British Abolitionists: Sublime Humanity and Majestic Prose
[Thanks to Jamie Stern-Weiner for his research]
When news of the 1791 Haitian slave revolt reached Britain, supporters of the slave trade cited the rebels’ brutality to prove the perils of abolition.
How did English abolitionists respond?
In general, they were embarrassed by the violence and did not defend it. Typical was the leading abolitionist William Wilberforce who, when the rebellion was debated in the House of Commons in April 1792, “distanced himself from the black uprising”.¹
To this general rule, historians typically cite two “radical, and marginal” exceptions — abolitionists who “openly defended the violent actions of slaves in pursuit of freedom”.²
William Roscoe was a liberal lawyer and sometime MP from Liverpool.
In his 1792 Inquiry into the Causes of the Insurrection of the Negroes in the Island of St. Domingo, Roscoe “deplored” the “outrages” perpetrated in the uprising but affirmed that slave “[r]esistance” was “justifiable” and blamed the atrocities on the slave system:
[L]et us be permitted a few reflections on the awful scenes that the Island of St. Domingo has of late exhibited: the picture of these outrages forms indeed the most striking part of the narrative in question. The destruction of flourishing plantations; the burning of houses; the slaughter of the Whites by secret treachery, or open revolt; the gross violations of female chastity; the dissolution of all bonds of subordination, and all the attachments of society, contribute to fill the dreadful sketch.
Are these enormities to be lamented? they surely are. Can they excite our wonder? by no means. What is the state of the labouring negro? Is he not a being, bound down by force? labouring under constant compulsion? driven to complete his task by the immediate discipline of the whip? — Are affection, lenity, and forbearance, the result of oppression and abuse? When the native ferocity of Africa is sharpened by the keen sense of long continued injury, who shall set bounds to its revenge?
Again, how have the fierce dispositions of savage life been counteracted or improved by the example of their White Superiors? Resistance is always justifiable where force is substitute of right: nor is the commission of a civil crime possible in a state of slavery. Yet the punishments that have been devised in the French islands to repress crimes, that could only exist by the abuse of the Slave-holder, are such as nature revolts at. How often have these unfortunate beings beheld their fellows, beat, in famine and distraction, the bars of an iron cage, in which they were doomed to pass in inconceivable misery the last days of their existence? Is it not known that in these wretched islands a human being has resigned his life in the torments of a slow-consuming fire? An unavenged instance of an act so awfully atrocious, marks out for perdition the country that could suffer it. When the oppressor thus enforces his authority, what must be the effects of the sufferers’ resentment?
[…]
In thus endeavouring to unfold the primary and ever active causes of these troubles, let it not be thought that I wish to paliate the enormities committed by the insurgents: enormities deeply to be deplored, by every one not totally insensible to the sufferings of humanity. But let it not be forgotten, that to know the origin of the malady is the first step towards an efficacious remedy: should that origin be found in the mistaken conduct of the Planters, it is for them to apply the cure after the accumulated cruelties of ages.
Roscoe also quoted a speech given by the leading French abolitionist Jean-Jacques Brissot to the French National Assembly in December 1791:
You have heard of enormities that freeze you with horror! but Phalaris spoke not of his brazen bull, he lamented only the daggers that his own cruelty had raised against him. The Colonists have related instances of ferocity; but give me, said Mirabeau, an uninformed brute, and I will soon make him a ferocious monster.—It was a White who first plunged a Negro into a burning oven,—who dashed out the brains of a child in the presence of its father;—who fed a Slave with his own proper flesh—These are the monsters that have to account for the barbarity of the revolted Savages.—Millions of Africans, have perished on this soil of blood.—You break at every step the bones of the inhabitants that nature had given to these islands, and you shudder at the relation of their vengeances.—In this dreadful struggle, the crimes of the Whites are yet the most horrible: They are the offspring of despotism; while those of the Blacks, originate in the hatred of Slavery—the thirst of vengeance. Is philosophy chargeable with these horrors? Does she require the blood of the Colonists? Brethren, she cries, be just—be beneficent—and you will prosper.—Eternal slavery, must be an eternal source of crimes;—divest it at least of the epithet eternal; for anguish that knows no bound can only produce despair.
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Percival Stockdale was a poet, writer, and cleric from Northumberland. In his open Letter to Granville Sharp, published 1791, he asserted that not revolting slaves but their merciless masters were the true “savages”:
When these human beings, from a natural, and necessary consequence of the frame with which Heaven endowed them, rise against their oppressors; by our very feeling, and reflecting countrymen, they are termed savages, and rebels. But they are the savages, who, precipitated by rapacity, destroy, and tear to pieces, their fellow-creatures;—and they are the rebels, who, by this insatiable passion, and by these merciless deeds, rebel against the fixed, and eternal laws, against the MAJESTY of their CREATOR.
Stockdale then set out to
assert, and vindicate, the right which the Negroes inherit, from nature, and from Heaven; from the laws of God, and man, of rising against their oppressors, with a just, and destructive indignation. The propriety, the necessity, with which an ingenuous writer must be impressed, of enforcing this important, this palpable truth in it’s own nature, shows how shamefully, how astonishingly (were it not usual) the human mind may be corrupted, and stupified, by selfishness; by habit, and prejudice; and by power.
