the cruelties practiced in the slave ship, declared that it was really
too bad, sympathetically remarked, "What a sorrowful world we live
in," stirred their sugar into their tea, and went on as before,
because, what was there to do--hadn't everybody always done it, and if
they didn't do it, wouldn't somebody else?
It is true that for many years individuals, at different times,
remonstrated, had written treatises, poems, stories, and movements had
been made by some religious ladies, particularly the Quakers, but the
opposition had amounted to nothing practically efficient.
The attention of Clarkson was first turned to the subject by having it
given out as the theme for a prize composition in his college class,
he being at that time a sprightly young man, about twenty-four years
of age. He entered into the investigation with no other purpose than
to see what he could make of it as a college theme.
He says of himself: "I had expected pleasure from the invention of
arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them
together, and from the thought, in the interim, that I was engaged in
an innocent contest for literary honor, but all my pleasures were
damped by the facts, which were now continually before me.
"It was but one gloomy subject from morning till night; in the day
time I was uneasy, in the night I had little rest, I sometimes never
closed my eyelids for grief."
It became not now so much a trial for academical reputation as to
write a work which should be useful to Africa. It is not surprising
that a work, written under the force of such feelings, should have
gained the prize, as it did. Clarkson was summoned from London to
Cambridge, to deliver his prize essay publicly. He says of himself, on
returning back to London: "The subject of it almost wholly engrossed
my thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while on the
road. I stopped my horse occasionally, dismounted, and walked.
"I frequently tried to persuade myself that the contents of my essay
could not be true, but the more I reflected on the authorities on
which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight
of Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf
by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind,
that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time that somebody
should see these calamities to an end."
These reflections, as it appears, were put off for awhile, but
returned again.
This young and noble heart was of a kind that could not comfort itself
so easily for a brother's sorrow as many do.
He says of himself: "In the course of the autumn of the same year, I
walked frequently into the woods that I might think of the subject in
solitude, and find relief to my mind there; but there the question
still recurred, 'are these things true?' Still the answer followed as
instantaneously, 'they are;' still the result accompanied it,--surely
some person should interfere. I began to envy those who had seats in
Parliament, riches, and widely-extended connections, which would
enable them to take up this cause.
"Finding scarcely any one, at the time, who thought of it, I was
turned frequently to myself, but here many difficulties arose. It
struck me, among others, that a young man only twenty-four years of
age could not have that solid judgment, or that knowledge of men,
manners, and things, which were requisite to qualify him to undertake
a task of such magnitude and importance; and with whom was I to unite?
I believed, also, that it looked so much like one of the feigned
labors of Hercules, that my understanding would be suspected, if I
proposed it."
He however resolved to do something for the cause by translating his
essay from Latin into English, enlarging and presenting it to the
public. Immediately on the publication of this essay, he discovered to
his astonishment and delight, that he was not the only one who had
been interested in this subject.
Being invited to the house of William Dillwyn, one of these friends to
the cause, he says: "How surprised was I to learn, in the course of
our conversation, of the labors of Granville Sharp, of the writings of
Ramsey, and of the controversy in which the latter was engaged, of all
which I had hitherto known nothing. How surprised was I to learn that
William Dillwyn had, himself, two years before, associated himself
with five others for the purpose of enlightening the public mind on
this great subject.
"How astonished was I to find, that a society had been formed in
America for the same object. These thoughts almost overpowered me. My
mind was overwhelmed by the thought, that I had been providentially
directed to this house; the finger of Providence was beginning to be
discernible, and that the day-star of African liberty was rising."
After this he associated with many friends of the cause, and at last
it became evident that in order to effect anything, he must sacrifice
all other prospects in life, and devote himself exclusively to this
work.
He says, after mentioning reasons which prevented all his associates
from doing this: "I could look, therefore, to no person but myself;
and the question was, whether I was prepared to make the sacrifice. In
favor of the undertaking, I urged to myself that never was any cause,
which had been taken up by man, in any country or in any age, so great
and important; that never was there one in which so much misery was
heard to cry for redress; that never was there one in which so much
good could be done; never one in which the duty of Christian charity
could be so extensively exercised; never one more worthy of the
devotion of a whole life towards it; and that, if a man thought
properly, he ought to rejoice to have been called into existence, if
he were only permitted to become an instrument in forwarding it in any
part of its progress.
