Daniel Read online

  They supposed it now, all right. From that day we encountered any amount of hostility which, of course, cramped our style. We were harassed and had to leave The King’s Arms. We received anonymous letters, threatening to kill us. I admit I was frightened and my fear was justified by a nasty experience.

  One day the city was hit by a strong gale. Mr. Clarkson and I made our way to the pier head to observe the tossing boats and spectacular waves and spray. Upon starting back, we saw a group of some nine or ten men coming towards us. We continued on our way, naturally supposing that they would part and let us through. We were mistaken. Shouting threats and insults, they closed in on us. We were pushed against the rails and almost over them into the sea. I recognised two of the men whom we had met in The Kings Arms.

  Mr. Clarkson and I both struck out for dear life, and I admit I thought we were done for: they meant to push us into the sea. However, as hooligans they proved to be no great shakes. I knocked one down and we were able to burst through them and run, pursued by abuse and foul language.

  As I have said, I found our visit disappointing. But it could hardly have been otherwise. Roscoe and his followers were only playing at Abolition. The practical effects of their so-called campaign were piffling. They entirely lacked readiness for self-sacrifice and ruthlessness of purpose. To come out into the open and declare for Abolition above all else would have cost them grave financial loss and their esteemed places in Liverpool society as well, and they weren’t ready to pay such a price. That was why Ted Rushton was the best man among them and the most valuable to us real abolitionists. He’d been on a slave-ship, he’d given his eyesight for the slaves and he had no place to lose in Liverpool society.

  Roscoe favoured a gradual reduction of slavery, bit by bit, until it disappeared, but we followers of Sharp and Wilberforce were having none of that. Once you have realised that something is appallingly wrong and wicked, how can you agree to leave chunks of it to go on lying about for years?

  As far as I remember, it was some time during the February of 1788 that Mr. Pitt set up a Committee of the Privy Council to make a formal inquiry into the conditions of trade with Africa. He meant to await its report before authorising any discussion in Parliament.

  A month later Mr. Wilberforce fell seriously ill, the result of strain and overwork. Most of us despaired of his life, for a conference of doctors made no secret of their view. Although he accepted their advice that he should go to Bath and take the waters, he arrived there in a grievous state. He maintained, however, (so I was told by Mr. Clarkson) that Our Lord meant him to survive to continue His work.

  It was an anxious time for all of us. Before going to the waters at Bath, he had been able to have another talk with Mr. Pitt, who promised to act on his behalf and do all that he would have done himself. Personally, I believe that this, more than anything else, was what put Mr. Wilberforce on the road to recovery.

  Mr. Pitt was as good as his word. Superintending the Privy Council inquiry in person, he told Mr. Clarkson and myself that for his own part he hoped for total Abolition. Serious proceedings, however, would have to await the Privy Council’s report.

  It was not until November that Mr. Wilberforce was able to return to the House of Commons. During this winter Parliamentary business was seriously affected as a result of the King going out of his mind. The crisis over the question of a Regency continued well into the following year.

  That April the Privy Council Committee submitted their Report on Trade with Africa, and accordingly the Commons debate was fixed for 12th May.

  I well remember, about this time, taking to Mr. Wilberforce a summary of the evidence that Mr. Clarkson and I had collected in Liverpool. He was in high spirits, and showed me a letter from Tom Gisborne, an old friend of Cambridge days.

  “I shall expect,” Mr. Gisborne wrote, “to read of your being carbonadoed by West Indian planters, barbecued by African merchants and eaten by Guinea captains. But do not be daunted, for — I will write your epitaph!”

  “Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Wilberforce, laughing heartily. “You mark my words, Daniel, I shall write his.”

  At this stage Mr. Wilberforce was in no doubt of success, for he had the support of Charles James Fox and also that of Mr. Pitt himself. But others were not so sure. Among them was the Reverend John Wesley, a hardened veteran when it came to urging moral principles upon people concerned with safeguarding the value of their own property. To them, slaves were “property”; chattels, not exactly human beings.