Addressing directly the Haitian uprising, Stockdale boldly affirmed that in their resort to violent self-defence, the slaves had acted not as “savages” but “like men”:
Whenever these unhappy people have risen in their own defence, in a ship, on a plantation, or through an island, it is remarkable, that the christian narrators of the event, in relating the particular acts of violence of the insurgents, have generally branded them, with the term, Savages.… But I must ask a plain, and fair question, or two, of those phlegmatick, and unfeeling narrators, in general; of the avowed advocates for the slave-trade; of those who grossly misrepresent the African character; and of the personal tyrants of the unhappy Negroes. If any body of Europeans were bought as slaves; treated with that oppression and inhumanity, with which, it is well known, the Negroes are treated, in the WEST INDIES, notwithstanding all the disingenuous industry which has, of late, been used, to make the contrary appear; and if the most deplorable servitude seemed to be inevitably entailed on themselves, and their posterity, unless they hazarded some desperate exertions for their emancipation:—should not we approve their conduct, or their violence (call it what you please) should not we crown it with eulogium, if they exterminated their tyrants with fire, and sword? Should they deliberately inflict the most exquisite tortures on those tyrants, would they not be excusable, in the moral judgement of those who properly value (if it is possible properly to value) those inestimable blessings, personal, rational, and religious liberty? […] In any instances of gloomy, and unrelenting cruelty, on the one side; and of despair thrown into correspondent action, on the other, we are (to speak properly) the savages; the Africans act like men; like beings endowed with rational, and immortal minds; with warm, and generous sentiments, and affections; for the very insurrections, against which we stupidly, and insolently exclaim, are so many natural, and moral proofs, that if we gave them humane, and generous treatment, they would return it with gratitude, and fidelity.
In March 1799, an attempt by Wilberforce to introduce an Abolition Bill was defeated in the Commons. In his Observations on this debate, Stockdale thundered:
I am perfectly convinced that when they [AFRICANS] are in their own country, in peace, and freedom; unmolested by those to whom the name of christians is profanely prostituted, they are a good, sensible people; far from being destitute of useful knowledge; nay, I will venture to add, sounder politicians than their EUROPEAN tyrants, and tormentors. Whatever they suffer in corruption of sentiment; whatever they suffer in corruption of intellect, results from the polluting contact into which they are forced, with you. But great politicians that you may think yourselves, there is no true, and durable policy but in the exercise of justice, equity, and humanity. God will have it so; and what politicians are they who strive against HIM? He will yet inflict signal, and temporal punishments on those who degrade, and oppress MEN; who were made in his Divine Image, REASON. The Crash will overwhelm you; and even the aged may live to be informed of the ruin.
[…]
Now, perhaps I shall stagger very profound politicians, by insisting on the simplest, and clearest truth in the world; that we have no more right to violate, and destroy the well-being of men who are ten thousand miles distant from us, than we have, essentially to injure, and oppress the inhabitants of our own island. And if some prodigious fatality should make a gang of you, Slave-holders, the despots of BRITAIN; if you should rule us with a rod of iron, as you lord it over the AFRICANS in the WEST INDIES; and if, in consequence of a happy insurrection, we should conquer our oppressours; could you, and your politicians impartially, and seriously blame us, if we persued our conquest with a vengeance proportionable to the tyranny with which we had been afflicted?
[…]
In writing these observations, and the preceding letter, my style, if my aim is effected, has been accurately expressive of their objects. Some orators, and authors, whom I very much respect, are cautious of treating even certain men, and certain subjects, with a fair strength, and ardour of language. I think their candour, and delicacy erroneous. A tenderness is due to common failings; even to unguarded, and undesigning vice; if we recollect our own faults, and the general infirmity of human nature. But when men perpetrate with impunity the greatest crimes; when publick advocates for these crimes prostitute the most respectable situations, to defend them; and when those men pass, or wave them, without a word of reproof, who are appointed by the state, with the reward of great dignities, and emoluments, expressly, to reprehend them; and who might oppose them powerfully, and probably, with success; the writer, who investigates, and arraigns all this conduct, without applying to it the most explicit, and vigorous terms of censure, and reprobation; seems to me to recoil from the important duty in which he is engaged; to shrink from the disinterested, and open defence of mankind. I have used expressions which were dictated by my just indignation; but before I used them, they had the sanction of my calm, and best reason.
At the close of the present century, some extraordinary, and astonishing events form an AEra, which, in many respects, is mortifying to reflection, and humanity. But I feel some consolation, when I look forward to posterity. The time will come, when the Slave-Trade will be abolished; may it not be abolished by a tempest of revenge; but by extorted justice.
David Hurley, The Culture of English Antislavery 1780-1860 (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 170.
Baron de Vastey, The Colonial System Unveiled (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), p. 244n8. Cf. David Geggus, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti, 1791-1805” in James Walvin ed., Slavery and British Society 1776-1846 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), p. 127. Hurley, Culture, p. 170. Jeremy Teow, “Black Revolt in the White Mind”, Australasian Journal of American Studies 37.1 (2018), p. 89.