The Death of Slavery, the First Dawn of Freedom
The epic saga of the abolition of colonial slavery, and its modern relevance, as told through two overlapping historical narratives
Social movements for freedom and equality are undergoing a resurgence throughout the world. Past movements can be a source of inspiration as well as concrete lessons for present struggles. One of the earliest international movements for a more free and equal society was the movement to abolish slavery. Readers from the US may be familiar with the abolitionist movement there, but abolitionism began earlier and in other places. The victory of abolishing colonial slavery was a tremendous achievement in its time and the legacy of slave emancipation is still with us now, whether we know it or not.
How was this original victory won? This subject is thoroughly explored in The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James and Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild. These two books, although written about 80 years apart, compliment one another very well and weave together an image of the past that gives the reader a vivid picture of how this epic struggle played out. The time period of The Black Jacobins is contained within the larger time period covered by Bury the Chains. The former covers the Haitian Revolution and the latter focuses on the struggle to abolish the slave trade in Britain and in the British-held Caribbean colonies.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, European imperialism, led by Britain and France, baptized the world in blood. In the late 1700s, Haiti was the most profitable colony in the world due to it’s sugar production and the labor of hundreds of thousands of African slaves. Conditions were so bad, and so many died each year, that many took pains to never have children. In fact, a great majority of the slaves had been born and raised in Africa, not in Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was called before the Haitian Revolution).
In The Black Jacobins, C.L.R. James tells of how maroon communities (communities of runaway slaves and other colonial deserters) existed well before the Haitian Revolution, and how the slave masters of the colony had been unable to suppress them. There was also an earlier attempt at revolution that had been suppressed. Slaves organized work stoppages when they were at risk of death from falling into vats of hot sugar in the dark when ordered to operate sugar mills at night.
Abolition in (not so) Great Britain
Meanwhile, in the heart of empire, a tiny cohort of British theologians, intellectuals and ex-slaves came together to form the first (known) organized effort by non-enslaved people to abolish slavery in 1787. Politically and economically, it was a tall order in Britain at that time. There is no real modern day comparison, but Hochschild impresses on the reader that this was seen as an “unreasonable” demand by overall public opinion at the time.
Undeterred, they went on to pioneer what Hochschild calls the basic toolkit of modern democracy. A lot of it centered around writing and popular education. Ex-slaves like Olaudah Equiano wrote memoirs detailing their time in bondage decades before Fredrick Douglas did the same in the United States. Organized political book tours were held; Hochschild suggests they were some of the first ever to be used in this way. The abolitionists also published and distributed daring investigations and interviews about the miserable conditions of slavery and the need to free all slaves. They petitioned parliament, which was not as widespread of a thing to do back in those days. One of them was actually a member of parliament. This initial wave of the movement got as far as pushing for (and losing) votes in Parliament, but when France and Britain went to war following the French Revolution, a reactionary nationalistic fervor temporarily submerged the nascent abolitionist movement.
French Abolition Smothered in its Cradle
There was also a small bud of an abolitionist movement in France, which too was soon to be plunged into the political fallout of the French Revolution. The French abolitionists are worth remembering, but the authoritarian turn of the revolution soon drowned their hopes and eventually led to the state murder of many of them as well. Their organization was called the Society of the Friends of Blacks and included many prominent public figures.
Why are Black people enslaved? The color of people’s skin only suggests a slight difference. There is no discord between day and night, the sun and the moon and between the stars and dark sky. All is varied; it is the beauty of nature. Why destroy nature’s work?
She was executed by Guillotine in 1793, at the age of 45, for being a critic of the new “revolutionary” government.
C.L.R. James also writes of the more spontaneous alignment of interests and actions between the people of Haiti and France in his fifth chapter titled “And The Paris Masses Complete.” In 1793, during a reactionary turn in the French Revolution, France and Britain went to war. This resulted in the international abolition of slavery being delayed by decades, as political reaction swept Britain.
The Saint-Domingue Bomb Explodes
By the time that The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, adopted by the French National Assembly, made it’s way to Saint-Domingue in 1789, the colony was already going through social upheaval. The document, stating that all men are born free and equal, was more fuel for flames that had already been rising. Before long, an uprising took place across many plantations.
The uprising was organized and took place across many plantations on a single night. This clearly implies there was a clandestine communication network at play. In that society, where aiding a slave revolt was a crime punished by excruciating death, merely having an insurgent network of communication between plantations required a high level of trust, relationship-building, security culture, and, in short, organizing.
An organized clandestine underground network to resist the slave state was not inevitable. The path of fatalism and despair, a pale specter that still haunts many would-be rebels today, was just as likely. In those days, given the seemingly low odds of success, an overwhelming feeling of helplessness doubtless consumed many hearts. Courageous people, most of who’s names we will never know, stared away from that specter and did the highly delicate and risky work of organizing an insurgent network in the Saint-Domingue colony.
