African law and custom, and demanded a "Western" rationale for making black people a different breed- or race, and hence not endowed by their Creator with those inalienable rights that "Americans" demanded for themselves.
So, as the Atlantic slave trade to North America died out, as T.B. Macaulay, son of Zachary Macaulay, part of the Wilberforce team, explained in 1845, there was a well-established slave trade within the USA.
I shared this (link below) with Shivfan some time ago
Cass
-
Message 29
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 4th March 2011
TimTrack:
It was the war aims of the traitors, or at least some of them, that was governed, to some degree, by their attitude to the possibility of abolition.Μύ
You grasp at straws. The British abolition movement as of 1783 had neither impact nor impression on the American slave-owners.
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