"Against these sentiments, on the other hand, I had to urge that I
had been designed for the church; that I had already advanced as far
as deacon's orders in it; that my prospects there on account of my
connections were then brilliant; that, by appearing to desert my
profession, my family would be dissatisfied, if not unhappy. These
thoughts pressed upon me, and rendered the conflict difficult.
"But the sacrifice of my prospects staggered me, I own, the most. When
the other objections which I have related, occurred to me, my
enthusiasm instantly, like a flash of lightning, consumed them; but
this stuck to me, and troubled me. I had ambition. I had a thirst
after worldly interest and honors, and I could not extinguish it at
once. I was more than two hours in solitude under this painful
conflict. At length I yielded, not because I saw any reasonable
prospect of success in my new undertaking, for all cool-headed and
cool-hearted men would have pronounced against it; but in obedience, I
believe, to a higher Power. And I can say, that both on the moment of
this resolution, and for some time afterwards, I had more sublime and
happy feelings than at any former period of my life."
In order to show how this enterprise was looked upon and talked of
very commonly by the majority of men in these times, we will extract
the following passage from Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which Bozzy
thus enters his solemn protest: "The wild and dangerous attempt, which
has for some time been persisted in, to obtain an act of our
Legislature, to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of
commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the
insignificance of the zealots, who vainly took the lead in it, made
the vast body of planters, merchants and others, whose immense
properties are involved in that trade, reasonably enough suppose, that
there could be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has
received, excites my wonder and indignation; and though some men of
superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary
popularity, when prosperous; or a love of general mischief, when
desperate, my opinion is unshaken.
"To abolish a statute which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man
has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of
our fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to the African
savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable
bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier
state of life; especially now, when their passage to the West Indies,
and their treatment there, is humanely regulated. To abolish this
trade, would be to
'---- shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'"
One of the first steps of Clarkson and his associates, was the
formation of a committee of twelve persons, for the collection and
dissemination of evidence on the subject.
* * * * *
The contest now began in earnest, a contest as sublime as any the
world ever saw.
The Abolition controversy more fully aroused the virtue, the talent,
and the religion of the great English nation, than any other event or
crisis which ever occurred.
Wilberforce was the leader of the question in Parliament. The other
members of the Anti-slavery Committee performed those labors which
were necessary out of it.
This labor consisted principally in the collection of evidence with
regard to the traffic, and the presentation of it before the public
mind. In this labor Clarkson was particularly engaged. The subject
was hemmed in with the same difficulties that now beset the
Anti-slavery cause in America. Those who knew most about it, were
precisely those whose interest it was to prevent inquiry. An immense
moneyed interest was arrayed against investigation, and was determined
to suppress the agitation of the subject. Owing to this powerful
pressure, many who were in possession of facts which would bear upon
this subject, refused to communicate them; and often after a long and
wearisome journey in search of an individual who could throw light
upon the subject, Clarkson had the mortification to find his lips
sealed by interest or timidity. As usual, the cause of oppression was
defended by the most impudent lying; the slave-trade was asserted to
be the latest revised edition of philanthropy. It was said that the
poor African, the slave of miserable oppression in his own country,
was wafted by it to an asylum in a Christian land; that the middle
passage was to the poor negro a perfect elysium, infinitely happier
than anything he had ever known in his own country. All this was said
while manacles, and hand-cuffs, and thumb-screws, and instruments to
force open the mouth, were a regular part of the stock for a slave
ship, and were hanging in the shop windows of Liverpool for sale.
For Clarkson's attention was first called to these things by observing
them in the shop window, and on inquiring the use of one of them, the
man informed him that many times negroes were sulky and tried to
starve themselves to death, and this instrument was used to force open
their jaws.
Of Clarkson's labor in this investigation some idea may be gathered
from his own words, when stating that for a season he was compelled to
retire from the cause, he thus speaks. "As far as I myself was
concerned, all exertion was then over. The nervous system was almost
shattered to pieces. Both my memory and my hearing failed me. Sudden
dizzinesses seized my head. A confused singing in the ear followed me
wherever I went. On going to bed the very stairs seemed to dance up
and down under me, so that, misplacing my foot, I sometimes fell.
Talking, too, if it continued but half an hour, exhausted me so that
profuse perspirations followed, and the same effect was produced even
by an active exertion of the mind for the like time.