Besides their organizing, another factor that made it a lot easier for the insurgent forces was division and power struggle within the elite classes. This division was a political conflict between the colony’s slave-owning oligarchs, known as the “big whites” and the free people of color who had been lucky enough to be born free (or legally freed). Over generations, the free people of color had built their own community and inter-generational wealth, making them the second most wealthy class in the colony after the big whites. The 3rd most wealthy class were the “small whites.” These were Frenchmen (they were mostly men) who mostly did not own slaves and made their living either as small shop owners or as guard labor, overseeing slaves or doing bookkeeping. Many of the free people of color did own slaves and were pro-slavery, but the whites felt threatened by them and tried to deny them full political equality. When the revolt happened, the tension between the free people of color and the white owners was so deep that they both accused one another of starting the rebellion as a cynical political move. They did not believe that the enslaved themselves had risen up of their own accord.
The initial rising was very successful and surprisingly merciful towards many slave owners and their families. In fact, primary sources exist describing how Dutty Boukman, an early revolutionary leader, successfully urged fellow rebels to spare the life of their shared master. Other accounts talk about other slaves taking similar actions, particularly helping women and children stay safe. Of course, retribution took place as well, with slave women beating owners and overseers who had abused them. In other instances, owners and men fighting on their behalf were killed on the spot by (ex)slave rebels.
After the initial weeks of the uprising, a stalemate set in, with the pro-slavery elements controlling the coastal cities and the liberated slaves controlling most of the countryside. Tragically, Boukman was killed in the early fighting, and power struggles emerged for leadership of the liberated Africans. Luckily for them, the pro-slavery bloc was in the grips of an even more vicious power struggle between the whites and the free people of color.
Each time these pro-slavery factions tried to unite politically, it got ruined by either small whites starting street battles with free people of color, or by the government of the newborn 1st French Republic reversing itself on the question of rights and citizenship for free people of color, which it did three times in under four months. You could say things were a little tense.
In fact, they were so tense that the conflict began to turn into a three-way civil war involving foreign powers. The British Empire ended up committing tens of thousands of troops to an ill-advised invasion of Saint-Domingue. Many big whites easily chose white supremacy over patriotism and sided with the British to restore slavery. The free people of color ended up siding with the two Commissioners sent from France, (who were interesting characters and avowed abolitionists, but that’s a story for another time). Spain, which ruled the other two-thirds of the island, soon opportunistically backed the freed Africans.
Before all that happened, as C.L.R. James relates, the cunning Toussaint Louverture, a rising rebel general, and some cohorts, offered the big whites an agreement that if they let this handful of officers go, they could put the rest of the Africans back in slavery. It is a stark and little-known example of self appointed Revolutionary Leaders being ready and willing to sell out the rebel masses. Yet, in their arrogance, the big whites turned the rebel officers down.
A detailed retelling of the Haitian Revolution is beyond the scope of this article. For a more detailed overview, check out this video series.
In short, under the leadership of Toussiant Louverture, the freed Africans were able to take and hold territory even while under attack from the world’s most powerful empire, Great Britain. This was due to great strategy and diplomacy by Toussiant and others, but also great guerilla tactics that many of the slaves who’d been captured in war brought with them from Africa. There was also an intense information war aspect to the conflict. Ambitious people who sought freed African followers often spread rumors that everyone other than them was a manipulative cynic who secretly wanted to restore slavery.
Britain’s Futile Wars for Slavery
There was more than just a chilling effect in Britain. Official abolitionist meetings were not held due to wartime sedition laws. The volume of written material put out by the movement had dwindled to nearly nothing, and this went on for over ten years. It was a cold winter indeed for the British abolitionists. However, under the snow, public consciousness was growing.
The British intervention in Saint-Domingue cost the country dearly. It is worth quoting Hochschild at length, as he gives a good sense of the magnitude.
Long rows of officers’ names filled the obituary columns — enlisted men usually did not merit such mention — and it was said on the floor of Parliament that every member had lost someone he knew in the Caribbean. Of the nearly 89,000 white officers and enlisted men who served in the British Army in the West Indies from 1793 to 1801, over 45,000 died in battle or of wounds or disease. Another 14,000 were discharged, mainly because of wounds or illness, and more than 3,000 deserted. In addition, among sailors on British naval or transport ships, deaths are estimated as at least 19,000. Proportionally, this would be as if the United States today lost more than 1.4 million soldiers and sailors in a distant war. The impact of the toll only grew as shiploads of ragged survivors returned, bringing news of the senseless waste of lives. Some men also brought with them other stories: about the nature of slavery — and about the blacks fighting to free themselves from it. (Bury the Chains, pp. 281)
But the wars weren’t over. Hochschild goes on to tell how, in 1828, arrogant colonial whites in Jamaica stupidly provoked a slave revolt that, although much smaller, utilized many of the same deadly tactics as the freed Africans over on Saint-Domingue. The British managed to win this conflict, but at a high cost in human lives.
