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Home , Joseph Sturge, Thomas Walker (merchant), Working class

ABOLITIONISTS AND WORKING-CLASS PROBLEMS IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION By the same author JAMES GILLESPIE BIRNEY: Slaveholder to Abolitionist MEN AND BROTHERS: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation ABOLITIONISTS AND WORKING-CLASS PROBLEMS IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

BETTY FLADELAND

M MACMILLAN © Betty Fladeland 1984 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1984 978-0-333-36207-5 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission

First published 1984 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fladeland, Betty Abolitionists and working-class problems in the age of industrialization 1. - Great Britain - Anti-slavery movements I. Title 322.4'4'0941 HT1163 ISBN 978-1-349-06999-6 ISBN 978-1-349-06997-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06997-2 Contents

Acknowledgements VI

Introduction Vll

1 Granville Sharp 1

2 A Quartet of Liverpudlians: William Rathbone, William Roscoe, James Currie and Edward Rushton 17

3 Joseph Sturge 49

4 Harriet Martineau 74

5 T. Perronet Thompson 93

6 Patrick Brewster and Henry Solly 111

7 Joseph Barker 132

Epilogue 171

Notes 176 Index 223

v Acknowledgements

I should like to thank several colleagues in the field of antislavery research who have either directed me to materials, shared their own, or read and criticized these essays: the late Roger Anstey, Richard Blackett, Merton Dillon, Seymour Drescher, George Shepperson, Nicholas Spence, Fiona Spiers, Clare Taylor, James Walvin and John A. Woods. I should also like to thank the staff members of the British Library (including the Newspaper Library in Colindale and the Library of Political and Economic Science), Dr Williams's Library, the Friends House Library, University College Library and the Public Record Office, all in London; the Rhodes House and Bodleian Libraries in Oxford; Cambridge University Library; Reference Library; the John Rylands and University of Libraries in Manchester; the Central Libraries and Harold Cohen Library in Liverpool; the Mitchell and University of Glasgow Libraries in Glasgow; the University of Edinburgh Library; the University of Hull Library; York Minster Library; the Record Office, Cumbria County; the Boston Public Library Manuscripts Division and Massachusetts Historical Library in Boston; the Historical Library of Pennsylvania; the State Historical Library of Nebraska; Duke University Library; and the Huntington Library. I especially wish to thank Mr Charles Holliday of the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University.

Vl Introduction

A question of some concern to current historians of the British and American antislavery movements is the degree of working• class involvement in those causes. The issue appears as a recurring theme in several of the essays in a recently published volume edited by Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher, Anti• S lavery, Religion, and Reform (1980), and also in Slavery and British Society 1776-1846 (1982), edited by James Walvin. 1 Thomas Clarkson himself raised the point initially when he wrote of the large numbers of people who signed petitions against the slave trade and joined in boycotts of slave-grown sugar. 2 But there the matter rested for more than a hundred years without much attention being paid to it. The earliest works on the American movement, which were published at the turn of the century by A. B. Hart, Alice D. Adams and Mary Locke, did not address the question of mass involvement. The same was true of the standard histories of the British movement by Sir Reginald Coupland, Frank J. Klingberg and William L. Mathieson and of American studies by Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, which revived interest in the subject of antislavery among American historians. 3 For the most part, even the succeeding generation of historians of antislavery did not give much thought to the question, but generally accepted as a 'given' that the movements were initiated, led and supported by the middle classes. 4 Aspects which received the most attention were the impact of evangelicalism and the Enlightenment on antislavery attitudes, antislavery as a political issue, and the question of . 5 Yet, some spadework on popular support, including that of the working classes, had begun in the 1950s and 1960s. Bernard Mandel's Labor: Free and Slave. Workingmen and the Anti• Slavery Movement in the United States presented the relationship between abolitionists and workers as largely negative. In Britain several people writing theses explored the topic and found