These disorders had been brought on by degrees, in consequence of the
severe labors necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause. For
seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred
persons, with my own hand; I had some book or other annually to write
in behalf of the cause. In this time I had traveled more than
thirty-five thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of
these journeys in the night. All this time my mind had been on the
stretch. It had been bent too to this one subject, for I had not even
leisure to attend to my own concerns. The various instances of
barbarity which had come successively to my knowledge within this
period, had vexed, harrassed, and afflicted it. The wound which these
had produced was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments
before related, which arose from the reiterated refusals of persons to
give their testimony, after I had traveled hundreds of miles in quest
of them. But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the
persecution, begun and pursued by persons interested in the
continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined
against them; and whom, on account of their dependent situation in
life, it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing
these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when
thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From
their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and
ungrateful to have fled. These different circumstances, by acting
together, had at length brought me into the situation just mentioned;
and I was therefore obliged, though very reluctantly, to be borne out
of the field, where I had placed the great honor and glory of my
life."
I may as well add here that a Mr. Whitbread, to whom Clarkson
mentioned this latter cause of distress, generously offered to repair
the pecuniary losses of all who had suffered in this cause. One
anecdote will be a specimen of the energy with which Clarkson pursued
evidence. It had been very strenuously asserted and maintained that
the subjects of the slave trade were only such unfortunates as had
become prisoners of war, and who, if not carried out of the country in
this manner, would be exposed to death or some more dreadful doom in
their own country. This was one of those stories which nobody
believed, and yet was particularly useful in the hands of the
opposition, because it was difficult legally to disprove it. It was
perfectly well known that in very many cases slavetraders made direct
incursions into the country, kidnapped, and carried off the
inhabitants of whole villages, but the question was, how to establish
it? A gentleman whom Clarkson accidentally met on one of his journeys,
informed him that he had been in company, about a year before, with a
sailor, a very respectable looking young man, who had actually been
engaged in one of these expeditions; he had spent half an hour with
him at an inn; he described his person, but knew nothing of his name
or the place of his abode, all he knew was that he belonged to a ship
of war in ordinary, but knew nothing of the port. Clarkson determined
that this man should be produced as a witness, and knew no better way
than to go personally to all the ships in ordinary, until the
individual was found. He actually visited every sea-port town, and
boarded every ship, till in the very _last_ port and on the very
_last_ ship which remained, the individual was found, and found to be
possessed of just the facts and information which were necessary. By
the labors of Clarkson and his contemporaries an incredible excitement
was produced throughout all England. The pictures and models of slave
ships, accounts of the cruelties practised in the trade, were
circulated with an industry which left not a man, woman, or child in
England uninstructed. In disseminating information, and in awakening
feeling and conscience, the women of England were particularly
earnest, and labored with that whole-hearted devotion which
characterizes the sex.
It seems that after the committee had published the facts, and sent
them to every town in England, Clarkson followed them up by journeying
to all the places, to see that they were read and attended to. Of the
state of feeling at this time, Clarkson gives the following account:
"And first I may observe, that there was no town through which I
passed, in which there was not some one individual who had left off
the use of sugar. In the smaller towns there were from ten to fifty,
by estimation, and in the larger, from two to five hundred, who made
this sacrifice to virtue. These were of all ranks and parties. Rich
and poor, churchmen and dissenters had adopted the measure. Even
grocers had left off trading in the article in some places. In
gentlemen's families, where the master had set the example, the
servants had often voluntarily followed it; and even children, who
were capable of understanding the history of the sufferings of the
Africans, excluded with the most virtuous resolution the sweets, to
which they had been accustomed, from their lips. By the best
computation I was able to make, from notes taken down in my journey,
no fewer than three hundred thousand persons had abandoned the use of
sugar." It was the reality, depth, and earnestness of the public
feeling, thus aroused, which pressed with resistless force upon the
government; for the government of England yields to popular demands,
quite as readily as that of America.
After years of protracted struggle, the victory was at last won. The
slave-trade was finally abolished through all the British empire; and
not only so, but the English nation committed, with the whole force of
its national influence, to seek the abolition of the slave-trade in
all the nations of the earth. But the wave of feeling did not rest
there; the investigations had brought before the English conscience
the horrors and abominations of slavery itself, and the agitation
never ceased till slavery was finally abolished through all the
British provinces. At this time the religious mind and conscience of
England gained, through this very struggle, a power which it never has
lost. The principle adopted by them was the same so sublimely adopted
by the church in America, in reference to the Foreign Missionary
cause: "The field is the world." They saw and felt that as the example
and practice of England had been powerful in giving sanction to this
evil, and particularly in introducing it into America, that there was
the greatest reason why she should never intermit her efforts till the
wrong was righted throughout the earth.
