This empathy in activists like Clarkson was apparent to observers. The poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of Clarkson, “Nothing can surpass the moral beauty of the manner in which he … relates his own [part] in that Immortal War. … [Clarkson is] a moral steam engine.”[788]
Clearly Clarkson’s emotions were not religious, but empathic. He spent much time traveling around England in an effort to find examples of cruelty and witnesses to cruelty, not only to slaves, but also to the sailors on slave ships. Their appeals to mass audiences also emphasized the universalist ideology aimed at combatting the idea that slaves were an outgroup rather than members of a common humanity. A famous medallion with a kneeling slave was inscribed “Am I not a man and a brother?” “Reproduced everywhere from books and leaflets to snuffboxes and cufflinks, the image was an instant hit.”[789]
Another very effective empathy-inducing illustration was a drawing of a slave ship, the H. M. S. Brookes, showing the very cramped quarters of slaves on their journey to the West Indies. This image was used in parliamentary debates over slavery and was included in Clarkson’s Abstract of the Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in the years 1790 and 1791, on the part of the petitioners for the Abolition of the slave trade which sold several hundred thousand copies. Rather than religious sentiments, the abstract is completely devoted to detailing the suffering of slaves “in gory detail.”[790] The appeal was to the empathy of his readers.
It was common among activists to assert that if people knew what really went on with the slave trade, they would be sympathetic to abolitionism. Another important activist, Granville Sharp, noted “We are clearly of the opinion that the nature of the slave-trade needs only to be known to be detested”[791]—a comment that assumes the empathic capability of his audience. Clarkson wrote of this “enormous evil” that he “was sure that it was only necessary for the inhabitants of this favoured island to know it, to feel a just indignation against it.”[792]
As a result of these efforts, abolition of the slave trade was popular with the public long before it became law in 1807. Indeed, even in 1787–1788, “if the question could have been decided by public opinion, the slave trade would have been abolished at once.”[793] A contemporary estimated 300,000 British gave up sugar because of its moral taint; another claimed 400,000. Olaudah Equaino, a former slave, wrote an autobiography depicting the cruelty of slavery and the slave trade that became a best-seller. In 1788, Joseph Wool, a merchant and Quaker abolitionist, wrote that “the British people were like ‘Tinder which has immediately caught fire from the spark of information which has been struck upon it.”[794] In April, 1788, a touring actor wrote that “the many British cities he had passed through had ‘caught fire’ over slavery.’”[795] When the slave trade was finally abolished, it was not the government that was the moving force; an article in the Edinburgh Review claimed “the sense of the nation had pressed abolition upon our rulers.”[796]
Empathy and Ideology in Opposition to Slavery: Quakers, Evangelical Anglicans, and Methodists
Antislavery sentiments were often expressed quite early in the eighteenth century, and indeed appear to have been rather common, waiting only for an organized movement and greater democratization of political institutions to have an effect on public policy.
Slave traders in Britain encountered public disapproval early in the eighteenth century, decades before the emergence of those cultural movements often credited for engendering antislavery sentiment, decades before the height of the Evangelical revival or the apex of the European Enlightenment, or the emergence of a cult of sensibility … [In 1746] a propagandist for the Royal Africa Company observed that ‘many are prepossessed against the Trade, thinking it a barbarous, unhuman, and unlawful traffic for a Christian Country to Trade in Blacks.”[797]
Remarks in opposition to slavery were made in an “offhand manner” which shows that the author assumed widespread antislavery sentiment. Further, “a culture of sympathy made it increasingly fashionable by the middle of the eighteenth century to romanticize enslaved Africans as exemplars of wounded innocence.”[798] During the American Revolutionary War, apologists for Britain emphasized the hypocrisy of the American rhetoric of liberty in the context of slavery. Americans countered that the British were hardly free from the practice, and indeed were ultimately responsible for slavery in America. Antislavery elements in America (notably the Quakers and descendants of the New England Puritan heritage) emphasized that slavery was indeed incompatible with American ideals.[799]
Nevertheless, there was no effective movement until the l780s. By that time, it was possible to envision a career as an antislavery activist:
To condemn slavery in principle and colonial institutions in practice had become by the 1780s the mark of an enlightened, humane Christian. Since the midcentury, novelists like Sarah Scott and Laurence Sterne had presented the man and woman of feeling, with their characteristic sympathy for the African, as the exemplar of moral virtue. It required only a small step to see that active opposition to slavery could be used as a way to demonstrate individual moral worth [i.e., virtue signaling], once such aims lost their association with hopeless idealism.[800]
Although antislavery attitudes were much affected by empathy for suffering others and were not necessarily tied to strong religious beliefs, the key activists and organizations, doubtless reflecting the general religiosity of the period, were all associated with religious groups: the Quakers, the Evangelical Anglicans, and the Methodists. An exception perhaps is Granville Sharp, a high Anglican and early activist against slavery. As were Evangelical Anglicans such as James Ramsey, Sharp was motivated by moral fervor mixed with concern about the effects of slavery on the afterlife. “When he believed that something was evil, he confidently marched off to confront the evildoer in person.”[801] The slave trade and colonial slavery brought Britain “indelible disgrace,” a “notorious wickedness”[802]; “to be in power and to neglect (as life is very uncertain) even a day in endeavouring to put a stop to such monstrous injustice and abandoned wickedness, must necessarily endanger a man’s eternal welfare.”[803] For Sharp, opposition to slavery was a moral duty, deeply embedded in his religious worldview; “he could never regard human bondage in anything other than moral terms.”[804] Brown situates Sharp in the context of New England Calvinism.[805] As discussed below and in Chapter 6, in the U.S., the Puritan heritage of New England provided the most powerful opposition to slavery in the period leading up to the Civil War. Like the Quakers and Evangelical Anglican women, Sharp seems to have been uninterested in self-promotion and typically avoided the limelight.[806]
