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Sisterhood and Slavery: Transatlantic Antislavery and Women's Rights

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Sisterhood and Slavery: Transatlantic Antislavery and Women's Rights Proceedings of the Third Annual Gilder Lehrman Center International Conference at Yale University Sisterhood and Slavery: Transatlantic Antislavery and Women's Rights October 25-28, 2001 Yale University New Haven, Connecticut The Revival of Antislavery in the 1820s at the Local, National, and Global Levels Joshua Civin In the 1820s, the antislavery movement underwent a series of major transformations. Its priorities shifted from worldwide abolition of the slave trade to immediate emancipation of all slaves. Its tactics shifted from insider lobbying of government officials to grassroots agitation. The timing of these developments was similar in Great Britain and the United States. Some transatlantic interpenetration has always been assumed, but scholars have never closely assessed just how important Anglo-American interactions were in revitalizing the movement in this crucial decade. Addressing this subject requires us to appreciate how challenging it is—even in 2001—to be part of a movement that spans continents. As committed as activists are to advancing their cause on all fronts, they have to prioritize. In the 1820s, it was far more resource intensive than it is today to develop projects that were truly transatlantic in scope. Activists then and now have to consider the impact that international efforts will have on their agendas at the national, regional, local, and household levels. Most theories that attempt to explain activists’ multi-tiered strategies can be reduced to either the familiar environmentalist motto, “Think Globally, Act Locally,” or its more parochial converse: “All Politics is Local.” These are great slogans, but as analytic tools, they are Civin, p. 2 too static. Whether nineteenth-century abolitionists or twenty-first-century environmentalists, the best activists shift back and forth from one level of engagement to another in order to exploit opportunities and circumvent obstacles. To understand how a transatlantic movement evolves, it is necessary to explore how activists deploy international resources for advantage in national and local struggles and vice versa. In the early 1820s, the biggest obstacles to creative thinking in the antislavery movement were its national organizations. After 1807 when the United States and Great Britain banned citizens from engaging in international slave trading, the African Institution and the Annual Convention of American Abolition Societies prioritized efforts to hunt down illegal slavers and to promote abolition worldwide. Both preferred lobbying legislators and diplomats to grassroots agitation.1 Into the 1820s, the ineffectiveness of these supply-side strategies and insider tactics became increasingly apparent. But most veteran metropolitan leaders of the African Institution and the American Abolition Convention were wary of advocating even gradual emancipation because it meant a frontal assault on the foundations of the transatlantic economy. More receptive to new approaches were activists in what Barbara Fields calls the “middle ground.”2 In regions at the boundary between slave and free labor economies, pro- and antislavery forces were closely matched. Thus, agitation over slavery resonated in local power struggles. In British port cities, merchants continued to invest in plantations and import slave-grown staples, but this did not stop antislavery activism from brewing. As David Davis has highlighted, James Cropper and other Liverpool merchants were pivotal in rejuvenating British antislavery. In the 1820s, new antislavery societies also sprouted in U.S. border regions. Benjamin Lundy galvanized local initiatives when he relocated the headquarters of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, the first American antislavery 1 African Institution, Report of the Committee… (London. 1807) and subsequent annual reports. Robert Sayre, “The Evolution of Early American Abolitionism: The American Convention for Promo ting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the African Race, 1794-1837” (Ohio State Univ. Ph.D. diss., 1987). David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1987), 105-14. Civin, p. 3 newspaper, from Ohio to Tennessee and then to Baltimore. Middle-ground initiatives were not always more radical than the Convention or the African Institution. But they were more willing to recruit new constituencies and experiment with new tactics.3 These middle-ground activists realized that their initiatives could be enhanced by pitching them as part of a broader movement. Conversely, the stronger their local auxiliary was, the more their voices resonated at the national level. More than anyone else in the 1820s, Cropper and Lundy bombarded their respective