Vll Vlll Introduction

decidedly positive connections, especially E. M. Hunt in 'The North of Agitation for the Abolition of the Slave Trade 1780-1800', and James Walvin in 'English Democratic Societies and Popular Radicalism 1791-1800'. Gloria Clare Taylor pointed out the role of the Scottish churches in disseminating antislavery doctrine to all classes, and more recently Douglas Riach has emphasized the organized attempts of the Dublin abolitionists to reach the working populace. 6 Building on those foundations, several scholars, both British and American, are currently addressing the problem. Richard Blackett has just completed a study of black American abolitionists' missions to Britain in which he reveals the degree to which they attracted working-class audiences in the thousands. James Walvin has carried forward his initial exploration of the subject to the reform campaign of 1832, and Seymour Drescher has contrasted the degree of mass support for the British movement with the lack of it in France. He argues that as long as the antislavery movement remained elitist, slavery 'pursued its unhampered course', but was abolished when became 'a vehicle adopted by underrepresented and dynamic social, regional, and religious groups'. 7 Patricia Hollis, on the other hand, has concluded that the British antislavery movement 'failed to forge a working-class constituency', at least prior to George Thompson's Anti-Slavery League of 1846, and that 'anti• slavery leaders preferred to acquire a more reputable con• stituency than that of working men'. 8 Alan Kraut, Edward Magdol and John Jentz are among those using quantitative techniques to analyse working-class participation in American antislavery organizations. They have found positive, active involvement to a surprising degree. 9 The obverse side of the question of working-class interest in the antislavery cause is that of abolitionists' concern with working• class movements. Perhaps it is not surprising how a widespread acceptance of the idea that abolition was largely a conservative, middle-class reform tended to perpetuate the old Dickensian stereotype of emancipationists as a collection of Mrs Jellybys who were oblivious to the fact that exploited white labour at home needed emancipation just as did black slaves in the West Indies or in a far-off section of the United States. Even when historians began to recognize abolitionists as interested in broad-based reform with many interrelated movements, they almost always Introduction IX depicted them, along with reformers in general, as paternalistic, usually evangelical, do-gooders motivated by the need for social control but unhampered by any deep concern for the rights of the working classes. 10 However, Ernest M. Howse in Saints in defended the Clapham Sect as men who though they 'unmis• takably and inevitably' were men of their own times, yet in many ways were ahead of their times. Frank Thistlethwaite in The Anglo-Amen"can Connection in the Early Nineteenth Century pointed out that eventually the more 'practical spirits' among the abolitionists 'turned their energies toward linking antislavery to broader political issues' including, in Britain, and the anti-Corn Law fight. 11 In his seminal volumes on the origins and development of antislavery thought, David Brion Davis, while considering the possibility that antislavery 'bred a new sensitivity to social oppression', emphasizes even more the idea of social control and the degree to which the antislavery movement supported the contemporary social order. He sees this not only as an inadvertent result but also as a conscious aim of the antislavery leaders. In citing abolitionists' defences of the existing social and economic structure, particularly their rationalisations of current labour conditions, he tends to resurrect the old stereotype: 'Abol• itionists could contemplate a revolutionary change in status precisely because they were not considering the upward mobility of workers, but rather the rise of distant Negroes to the level of humanity.'12 My impression is that they were, consciously, advocating the upward mobility of the working classes but not solely, and often not primarily, from an economic viewpoint. Civil liberties, political rights and educational opportunity were of equal importance in their vision of the just and good society. Davis was, of course, dealing with the early period of abolition (in which support for the status quo may have been truer than I think it was later), and his evidence is drawn to a large extent from the positions of Wilberforce, James Stephen, Granville Sharp and their colleagues of the revolutionary era. As is apparent in my first essay, I disagree with him on Granville Sharp, and believe that one can find many others of the same period who do not fit so neatly into the category of upholders of the status quo. 1 ~ To illustrate, one has only to name Major John Cartwright, Thomas Hardy, Tom Paine, Capel Lofft, Thomas Walker, and Richard Price- all antislavery and political radicals. X Introduction