Quakers
Quakers in Philadelphia early developed an antipathy toward slavery, coming out against it in 1754[807] and expelling slaveholders in the 1760s and 1770s.[808] Quakers in the U.S. freed their slaves and some paid compensation. The American Quakers pressured their British brethren/coreligionists to be more actively involved in abolitionism.[809]
In Britain, Quaker networks and money were “of critical importance” in the early campaigns of 1787–1788; they were “the foremost champions of liberty for enslaved Africans.”[810] In 1783 Quakers, with around 20,000 members, started an energetic campaign against slavery, responsible for the first petition to the House of Commons in 1783, the first antislavery committees (beginning in 1783 but including the very influential Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade established in 1787), and the printing and distribution of antislavery literature. Quakers did the vast majority of the practical, day-to-day work of the Society and were a major source of its funding.
“Quaker propagandists shaped the information available to the reading public after 1783.”[811] They also aggressively distributed their literature among the elite (e.g., political figures) and non-elite alike (e.g., articles in provincial newspapers without attribution to Quaker sources, an approach that “allowed them to disguise the extent to which the sudden appearance of ant
islavery sentiment in the press reflected Quaker initiative.”[812] “Dozens of Quakers across England devoted countless hours in 1784 and 1785 to placing antislavery literature in the proper hands.”[813] Beginning in the 1780s all antislavery literature was printed by the Quaker James Phillips, typically with the financial support of other Quakers. The works of Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet were of seminal importance and often cited by other writers; Maurice Jackson subtitles his biography of Benezet “the Father of Atlantic Abolitionism.”[814] Benezet wrote that slavery and the slave trade were “prodigious wickedness,” “prodigious iniquity.”[815]
Quakers were a fringe group in British society: “They were marginalized because they could not hold office because only [Church of England] members could. Often mocked, ‘laughed off as powerless oddballs.’”[816] Brown argues that Quakers used the public consensus against slavery that had developed by the 1780s as a way of obtaining greater acceptance.[817] They were, indeed, widely praised for introducing an antislavery petition to the House of Commons: “These tributes encouraged Friends to picture themselves as moral campaigners, to assume the mantle of crusaders for justice and virtue”[818] Opposition to slavery came to be a central aspect of Quaker identity: “Laboring against ‘the avarice of unrighteous men’ reinforced the religious fellowship and instilled a collective sense of purpose.”[819]
Elizabeth Hayrick, a convert to Quakerism, was an effective advocate for abolition. In general abolitionism was very popular among women, and many were engaged in street-level activism, distributing literature, etc. Women’s societies were “almost always bolder than men’s.”[820] Women kept the movement alive when it had lost steam in the 1820s and early 1830s.
Quaker religious ideology is the nec plus ultra of moral universalism; they “believed that the ‘Inner Light’ of God’s revelation shone equally on human beings of any race or class.”[821] For Benezet, human equality “was an ontological fact rather than a philosophical doctrine or maxim”;[822] in addition to his concern for African slaves, he extended his interest to the welfare of Native Americans and the poor in Philadelphia. A statement by a Quaker subcommittee submitted to Parliament was titled The Case of Our Fellow-Creatures, the Oppressed Africans.[823]
Quakers were also highly egalitarian: they were “democratic and nonhierarchical”;[824] there were no bishops or ordained ministers, and any person (including women) could speak. As is typical of egalitarian groups (see Chapter 3), policy was passed by consensus of the entire meeting. In general, Quakers were economically successful, a merchant class capable of devoting substantial resources to the cause of antislavery activism.[825] While beginning as a fringe group widely derided for their customs (early Quakers in the mid-seventeenth century at times appeared naked in public[826]), they eventually became a religion (along with Puritan-derived Unitarianism) of urban and business elites, with “some of the most famous names in British business and finance.”[827]
Even early in the eighteenth century, Quaker concerns went beyond utilitarian reasons (e.g., the dangers of slaveholding):
Quaker moralists from William Edmundson to John Woolman insisted on a conflict between slavery and the fundamental principles of justice, morality, and righteousness. This attitude reflected, in part, the peculiar cast of the Quaker faith. More than other sects, Quakers attempted to realize in practice the egalitarian principles implicit in the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation. Friends knew that Christ had enjoined compassion for the weak. And they knew that the violence required to institute and sustain slavery conflicted with their unique commitment to pacifism … . They placed particular emphasis on renouncing worldly luxuries, on demonstrating through everyday life the disavowal of greed and self-interest.[828]
As noted above, Woolman, known as the “Quintessential Quaker,” felt guilty about preferring his own children to children on the other side of the world.[829]
Evangelical Anglicans
Evangelical Anglicans were motivated by moral outrage at slavery combined with strong ideological overtones based on a religious worldview. Unlike the Quakers or Methodists, they “enjoyed prominence and social standing,”[830] and were thus in a better position to alter the attitudes and behavior of elites. The principle figures are Rev. Thomas Clarkson (the principle activist, an effective writer, and a bridge between the Evangelical Anglicans and the Quakers), Rev. James Ramsey (the preeminent writer and pamphleteer), William Wilberforce (the leader of abolitionist forces in Parliament), Hannah More (the writer and philanthropist who, as noted above, first used the phrase “Age of Benevolence”), Beilby Porteus (an influential Anglican bishop), Elizabeth Bouverie (a wealthy benefactress), and Admiral Charles and Margaret Middleton (the latter a wealthy, pious benefactress who “insisted that Barham Court [Middleton’s estate in Teston] serve as a space for conversations about slavery”[831]); she is regarded as a formative force among the Evangelical Anglicans.
