# The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 9

Contents
CHAPTER IX
THE EARLY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION
When Sir John Hawkins, flushed with success, was telling Good Queen Bess how he had taken, "partly by the sword and partly by other means" three hundred negroes from the coast of Guinea to the far side of the Atlantic and sold them there with profit, the heart of the Queen was touched and she saw, back of the “great profit," the picture of the negroes when they were torn from their homes by force, and she said the deed "was detestable." For one brief moment she saw clear-eyed, and a writer recorded her words where they were most likely to find readers among her people — in a naval history.
The importance of the fact that her words were printed is to be emphasized. The reader will recall what Carlyle says of the voiceless millions, whose sufferings made the French revolution possible, in contrast with the screaming outcries of the few who were ​justly treated therein while those millions held power. When the protest of Elizabeth was printed, the voiceless negro slave was heard.
In like fashion the slave was heard again when Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman employed by the slaveholding missionary society of England, wrote "The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate." Then Richard Baxter wrote a "Christian Directory," wherein he gives "advice to those masters in foreign plantations who have negroes and other slaves."
They were sowing good seed — a sort of winterwheat crop, one may say. The Pennsylvania Quakers took up the work and on "the 13th day of the 8th month, 1693," at ‘our Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia," prepared an "Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes,"
They were opposed to "keeping negroes for Term of Life" for several reasons clearly stated, the "fifthly" of which shall be quoted: "Because slaves and souls of men are some of the Merchandize of Babylon, by which the Merchants of the Earth are made Rich."
In the valuable and interesting book called "The Workers"? by Walter A. Wyckoff, is a graphic description of the effect, as he observed it, of a sermon upon a wealthy congregation in a Chicago church which he attended that he might see how a laborer would be received among the wealthy. So earnest was the preacher, so intent were the audience, that (to quote the author) "it was as though distress had ceased to be for them the visible sufferings of the poor, and had grown, through the deepening sense of brotherhood, into an anguish of their own, which must find ​healing in forms of effective helpfulness. Very clearly dawned the conviction that, if one could but point out to the members of this waiting company some ‘way', 'something to do, which would square well with their practical business sense, of things instant and unmeasured would be their response.'"
The quotation emphasizes the work of the Quakers of 1693, for they did not ask nor did they so much as think of what would square with practical business sense. There is not a word in their manifesto, nor was there a thought in the heart of one of them, about the "Impolicy of the Slave-trade." And they were followed by many others who refused to entertain business considerations, but asked solely what was right.
The story of the Boston slaver, who, in 1645, robbed an African village by force of arms of its inhabitants, was told in open court because the slaver captain quarrelled with the ship's owners. On hearing it, one of the magistrates, Richard Saltonstall, declared that the master and his mate had been guilty of murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-breaking, all crimes "Capital by the law of God." This was the first time that a man was accused in open court, on United States soil, of a capital offence because he had stolen negroes in Africa. It was the first of the long series of slave-trials wherein the insolent slaver was let go on technicalities, the Courts deciding that they had no jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of the colony when on the coast of Africa.
The next court case worth mention here came up in 1767. In 1727 the British planters of the West Indies who came to England bringing slaves for personal attendants began to have trouble through ​the efforts of the slaves to escape service. The negroes, seeing the relative freedom and comfort of the white servants of England, ran away. Fora time the masters had merely to find the negroes to recover them, but eventually it was noised among the negroes that, under the laws of England, every human being who had been baptized in the Established Church was free. Thereat every negro made haste to get baptized.
The law was plain in letter and spirit, but the Crown Attorney and the Solicitor-General, at the request of certain slave-owners, wrote an opinion saying that baptism of a slave could not divest the slave-owner of any property right. That opinion served as law for nearly forty years.
But in 1765 a Barbadoes planter named David Lisle came to London bringing a negro slave named Jonathan Strong with him, and took lodgings in Wapping. Lisle abused Strong in shocking fashion and then turned him into the street, as he would have turned a worthless dog, to die.
At that time a Dr. William Sharp lived in Wapping, and he gave much time to charity. In some way the negro Strong found his way to Sharp's oflice. Sharp heard his story and sent him to a hospital, where he was cured. Now, Dr. Sharp had a brother, one Granville Sharp, "born at Durham, England, November 10, 1735. His early education was limited. In 1750 he was apprenticed to a Friend — alterward to an Independent — and subsequently to a Romanist." The story of the negro Strong appealed to Granville, who after he left the hospital obtained a situation for him where all went well with him until one day in 1767 his old master saw him, and at once decided to take ​possession of him again. To this end he had the slave kidnapped, and then sold him to one John Kerr for £30.
