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Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846) was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
He became a pacifist in 1816 and, with his brother, John, was one of the twelve founders of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. (1996). 9780198226741, Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198226741
In his later years Clarkson campaigned for the abolition of slavery worldwide. In 1840 he was the key speaker at the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society's first convention in London, which campaigned to end slavery in other countries.
He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1779. An excellent student, he appears to have enjoyed his time at the University of Cambridge, although he was a serious, devout man. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1783 and was set to continue at Cambridge to follow in his father's footsteps and enter the Anglican ministry. He was ordained a deacon in 1783 but never proceeded to priest's orders.
After winning the prize, Clarkson had what he called a spiritual revelation from God, as he travelled by horse between Cambridge and London. He broke his journey at Wadesmill, near Ware, Hertfordshire. He later wrote:
As it is usual to read these essays publicly in the senate-house soon after the prize is adjudged, I was called to Cambridge for this purpose. I went and performed my office. On returning however to London, the subject of it almost wholly engrossed my thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while upon the road. I stopped my horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true. The more however I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight of Wades Mill in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. Agitated in this manner I reached home. This was in the summer of 1785.
This experience and sense of calling ultimately led him to devote his life to abolishing the slave trade.
Having translated the essay into English so that it could gain a wider audience, Clarkson published it in pamphlet form in 1786 as An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin Dissertation.
The essay was influential, resulting in Clarkson's being introduced to many others who were sympathetic to abolition, some of whom had already published and campaigned against slavery. These included influential men such as James Ramsay and Granville Sharp, many Quakers, and other nonconformists. The movement had been gathering strength for some years, having been founded by Quakers both in Britain and in the United States, with support from other nonconformists, primarily Methodists and Baptists, on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1783, 300 Quakers, chiefly from the London area, presented Parliament with their signatures on the first petition against the slave trade.
Following this step, a small offshoot group formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a small non-denominational group that could lobby more successfully by incorporating Anglicans. Under the Test Act, only those prepared to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England were permitted to serve as MPs, thus Quakers were generally barred from the House of Commons until the early nineteenth century. The twelve founding members included nine Quakers, and three pioneering Anglicans: Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and Philip Sansom. They were sympathetic to the religious revival that had predominantly nonconformist origins, but which sought wider non-denominational support for a "Great Awakening" amongst believers.
Clarkson took a leading part in the affairs of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and was tasked to collect evidence to support the abolition of the slave trade. He faced strong opposition from supporters of the trade in some of the cities he visited. The slave traders were an influential group because the trade was a legitimate and highly lucrative business, generating prosperity for many of the ports.
Liverpool was a major base of slave-trading syndicates and home port for their ships. In 1787, Clarkson was attacked and nearly killed when visiting the city, as a gang of sailors was paid to assassinate him. He barely escaped with his life. Elsewhere, however, he gathered support. Clarkson's speech at the collegiate church in Manchester (now Manchester Cathedral) on 28 October 1787 galvanised the anti-slavery campaign in the city. That same year, Clarkson published the pamphlet A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition.
Clarkson was very effective at giving the committee a high public profile: he spent the next two years travelling around England, promoting the cause and gathering evidence. He interviewed 20,000 sailors during his research. He obtained equipment used on slave-ships, such as iron handcuffs, leg-shackles, and thumbscrews; instruments for forcing open slaves' jaws; and branding irons. He published engravings of the tools in pamphlets and displayed the instruments at public meetings.
Clarkson's research took him to English ports such as Bristol, where he received information from the landlord of the Seven Stars pub. (The building still stands in Thomas Lane.) He also travelled repeatedly to Liverpool and London, collecting evidence to support the abolitionist case.
Clarkson visited The Lively, an African trading ship. Although not a slave ship, it carried cargo of high-quality goods: carved ivory and woven textiles, beeswax, and produce such as palm oil and Capsicum. Impressed by the high quality of craftsmanship and skill expressed in these items, Clarkson was horrified to think that the people who could create such items were being enslaved. He bought samples from the ship and started a collection to which he added over the years. It included crops, spices and , along with refined trade goods.
Clarkson noticed that pictures and artefacts could influence public opinion more than words alone. He began to display items from his collection of fine goods to reinforce his anti-slavery lectures. Demonstrating that Africans were highly skilled artisans, he argued for an alternative humane trading system based on goods rather than labourers. He carried a "box" featuring his collection, which became an important part of his public meetings. Home: "Thomas Clarkson", Abolition Project website. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
He rode some 35,000 miles for evidence and visited local anti-slave-trade societies founded across the country. He enlisted the help of Alexander Falconbridge and James Arnold, two ship's surgeons he had met in Liverpool. They had been on many voyages aboard slave ships, and were able to recount their experiences in detail for publication. "Thomas Clarkson: Collecting Evidence", The Abolition Project website. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
Clarkson also continued to write against the slave trade. He filled his works with vivid firsthand descriptions from sailors, surgeons and others who had been involved in the slave traffic. In 1788 Clarkson published large numbers of his Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade (1788). Another example was his "An Essay on the Slave Trade" (1789), the account of a sailor who had served aboard a slave ship. These works provided a grounding for William Wilberforce's first abolitionist speech in the House of Commons on 12 May 1789, and his twelve propositions.