While empathy for the slaves is quite apparent in their writings and comments, there was also a strong religious emphasis—a universalist ideology in which all humans were created by God and candidates for eternal salvation.[832] “The Evangelical revivalists sometimes overlooked racial and ethnic difference more readily. There were important differences in theology and in practice among the Evangelical sects. Yet they possessed a shared tendency to assume the spiritual equality of black men and women.”[833]
Indeed, in his book, An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (1784), Rev. James Ramsey emphasized the intellectual and moral equality of the African slaves: “I shall assert the claim of Negroes to attention from us, by explaining their natural capacity, and proving them to be on a footing of equality in respect of the reception of mental improvement, with the natives of any other country.”[834] Ramsey’s book was influential and well-reviewed in elite publications, but provoked “paroxysms of outrage” from the West Indies interests.”[835] By 1788 even pro-slavery tracts conceded the basic moral premise of the abolitionists, for example, noting “that slavery is an evil no man can deny” or “no man condemns, as an abstract proposition, more than I the command over the lives and properties of their fellow creatures.”[836]
Nevertheless, with authority deriving from his experience of having lived nearly 20 years in the West Indies and as a former slaveholder himself, Ramsey provided graphic descriptions of the oppression of the slaves clearly designed to evoke empathy. Slave owners are “accustomed from their infancy to trifle with the feelings and smile at the miseries of wretches born to be the drudges of their avarice and slaves of their caprice.”[837] He describes slaves getting “twenty lashes of a long cart whip” for minor failures in carrying out the daily task of gathering grass for domestic animals.[838] The cart whip, “in the hands of a skillful driver, cuts out flakes of skin and flesh with every stroke; and the wretch in this mangled condition, is turned out to work in dry or wet weather, which last, now and then, brings on the cramp, and ends his slavery altogether.”[839] There are detailed descriptions of the punishments given to slaves, often for trifling offenses. The dangers of work on the sugar plantations are also described, such as arms being cut off in the machinery, the danger made worse because overworked slaves were so exhausted from lack of sleep.
Ramsey, although contemptuous of greed, maintained that improving the lot of slaves would be good for the owners: “While the man of feeling finds every generous sentiment indulged in the prospect which it opens, the politician, the selfish, will have all their little wishes of opulence and accumulation fully realized.”[840] He is also careful to emphasize that his involvement is altruistic—that he is not motivated by any sort of personal gain or approbation. Indeed, his behavior will be costly because he will suffer censure from others: “Profit he disclaims and willingly he would transfer all the credit that can possibly arise from it, to him who would take on him the censure.”[841] Ramsey thus regarded himself “as a martyr, not a hero.”[842]
Based
on the ideology of moral universalism, the desirability of bringing slaves within the Christian fold was paramount. This ideology rationalized strong social controls aimed to rein in the planters. The Evangelical Anglicans proposed to achieve their aims by effecting, “in the words of Bishop Beilby Porteus, the institution of ‘fixed laws’ and ‘police’ to restrain abusive slaveholders and for initiatives that would provide the enslaved ‘protection, security, encouragement, improvement, and conversion.’”[843] Porteus was greatly affected by the descriptions of the treatment of slaves: “for him the treatment of British slaves had become by 1784 a measure of collective virtue.”[844]
Reflecting the fact that antislavery attitudes had become entirely mainstream by the 1780s, Brown interprets the Evangelicals’ support as motivated by obtaining moral capital that they could use to further their wider goals of increasing piety and morally circumspect behavior in other areas.[845] In other words, the cause of abolition had achieved a moral imperative to the point that among the public in general it “was associated with politeness, sensibility, patriotism, and a commitment to British liberty.”[846] It could therefore be utilized as a battering ram against immorality in other areas.
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