On 22nd May 1787, twelve devout men assembled at a print shop in the City of London. Nine of them were Quakers, the rest Anglicans. Together they formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Within twenty years of this meeting the slave trade had been abolished in the British Empire. By 1833 parliament had abolished slavery itself in the empire, and all slaves had been freed. By the 1880’s slavery was ended in the southern United States. “From any historical perspective”, writes the historian of slavery, David Bryon-Davis, “This was a stupendous transformation” . [1]
Why did this group of people feel so strongly that slavery ought to be abolished?
To us it is obvious; it seems obscene to ask that question. The problem is that our ability to exercise an historical imagination is poor and we are quick to judge the people of the past by 21st century standards. Christians in the 1700’s were largely complacent about the slave trade. Most felt that, since the Bible did not condemn it directly, and since there were slaves in the Bible, there was no problem. Only a few felt otherwise and they were regarded as the lunatic fringe.
The size of the problem – the Atlantic slave trade
Although it was illegal to own slaves in the British Isles, slaves were central to the economy of Britain in the eighteenth century. Manufactured goods were sent to Africa, traded and exchanged for slaves in the costal areas. The slaves were then taken to the Americas and sold. The money was used to buy raw materials which were then taken to Britain and Europe. It was a profitable cycle of activity and hundreds of ships circled the Atlantic each year.
It is estimated that, in the end, 20 million Africans were taken from their homes and sold into servitude in the Americas. Try to imagine yourself living at this time and accepting this as being perfectly normal. The British economy depends on it and your income is relying on it. If anyone were to abolish the slave trade, thousands of seamen would be thrown out of work. Great cities such as Bristol and Liverpool were thriving because of the buying and selling of living human beings.
Many Christians were slow to see the iniquity of this system. A famous hymn writer will serve as an example.
John Newton, born in 1725, was living at sea by the age of eleven! His dad was a sea captain and John Newton followed in his wake, serving in the crew of several slave-ships. During one voyage a violent storm brought Newton to realise the power of God and his own vulnerability. He was dramatically converted in 1748.
But Newton continued to work on slave ships, serving a captain on the Duke of Argyle and The African in 1753 and 1754.
Then Newton left the sea and trained to enter the Anglican ministry. He once wrote, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God”. Newton’s hymn, Amazing grace is well known but Newton became an abolitionist only gradually – it is an indication of how normal slavery had become that a man like Newton could continue to regard it as acceptable until well into the 1770’s.
But eventually Newton was convinced. In 1787 he wrote Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, an abolitionist tract based on his experiences as a slave captain. It was an influential work, but even before it was written Newton had already exerted a deep influence upon the abolitionist movement…
