Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), a militant abolitionist

Clarkson, an abolitionist and a crusader

Though his name is not very well-known outside Britain, Thomas Clarkson is a British abolitionist who devoted his life to the crusade against the slave trade. He was touched by a divine revelation when, as a theology student, he was asked to write an essay on servitude. He was moved by reading abolitionist authors (Benezet, Wesley) who denounced the inhumanity of the slave trade and slavery. Clarkson decided to dedicate his life to the cause of abolition, convinced that spreading true facts about the slave trade, providing brutal figures, would bring the British and Europeans to realize that their nations were engaged in a traffic of human beings.

Clarkson organized the Society for the abolition of the slave trade, in London in 1787. It supported the work of William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament, who brought the abolitionist discourse to the House of Commons. Clarkson’s arguments were based on facts and figures that he collected in British ports, while recording rare testimonies from former sailors and ship captains… Their words had to be reported because they knew about the cruelty of the trade, first hand. Clarkson gave lectures in churches throughout the United Kingdom, bringing the general public to learn about the abolitionist cause by depicting the cruelty of the Middle Passage. Engravings and the schematic representation of a slave ship (The Brookes) depicting bodies crammed below deck, containing twice as many slaves as the ship could hold, were intended to shock members of Parliament and the general public. Clarkson had these disturbing images reproduced in multiple copies, while he published short fact-based pamphlets, which he distributed on his tours. He carried with him a trunk containing various objects used in the trade (whips, irons…). He exhibited them to shock the audience in order to make them feel the pain of the slave. His collection of testimonies and his investigations supported Wilberforce’s discourse who convinced the parliamentary committee in charge of the slave trade to introduce a bill. It was presented by Wilberforce in April 1791 and on several occasions thereafter. When the slave trade was abolished by the British parliament in 1807, Clarkson read it as his own triumph, though the reason behind the abolition was to be found elsewhere in a new economic context. From that date on, and for about fifteen years, Clarkson continued his crusading work, trying to convince Europeans that the abolition of the trade should be collective and international, to save humanity.

Despite his old age when the campaign against slavery began in 1823 in Britain, Clarkson resumed his lecturing, on the road, meeting with a new generation of abolitionists, writing evangelical and factual essays while still using images and artifacts. Alone, he created a network of two hundred committees across the country, from which he organized the signing of petitions against slavery, which was abolished in 1833.