The battle of the slaveholding liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and slavery in the early nineteenth century

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 665-696

  Mason, Matthew ^a  

^a EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 53949113470     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491468     Document Type: Review

References (94)

1. The Courier (London), Jan. 12, 1815.
2. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, 1992), elucidates these elements in British nationalism and highlights the use ofslavery in nationalist discourse.
3. For other works on British nationalism see Kathleen Wilson, The Sense ofthe People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785 (Cambridge, 1995);
4. Gerald Newman, "Nationalism Revisited, " Journal of British Studies, 35 (1996), 118-27,
5. The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740-1830, rev.ed. (New York, 1997);
6. Tony Clayton and Ian McBride, eds., Protestantism and National Identity:Britain and Ireland, c. 1650-c. 1850 (Cambridge, 1998);
7. Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence(Oxford, 2000), esp. chap. 5;
8. Dror Wahrman, "The English Problem of Identity in the American Revolution, " American Historical Review, 106 (2001), 1236-62.
9. Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815 (Gainesville, Fla., 1981);
10. Mary R. Bullard, Black Emancipation at Cumberland Island in 1815 (Delean Springs, Fla., 1983);
11. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men: African-Americans and the War of1812 (Put-in-Bay, Ohio, 1996);
12. Christopher T. George, "Mirage of Freedom: African Americans inthe War of 1812, " Maryland Historical Magazine, 91 (1996), 427-50.
13. See Arnett G. Lindsay, "Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Great Britain Bearing on the Return of Negro Slaves, 1783-1828, "J. Negro Hist., 5 (1920), 391-419.
14. The Weekly Register (Baltimore), 2 (Apr. 18, 1812), 119.
15. Madison to Albert Gallatin, July 28, 1809,
16. quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison, 2 vols. (New York, 1986; orig. pub.1889-1891), 2:80-81.
17. The slave trade's status represented one of the most strikingdiscontinuities of the Age of Revolution. In the slave trade debates of the late1780s, "one glimpses a transitional moment in the evolution of the modernsocial conscience. The African slave trade, which had aroused so little protestin earlier decades, was beginning to stand as a symbol of the ultimateinjustice"; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975), 549.
18. See Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and"Race" in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, 1998), 137-61,
19. Paul Baepler, ed., White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago, 1999).
20. Weekly Register, 3 (Jan. 9, 1813), 303.
21. see, for example, Carey, Olive Branch, 210,
22. National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), Mar. 10, 1812.
23. Cornelius P. Van Ness, An Oration Delivered at Williston, July 4th, 1812, to a General and Very Numerous Meeting of the Republicans of Chittenden County(Burlington, Vt., 1812), 22-23.
24. Enquirer (Richmond), Nov. 24, 1812.
25. Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, 12 vols. (Freeport, N. Y., 1969; orig.pub. 1874-1877), 2:422.
26. Soulsby, Right of Search, 13-17;
27. Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823 (Berkeley, 1964), 275-77.
28. Quoted in Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 125.
29. Weekly Register, 5 (Oct. 2, 1813), 84.
30. Niles' Weekly Register, 7 (Dec. 31, 1814), 284. The sheer volume andpersistence of his charges on this score are impressive;
31. National Intelligencer, Oct. 24, 1814.
32. See also Enquirer, Dec. 16, 1813.
33. Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 3d Sess., 287-91.
34. Parliamentary Debates, ed. Hansard, 1st Ser., 31 (1815), 572.
35. see also Parliamentary Debates, ed. Hansard, 1st Ser., 30 (1815), 511-13.After the inquiry was completed, he declared himself satisfied that the chargeswere without foundation.
36. Brian Jenkins, Henry Goulbourn, 1784-856: A Political Biography(Montreal, 1996), 84-85.
37. See Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 3:204, 234, 255-59, 293-95, 398-400, 4:430-31, 6:39. As late as 1822, well past his personal antislaveryepiphany at the time of the Missouri debates, Adams doggedly denied Great Britain's right to liberate American slaves.
38. For other revealing exchanges between Adams and British ministers over American slave property, see Fehrenbacher, Slaveholding Republic, 94, 102.
39. Wright, A Refutation of the Sophisms, Gross Misrepresentations, and Erroneous Quotations Contained in "An American's" "Letter to the Edinburgh Reviewers" (Washington, D. C., 1820), iii.
40. Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 6:69.
41. Jenkins, Henry Goulbourn, ix, 44-55, 67-74, 95-105, 124-28.
42. Parliamentary Debates, ed. Hansard, 1st Ser., 28 (1814), 810.
43. Southern slavery similarly reduced Americans' ability to score propagandapoints. In April 1814, for instance, a district judge in North Carolina had todetermine the disposition of 6 slaves of British soldiers captured by Carolinianmilitiamen. He ruled that they were "confiscable to the use of the United States"; Niles' Weekly Register, 6 (June 25, 1814), 283.
44. Parliamentary Debates, ed. Hansard, 2d Ser., 8 (1823), 769.
45. Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 71, 343-85, 437-68;
46. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London, 1988), 295-329.
47. See Colley, Britons, 350-63, for a powerful discussion of how abolitionof the slave trade became a key part of the national self-image and a key weaponin putting French and American republicans in their place for Britons of manyranks.
48. The Quarterly Review (London), 10 (Jan. 1814), 518-19.
49. Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States... (London, 1823; rpt. Cleveland, 1905), 1:62, 71-72, 85-87, 138.
50. See F. Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, . . . Commencedat Philadelphia in the Winter of 1807, and Concluded in 1809 (1810) (Cleveland, 1904), in which slaves throughout are shadowy parts of the landscape, barelymentioned by the author;