Napoleon Tries to Bring back Slavery
Napoleon’s seizure of power in 1799 marked a new low for the French Revolution. Napoleon was no friend of the freed Africans. In fact, his own words really say it all:
My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint-Domingue is not so much based on the considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block forever the march of blacks in the world. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Not everyone shared Napoleon’s virulent racism. In the final years of the Haitian war of independence, several thousand Polish mercenaries were brought in by the French, but given a shoddy explanation of what was really happening on the island. Although some stayed loyal to their paymasters, many of the Polish were moved by the African’s struggle for freedom and completely switched sides in the war. There is still a Polish village in Haiti today called Cazale.
Napoleon’s efforts failed, of course, but not before his general Rochambeau waged one of the most horrific terror campaigns in the history of colonialism against the Haitian people. Ultimately the French lost their colony forever, and Haitian independence was declared on January 1st, 1804. This is also when the country officially changed it’s name from Saint-Domingue to Haiti, a name based on an indigenous Arawak place name.
Financial pressure, compounded by the failure of France’s last ditch effort to reimpose slavery, led to the Louisiana Purchase.
Britain Finally Abolishes (some) Slavery
The snow finally melted, and thanks to the tireless efforts of the British abolitionists, plus the personal accounts of soldiers coming back from the Caribbean, abolition was more popular than ever. In 1807, William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist member of Parliament, introduced a bill to abolish the British slave trade, and it passed. The bill banned slave ships from leaving British ports, but did not free slaves still in bondage in the British Caribbean colonies.
Nonetheless, it was a political masterstroke. British colonial slave owners now flipped on a dime and demanded that the Royal Navy enforce the suppression of the slave trade in order to deny their competitors what had just been taken from them. After twenty years of effort, the British abolitionists savored their limited victory, which they must have suspected would not come in their lifetimes, if ever. By 1815, British abolitionists had successfully pushed their government to get the French government (which by now was the restored Bourbon monarchy) to abolish its slave trade as well.
The Movement Reborn
By the 1820s, slave owners in Barbados had created a successful “breeding” program that was able to grow their population of slaves over time. News of this was a wake-up call to abolitionists in Britain that the fight was far from over. In 1823, Thomas Clarkson, who had been a traveling writer and organizer for abolition in the early days, got back on the road again at the age of 63. According to Hochschild, the new abolitionist organization held a mass meeting in 1824, and by that time 230 branches existed across Britain.
That same year, Elizabeth Heyrick published a pamphlet criticizing the new organization for being too gradualist and timid in it’s approach. As Hochschild quotes:
West Indian planters, have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question. The abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen…Truth and justice, make their best way in the world, when they appear in bold and simple majesty. ~ Elizabeth Heyrick
Heyrick also lifted international solidarity to new heights by openly defending slave insurrections, which was still pretty much unheard of in White Society. After her pamphlet was published, over 70 new women’s anti-slavery societies sprang into being. Heyrick was also active and vocal around prison issues and poverty and labor issues, including the conditions of Irish migrant workers, who were another highly marginalized sector of society. She also gave advice that went unheeded by Parliament about the specifics of abolition in the colonies: “Let compensation be made first to the slave.” She was a magnetic and influential rebel who was ahead of her time. A generation of younger abolitionists was inspired by her example.
As the years went on, radicalism grew. The question of Reform soon came to dominate British politics. Reform meant democratic reforms allowing people who weren’t Lords more say in government. This effort has implications for the abolitionist cause. The movement for Reform was intense. At times commoners attacked the houses of the nobility. The Revolution of July 1830 in France was a stark demonstration for British officials of what they wanted to avoid at all costs. As the Reform movement advanced, abolition began to be seen as more moderate.
In 1831, there was another slave uprising in British Jamaica. It was deemed so severe that white women and children were temporarily evacuated. The revolt was suppressed, with more rebels being hanged afterward than had died in the fighting. This time, unlike previously, the rebellion galvanized the British public in favor of abolition. The slave owners in Jamaica were forever blaming slave unrest on “outside agitators.” This shallow trope has been used to dismiss defiance in relation to genuine grievances throughout history, particularly when race is involved. Unfortunately, we are still not rid of it today. The chief suspects in Jamaica were always Christian missionaries who came to teach and preach to the slaves. Jamaica had a free press, which included English newspapers with anti-slavery perspectives. However, the right of slaves to be literate was hotly contested by slave-owners. In the wake of this rebellion, white mobs burned churches used by slaves, and this left the British public aghast.