Indeed, Roger Anstey held that even Wilberforce had the potential for 'a more modern syndrome'. Although Wilberforce voted for what Will Cobbett termed the 'gagging and dungeoning' bills, he supported Pitt's abortive reform bill of 1785, subsequent bills to curtail election corruption, and Peel's factory acts of 1802 and 1818. He advocated the expenditure of public as well as private monies to relieve the poor and carry out prison reform. 14 Davis cites the potter Josiah Wedgwood as a representative abolitionist whose concern for black slaves was not matched by a concern for his own labourers, whom he ruled with an iron discipline overlaid with benevolent paternalism. Yet in the riots of 1779 workmen trusted him enough to admit to him, in a large meeting, that they had been destroying machinery, and he acknowledged (at least privately) that their action was the result of their unemployment. In a riot in 1783 which was crushed by military force, one of Wedgwood's workmen was hanged; but Wedgwood deplored the use of soldiers against rioting workers, saying, 'I do not like to have the soldiery familiaris'd to spilling the blood of their countrymen & fellow citizens.' And in another case of recalcitrant workmen he took the 'shortest and easiest' way with the 'rascals' by letting them 'carry themselves off - that is, run away without being pursued and returned for punishment. To his partner, Thomas Bentley, he admitted that the petty larcenies of the lower classes were 'a mere flea bite' compared to the robberies 'of those above us'. Wedgwood rejoiced over both the American and French revolutions and the spirit of liberty which he saw growing all over Europe. 15 These bits of evidence suggest that Wedgwood as well as Wilberforce had the potential for enough flexibility to accept expanding boundaries of egali• tarian thought. While Davis emphasizes the degree to which Granville Sharp 'helped to frame the boundaries of future controversy' with care to preserve the existing legal system, it seems to me that Sharp was more interested in extending the limits of change in existing legal and social structures than he was in curtailing them. Howard Temperly concludes that, while Davis himself has 'signi• ficantly altered the boundaries' of antislavery historiography, yet from his two volumes 'no very clear overall picture emerges'. As for the thesis that the antislavery movement was designed to divert attention from a developing bad situation at home, Temperley writes, 'That this may sometimes have been the case Introductz"on XI

cannot be disproved, although evidence for it is hard to find ... it is hard to see a movement as formidable as the assault on slavery, with all its implications for radical change, simply, or even largely, as a form of negative response.' Using the Midlands as a test case, Seymour Drescher has found that the antislavery movement helped to stimulate factory and other reforms rather than to divert attention from them. 16 Abolitionists have traditionally been associated with the laissez• faire doctrines of the Political Economy school of Jeremy Bentham and often therefore lumped with those who opposed business regulation and public expenditures for . Except for R. K. Webb's sympathetic treatment, Harriet Martineau has had to carry more than her share of the odium of inflexible Social Darwinism, with little notice taken of the modifications her theories underwent. Richard Hofstadter left this negative impression of her for thousands of American students who probably knew nothing of Martineau except what they read of her in Socz"al Darwz"nz"sm z"n Amerz"ca. More recently, Jonathan Glickstein took a hard swipe at her by holding her up as the epitome of abolitionist laissez-fairists who upheld business interests and denied the rights and needs of labourers. 17 David Davis refers to Thomas Babington Macaulay as 'a rising spokesman for laissez-faire and middle-class ', con• trasting his position with that of Michael Sadler, who led the fight for factory legislation. 18 True, Macaulay generally fits the description, yet one should note that even he voted for the Ten Hours Bill. More importantly, a legitimate question can be raised as to whether Macaulay, or the sons of Wilberforce for that matter, can be taken as representative of abolitionist attitudes. Their devotion to the cause was markedly lukewarm in comparison to that of their fathers. One might as appropriately use Sadler as representative, for he was an abolitionist too. Patricia Hollis, in 'Anti-Slavery and British Working-Class Radicalism in the Years of Reform', is the most recent upholder of the traditional interpretation of abolitionists as unsympathetic to the rights and demands of labour. In her opinion, even for the period of the 1830s and , 'Anti-slavery leaders in any case were no radicals, and had little sympathy with a more democratic impulse. '19 She stresses the degree to which working-class leaders saw antislavery as a rival movement, with the consequence that it evoked antagonism and opposition. Beginning my study of the Xll Introduction

