#thomas clarkson

[bulkbinbox]

plano e seções de um navio negreiro, 1808, thomas clarkson.

[marq-de-laf]

Lafayette’s English/Scottish Friends - Thomas Clarkson (English Abolitionist), Mary Shelley (English author), Frances Wright (Scottish author), and Jeremy Bentham (English philosopher). These are just a few of the Brits and Scots Lafayette corresponded with. Many 19th and 20th century historians attributed Lafayette’s contribution to the American Revolution to a life-long hatred of the English, but this was most certainly not the case. English thinkers influenced many of Lafayette’s opinions on human rights, emancipation, and feminism. 

[marquisdelaughingette]

I will finish my letter with a saying of one of the dearest friends I ever had, namely, General Lafayette. I was with the general often, and corresponded with him after his coming out of his dungeon at Olmutz. But the first time I knew him was when I was in Paris, the year after the French Revolution, on the subject of the slave-trade and I assisted him materially. He was as decidedly as uncompromising an enemy to the slave-trade, and slavery, as any man I ever knew. He freed all his slaves in French Cayenne, who had come to him by inheritance, in 1785, and showed me all his rules and regulations for his estate when they were emancipated. I was with him no less than four different times in Paris. He was a real gentleman, and of soft and gentle manners. I have seen him put out of temper, but never at any time except when slavery was the subject. He has said, frequently, ‘I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.’ How would the people of Fayette County like to hear this? – to hear their land cursed by the man who gained it for them?

Thomas Clarkson to Maria Weston Chapman, 3 October 1845 Clarkson’s memory about how Lafayette came to own the plantation and to attempt to free the slaves is not correct (and there’s a lot that could be said about Adrienne’s role in the endeavour), but his recollection of Lafayette’s vehemence on the subject of slavery rings true. He didn’t feel so strongly about human bondage when he landed in America - he seems to have been largely oblivious to the evils of the institution when he arrived in 1777 - but he came to be an implacable foe of slavery and the slave-trade. It’s interesting that Clarkson - who had championed abolition in England and then world wide - regarded Lafayette as “one of the dearest friends I ever had.” Yet another one of Lafayette’s close British friendships. 

[fredriksewell]

[marq-de-laf]

For the Marquis de Lafayette, the notion that an independent America would tolerate slavery was more than a contradiction in terms: it was anathema to everything he believed. As he told British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, 'I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.' So profoundly in earnest was Lafayette that Clarkson called him 'as uncompromising an enemy of the slave trade and slavery as any man I ever knew.'

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, pg. 485 {It should be noted that in the early years of the war, Lafayette wrote to his European counterparts about the profit to be made in the slave trade of the Americas. That being said, he very quickly changed his tune. Conviction changed his mind.}

[marquisdelaughingette]

Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846) by Carl Frederik von Breda, National Portrait Gallery.   Clarkson was a leading figure first in the British abolitionist movement, and then in the international movement. He helped establish and was active in the work of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and in later life worked with the Anti-Slavery Society to abolish slavery internationally.  He first met Lafayette when he traveled to Paris 1789 to try and advance the cause of the abolitionists, but the National Assembly would not discuss the slave trade. He found common cause with Lafayette, however, who told him that  “he hoped the day was near at hand, when two great nations, which had been hitherto distinguished only for their hostility would unite in so sublime a measure (abolition) and that they would follow up their union by another, still more lovely, for the preservation of eternal and universal peace.” Clarkson later remembered how vehemently the Frenchman opposed slavery, calling him a “true friend of the cause”.  He also remembered Lafayette as “one of the dearest friends I ever had.” 

[wisdomfish]

'Wilberforce and the anti-slavery society'

Wilberforce was not always a Christian. Indeed, he was born into the privileged class, and that culture, much like today’s Hollywood, loved gambling, fancy clothes, fast horses, drinking and gluttony. Furthermore, he had denounced the deity of Christ after attending an apostate church much like today’s liberal ones. But in a secular sense, he was succeeding very nicely, entering parliament at 21, and was a good friend of William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), who would become the UK’s youngest ever Prime Minister at 24.

However, Wilberforce gave his life truly to Christ in 1775, then wanted to quit parliament because of the immorality and infighting. However, he visited John Newton (1725–1807), famous for the great hymn Amazing Grace (hence the name of the film). Newton in his earlier days had been a slave trader himself before his conversion to Christ. Newton was the one who convinced Wilberforce that he would do the most good by remaining in Parliament:

‘It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation.’

After Newton’s conversion, he first insisted that slaves were to be treated humanely. But he soon came to see that since the slaves were also created in the image of God, the slave trade was wrong in itself, and could not be humanized. He left the trade, became friends with the great evangelists George Whitfield (1714–1770) and John Wesley (1703–1791) and his brother Charles (1707–1788), became a minister, and testified to King George III (1738–1820) about the atrocities of the slave trade.

John Wesley was instrumental in the conversion of Wilberforce himself. And Wesley’s last letter of his life of 24 February 1791 was to Wilberforce commending his abolitionist work, comparing this to the gallant struggle of Athanasius (c. 293–373) for the vital biblical doctrine of the full deity of Christ.

‘Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum [Athanasius against the world], I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.’

Another prominent anti-slavery activist in Britain was Granville Sharp (1735–1813), who was most responsible for a law that a slave became free from the moment he set foot on English territory, and founded a society for the abolition of slavery. He was also a joint founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for the Conversion of the Jews. A noted Greek scholar, he published a detailed and accurate study, discovering a rule of grammar that’s accepted by the majority of Bible translators today and now bears his name. But the existing English translations had overlooked this rule, thus, as he pointed out, they obscured the deity of Christ in places like Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1, which should say ‘our (great) God and Savior Jesus Christ’.

Another very important activist was Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), an evangelical Anglican who first became interested in the issue when he was at Cambridge in 1785. That year, he won a Latin essay competition with an essay called Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting? His detailed research convinced him of the immorality and horrors of slavery. Next year he translated this essay into English under the title ‘An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African’, translated from a Latin Dissertation. This essay was very influential in the foundation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade soon after, in 1787. Also in that year, he wrote the pamphlet: A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition. He was a most courageous opponent, since early that year, he was attacked in Liverpool by a gang of sailors who had been paid to assassinate him, and he barely escaped with his life.

- Jonathan Safarti

[trixie-studies]

"... a number of dead people are encouraging us in libraries, and a number of living people are conversing (with) us at the same time."

- Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)