Abolitionist Movement

Background

European merchants carried on the transatlantic slave trade, buying Africans and selling them to plantations in the American colonies. Among Christians, the first to challenge this system were the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends). Protests began in the late seventeenth century, and in 1727 British Quakers declared their opposition to the slave trade. The Quakers John Woolman and Anthony Benezet published pamphlets condemning the slave trade. In the Somerset case of 1772, in which the Anglican Granville Sharp assisted, the court ruled that English law provided no basis for slavery. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, also publicly condemned slavery in 1774.

Development

• 1783: Quakers submitted a petition against the slave trade to the British Parliament.
• 1787: On May 22, twelve men founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London. Nine of them were Quakers, while its leading figures, Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, were evangelical Anglicans. Clarkson traveled from port to port gathering testimony from sailors and physical evidence such as shackles, with the help of local Quaker meetings. The networks of the Methodist movement, which had spread among ordinary people, also lent support. John Newton, a clergyman and former slave-ship captain, began supporting the movement at this time, and free Black Londoners such as Olaudah Equiano also made their voices heard.
• 1787: On October 28, William Wilberforce, a member of the House of Commons, wrote in his diary that God had set before him two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. The evangelicals who shared his convictions were at first called "the Saints," and from around 1797 they became known as the "Clapham Sect," after a district on the outskirts of London.
• 1791–1806: Wilberforce's bill was defeated in the House of Commons in 1791 by a vote of 163 to 88. In 1804 it passed the Commons but was blocked in the House of Lords, where opposition in defense of mercantile and colonial interests was strong.
• 1807: With the backing of a new ministry and a bill drafted by James Stephen, the Slave Trade Act was passed, prohibiting the slave trade within the British Empire.
• 1833: On August 28, the Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent; it took effect on August 1 of the following year. Wilberforce died on July 29, shortly before the act was passed.

Results and Impact

The act freed more than 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean, South Africa, and elsewhere. The government, however, paid £20 million in compensation not to the formerly enslaved but to the slaveholders. In addition, many of those emancipated were required to keep working for their former masters as "apprentices," and this apprenticeship system was not abolished until 1838. British abolition gave impetus to abolitionist movements in other countries, including the United States, which abolished slavery in 1865 through the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Assessment

The movement is regarded as an example of believers from several traditions—Quakers, evangelical Anglicans, Methodists, and others—acting together out of religious conviction. Sharp is reported to have cited passages such as Exodus 21:16, which calls for the punishment of anyone who kidnaps a person. Nevertheless, the church did not speak with one voice from the outset. The Quakers, a minority body, raised the issue first, and public debate in British society did not gain momentum until the late 1780s. Alongside the activism of believers, historians point to other factors behind abolition, including uprisings by enslaved people in the colonies, changes in economic structures, and the activities of free Black people. The compensation paid solely to slaveholders and the apprenticeship system are cited as limitations of the reform.