Gale Primary Sources Start at the source. Debates Over Slavery and Abolition: An Interpretative and Historiographical Essay Orville Vernon Burton Clemson University Various source media, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive EMPOWER™ RESEARCH Slavery is an ugly word, and the vast majority of modern enslaved in the seventeenth century, frequently being readers would immediately identify it as an ugly shipped to the West Indies. Europeans introduced a concept. Any effort to reintroduce the institution in the complex slave trade to their new Indian neighbors, United States would no doubt be vigorously resisted by often pitting tribe against tribe to obtain captives to sell all but a marginal few; most citizens, in fact, would into slavery. By the eighteenth century, however, wonder how such a proposal could even be seriously slavery as practiced by Europeans almost exclusively debated, or how support for it could be buttressed by victimized Africans by means of the triangular slave anything other than ignorance or the most unmitigated trade. form of selfishness. Slavery in colonial and early America existed in both the People, however, tend to have short memories (which is North and the South. For example, slavery was why they need historians). Slavery had been a common in New York. Even by the Civil War, there were commonly accepted fact of life since before written still a few remaining slaves in New Jersey, which had records began and has lingered in some parts of the ended slavery through gradual emancipation but like world until the present time. In the past, individuals other northern states had become a free state. Further were enslaved, some for being captives, debtors, north, New Hampshire still had eighteen slaves at the criminals, or the indigent poor. Sometimes whole war's beginning. Slavery, though, moved from being a groups were placed in bondage. In either case, the national problem to an increasingly sectional difference purpose of the institution was primarily to provide defining North and South in the United States. Several inexpensive labor and, in some societies, to promote southeastern Indian tribes, in fact, adopted plantation group identity among the enslavers by providing a slavery (far different from the kinship slavery they had permanently contrasted "other," which allowed the traditionally practiced, which involved war captives) and enslaving group to feel superior. Sometimes individual began to identify, even after Indian Removal, with their slaves, or even large groups, were freed. Sometimes white southern neighbors where slavery was too, slaves rose up, often spurred by inspirational concerned. leaders such as Moses or Spartacus. Some of these efforts at resistance were more successful than others, but the institution continued through the centuries. The Abolitionist organizations arose in the eighteenth very word slave has its roots in the ethnic century, first in Europe and then in America. Although nomenclature Slav, for Slavs were frequently enslaved slavery was common in the British Empire, it existed by their Holy Roman conquerors. mostly on colonial plantations; by the 1770s only fifteen thousand Africans were enslaved in England itself, most of them domestic servants. Most English citizens The first African slaves appeared in the English rarely if ever saw the full effects of slavery, and few colonies in 1619. Native Americans too were often gave it much thought. This changed in 1772, when the Bostonian Charles Stuart recaptured his slave James voice in the abolitionist movement for decades. The Somerset, who had escaped while accompanying his anti-slavery group, however, continued to face powerful master on a trip to England. Stuart made preparations opposition from planters. Their cause was dealt a blow to send Somerset to the West Indies for resale. when Britain went to war with France in 1793, creating Somerset, however, had made friends. He had been an atmosphere in which any protests against the status baptized during his stay, and his new godparents quo were interpreted as unpatriotic. The abolitionists interceded on his behalf, issuing a writ of habeus did not relent, and in 1807 the slave trade was banned corpus, forcing the issue to trial. Lord Mansfield, chief in Great Britain. In 1833, benefiting from a national justice of the King's Bench, issued a judgment that mood for reform in general, they achieved an even ended: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may greater goal: slavery itself was abolished. Wilberforce follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed learned of the passage of the Abolition of Slavery Act on or approved by the law of England; and therefore the his deathbed. black must be discharged." Lord Mansfield's decision called into question whether, and how, slavery could be enforced in Great Britain; a large segment of the public London's Committee for the Abolition of the Slave wrongly concluded that slavery was abolished, but that Trade, formed in 1787, served as an inspiration for the was not the case. Regardless of legal decisions made in visiting Frenchman Jacques