NEWTON, CLARKSON, COWPER, MORE/SMITH, COLERIDGE, COBBETT

THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION

OBJECTIVES

• Consider the ECONOMIC factors in the debate over the slave trade and reflect on contemporary practices of consumption • Analyze the LITERARY qualities of the literature of

abolition and consider the power of the arts to affect political change • Analyze the representations of slavery

(HISTORICAL), including those of current and former slaves and slave-traders, in order to understand the complexity of the enterprise and its impact on humanity

REMEMBER…

• The practice of slavery was by and large enacted in the outlying colonies and NOT in the homeland• Yet people across the country benefitted by the

slave trade because of the economic growth it enabled and the foreign goods it brought to their tables (blissful ignorance?)

ECONOMIC ANGLE…

• Coleridge’s exhortation to the Bristol public makes the economic case against slavery most baldly, as he identifies consumers of goods from the West Indian plantations as collaborators in the slave trade• His call for the BOYCOTT of sugar and rum

OWS… BP (overseas sweatshop labor)• Considering your own food, clothes,

transportation, how would you respond?

LITERARY ANGLE…

• Which rhetorical stance do you detect in these texts?• Christianity bedrock of the discussion; yet both

sides of the slavery debate employ Christian rhetoric • How do the separate pieces makes claims for a

separate or superior version of Christianity?

MORE LITERARY…

• Both sides recognized that the investment in slavery was primarily economic; hence the debate pitted HUMANE REASON versus self-interest and luxury• Can the opposition claim a MORAL ground for

slavery? (Consider Cobbett using the Bible as evidence for divine sanction of the practice)

SYMPATHY

• Because slave labor actually takes place in lands far removed from England, to what extent do these texts ask Britons to sympathize with the plight of a slave who is not visible to them on a day-to-day basis?

SENSIBILITY

• …a dominant mode in abolitionist literature• How do these pieces characterize the African?• Consider the image of the African on his knees in

supplication on the seal of the Anti-Slavery Society: “Am I not a man and a brother?”• What are the pros and cons of representing the African

this way?• Coleridge: “Sensibility is not benevolence.”

HORROR

• Consider the direct impact of the practice on human beings• Consider the Middle Passage or labor on the

sugar colonies• Consider the extent of HUMAN TRAGEDY HERE,

preserved in these documents• Consider Clarkson’s description of the Middle

Passage and the Zong Incident, or the suffering of the Yamba in More’s poem

RESIDUAL, RHETORICAL QUESTIONS:

• What do these texts reveal to their audiences that otherwise remained unknown?

• What of the mental constructs (e.g., white supremacy) allow for blindness to such human suffering?