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Page 8
The fact is, that to all human seeming at the middle of our century
American slavery seemed to be more firmly established than ever
before. Neither the outcry of the Northern abolitionists nor the
appeals of Southern patriots such as Henry Clay, availed to check the
pro-slavery disposition in fully one-half the Union, or to abate the
covert favor with which the institution was regarded in nearly all the
other half.
Meanwhile, however, slavery was suffering and expiring in nearly all
parts of Europe. England began her battle against it even before the
beginning of the century. The work of the philanthropists, begun as
far back as 1786-87, when the Quakers, under the leadership of
Clarkson and Sharpe, began to cry out against the atrocity of human
bondage, now reached the public authorities, and ministers found it
necessary to take heed of what the people were saying and doing. Both
Pitt and Fox became abolitionists before the close of the eighteenth
century. The first attack was against the slave _trade_. Bills for the
abolition of this trade were passed in 1793-94 by the House of
Commons, but were rejected by the Peers. In 1804 another act was
passed; but this also was rejected by the Lords. So too, the bill of
1805! The agitation continued during 1806; and in 1807, just after the
death of Fox, the slave trade _was_ abolished in Great Britain.
The abolitionists went straight ahead, however, to attack slavery
itself. The Anti-slavery Society was founded. Clarkson and Wilberforce
and Buxton became the evangels of a new order that was seen far off.
It was not, however, until the great reform agitation of 1832 that the
government really took up the question of the abolition of slavery.
The bill for this purpose was introduced in the House of Commons on
the twenty-third of April, 1833. The process of abolition was to be
_gradual_. The masters were to be _compensated_. There were to be
periods of apprenticeship, after which freedom should supervene.
Twenty million pounds were to be appropriated from the national
treasury to pay the expenses of the abolition process.
It was on the seventh of August, 1833, that this bill was adopted by
the House of Commons. Two weeks afterward the House of Lords assented,
and on the twenty-eighth of August the royal assent was given. The
emancipation, however, was set for the first of August, 1834; and this
is the date from which the abolition of slavery in Great Britain and
her dependencies may be said to have occurred. In some parts, however,
the actual process of extinguishing slavery lagged. It was not until
1843 that the 12,000,000 of slaves under British control in the empire
were emancipated.
The virtual extinction of human slavery in the present century,
presents a peculiar ethnical study. Among the Latin races, the French
were the first to move for emancipation. It appears that the infusion
of Gallic blood, as well as the large influence of the Frankish
nations in the production of the modern French, has given to that
people a bias in favor of liberty. All the other Latin races have
lagged behind; but, France foreran even Great Britain in the work of
abolition. Scarcely had the great Revolution of 1789 got under way,
until an act of abolition conceding freedom to all men without regard
to race or color was adopted by the National Assembly.
It was on the fifteenth of May, 1791, that this great act was passed.
One of the darkest aspects of the character of Napoleon I. was the
favor which he showed to the project of restoring slavery in the
French colonies. But that project was in vain. The blow of freedom
once struck produced its everlasting results. Though slavery lingered
for nearly a half century in some of the French colonies, it survived
there only because of the revolutions in the home government which
prevented its final extinction. Acts were passed for the utter
extirpation of the system during the reign of Louis Philippe, and
again in the time of the Second Republic.
Meanwhile, the northern nations proceeded with the work of abolition.
In Sweden slavery ceased in 1847. In the following year Denmark passed
an Act of Emancipation. But the Netherlands did not follow in the good
work until the year 1860. The Spaniards and Portuguese have been among
the last to cling to the system of human servitude. In the outlying
possessions of Spain, in Spanish America and elsewhere, the
institution still maintains a precarious existence. In Brazil it was
not abolished until 1871. In the Mohammedan countries it still exists,
and may even be said to flourish. In Russia serfdom was abolished in
1863. He who at that date looked abroad over the world, might see the
pillars of human bondage shaken, and falling in every part of the
habitable globe which had been reclaimed by civilization.
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