Clarkson to his last day never ceased to be interested in the subject,
and took the warmest interest in all movements for the abolition of
slavery in America.
One of his friends, during my visit at this place, read me a
manuscript letter from him, written at a very advanced age, in which
he speaks with the utmost ardor and enthusiasm of the first
anti-slavery movements of Cassius Clay in Kentucky. The same friend
described him to me as a cheerful, companionable being,--frank and
simple-hearted, and with a good deal of quiet humor.
It is remarkable of him that with such intense feeling for human
suffering as he had, and worn down and exhausted as he was, by the
dreadful miseries and sorrows with which he was constantly obliged to
be familiar, he never yielded to a spirit of bitterness or
denunciation.
The narrative which he gives is as calm and unimpassioned, and as free
from any trait of this kind, as the narrative of the evangelist.
I have given this sketch of what Clarkson did, that you may better
appreciate the feelings with which I visited the place.
The old stone house, the moat, the draw-bridge, all spoke of days of
violence long gone by, when no man was safe except within fortified
walls, and every man's house literally had to be his castle.
To me it was interesting as the dwelling of a conqueror, as one who
had not wrestled with flesh and blood merely, but with principalities
and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world, and who had
overcome, as his great Master did before him, by faith, and prayer,
and labor.
We were received with much cordiality by the widow of Clarkson, now in
her eighty-fourth year. She has been a woman of great energy and
vigor, and an efficient co-laborer in his plans of benevolence.
She is now quite feeble. I was placed under the care of a respectable
female servant, who forthwith installed me in a large chamber
overlooking the court-yard, which had been Clarkson's own room; the
room where for years, many of his most important labors had been
conducted, and from whence his soul had ascended to the reward of the
just.
The servant who attended me seemed to be quite a superior woman; like
many of the servants in respectable English families. She had grown up
in the family, and was identified with it; its ruling aims and
purposes had become hers. She had been the personal attendant of
Clarkson, and his nurse during his last sickness; she had evidently
understood, and been interested in his plans, and the veneration with
which she therefore spoke of him, had the sanction of intelligent
appreciation.
A daughter of Clarkson, who was married to a neighboring clergyman,
with her husband, was also present on this day.
After dinner we rode out to see the old church, in hose enclosure the
remains of Clarkson repose. It was just such a still, quiet, mossy old
church, as you have read of in story-books, with the grave-yard spread
all around it, like a thoughtful mother, who watches the resting of
her children.
The grass in the yard was long and green, and the daisy, which in
other places lies like a little button on the ground, here had a
richer fringe of crimson, and a stalk about six inches high. It is, I
well know, the vital influence from the slumbering dust beneath, which
gives the richness to this grass and these flowers; but let not that
be a painful thought; let it rather cheer us, that beauty should
spring from ashes, and life smile brighter from the near presence of
death. The grave of Clarkson was near the church, enclosed by a
railing and marked by a simple white marble slab; it was carefully
tended and planted with flowers. In the church was an old book of
records, and among other curious inscriptions, was one recording how a
pious committee of old Noll's army had been there, knocking off
saints' noses, and otherwise purging the church from the relics of
idolatry.
Near by the church was the parsonage, the home of my friends, a neat,
pleasant, sequestered dwelling, of about the style of a New England
country parsonage.
The effect of the whole together was inexpressibly beautiful to me.
For a wonder, it was a pleasant day, and this is a thing always to be
thankfully acknowledged in England. The calm stillness of the
afternoon, the seclusion of the whole place, the silence only broken
by the cawing of the rooks, the ancient church, the mossy graves with
their flowers and green grass, the sunshine and the tree shadows, all
seemed to mingle together in a kind of hazy dream of peacefulness and
rest. How natural it is to say of some place sheltered, simple, cool,
and retired, here one might find peace, as if peace came from without,
and not from within. In the shadiest and stillest places may be the
most turbulent hearts, and there are hearts which, through the busiest
scenes, carry with them unchanging peace. As we were walking back, we
passed many cottages of the poor.
I noticed, with particular pleasure, the invariable flower garden
attached to each. Some pansies in one of them attracted my attention
by their peculiar beauty, so very large and richly colored. On being
introduced to the owner of them, she, with cheerful alacrity, offered
me some of the finest. I do not doubt of there being suffering and
misery in the agricultural population of England, but still there are
multitudes of cottages, which are really very pleasant objects, as
were all these. The cottagers had that bright, rosy look of health
which we seldom see in America, and appeared to be both polite and
self-respecting.