  Mr. Clarkson was able to gain admission for himself and me to an upper gallery, from which we could see and hear well enough.

  On the previous day, Mr. Wilberforce had told some of us that, although he knew that in their hearts, most of the Members were on his side in condemning the Trade, they felt hesitant about openly going against an essential national interest; and on top of that, he had to bear in mind the West Indian lobby. So he took care to speak courteously and moderately. Afterwards Mr. Edmund Burke who, together with Pitt and Fox, had also spoken in favour of immediate abolition, said that he considered Mr. Wilberforce’s speech as good as anything he had come across in the whole field of modern oratory.

  Mr. Wilberforce spoke for more than three hours, and I could have listened to him for longer. But for all his conviction and sincerity, those against Abolition succeeded in postponing further consideration of the business until the next Parliamentary session. Naturally, we all felt this as a disappointing setback.

  Another blow that fell upon us soon afterwards, in July, was the death of the Reverend Ramsay. His contribution to the Cause had been, perhaps, the greatest of all. His well-written, convincing pamphlets were widely read and proved of great value to the Cause. The first man of all to go into print about Slavery, for two years and more he had kept the Cause alive and borne single-handed the brunt of one savage attack after another. His death came as no surprise to me for, as I have said, when Mr. Clarkson and I met him, I had thought him in poor health. Now, I wondered only that he had lasted so long. “Poor fellow,” said Mr. Clarkson, “he gave his life in the Cause. He’s set us a great example. We must follow in his footsteps, Daniel, however far they lead us.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “We know now, don’t we? how far they may lead us, and what we may be in for.”

  I believe that Mr. Clarkson, with his insatiable energy, could not convince himself that he was furthering the cause unless he was continually on the move. It was soon after the death of Mr. Ramsay that he decided to visit France, to meet as many as he could of the most well-known public figures and if possible to obtain their support for Abolition. Naturally, I begged him to take me with him, but he refused me with his characteristic abruptness. “No, no. You’d only increase the cost. You’ll do more good staying here.”

  “But how long will you be away, sir?”

  “No idea. I’ll write, of course. ’Let you know what happens. I’ll leave you some money. Take a good, long holiday. Then go and see Wilberforce or Sharp. They’ll give you plenty to do.”

  I went to see Mr. Wilberforce in his dwelling at Palace Yard, opposite the entrance to the House of Lords. I found it not unlike a crowded hotel. On the day of my visit, Mr. Pitt and several of his friends were there. Falling into conversation with one of the servants, I learned that they often dined at Mr. Wilberforce’s table, as did the London Committee, while those engaged in research (his “white slaves” as Mr. Pitt jokingly called them) did much of their work there. I myself had come early that morning, with the result that I (and several other early birds) was given breakfast. By ten o’clock the anteroom was more than full. There were Yorkshire constituents, Christian missionaries, people from Africa, petitioners for charity, men who had come to give their personal testimony about the Slave Trade and many more. However, I did manage to talk to Mr. Wilberforce who, after praising me for all I had done since I first joined Mr. Clarkson, told me that he thought I would certainly be of use to Mr. Granville Sharp.


  I had, of course, already heard of Mr. Sharp, one of the most highly regarded veterans in the Movement. Two years before, he had been a founder member of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and as Chairman had shown forceful leadership. On more than one occasion he had talked with Mr. Pitt, whose views on total abolition accorded with the Society’s own.

  Before going to meet Mr. Sharp, I thought I would ask one or two people who knew him well to tell me about his character and achievements. I sought out two of the Society’s Quaker committee members, Mr. Gratby and Mr. Hayter, and asked for their advice. I explained that I had already had some useful experience, having worked for Mr. Clarkson, and that Mr. Wilberforce himself had advised me to offer my services to Mr. Granville Sharp.

