Abolition! Granville Sharp's Campaign to End Slavery
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International Journal of Leadership and Change Volume 7 Issue 1 Article 5 2019 Abolition! Granville Sharp’s Campaign to End Slavery Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijlc Part of the Educational Leadership Commons Recommended Citation (2019) "Abolition! Granville Sharp’s Campaign to End Slavery," International Journal of Leadership and Change: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijlc/vol7/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in International Journal of Leadership and Change by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abolition! Granville Sharp’s Campaign to End Slavery Keywords slavery, slave trade, abolition, Granville Sharp This article is available in International Journal of Leadership and Change: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijlc/vol7/ iss1/5 Abolition! Granville Sharp’s Campaign to End Slavery Sam McFarland Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Western Kentucky University Abstract In 1765, Granville Sharp, a British armaments clerk, Biblical scholar and musician, found a brutally beaten teenage slave on a London street and helped him recover and find work. Deeply upset by the boy’s cruel treatment, Sharp was inspired to launch the movement that led to the end of slavery! Several later campaigners against slavery are better known: In the 1780s, Thomas Clarkson publicized the horrors of the “middle passage,” the transporting of slaves from Africa to the Americas. John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace, became an anti-slavery crusader in the same decade. William Wilberforce persuaded the British Parliament to outlaw the slave trade in 1807. All of these, however, were inspired by Granville Sharp’s earlier efforts. This article tells Sharp’s story, what he did and how he started the movement that led eventually to the end of slavery. Keywords slavery, slave trade, abolition, Granville Sharp Granville Sharp meets Jonathan Strong Slavery and the Slave Trade in England The Sharps were known across London for their Sunday The English took pride that England, unlike their American musical concerts. William, both the King’s surgeon and a colonies, had no slavery. According to tradition, a Russian caregiver to London’s poor, played the organ and several slave brought to England in 1569 was immediately freed horns. Granville, known as Greeny to family and friends, by a British court on the grounds that “England was too played the flute, sometimes two flutes simultaneously. pure an air for slaves to breathe in.”1 That phrase stuck and James played a curved horned instrument called the was repeated often with pride in later centuries. This policy serpent, while sisters Judith and Eliza added the lute and did not extend to the British colonies, as these colonies harpsichord. Another sister, Frances, sang sweetly with the imported more than two million slaves from Africa from group. 1680 until the end of slavery. Slaves were most numerous The family often gathered in the evenings to practice or and their conditions the worst on the large Sugar plantations just to play for themselves. So late one afternoon in 1765, in the West Indies. Granville left his job at the Tower of London, where he was Still, slave owners from the West Indies and the a British armaments clerk who kept the records of saltpeter American colonies often brought their personal slaves to purchases for gunpowder, and headed to William’s house England when they came, so an estimated 20,000 slaves for some evening music. were in England when Strong was beaten. Early in the But this time, as he arrived, he came upon a brutally century, Sir John Holt, the Chief Justice of the King’s beaten teenage black slave, Jonathan Strong, collapsing Bench, had issued opinions in three cases that threatened in the doorway. David Lisle, Strong’s owner, had pistol to free all slaves brought to England. He stated in one whipped him, blinding him with blood, permanently case that “there is no such thing as a slave by the law damaging his vision, and making his face a gory mess. of England.”2 However, West Indies slave holders had Lisle had beaten Strong’s body just as mercilessly. When persuaded a British Lord Chancellor to rule in 1729, and he had finished, he abandoned Strong on the street to die. again in 1749, that slaves brought to England remained Floggings were common in 18th century England. slaves, even if they were baptized Christians. Many slaves Horses, servants, beggars, wives and children were often flogged until they bled. Still, Lisle’s beating of Jonathan brought to England had themselves baptized because they Strong was unusually brutal, even for the times. had heard that if they became Christians while in England Granville called William out to help. Strong had they would be freed. It didn’t work. managed to stagger to William’s, as William was known Even though England had no slavery, by this time it for his charity toward London’s poor. The Sharps housed had long led in the slave trade, due to its growth as a naval and cared for Strong for more than four months. When he power and its expanding control over the Americas. About was well enough to leave, they bought him clothes, paid for 1640, British ships began hauling large numbers of African 1Stephen M. Wise, Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial that Led to his lodging, and found him a job doing errands for a nearby the End of Human Slavery, (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005), 27. apothecary. 2 Wise, Though the Heavens May Fall, 29. 52 International Journal of Leadership and Change slaves to the Caribbean for sugar production. From then which he declined. Sadly, Jonathan Strong died three years until 1807, British ships are believed to have carried three later of complications from his beating. million Africans to the Americas. About a quarter of the Granville, however, had found his calling. He was ships leaving Liverpool, England’s busiest port, traded transformed, and became, as historian Christopher Brown in slaves. Many were headed to Africa to pick up slaves has called him, Britain’s “first abolitionist.”5 He was just for the dreadful “middle passage” carrying slaves to the thirty-two. From that day, he worked to prevent other Americas. Many enslaved Blacks died on the horrible slaves in Britain from being forced to return to the West voyage, crowded into the holds of ships. Because poor Indies or America, and he started the long campaign that records were kept, we cannot know how many, but some ended the slave trade and, eventually, slavery itself. ship captains regarded the voyage as successful if no more Granville Sharp was a devout Anglican and an intense than a quarter of the slaves died. Although Englishmen student of the Bible. He knew both Biblical languages, may not have owned slaves, the British economy profited Hebrew and Greek, as well as several modern languages. enormously from this barbaric trade in them. His collection of Bibles in many languages, including Mohawk, was thought to be Europe’s largest. His treatise The Hearing to Save Jonathan Strong on the use of the definite article in New Testament Greek, which he published in a 1778 paper, became known as “The Strong worked for the apothecary for two years until, Granville Sharp Rule” and is still used. His importance in by accident, he was spotted by Lisle, his former owner. history, however, is that he became, following Jonathan Seeing that his slave had not only survived but was partly Strong’s release, the first resolute campaigner against the recovered, Lisle wanted to reclaim him as his property. institution of slavery. He sold him to a Jamaican planter, expecting that Strong would be grabbed by slave catchers -- there were many in A Brief on Human Slavery London at the time -- and shipped off for whatever labor could be forced from him on a sugar plantation in the West Slavery is about as old and universal as human history. It Indies. Strong was soon caught by two hired men and taken has been practiced by almost every culture that ever won to a local jail to be held for the next ship. a war, and for almost all time. The origins of slavery are Strong, unlike most slaves, could read and write a bit, unclear, but it may have started when humans began to grow so managed to smuggle out a note on his situation. The crops and formed stable communities, creating a need for note was passed to Granville, who rushed to the prison and mass labor. Most early slaves were war captives, debtors, insisted to the jailers that Strong had committed no crime criminals, or sex slaves. Differences in language, culture, and should be freed. He threatened the jailers that if they religion, and race, were often used to justify slavery. turned him over to be deported before there was a hearing In most ancient societies, from China and India around by London’s Lord Mayor, they could be charged with a the world to the Aztec empire, slaves could be maimed or crime. killed at will. The Aztecs staged ritual torture and killing Granville got his hearing, which became a virtual of slaves. Slaves in ancient Greece had some rights; in shouting match between Granville, who was not a lawyer, Athens, they could save to purchase their freedom. In and the lawyer representing Strong’s new owner. During early ancient Rome, slaves had virtually no rights, and the hearing, Granville placed his hand on ship captain’s they were often forced to become gladiators or castrated shoulder and proclaimed, “I charge you, in the name of the to become eunuchs.