period with the same impression, I was instead struck by the sur• prising amount of co-operation that I found to be emerging in the 1830s.2°Cobbett, for example, found it politically necessary to switch from his abolitionist-baiting negrophobia of the 1820s to a pro-emancipation stance.21 I learned that labour leaders , John Collins and Richard Oastler were long-time anti• slavery men, as were George Julian Harney and Ernest Jones after them. With the completion of emancipation and in the West Indies in 1838, when abolitionists were free for other endeavours, Oastler proposed that systematic efforts should be started to bring them into the movements on behalf of white labour. Even Bronterre O'Brien and (perhaps with ulterior motives) Feargus O'Connor co-operated for a time with Joseph Sturge and his abolitionist followers who formed the backbone of the Complete Suffrage Movement. 22 Hollis cites Chartist interruptions of antislavery meetings as the height of their anti-abolitionism; but, when one remembers that it was a Chartist tactic to interrupt the public meetings of all organ• izations which did not give priority to the Charter, one cannot assume that Chartists were antagonistic to antislavery organ• izations per se. In Glasgow, for example, it was James Moir, a member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society and a Chartist, who issued the notice of the policy to interrupt public meetings. 25 In his essay 'Abolitionism and the Labor Movement in America', Eric Foner joined those who question the Davis thesis that antislavery supported the emerging capitalistic order. Although most American abolitionists, like their British counter• parts, continued to define slavery as the absence of personal freedom - that is, ownership by another rather than self• ownership- Foner points out that their initial disregard of slavery gave way to some concern. He mentions John A. Collins of New York as being influenced by what he saw of when on an abolitionist mission to Great Britain. Several other American abolitionists, including both Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison himself, were similarly influenced by their visits in Britain, but initially they were not ready to admit that the conditions of American labour could be equated with slavery even though they conceded that working people in England were wage slaves. Foner believes that antislavery and American labour-movement principles came together eventually in the stand of Lincoln and the Republican Party.24 James B. Introduction Xlll

Stewart is just finishing a biography of Wendell Phillips that dis• cusses at length his interest in labour problems. David Eltis has pointed out how Garrisonian beliefs in personal liberty and the universal brotherhood of man led to the position that 'Freedom for the slave should be matched by universal suffrage and the ballot at home and in the colonies.'25 Obviously, one can find plenty of examples both of antagonism between the working class and abolitionists and of co-operation between them. Perhaps it is a case of some historians seeing the proverbial half-empty glass while others see it as half full. Charles Darwin's remark about research in geology is equally applicable to history. In 1861 he wrote,

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone would not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service. 26

Since the antagonisms between the labour and antislavery movements have had a longer and fuller press, my purpose is to give some exposure to the evidences of co-operation between them. The following essays, a beginning on my way to a longer study of the association of abolitionists with working-class movements, provide a few illustrations of cases where abolitionist leaders grew to see black chattel slavery and white wage slavery as parts of the same whole. As Richard Oastler put it, the anti• slavery and labour causes were 'one and the same', or, as Bronterre O'Brien phrased it, to say that white workers owned themselves and black slaves did not was to create a 'distinction without a difference'. 27 Paternalistic the antislavery leaders were, but they illustrate a capacity for growth and flexibility when con• fronted with the increasing problem of industrial labour and with accusations levelled at their short-sightedness. They moved beyond pity and charity to attempts to gain justice and indepen• dent rights for working people and the range of their con• sideration extended to rural tenant farmers and to artisans as well as to industrial workers. Hence I have included all of these groups in my definition of the working classes. Brian Harrison has pointed out how 'reciprocal rebuke' XIV Introduction resulted in a 'jostling forward' of reforms, an idea I tried to illu• strate in showing the relationship between abolitionists and Chartism.28 In his book Drt"nk and the Victorians, Harrison used the phrase 'a broker between the classes' to describe a temperance reformer. 29 I think the concept an apt one to characterize the antislavery reformers discussed in the following essays. I have not intended these essays to be biographical, and because of my thesis I have usually given less space to my subjects' antislavery activities and have put more emphasis on their on behalf of poor, white labouring people. Most of all I have tried to present evidence of their emerging recognition of the close relationship between white and black slavery.