  They responded warmly, and asked me how much I knew about Mr. Sharp, to which I replied, “Very little”, and added, “What sort of a man is he?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Hayter with a smile, “he was born and brought up in Durham, you know. I’ve always been told that’s the place to look for real dogged fellows; chaps who don’t give up on anything once they’ve started.”

  “And that just about fits our friend Granville,” said Mr. Gratby. “He was apprenticed here in London, you know, when he was just a young chap, and I’ve heard that he taught himself Hebrew and Greek in his spare time. That’ll give you some idea of him. He’d have been in his twenties, I suppose, when he first got interested in the Anti-Slavery movement.”

  “Ah, and he didn’t just read about it or talk about it,” said Mr. Hayter. “He took it on board and lived it, ‘Soon showed what he was made of. One night, going home, he came on a black man destitute on the streets, not a penny in his pocket – abandoned by his white master. Now what the deuce was his name, Terence? It’s clean gone out of my head.”

  “The black man’s name was Jonathan Strong,” said Mr. Gratby. “I met him once, soon after Mr. Sharp had taken him home and was looking after him at his own expense. He struck me as an honest fellow.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Hayter, “and the man who abandoned him was called David Lisle. I remember that much. You never met him, though, did you, Terence?”

  “No, I never did,” said Mr. Gratby. “Nor I didn’t want to. Didn’t he get hold of Strong while he was with Granville and had him put in prison as a runaway slave?”

  “That’s right, and he brought an action against Granville, for unlawfully detaining his property. He said Strong was his property! But Granville fought him in Court every inch of the way and Mr, Lisle dropped out in the end. ’Found he’d ‘caught a Tartar’, as they say. Hadn’t reckoned with Granville and his Durham style. Bull terrier he is, when he sees occasion.”

  They both laughed. “Do go on,” I said. “I’m going to like Mr. Sharp, I can see that.”

  “You’ll not be the only one,” replied Mr. Gratby, taking a large pinch of snuff from a silver box. “’Specially you being black. He’s been a regular saint and champion for black people.”

  “None to touch him,” said Mr. Hayter. “The great battle he won was the Summersett case. Do you know about that, Mr. Daniel? ’Changed the world, that has.”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Who was Summersett?”

  “He was a black slave until he met Mr. Sharp. Oh, it must have been something like sixteen or seventeen years ago now, I suppose. He ran away from his master and when his master captured him and held him – held him against his will, of course – Granville took him to law. That was when Lord Mansfield laid it down that there were no slaves in this country. As soon as a so-called slave sets foot on English soil, he becomes free; free to leave his master, and free to look after himself.”

  “And that crowning victory was due entirely to Granville and to no one else,” said Mr. Gratby. “He won it single-handed. He had very little money and he was entirely dependent on his job in the Ordnance Department: he had to keep that on just to live. But somehow he found the money and the time and the knowledge of law to conduct the case on his own and the perseverance to see it through to the end. You couldn’t have found anyone who’d have put a shilling on him to win.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Hayter. “He said God was on his side and God was all he needed.”

  “That was the most important case of the last hundred years, I reckon,” said Mr. Gratby, emphasising his words by nodding vigorously and putting a heavy hand on my shoulder. “It set hundreds of black people free all over the country.”

  I told them about Mr. Grench and Lady Penelope, and about Fahdah and her brothers.

  “Ah, I’ve heard tell of Lady Penelope Marston,” said Mr. Hayter. “She’s a servant of the Lord, all right.”

  “But all those freed black people have made a difficult problem, all the same,” said Mr. Gratby. There simply hasn’t been enough employment for them. I well remember Mr. Pitt himself discussing the whole thing with Granville. Granville always had the notion of taking them abroad to found a colony and run it themselves. Need a white governor to see it go right, of course.”

  “And what was the name of the man who suggested Sierra Leone?” asked Mr. Hayter.

  “Oh, Dr. Sleathman, you mean,” replied Mr. Gratby. “He’d lived there himself, of course. Knew all about the country.”

  “And did anything come of it?” I asked.

  “Oh, my goodness, yes. You don’t know?”

  “I’m afraid not;

  “Oh, it’s all of two years and more, isn’t it, Ben? A whole shipload of freed black people and quite a few whites as well set sail for Sierra Leone. There were something like 80 white wives of black husbands. What I heard was that the white women were people who could well be spared.”

  “And have these people made a go of it?” I asked.

  “I wish I could say yes,” replied Mr. Hayter. “A local chieftain — King Tom as he’s called – had sold them quite a sizeable area of land to start on, and they’d begun building a town. Granville Sharp (who didn’t go out with them) named it ‘Freedom Province’. But they had bad luck right from the start. An epidemic broke out and a lot of them died.”

  “Ah, and there was even worse news only the other day,” said Mr. Gratby. “It takes a good deal to make me angry, but I’ll tell you, I was angry when I heard this. Apparently there were some English seamen on a slaving ship who quarrelled with a chieftain known as ‘King Jimmy’, and they destroyed one of his villages. Well, I suppose from the chief’s point of view one white man’s much the same as another. Anyhow, his idea of revenge was to order his warriors to burn down everything the settlers had built.”

  “Destroyed all their hard work?” I asked.

  “So we’ve heard.” He took out and consulted a silver “turnip” watch. “My goodness, it’s later than I thought. I’ll have to be getting along. The best of luck, my dear boy. It’s been very pleasant talking with you. I’m sure you’ll hit it off very well with Granville Sharp.”

  However, before I could meet Mr. Sharp, I learned that Mr. Clarkson, after six months absence, had returned from France. It was a typically wet, grey, winter’s day when I returned to his rooms and found him sitting over the fire, reading the journal he’d kept of his visit and looking none too happy.

  I told him how glad I was to see him back home and then, of course, asked whether all had gone well.

  “No good at all,” said he, giving me a cold smile. “Might as well have stayed here.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that, sir.”

  “Well, to start with, they’re not going to join us over Abolition. That’s flat. ’Got too many troubles of their own, that’s what it comes down to.”

  “Did you meet the King?”

  “Meet the King? Oh aye, and he blew hot and cold all right; hot and cold, he blew. No real interest. Anyway, I had to sit by in Paris while the mob took him and the Queen off to the Tuileries. They’re prisoners there, in effect. ’Got no power at all. Anyway, the idea of Abolition in France is hopeless in the light of San Dominguez.”
/>   “San Dominguez. French West Indies?”

  “Yes. Full of black rebellion, murders of white people, massacres, bloodshed. And from there the trouble’s spread to Martinique. How can you talk to them about Abolition when they’re up to the neck in that sort of thing?”

  He poked the fire as if he hated it.

  “‘Declaration of Rights’ my wig. ‘Men are born free and equal’ my eye.”

  “But didn’t you meet any sympathisers at all, sir?”

  “Oh, plenty. About as much use to us as those people in Liverpool. Abbé Sieyès, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau, La Fayette. ‘Amis des Noirs’. Amis des Inutiles, they are.”

  I did my best to give him some encouragement. “You know Parliament’s reassembled, sir, and they’re hearing evidence against the Trade. Mr. Pitt’s on our side, and Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke too.”

  “I know; but Pitt can’t commit his Cabinet: they’re all scared stiff by what’s happening in France. And as for the Lords, that Chancellor Thurlow – he’ll make sure they throw out any Bill that ever reaches them.”

  “But Mr. Wilberforce has said they’re fairly beat.”

  “He’ll kill himself with work before he’s done.”

  Of course, now that Mr. Clarkson was back and obviously in need of my support, I laid by the idea of reporting to Mr. Sharp. All through May and June the Committee for Abolition met almost daily and for a time Mr. Wilberforce sat with them, giving the witnesses every help he could. That summer his constituency returned him again with a handsome majority.