B U L L E T I N           

of    T h o m a s     P a i n e     F r i e n d s  

 

copyright  2007  Thomas  Paine  Friends, Inc.

 

 

                  Volume 8   Number  1                                                                                                                                          March   2007

 

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200th  Anniversary ~ Abolition  of  Slave  Trade  by  England  and   United  States

Two  Articles:  Chronicle  of  African  Slave  Trade  and  Thomas  Paine's  Anti-Slavery  Stance

 

 

ABOLITION   OF   THE   SLAVE  TRADE

 

by  Joyce  Chumbley

 

About 550 years ago some “enterprising” Portuguese adventurers began the cruel business of selling human beings that became known as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TST).  The island of Goree, two miles off the Senegalese coast, was its center.  Soon, the French, the Dutch, and the British were involved as well.  At the height of the trade, Liverpool (whose streets once included a “Goree Plaza”) became Europe’s largest slavery port.

 

Chronology

 

1450-1850   Over 10 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean, with another 10 million perishing in the process.

1562   Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595), Elizabethan shipbuilder, explorer, “lawful” privateer captain, hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and traded the slaves in the Caribbean, beginning England’s participation in the slave trade. He organized a syndicate of wealthy merchants to invest in the slave trade throughout the Caribbean and the Americas.

17th Century   England began to acquire colonies in the Caribbean (West Indies).

1672   The Royal Africa Company was formed to regulate and control the trading.

18th Century   The English became leaders in the slave trade, based in the west coast ports of Bristol and Liverpool. The ships left England loaded with manufactured goods bound for the slave merchants in Africa; the goods were exchanged for slaves who were picked up and transported (the Middle Passage) to the Caribbean and the Americas; then the slaves were exchanged for the precious commodities—sugar, coffee, tea harvested by slave labor—and the ships sailed back to England (the triangular trade).

1662-1807   British ships carried over three million Africans to slavery in the Americas.

1678-1807   2000 slave voyages left Bristol alone, and over 60% of the city’s trade was directly related to slavery.

1753 Thomas Paine attempted to board a privateer, Terrible, but was dissuaded by his father.

1756 Thomas Paine served on the privateer, The King of Prussia; returned after six months.

1772   The Somerset Ruling determined that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain and sold into slavery.  The slave James Somerset was the property of a Boston customs official, Charles Stewart. Somerset was brought to England while his master was sojourning there. He escaped, was recaptured, sold, and forced onto a ship bound for Jamaica. Anti-slavery campaigners learned of this incident, sought and received a writ of habeas corpus, requiring Somerset to be brought to court, where eventually he won his freedom and opened the way for other “sojourner” slaves. Thomas Paine was still in England during this well-known, precedent-setting trial.

1774   Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia.

1775   The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American abolitionist organization, was formed in Philadelphia. The Society ceased to operate during the Revolution and the British occupation of Philadelphia. It was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president and Benjamin Rush another leader.  Thomas Paine is thought to have joined the Society in its early days.

1775   “African Slavery in America” appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal. This piece, signed by "Justice  and Humanity," is often attributed to Thomas Paine.

1775-1783   American War of Independence

1779-1780   Thomas Paine was appointed clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and the next year his state was the first to achieve one of his ardent goals when it abolished slavery and emancipated 6,000 men and women.  (See Preamble to Act for Abolition of Slavery in Pennsylvania, 1780.)

1787   The British Committee for Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed. It consisted of a group of veteran anti-slavery campaigners, like Granville Sharp, and young reformers, like Thomas Clarkson. William Wilberforce, born in Hull, a young Tory (conservative) Member of Parliament from Hull (then York), an Anglican/Methodist evangelical, a deeply committed abolitionist, was asked to press the issue in Parliament.

       Continued on page 4, The Slave Trade

 

 

To  Know  Paine,  Read  Him -- Florence  Stapleton

                                        IN  THIS  ISSUE         

 

                         Abolition of the Slave Trade by Joyce Chumbley                         1

                         Acknowledgements & Announcements                                        2 

                         Thomas Paine on Slavery by Irwin Spiegelman                            3 

                         Remembering Louis Worth Jones                                                 5

                         Religious & Political Philosophy of Paine by James Tepfer        6 

                         Political Thought of Thomas Paine by Maurice Bisheff              7

                         Membership Coupon                                                                    11

 

 

 

          Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, vol. 8, no. 1, March 2007   1