Two hundred years ago today, on March 25, 1807, the Foreign Slave Trade Act received royal assent (it became law). The new law “banned British subjects, shipyards, outfitters, and insurers from participating in the slave trade to the colonies of France and its allies”.
The is a date worth commemmorating for two reasons. The most obvous is that it represents the first major stake in the heart of the British slave trade.
The second is that it is a beautiful example of a sheep in wolf’s clothing that we can learn from today. Prior to the 1790s, the push for the abolition the slave trade (not to be confused with the abolition of slavery – that came much later) was gaining some ground in Britain. However, with the onset of hostilities with France, slavery was seen as essential to the empire, and virtually all abolition activities were quashed with Parliament’s passage of severe civil liberties restrictions like the Seditious Meetings Act and the Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act of 1795. Due to these acts, the organizing activities required for the abolition movement – meetings, debates, circulating petitions – were now viewed as seditious and subversive.
Enter James Stephen, a maritime lawyer and abolitionist. He came up with the Foreign Slave Trade Act, which didn’t challenge slaving directly, but ostensibly would curtail French commerce by prohibiting British slavers from selling their slaves to American or French planters. Had the act been debated on its merits (e.g. attenuation of the British slave trade), the sponsoring parliamentarians would have been arrested for sedition. Dressed up as anti-French legislation, the bill passed in both houses of Parliament and marked the beginning of the end of British slaving.
Passage of the Foreign Slave Trade Act is lauded by all who love liberty as a creative solution to an evil situation. It represents the work of activists and politicians who were willing to do what needed to be done to end an unfair and inhumane practice. I hope that our state legislators celebrate this bicentennial and carry in their hearts the message of justice over protocol as they enter this session’s Constitutional Convention.
What exactly are you suggesting that our fine legislators do? Apologies for density.
to stop the Amendment for State-sponsored Discrimination Against a Minority (also known as the marriage amendment). This means being willing to use all methods available to them, and then being proud of themselves for joining the ranks history’s defenders of fairness and justice.
to amend the State Constitution first in such away as to remove the People’s RIGHT by referendum to overide what they view as legislative or judicial oppression ? In this way , the so called “peoples representatives” could avoid the disgrace of the blatant disregard for the rule of law that they have demonstrated and a total disrespect for the oldest State Constitution in The Union.
It is indeed a dangerous precedent when a “Court” (Mass SJC) begins to “make law” rather than “intepreting law” and it is supported by a corrupt and incredibly “lobbied” (by a special interest group )legislature to deny the will of the people and their right to voice their will be it pro or con in this instance.
There is nothing to be “proud of” by this sitting legislature or the Governor who instructs them to break the law and Constitution he has taken an oath to uphold.
This is a clear case of the few usurping the rights of the many. This is a clear case of the unbridled arrogance of the “rulers” to supress the voice and will of the people.
This is how the “tea” got thrown into Boston Harbor some 233 years ago.
that once the British banned slavery in 1807, they found it in their economic interests to encourage other nations to ban slavery as well and did various maneuvers to achieve that goal.
The British did not actually ban SLAVERY within its dominsion until 1835! They merely abolished British maritime involvement in the Triagular Trade, as it was known.
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Parliament knew that the Jamacian and West Indian planters depended upon slavery as a source of sugar-cane labor. So, the shipping of slaves was forbidden, but not slavery itself.
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There is an excellent movie called Amazing Grace about the anti-slavery efforts of William Wilberforce – my own post HERE.
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However, the film gives the impression that Wilberforce triumphed as a young man. The truth is even greater – he dedicated the rest of his adult life to the true ABOLITION of slavery, and died only three days after Parliament did so (by paying hefty reparations to the planters, BTW, a strategy which could have avoided the Civil War had we chosen to do so).
What I meant was they actively sought to end slave trade. What they intended was to create what they called “legitimate trade,” with Africa. Many Britons even tried to start raising sugar and some cotton in West Africa, but the climate wouldn’t stick. Eventually palm oil (used for things like soap and as a lubricant) became a better investment.
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I’ve heard of Wilberforce, but I haven’t seen the movie, yet. I might just rent it!
it’s definately worth seeing. something i really appreciated: it showed (althought didn’t emphasize) that social movements, even though they have their necessary figureheads & champions like wilberforce, require the dedication of countless other people, each with their own, different strenghts. for example, in my example above with the maritime lawyer dreaming up a fresh approach. wilberforce pushed it in parliament, but didn’t dream it up himself.
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something they oddly neglected to mention in the “what happened afterwards” text at the end of the movie: wilberforce’s roll not only in british slave emancipation, but in aiding the american abolitionists. in the year before wilberforce’s death (1832), there was a huge struggle in america between the gradualists and the immediatists. the gradualists really didn’t want to rock the boat, preferring to let slavery die out naturally (ha!). they also wanted to “repatriate” american slaves to liberia, even when those slaves were american-born. the mainline churches and most power politicos were in the gradualist camp. the immediatists were headed up by william lloyd garrison. he went to england and, among other things, received a letter of support for immediatism and against gradulaism signed by all the major british abolitionists except thomas clarkson. the most meaningful signature was that of william wilberforce. the power of the letter helped discredit the american gradualists, thus strengthening the hand (and the bank account) of the immediatists. garrison was widely seen as the american wilberforce. too bad the movie didn’t mention this highly important legacy.
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one other oddity in the movie: seems to me they really portrayed w’m pitt the younger as a much more active and principled abolitionist than he really was. he was quite the consumate political opportunist, as far as i can tell, and abolition was one such opportunity (except when it wasn’t). i think the movie is incorrect, for example, is showing him as introducing wilberfore to the abolitionist crowd. am i wrong? could be – i’m not as up on the british history as the american!
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oh yeah, and wasn’t fox dead by the 1807 vote? he couldn’t possibly have given that very moving tribute speech to wilberforce. i wonder who actually did.
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quibbles aside, still a worthwhile movie. now we need to make one about our own very incredible william lloyd garrison.
…and the Bill was passed in the Commons. The following April is when it passed the House of LORDS.
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I’ve been trying to get precise dates but the best I can do is This
Was suggested by some a number of times before the Civil War. It never got anywhere, perhaps because slavery conveyed non-economic benefits on slave owners (such as, for example, boosting their representation in Congress through the 3/5 clause). In November 1861 (during the Civil War) Lincoln proposed that the border states begin a program of gradual emancipation, with the federal government paying compensation. When slavery was ended in the District of Columbia in 1862 compensation was paid to slave owners. I don’t think you can conclude that this approach necessarily would have eliminated slavery or prevented the Civil War.
…but it IS remarkable that Britain paid TWENTY MILLION pounds in 1833 (!) to compensate slave onwers.
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It’s hard to calculate the economic and human costs of the Civil War.
Another example closer to home: The Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, it did not free all slaves (something which Lincoln himself had previously publicly stated as beyond the power of the executive and even Congress to legislate). Instead, it was an exercise of Lincoln’s war powers, to free all slaves held in confederate territories. Slaves held in the union slave states would have to wait for passage of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments.