Books in the Cambridge Library Collection - Slavery and Abolition series

In the years preceding the American Civil War, religion was at the heart of the debate over slavery. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) had rejected the strict Calvinism of his background to become the leading Unitarian spokesman and preacher, and in later life he began to address the subject of slavery. Published in 1836, this work was Channing's most substantial contribution to the debate, revealing the real difficulties men such as Channing had in questioning a practice with which they had grown up. He vacillates between contempt for the institution and empathy for the slaveholders, writing, 'I do not intend to pass sentence on the character of the slave-holder.' He sees black slaves as humans, but not of equal status with white people. The final chapter is particularly prescient: 'There is a great dread ... that the union of the States may be dissolved by the conflict about slavery.'

The Christmas Rebellion (1831-2) saw the uprising of 60,000 Jamaican slaves, many of them followers of one Baptist preacher. Initially intended only as a peaceful strike, it escalated as estates were burned down and plantation owners killed. This 1832 pamphlet details the violence and persecution directed against nonconformists and missionaries, who were regarded as having been sympathetic towards the revolt. The materials were published by William Knibb, a Baptist minister, who in 1832 was summoned to appear before parliamentary committees investigating the state of the Caribbean colonies. His evidence and the rebellion itself are regarded as having quickened the pace of emancipation in Jamaica. The documents are reissued here with an 1837 narrative by James Williams, a youth who became an apprentice under the system that replaced slavery. He describes how conditions for former slaves were little improved, with many instances of harsh treatment and unjust imprisonment.

Born into slavery on a Virginia plantation, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) educated himself tirelessly in the years after the American Civil War. In 1881, he was appointed head of the Tuskegee Institute, a teacher-training college for African Americans. As a writer, orator and fundraiser, he became one of the leading figures of the black community. Washington argued that the best way of bettering the social position of African Americans was through vocational education, which would make them indispensable and productive members of society. In this 1901 autobiography, he uses his life as an example to illustrate these principles, covering particularly the work of the Tuskegee Institute and his fundraising on behalf of black education. The book also contains the full text of his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech, which created the model for Southern race relations until Washington's death and the emergence of more overtly assertive African-American civil rights leaders.

In this short work of 1860, William Craft (c.1825-1900), assisted by his wife Ellen (c.1825-91), recounts the remarkable story of how they escaped from slavery in America. Having married as slaves in Georgia, yet unwilling to raise a family in servitude, the couple came up with a plan to disguise the light-skinned Ellen as a man, with William acting as her slave, and to travel to the north in late 1848. This compelling narrative traces their successful journey to Philadelphia and their subsequent move to Boston, where they became involved in abolitionist activities. Later, the couple sought greater safety in England, where they lived for a number of years and had five children. A success upon its first appearance, the book touches on the themes of race, gender and class in mid-nineteenth-century America, offering modern readers a first-hand account of how barriers to freedom could be overcome.

In the late eighteenth century, slave labour in Britain's colonies was seen as central to world trade, and the practice was supported by prominent members of society, including the king. Ottobah Cugoano, an emancipated slave living in England, had joined the Sons of Africa, a group whose members wrote to the royal family, aristocrats and leading politicians to condemn slavery and campaign for its abolition. This work, first published in 1787 and sent to George III, was a daring attack on colonial conquest and enslavement, arguing that slaves had a moral duty to rebel against their oppressors. Widely read upon publication, it went through at least three printings that year and was translated into French, with a shorter version published in 1791. This reissue of the original work makes available an important document in the history of colonialism and slavery in the British Empire.

William Wells Brown (1814?-84) was uncertain of his own birthday because he was born a slave, near Lexington, Kentucky. He managed to escape to Ohio, a free state, in 1834. Obtaining work on steamboats, he assisted many other slaves to escape across Lake Erie to Canada. In 1849, having achieved prominence in the American anti-slavery movement, he left for Europe, both to lecture against slavery and also to gain an education for his daughters. He stayed in Europe until 1854, since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had made it possible that he could be taken back into slavery if he returned. Meanwhile, he had begun to write both fiction and non-fiction, and this account of his travels in Europe, prefaced by a short biography, was published in 1852. Brown was able to return to the United States in 1854, when British friends paid for his freedom.

Self-educated in languages and the law, the author Granville Sharp (1735-1813) was a leading anti-slavery campaigner. Though many of his associates in the abolitionist movement were dissenters or freethinkers, he was an Anglican very much concerned with the fate of the church in America after the war of independence. His family consigned his archives to the painter, playwright and author Prince Hoare (1755-1834), who published this biography in 1820. Sharp is less well remembered than other British abolitionists such as Clarkson and Wilberforce, but it was his work which, in 1772, brought the landmark case of James Somerset before Lord Mansfield, who upheld Sharp's legal arguments: as a result, it was henceforth understood that any slave reaching the shores of England became free. Sharp's continuing work for abolition, and his many other charitable and scholarly activities, are detailed in this fascinating work, drawn directly from his own writings.

Moncure Conway (1832-1907) was born on his family's plantation in Virginia, but became a committed abolitionist soon after he left college. He joined abolitionist rallies and moved from Methodism to the Unitarian ministry, eventually becoming a freethinker. Conway became increasingly isolated from his family as a result of his abolitionist activism, his marriage to an abolitionist, and the resettling of a group of his father's escaped slaves in Ohio during the civil war. This book was published in 1865, soon after he settled in Britain, where he lived for over 30 years, became a supporter of women's suffrage, and networked with intellectuals including Dickens, Carlyle, Lyell and Darwin. His description of the injustices of slavery, including the slave trading in the southern plantations that triggered the secession of southern states and the civil war, is set in the context of his personal experiences and his evolving ethical views.

This collection of papers, reports and letters, published in 1842, documents the official investigation into the export of South Asians effectively as slave labour to Mauritius and British Guiana in 1837, four years after the abolition of slavery in all British colonies. The investigation revealed how the anti-slavery laws were evaded by the issue of nominal contracts for labourers, by which much of their wages were withheld to pay for their passage, and how enticement, trickery and sometimes kidnap were used in recruiting them. It highlights appalling conditions on overloaded ships, inadequate living conditions and a brutal working environment. Only rarely were workers released at the end of their 'contract'. The reports and correspondence show the struggle of Parliament and the Anti-Slavery Society to ascertain facts often distorted by corrupt officials, particularly on Mauritius. Readers will find chilling parallels to the human trafficking that still persists today.

The underlying thesis of Lucien Peytraud's 1897 work is that the practice of slavery in the West Indies prior to 1789 was of great economic and material benefit to the islands. He is adamant that the revisionist reading of history, which had only just begun at the time when this book was published, omits to consider this aspect in its treatment of the slave trade. Peytraud gives a broad and detailed account of the French slave trade in the West Indies, during which slaves from the African continent were shipped to both North and South America. He discusses the religion, morality and living conditions of the slaves and admits that it was common for European men to sexually exploit black women. He also addresses the legislation governing slaves, former slaves and slave-holding in the French colonies including the French Caribbean, the so-called Code Noir.

Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843) was plagued with spinal problems and rheumatism throughout his life. The purpose of his six-month voyage around the Caribbean, although ostensibly for his health, was also a futile attempt to prevent his marriage to his beloved cousin Sara. Coleridge's thinly disguised references to Sara punctuate this light-hearted memoir, originally published anonymously in 1826. Coleridge compares and contrasts twelve different islands. Towns, villages, monuments, architecture, churches and plantations are described as he roams the islands freely, visits acquaintances and enjoys the natural history. Throughout his journey Coleridge observes all races on the islands. He gives an account of the Caribbean plantations, commenting on the situation of the plantation slaves and pondering the opportunities available to emancipate them without affecting the plantations' productivity. He also highlights cases where slaves are well treated by plantation owners.

Joseph Marryat (1757-1824) was an M.P., chairman of Lloyd's and colonial agent for Grenada. This volume contains three of his pamphlets - Thoughts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1816), More Thoughts (1816) and More Thoughts Still (1818) which replied to his critics. The first pamphlet was very controversial, running to four editions in the year of publication. It vigorously attacks the policies and influence of the African Institution, whose arguments regarding the operation of slavery since the Abolition Act of 1807 he proves, by using evidence from official British and colonial government reports, to contain many falsehoods. Marryat believed that, with regard to emancipation, lessons must be learned from the French Revolution: ideals, if taken too quickly to extremes, cause national and even international conflict. His critics accused him of equal economy with the truth by selective use of source material: his responses were also best-sellers.

The Committee was commissioned to report on the state of trade between Britain and America after the United States Congress had passed legislation imposing duties and restrictions on imports in 1789. Merchants and ship owners in the major British ports and British consuls in America were sent questionnaires on the effects of such levies. The committee made its report in 1791, and began by summarising the situation since Britain had acknowledged American independence in 1783, and how independence had affected trade, including that involving slaves, between the two countries. The decline in British exports to the United States had been offset by exports to Canada and the West Indies. Overall, the balance of trade was in Britain's favour, but the continuing prosperity of the British West Indian colonies was seen as depending almost entirely on their slave-based economy, and abolition was therefore not believed to be an option.

Matthew 'Monk' Lewis (1775-1818) is best known as a writer of plays and 'Gothic' novels such as The Monk (from which he acquired his nickname). On the death of his father in 1812, he inherited a large fortune, including estates in Jamaica. He spent four months there in 1815, during which time much of this Journal of a West India Proprietor was written. He became interested in the condition of the slaves on his estates, and on returning to England made contact with William Wilberforce and other abolitionists. The improvements he made on his own estates were unpopular with other landholders, but foreshadowed the reforms of the 1830s, when the Journal was published. He revisited the island in 1817, but died of yellow fever on the way home. S. T. Coleridge regarded the Journal as Lewis' best work, and the one most likely to be of lasting value.

First published in 1900, this systematic analysis of slavery in primitive societies from an ethnographical and economic viewpoint by Dutch scholar Herman Nieboer (1873-1920) brought him international fame. The first part defines what he means by slavery, and then examines how slavery has been practised at different periods and in all parts of the world. In the second part, Nieboer analyses this mass of information from ethnographical literature to derive an underlying theory of slavery, and the economic conditions necessary for it to function. Discussing the different types of early societies - hunters, nomads and agriculturists - Nieboer shows how the presence or absence of slavery can be closely linked to economic conditions. The book was a key work in the study of early slavery, particularly as Nieboer concentrates on primitive cultures rather than on the ancient and classical world most studied previously, and covers a worldwide geographical area.

The husband of Maria, Lady Nugent (1771-1834) was Governor of Jamaica from 1801 to 1806. Her diaries were not written for publication, and therefore offer a valuable and frank record of people and situations she met with in Jamaica. They were published privately after her death, and are here reproduced from the 1907 edition. The Jamaica diary covers a period of uncertainty in the West Indies due to the Napoleonic Wars. While generally avoiding politics, she comments on colonial society and planter life. Her initial view of slaves altered as rumours of uprisings made her fear for her young children. She also expresses concern about the sexual exploitation of slaves by planters, as being bad for both parties. The latter part of the work covers in less detail her return to England, and the period she spent in India where her husband had been appointed commander-in-chief.

Robert Francis Jameson was the British Commissioner of Arbitration stationed in Cuba between 1819 and 1823. This volume, first published in 1821, contains his observations of Cuba, recorded during his year-long stay in Havana in 1820. Jameson provides a comprehensive description of Cuban society and a detailed account of the city of Havana, illustrating the stark differences between the classes in Havana society. At this time, Cuba was the world's leading producer of sugar cane, and totally dependent on slave labour and the slave trade. Jameson discusses the impact of slavery on the Cuban economy and the advantages and disadvantages of emancipation. He also discusses Cuba's constitutional history and contemporary economy, exploring the effects of Ferdinand VII's opening of Havana to foreign trade. Written in the form of letters to an anonymous recipient, this volume provides a valuable and fascinating picture of contemporary Cuban society.

John Candler (1787-1869), a Quaker Abolitionist, visited the West Indies between 1839 and 1841, to study the situation of ex-slaves since they had obtained their freedom. He spent three months in Haiti, and appears to have been generally impressed by what he found. The former slaves had become smallholders, growing crops on small plots of land, though they were not interested in producing more than they needed for their basic livelihood. The export of coffee, cotton and tobacco had declined since the end of slavery, and the sugar trade had ended. Whites were barred from owning land, or from marrying Haitians, and were restricted in trading activities, reducing available investment capital. The compensation demanded by France to the former plantation owners was also crippling the economic development of the island. Candler's book gives much valuable detail about an important former colony at a time of transition.