Although held in prison, Strong found means to send for friends, and Granville Sharp went to the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Kite, "and entreated him to send for Strong, and to hear his case."
Accordingly the case was heard, and Strong was discharged from custody on the ground that he had been kidnapped — that is, really, on a technical plea. Sharp freed Strong, but this case established no principle worth mention, and the story is told chiefly because the work of Sharp in the case was his first effort in behalf of the negro race, and great things were to follow through his later efforts.
Straightway Sharp found his hands full of the work of liberating slaves. So let us look his work in the face. It was nothing more nor less than an attack on property legally obtained and legally held. It was a work that would not "square with the business sense" of anybody. It is, therefore, but justice to the man to let him say here what the faith was that moved him to this extraordinary career. In a letter to Lord Carysport he said:
"This is the compendium or sum total of all my politics, so that I include them in a very small compass. I am thoroughly convinced that Right ought to be adopted and maintained, on all occasions, without regard to consequences either probable or possible."
This was the first statement made by an abolitionist of what the abolitionists called "the higher law."
In November, 1769, Charles Stewart, a Virginia planter, brought a slave named James Somerset to ​England. Somerset ran away; was recaptured, and was placed on the ship Mary and Ann to be carried to Jamaica and sold. On learning this fact Sharp took the negro from the ship on the usual writ, and it was agreed that the case should turn on the broad question "Whether an African slave coming into England becomes free."
That was a trial to stir the kingdom, for it was an open attack not alone on the planters of distant colonies, but on the whole foreign commerce of the nation that had been developed, nurtured, improved, and brought to the leading place on the sea through the profits of the slave-trade. Worse yet, from a business point of view, it was an attack upon many interests ashore. The distilleries that made rum, the factories that made ropes, sails, and other ship fittings, even the whole industry of Manchester that turned out cloths for the African trade — all these were interested in the success of the slavers.
The wealth of the nation and the power of society gathered on one side. On the other side stood a timorous negro slave and Granville Sharp. Lord Mansfield in his robes presided.
For six months — from January to June, 1772, inclusive — blind Justice held the scales aloft in that court while learned counsel heaped this side and that with lore and statute bald, and strove with fierce as well as pleading breath to sway the poised beam. And then he who stood for the oppressed, rising above the obscuring, tape-bound "chaos of formulas," asked in a voice that was heard in spite of clamor:
"Shall the Right prevail in England?"
When those words were heard a hush fell upon all ​in that court, as if God had spoken. And then Justice raised her sword, and, while the timorous slave and the arrogant master listened, the justice who was appointed to speak said:
"Immemorial usage preserves the memory of positive law long after all traces of the occasion, reason, authority, and time of its introduction are lost; and in a case so odious as that of the condition of slaves, must be taken strictly (tracing the subject to natural principles, the claim of slavery never can be supported). The power claimed by this return never was in use here. We cannot say the cause set forth by this return is allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom, and therefore the man must be discharged."
That was said on Monday, June 22,1772. From that day slave-traders lost England as a landing-place — lost her waters even as ports of call while their human cargoes were on board. The slave-trade had been actually restricted regardless of business considerations.
Not only did the case of Somerset serve to restrict the territory of the slave-traders; the stir it created in public talk was of tremendous effect. For it should be recalled that under the laws of England and of the colonies in those days it was libellous to tell the truth in public print about the ill-treatment a slave might receive from his master, unless, indeed, the story of it were first told in open court during a trial involving the matter. The cases which Granville Sharp brought into court enabled the masses of the English-speaking people who held no slaves to learn lawfully how slaves were treated by ​slave-owners, and this set them to considering whether or not slave-owning was right.
Granville Sharp, in fighting the battle of an unfortunate negro, prepared the way in England for the discussion of slavery and the slave-trade on their merits, The voiceless negro through him appealed to the justice and humanity of the dominant race.
In America no such appeal as that was heard, but a demand was made there for universal liberty, and it was heard around the world because emphasized by the thunder of cannon.
When the colonists united to oppose British oppression, the talk about slavery and slaves, which had reference to their own condition, turned their thoughts to the unfortunate negro slaves, and on Thursday, October 20, 1774, they signed an agreement that they would "not purchase any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."