national organizations with policy proposals. But they found it difficult to get national leaders to listen unless they agreed to fund these initiatives themselves or unless they appeared in London or Philadelphia and demanded action. In their battles to influence their national movements, they resorted to strong-arm tactics. They withheld financial contributions until their views were heeded. Often, they initiated a project at the grassroots and brought it to the national organization as a fait accompli. They even staged coups. Lundy and other middle-ground activists convinced the Convention to relocate from Philadelphia to Baltimore. Cropper convinced London leaders to replace the African Institution with a more activist Antislavery Society. When this new association stumbled, he spearheaded several attempts at reorganization. Yet as active as Cropper and Lundy became in their national movements, they never abandoned their commitment to the communities where they lived. They carefully calibrated how nationwide initiatives would impact their local power bases.4 2 Barbara J. Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground (New Haven, 1985). 3 The best source for 1820s American antislavery societies is the Genius of Universal Emancipation (hereafter GUE), 1821-33. For secondary material, see David Brion Davis, “James Cropper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821-33,” Journal of Negro History, xlv (1960), 241-58; 46 (1961), pp. 154-73. K. Charlton, “James Cropper and Liverpool’s Contributions to the Anti-Slavery Movement,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxxiii (1971), 57-80. Merton Dillon, Benjamin Lundy and the Struggle for Negro Freedom (Urbana, 1966). Edward N. Wright, “John Needles (1786-1878): An Autobiography,” Quaker History, lviii (1969), 3-21. 4 Rhodes House (British Antislavery Papers) Brit. Emp. S16 E2/1-4: Antislavery Society, Minute Books, 1823-36; S18 C1/16: J. Cropper to T. Pringle and J. Crisp, 15 Feb. 1832. Antislavery Society, Accounts of the Receipts and Disbursements…(1823-31). Liverpool Maritime Museum (Cropper Family Papers) D/CR/10/58: J. to Eliza Cropper, 9 Aug. 1831. Cropper to Sturge, 30 Dec. 1825, 14 July 1827, 31 Aug. 1830 in A. Cropper, Extracts from Letters of the Late James Cropper… [Liverpool, 1850], ff. 56-7, 61-63, 73-4. Maryland Historical Society, Vertical File: Maryland Antislavery Society, Constitution and Minutes, 1825. Elsewhere, I focus on the intersection of grassroots and national Civin, p. 4 Developing connections across the Atlantic offered additional leverage for Baltimore and Liverpool activists. As innovative as they were, Cropper and Lundy were not the first antislavery activists to explore transatlantic ties. Slave-trading was a truly global business, and abolitionists recognized that effective opposition would have to be international in scope. From the 1780s, American and British activists collaborated extensively, relying on transatlantic networks maintained by Quakers and other denominations. Even during the War of 1812, the African Institution partnered with the American Convention to track illegal slavers. The colonization movement also emerged from a transatlantic dialogue. Founded in December 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS) legitimated its project as a bone fide antislavery enterprise by equating it with the Sierra Leone colony founded by British abolitionists. The African Institution welcomed ACS agents to its meetings and offered advice and other resources.5 To the extent that 1820s activists prioritized emancipation of slaves over worldwide abolition of the slave trade, they had less of a direct use for Anglo-American ties. The British movement remained transatlantic, but its first priority was eradicating slavery in the Caribbean colonies. In the United States, there was less incentive for national—much less international—coordination, since only state governments were thought to have the power to regulate slavery within their borders. Still, emancipationists did not discount international connections entirely. Transatlantic networks offered opportunities for resource mobilization. Fund-raising was a major motivation for the international tours taken by William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and others. In addition to cash donations, sympathizers circulated publications throughout the transatlantic world. Formally and informally, they shared ideas and strategies. Transatlantic ties also provided a sense of activism in more detail. See “Civic Experiments: Community-Building in Baltimore and Liverpool, 1785-1835” (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. diss., forthcoming). 5 African Institution Fourth Report (1810), 13. Fifth Report (1811), 27; Sixth Report (1812), 8. American Abolition Convention, Proceedings of the Thirteenth American Convention… (Philadelphia,
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