Sir Fortunatus Dwarris (1786-1860) was an English barrister, civil servant and abolitionist. After graduating from University College, Oxford, in 1808 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1811. In 1823 Dwarris was appointed a commissioner for an Imperial Commission of Inquiry on the state of legal and slave codes of the self-governing colonies of the British West Indies. This detailed volume, first published in 1827, contains three reports summarising the Commission's findings and recommendations. Focusing on the islands of Barbados, Tobago, Dominica, and Antigua, this volume provides a detailed analysis of the various criminal and civil laws peculiar to each island, together with a description of the various courts and processes in each. The commissioners perceptively discuss and illustrate the institutionalised racism of these laws, providing valuable information for the study of slavery and emancipation and the legal history of the British West Indies.

An active Member of Parliament from 1857, Charles Buxton (1822-1871) was the third son of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, a well-known and popular philanthropist (several of whose books are reissued in this collection). Buxton inherited his father's interest in social welfare. He owned property in Co. Kerry, Ireland, and became a strong advocate for reform of the Irish Church, and the introduction of a national education system. Buxton also followed his father in supporting the anti-slavery movement. He published this short work in 1860 in response to critics of the abolition of slavery. He argues that abolition in the British West Indies had brought prosperity to that region, and had also fostered the advance of missionary work and Christian civilisation in West Africa.

This book, first published in 1868, became the best-known work of medical officer and writer James Africanus Beale Horton (1835-1883), who was born in Sierra Leone to parents of Igbo descent. He was chosen by the British to train as an army medical officer and attended King's College, London, and Edinburgh University. He returned to West Africa and published his doctoral thesis, which was a medical topography of the region; subsequent works called for health reforms. West African Countries, however, went beyond medicine. In it Horton refutes the derogatory racial theories about Africans rife in Victorian Britain and its empire, and he examines the possibility of self-government and how it might function in Sierra Leone and other territories in West Africa, foreshadowing the decolonisation that took place almost one hundred years later.

James MacQueen (1778-1870) was one of the most outspoken critics of the British anti-slavery campaign in the 1820s and 1830s. A former manager of a sugar plantation in the Caribbean, he was editor of the Glasgow Courier, a paper that favoured West Indian merchant interests and opposed rights for slaves. First published in 1824, this book is a direct attack on contemporary anti-slavery campaigners, such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, whom MacQueen holds responsible for 'the dreadful misrepresentations scattered abroad' about West India colonies and the planters. MacQueen, who insists on calling himself an enemy of slavery 'in the abstract', argues that abolition in the colonies would lead to insurrections, bringing chaos and barbarism to these territories. This, in turn, would lead to the loss of the British colonies. This volume remains an essential document in the context of post-colonial studies.

This book contains two pamphlets showing two opposed points of view on the slavery question. British philanthropist Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1831) was a strong supporter of complete emancipation for slaves in the British West Indies, and published Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition in 1824. This work not only criticises anti-slavery campaigners of the time, whose efforts Heyrick considered too cautious and indirect; they also call for a boycott of all slave-produced goods from the West Indies - particularly sugar - and underline the collective responsibility of British citizens in the matter. Alexander McDonnell (1794-1875) was an equally vigorous propagandist for the sugar-planters of the West Indies, and published Compulsory Manumission: or, An Examination of the Actual State of the West India Question, in 1827. These works show the strength of feeling on both sides of the argument in Britain nearly twenty years after the abolition of the slave trade.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845) was a noted social reformer and one of the leading members of the campaign to abolish slavery. Buxton had family connections to the Quakers and became an associate of Elizabeth Fry in campaigning for prison reform. He was elected an MP in 1818 and from 1825 he became the leader of the abolitionist movement in Parliament following William Wilberforce's retirement from politics. This biography, compiled by his son Charles Buxton and first published in 1848, provides an intimate and detailed account of Buxton's character and involvement with social reform and the abolition movement, culminating in the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. The inclusion of Buxton's letters to family, friends and colleagues provides valuable insights into his character and his thoughts on the progress of the abolition movement and other political events connected to the campaign for abolition.