It is unclear if the British Empire would still have abolished slavery if not for the revolts in Jamaica. It nearly certainly would not have done so without a successful Haitian Revolution. According to Hochschild, when Reform passed, it still left four out of five Englishmen without a vote. Even so, it became much easier to get a pro-abolition Parliament elected, which is precisely what happened. The public pressure to abolish slavery was now immense, and the wider world was watching closely. Hochschild writes:
John Quincy Adams thought that emancipation in the British Empire might “prove an earthquake on this continent.” Hoping for just such an earthquake, the fiery young American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, making his first visit to England, closely studied the British movement’s tactics and eagerly joined the antislavery activists each morning for breakfast at the Guildhall Coffee House as they plotted strategy inside and outside Parliament. American newspapers printed long excerpts of House of Commons speeches. (Bury the Chains, pp. 347)
The West Indies planter lobby made a savvy move, they switched from trying to stop emancipation to arguing for hefty compensation for the slave owners. The final implementation of emancipation was very favorable indeed to slave owners. It not only included a hefty bailout for planters, but also said that slaves were to be freed only after a six-year, unpaid “apprenticeship” that was essentially still slavery in all but name. Abolitionists fought against these terms, with strikes in the colonies, petitions in England, and public demonstrations on both sides of the ocean. Through determination and struggle they were able to reduce the six years to four. On August 1st, 1838, after half a century of organizing and solidarity, 800,000 Africans across the British Empire became free.
Thomas Clarkson had fought for the abolition of slavery for the whole 51 years it took to get it done in Britain. As an old man, he kept doing what he could to oppose slavery in the Americas as well. In 1846, a few weeks before he died at the age of 86, he welcomed two visitors from the US. They were William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglass.
Lessons for Today
This great struggle holds many lessons for those seeking justice in an often cruel world. Below are some reflections on what we can learn from the early abolitionist movement and graft on to our own modern movements.
Slow and Steady wins the race
The abolitionists knew they were up against a lot. They knew they wouldn’t win overnight, but had the determination and moral clarity to fight for what was just, not knowing what the outcome would be. They suffered major setbacks. In the colonies, precious lives were lost. They did not give up. They kept fighting, building and organizing towards freedom.
Learn, Organize, Teach, Repeat
To oppose slavery, abolitionists who were not slaves had to learn a great deal about it. They then had to organize to grow the capacity to spread this knowledge. Teaching the public what they had learned was essential. Slavers put out absurd propaganda about the middle passage being a pleasant journey, and it was up to the abolitionists to debunk these and other lies.
Today we still must learn about social issues and other social movements in order to be more effective. Learning, organizing and teaching are a virtuous cycle.
The Role of Faith
Faith can carry a lot of moral weight, or none. Many of the early abolitionists (in both Britain and the US) were Quakers or devoted Christians of other denominations. Their Christian faith clearly gave many abolitionists powerful motivation. However, lots of people in the British Empire considered themselves devoted Christians, including slavers. Faith can add a lot of power to movements, but nowhere is it written that it has to. Modern reports of the demise of faith have been greatly exaggerated. Current and future movements for freedom and justice have a lot to gain from embracing faith communities.
Role of Literacy
Literacy was another major asset for abolitionists. If Equiano had never written his memoir, it’s unclear whether an abolitionist movement would ever have sprung up. Books and newspapers were key to the abolition movement in Britain. The literacy of Toussaint and other freed Africans all but saved the Haitian Revolution, since it allowed him to conduct military and diplomatic efforts at great distance. The planters in Jamaica and the US knew that literacy among slaves was a threat to their authority. Today too, literacy plays a key role in struggles for empowerment and freedom. Critical literacy must be honed and practiced more than ever before, due to the immense volume of information now available to the public.
Role of Women
The British abolitionist movement really took off once women got involved. In France, on the other hand, the execution of early feminists and abolitionists was a blow that crippled the struggle for freedom there. Because of social conditioning, women tend to care for others and for the common good more than many men. The more a movement includes and empowers women, the more powerful that movement will become.
International Solidarity
Lastly, the early abolitionist movement shows the vital importance and potential impact of international solidarity. It is easy to ignore what goes on in other places, (especially when your country’s news agencies barely cover what happens in other places). However, we all live in one world which is far more interconnected now than it was during colonial slavery. Solidarity is different from charity. Solidarity means action, not merely donations. It means bold political demands, not defeatism masked as “realism.” The more one learns about the world we live in, the more movements around the world one finds to be in solidarity with.
The struggle for freedom is not over.
It is still just beginning.
