Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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