Frederick Douglass (c.1818-1895) was born into slavery but escaped in 1838, quickly becoming involved in the abolitionist movement. Following publication in 1845 of this autobiography he risked recognition and recapture by his owner, and so fled the United States. This reissue is of the Dublin edition of 1845, with a preface by Douglass explaining his reasons for his journey to Britain. Opening with a touching explanation of how he doesn't know his birthday, Douglass describes his early life and the growing awareness of the injustices he suffered. The beatings he witnessed and received himself are described in painful detail. Later, Douglass highlights the hypocrisy of the 'slaveholding religion of this land', condemning it as 'the grossest of libels'. The eloquence of the writing, with an immediacy and honesty found shocking at the time, make this an invaluable first-hand record of one of humanity's most shameful acts.

A chronicle of the difficulties and successes of trying to police the slave trading routes on the eastern Indian Ocean. Captain George Sullivan writes of his experiences and frustrations in trying to enforce British anti-slave-trade laws among the Arab and African kingdoms of the east coast of Africa and the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Madagascar in 1849. Battling with scorching heat, rough seas, tropical diseases, hostility from the native slavers, and language barriers, the naval ships continue the struggle for abolition. While rescuing a significant number of slaves from transport dhows, the captain chronicles their stories: their tribes, how they were sold into slavery, and the best location to rehabilitate them to avoid re-capture. A fascinating record, published in 1873, of the struggle to enforce the complex abolition laws far from central government, with dubious documents and deceptions encountered from local Arab and Portuguese slavers.

This vivid account of the missionary work of the Rev. Hope Masterton Waddell in the West Indies and Central Africa was first published in 1863. During his sixteen years in Jamaica he witnessed the slave revolt and the aftermath of the abolition of slavery. The mission helped former slaves adapt to freedom in new communities. In 1846 he left Jamaica for Calabar in West Africa (now part of Nigeria), and his narrative is one of the best European accounts of pre-colonial Africa. The mission was concerned with ending local practices such as polygamy, human sacrifice and witchcraft, and Waddell formed a close relationship with King Eyo. The book gives considerable detail about the history and culture of the area, as well as on the work of the mission. His work in Calabar is still commemorated there in the Hope Waddell Training Institute, Duke Town.

Published in 1838 by the American Anti-Slavery Society, who had commissioned their investigative tour, Thome and Kimball's Emancipation in the West Indies immediately became an influential abolitionist text. Many anti-abolitionists in America were prophesying major upheaval should slavery be outlawed. Slavery had been officially abolished in the British West Indies in 1827, and the object of the tour was to assess the results there. The islands visited had followed different models ranging from total abolition to a gradual change through apprenticeship until 1838, and the results had proved those who feared abolition wrong. There had been no insurrection or increase in crime, participation in education and religion among former slaves had generally increased, and only the former slave-owners were unhappy about the economic consequences for their estates. The book contains documentary evidence from residents and officials of the islands, describing the effects of emancipation.

Archibald Grimke (1849-1930) was an American lawyer, politician and black civil rights activist. He was the son of a white plantation owner and a slave, and was born a slave himself. Aided by his father's abolitionist sisters, he graduated from Lincoln University, and in 1874 attended Harvard Law School. He then practised as a barrister in Boston, campaigning for black civil rights and writing many essays and articles concerning black history. This volume, first published in 1891, contains Grimke's biography of the prominent American abolitionist and social reformer William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879). Grimke discusses Garrison's considerable influence in the campaign for immediate emancipation, providing details on his early life and his position as editor of the leading abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. This sympathetic biography provides valuable insights into Garrison's life and his standing among contemporary civil rights campaigners in the years after emancipation.

Born a slave and largely self-taught, Ignatius Sancho (c.1729-80) corresponded in Britain with a wide social circle that included nobility, artists and politicians. Published in 1782, this two-volume collection of his charmingly composed letters helped counter contemporary racism by showing that Africans possessed as much natural intelligence as Europeans.