51. John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 . . ., 2d ed. (1819) (Cleveland, 1904), who traveled extensivelythrough slave country with nary a comment on slavery;
52. John Melish, Travels through the United States of America, in the Years 1806 and 1807, and 1809, 1810, and 1811 (1818) (New York and London, 1970), who discussed slavery mostly for its effects on the white population andrelied on Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia for most of his moral commentaryon the institution.
53. Niles' Weekly Register, 12 (Aug. 23, 1817), 416.
54. Fearon, Sketches of America: A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America . . . , 2d ed. (London, 1818), 97, 270-71, 288-91, quotation on 290-91.
55. Cobbett, A Year's Residence in the United States of America ... (1818)(New York, 1969), 394-9;
56. Cobbett began the English radical tradition that abolition was at best adistraction from the real reforms England needed; see Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N. J., 1975), 411.
57. Birkbeck, Letters from Illinois (London, 1818) 22, 32 (quotation), 66, 70(quotation), passim.
58. See also Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey in America: From the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois, 3d ed. (London, 1818), 10-14, 21-24, 28.
59. Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), ed. Paul R. Baker(Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 37-44, 202-05.
60. Edinburgh Review, 31 (Dec. 1818), 146-50, quotations on 146, 148.
61. Enquirer, Sept. 22, 1820.
62. National Advocate (New York), Oct. 30, 1818.
63. Walsh, An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United States of America . . . (Philadelphia, 1819), 306, 309.
64. Such passages belie historian Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Athens, Ga., 1987), 42-74, 98-99,
65. Walsh, Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain, 407.
66. For leading Britons' acute embarrassment over the revival of the slavetrade in the postwar order they presided over, see Blackburn, Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 413-14.
67. Columbian, Jan. 4, 1816;
68. Kenrick, Horrors of Slavery, in Two Parts . . . Demonstrating that SLAVERY is Impolitic, Antirepublican, Unchristian, and Highly Criminal . . .(Cambridge, Mass., 1817), 5-34;
69. Bourne, The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, in John W. Christie and Dwight L. Dumond, George Bourne and "The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable" (Wilmington, Del., 1969), 105-206 passim.
70. For other American abolitionists who sought to draw strength from the British example and America's concern for its world image, see Jesse Torrey, Jr., A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States . . . (Philadelphia, 1817), 62-63,
71. Parliamentary Debates, ed. Hansard, 2d Ser., 4 (1821), 428-29;
72. Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 310;
73. Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (Urbana, Ill., 1972), ix, 3-79.
74. Pointing to slave coffles marching through the nation's capital, theantislavery Virginian Edward Coles told Madison that it was good that no foreignminister was with them from a country "less boastful perhaps of its regardfor the rights of man, but more observant of them"; quoted in Ralph L.Ketcham, "The Dictates of Conscience: Edward Coles and Slavery, "Virginia Quarterly Review, 36 (1960), 52.
75. see Courier, Aug. 4, 6, 1814.
76. Wright, Refutation of the Sophisms, vii, 11.
77. Niks' Weekly Register, 10 (Aug. 24, 1816), 427; 14 (Apr. 18 1818), 136;14 (May 2, 1818), 166.
78. Columbian Centinel, Aug. 3, 1816.
79. North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal, I (May 1815), 61-91, quotations on 65. While this authot wrote more along partisan than on strictlysectional lines - leaving the Madison administration, not necessarily the South, out to dry -some readers interpreted this article as symptomatic of New England Federalists' sectionalism;
80. see National Intelligencer, July 17, 1815.
81. see North American Review, 7 (Sept. 1818), 422-23, 13 (July 1821), 42-46.
82. Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (1821-1822), 4 vols., ed.Barbara Miller Solomon (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 4:160-61, 185.
83. [James Kirke Paulding], The United States and England: Being A Reply tothe Criticism on Inchiquin 's Letters Contained in the Quarterly Review for January, 1814 (New York, 1815), 4.
84. National Intelligencer, June 30, 1819. This same writer had earlierdenounced those who "content themselves with joining in the hypocriticaland anti-christian cry against" the "innocent" Americanslaveholder, and with "railing at our country, and triumphantly contrastingit with the cheap benevolence of England" (June 10, 1819).
85. Faux, Memorable Days in America, 1:91-95.
86. Letter to the Edinburgh Reviewers: By "An American" ([Washington, D. C.], 1819;
87. Letter to the Edinburgh Reviewers, 4-15.
88. For an earlier elaboration of a hesitantly proslavery argument inresponse to New Englanders and Britons, see Benjamin Elliott, A Sketch of the Means and Benefits of Prosecuting this War Against Britain (Charleston, 1814), 19.
89. A review rejecting the idea of immediate emancipation in the West Indies, for instance, echoed the anonymous respondent to the Edinburgh Review in hisdenunciation of impetuous, dangerous enthusiasts; Quarterly Review, 30 (Jan.1824), 579. Meanwhile, at least one atistocratic British visitor to the United States concluded that philanthropists in his country had exaggerated the evilsof American slavery. Still, even he was very reluctant to speak in favor ofslavery;
90. see Adlard Welby, A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois . . . (1821), (Cleveland, 1905), 204-05, 228-29, 289-90.
91. See Elie Halevy, England in 1815 (1913; trans., New York, 1961), 459;
92. Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 91-153;
93. J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787-1807 (London, 1998).
94. Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 4:151-52;