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) a member of the Sons of Africa published his memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, one of the genre of what became known as slave narratives – accounts by slaves who achieved freedom. As an African with direct experience of the slave trade and slavery, Equiano was pleased that his book became highly influential in the anti-slavery movement. Clarkson wrote to the Reverend Thomas Jones (1756–1807) at Trinity College, Cambridge, to introduce Equiano to him and the community. He asked for aid from the Rev. Jones in selling copies of the memoir and arranging for Equiano to visit Cambridge to lecture. In 1791, Wilberforce introduced the first Bill to abolish the slave trade; it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88. As Wilberforce continued to bring the issue of the slave trade before Parliament, Clarkson travelled and wrote anti-slavery works. Based on a plan of a slave ship he acquired in Portsmouth, he had an image drawn of slaves loaded on the slave ship Brookes; he published this in London in 1791, took the image with him on lectures, and provided it to Wilberforce with other anti-slave trade materials for use in parliament. "Brookes' Diagram-Clarkson's Box", The Abolition Project, 2009. Retrieved 28 September 2014. This was the beginning of their protracted parliamentary campaign, during which Wilberforce introduced a motion in favour of abolition almost every year. Clarkson, Wilberforce and the other members of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and their supporters, were responsible for generating and sustaining a national movement that mobilised public opinion as never before. Parliament, however, refused to pass the bill. The outbreak of Napoleonic Wars effectively prevented further debate for many years. Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who was the Secretary of State for War for prime minister William Pitt the Younger, instructed Sir Adam Williamson, the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, to sign an agreement with representatives of the French colonists of Saint Domingue, later Haiti, that promised to restore the ancien regime, slavery and discrimination against mixed-race colonists, a move that drew criticism from abolitionists Wilberforce and Clarkson.James, C. L. R., The Black Jacobins (London: Penguin, 1938), p. 109.Geggus, David, Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1982).
By 1794, Clarkson's health was failing, as he suffered from exhaustion. He retired from the campaign and spent some time in the Lake District, where he bought an estate, Eusemere, by Ullswater. There he became a friend of the poet William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth, his sister.
On 19 January 1796 he married Catherine Buck of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; their only child Thomas was born in 1796. They moved to the south of England for the sake of Catherine's health, and settled at Bury St Edmunds from 1806 to 1816. They then lived at Playford Hall, between Ipswich and Woodbridge in Suffolk.
When the war with France appeared to be almost over, in 1804 Clarkson and his allies revived the anti-slave trade campaign. After his ten years' retreat, he mounted his horse to travel again all over Great Britain and canvass support for the measure. He appeared to have returned with all his old enthusiasm and vigour. He was especially active in persuading MPs to back the parliamentary campaign.
Passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 ended the trade and provided for British naval support to enforce the law. Clarkson directed his efforts toward enforcement and extending the campaign to the rest of Europe, as Spain and France continued a trade in their American colonies. The United States also prohibited the international trade in 1807, and operated chiefly in the Caribbean to interdict illegal slave ships. In 1808 Clarkson published a book about the progress in abolition of the slave trade. He travelled to Paris in 1814 and Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, trying to reach international agreement on a timetable for abolition of the trade. He contributed the article on the "Slave Trade" for Rees's Cyclopædia, Vol. 33, 1816.
Clarkson lived an additional 13 years. Although his eyesight was failing, he continued to campaign for abolition, focusing on the United States, where slavery had expanded in the Deep South and some states west of the Mississippi River. He was the principal speaker in 1840 at the opening of the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, chaired by Thomas Binney. The conference was intended to build support for abolishing slavery worldwide and included delegates from France, the US, Haiti (established in 1804 as the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere) and Jamaica. The scene at Clarkson's opening address was painted in a commemorative work by Benjamin Haydon, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London; Clarkson is shown, finishing his speech with arm raised.
In 1846, Clarkson was host to Frederick Douglass, an American former slave who had escaped to freedom in the North and become a prominent abolitionist, on his first visit to England.Simon Schama, , New York: HarperCollins, 2006 pb, p. 420. Douglass spoke at numerous meetings and attracted considerable attention and support. At risk even prior to passage in the US of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Douglass was grateful when British friends raised the money and negotiated purchase of his freedom from his former master in December 1846.
His younger brother John Clarkson (1764–1828) took a major part in organising the relocation of approximately 1200 Black Loyalists to Africa in early 1792. They were among the 3000 former United States slaves given their freedom by the British and granted land in Nova Scotia, Canada, after the American Revolutionary War. This group chose to go to the new colony of Sierra Leone established by the British in West Africa, founding Freetown. John Clarkson was appointed its first Governor.
Thomas Clarkson died on 26 September 1846 in Playford, Suffolk, aged 86. Hugh Brogan's biography of Clarkson. (May require log in) He was buried in the village on 2 October at St Mary's Church.
The Clarkson chest and Clarkson Collection are now on display in Wisbech & Fenland Museum.
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