Pierre Brissot, who London, slavery continued to flourish in the West became acquainted with several members. Upon his Indies. return to Paris in 1788 Brissot founded the Society of Friends of the Blacks, hoping the two organizations could work together to end the slave trade. Although The first British abolitionist organization was set up by many politicians and intellectuals joined Brissot's Quakers in 1783. This was followed, in 1787, by the Society, the planters and merchants who benefited Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, whose from the trade mounted a well-organized publicity membership included Thomas Clarkson and Granville campaign that gained them much public support. Sharp. Clarkson and Sharp tirelessly investigated the Society members were sometimes attacked in the slave trade, writing pamphlets and delivering speeches streets for their unpopular views. intended to educate the British public about the horrors of slavery. They also heavily promoted the autobiography of the former slave Olaudah Equiano, The successful French Revolution led to the who joined them on lecture tours. The movement publication, in 1789, of the Declaration of the Rights of needed a political face, however, and they found it in Man. The document delineated rights for "all men William Wilberforce, a prominent evangelical member without exception" and included the statement "men of Parliament. Wilberforce, with the support of are born and remain free and equal in rights." It did not, powerful political friends such as William Pitt the however, directly address slavery. The declaration's Younger and Charles Fox, became the most recognized precepts inspired Julien Raimond to come to France and present his case to the National Assembly. liberty, inspired an all too brief moment of Raimond, a mulatto who had been born free, owned an manumission among some slaveholders, especially in indigo plantation in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). the North, but also in the South. And some slaves took Raimond wanted the French government to ease racial the opportunity of the British offer of manumission to restrictions in Saint-Domingue and to allow its wealthy leave the country. By the early nineteenth century even colonial citizens of color to vote. Supported by friends some white southerners were having doubts about how such as Abbé Henri Grégoire, Vincent Ogé (who was worthwhile the "peculiar institution" really was, and also a freeborn black from the colony), and the Society most of its supporters presented it as a distasteful, of Friends of the Blacks, Raimond convinced the necessary evil. assembly to enfranchise freeborn blacks. The decision incensed white colonists, and they refused to enforce it; in turn, Ogé led an unsuccessful insurrection in 1791 Then, in 1831, the abolition of slavery became a serious and was tortured to death. A few months later a much topic of conversation. In Boston, Massachusetts, the larger slave revolt began, which would ultimately lead Christian pacifist William Lloyd Garrison denounced to the formation of Haiti, the first black republic. any and all who excused slavery—people, churches, political parties—and founded the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper. While circulation was relatively Slavery was abolished in France in 1794 but reinstituted limited, the paper and his speaking engagements in 1802, mostly in reaction to Haiti and the failed brought attention to the issue of slavery. Later that insurrection in Guadeloupe. The French writer Victor year, in North Hampton, Virginia, a religiously Schoelcher began to publish anti-slavery literature in motivated enslaved man, Nat Turner, led Virginia slaves the 1830s, founding his own abolitionist group in 1834. in a bloody revolt. Because Nat Turner's Rebellion Appointed undersecretary of state for the colonies after occurred seven months after the first publication of the Revolution of 1848, Schoelcher immediately set up the Liberator, many blamed Turner's insurrection on a committee to end slavery. On 27 April 1848 the Garrison, linking abolitionism to slave revolt. provisional government accepted and passed the committee's decree to abolish slavery in all French territories, freeing 260,000 slaves. Abolitionism developed a newfound immediacy in the aftermath of Turner's slave revolt, which cost the lives of sixty whites and of many more African Americans in The United States' Founding Fathers, while writing retaliation. Even some slave owners, fearful for their about freedom and liberty, were ambivalent enough families' safety, questioned whether slavery was worth about the subject of slavery to avoid discussing it the risk. Some opponents of slavery presented the directly as much as possible; for example, the revolt as proof that men, even slaves, could reach a words slave or slavery are never mentioned in the point where they were willing to die for a chance at Constitution. The American Revolution, a revolution for freedom. The possibility of ending slavery in the Commonwealth was taken up by the Virginia legislature thus gain a more compliant workforce.