AHC: 'Slave Power' Britain in an ARW loss TL

Morty Vicar

Banned
Huh? Slavery continued in the United States until 1965?

Please explain....

Best,

It was a typo, obviously. Edited. That said, there could be an argument made for prison labor as slavery, especially given the region and demographic, not to mention the scale of operations..
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Well, there could be, but it would not be

It was a typo, obviously. Edited. That said, there could be an argument made for prison labor as slavery, especially given the region and demographic, not to mention the scale of operations..


Well, there could be, but it would not be that strong of one.

If you're speaking solely of the US south, in the "slavery by another name" concept, perhaps, but something of stretch to indict the entire nation.

Best,
 
However, even Clarkson admitted that the success of the American Revolution played a vital role in the organizing in his movement, saying twenty years before he wrote his history, "As long as America was ours, there was no chance that a minister would have attended to the groans of the sons and daughters of Africa, however he might feel for their distress".

The quote is from Clarkson's book "An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade" - I had to do quite a lot of digging to find it, a cite would have been nice. And as Clarkson goes on to say "From the same spot, which was thus once the means of creating an insuprable impediment to the relief of these unfortunate people, our affection, by a wonderful concatenation of events has been taken off, and a prospect has been presented to our view, which shews it to be policy to remove their pain." It's clear that his point is, now that Britain no longer rules America, that Britain no longer has to take American views in account and is free to pursue a more moral policy. Pretty much the opposite of the interpretation you are implying, which seems to be that that Clarkson was citing the moral example of the revolution as providing a boost to abolitionism.

The fact remains that before anti-slavery sentiment in Britain organized itself into a movement in 1787, it was only that -- sentiment -- and posed no serious threat whatsoever to the vast slave interests in the Empire. To the idea that abolitionism was a trigger for the ARW, well -- the preceding sentence alone would destroy any pretense of taking it seriously,
There were rather a lot of preceding sentences, which one did you have in mind? If it was the Clarkson quote, you rather misinterpreted it. But to repeat, Somerset was in 1772 - how that was supposed to have been inspired by the aRW, rather than the other way round, I have yet to hear a coherent explanation for.

to say nothing of the fact that the Revolution began in Massachusetts (where slavery was far from essential to the economy)
Nobody said it was the sole cause of the ARW, just that it was a major one, especially in the South.

, or that the Declaration originally laid the slave trade at the feet of the British Crown,
That would be the declaration written by a slave owner, would it not? The passage on slavery was deleted - on the insistence of other slave-owners - before approval in any case, and replaced with the bit about inciting "domestic insurrections amongst us" - which shows what the real concern of the revolutionaries was, that the British were encouraging slaves to think they could be free if they sided with the Crown.

Does the book offer anything more than the "Sommerset scared Southern plantation owners" argument, where our discussion is concerned? Because as often as I've seen that idea brought up, I've seen very little in the way of evidence (as opposed to speculation), and from what I've read about the book, it offers very little as well. This is particularly important when the argument is that plantation owners were concerned a case that explicitly only applied to the British home island, and wasn't even fully settled* by 1775, was somehow an imminent threat to their property and livelihood.

Well, there's this, forex -

Virginia Gazette said:
AUGUSTA, June 18, 1774. RUN away the 16th Instant, from the Subscriber, a Negro Man named BACCHUS, about 30 Years of Age, five Feet six or seven Inches high, strong and well made; had on, and took with him, two white Russia Drill Coats, one turned up with blue, the other quite plain and new, with white figured Metal Buttons, blue Plush Breeches, a fine Cloth Pompadour Waistcoat, two or three thin or Summer Jackets, sundry Pairs of white Thread Stockings, five or six white Shirts, two of them pretty fine, neat Shoes, Silver Buckles, a fine Hat cut and cocked in the Macaroni Figure, a double-milled Drab Great Coat, and sundry other Wearing Apparel. He formerly belonged to Doctor George Pitt, of Williamsburg, and I imagine is gone there under Pretence of my sending him upon Business, as I have frequently heretofore done; he is a cunning, artful, sensible Fellow, and very capable of forging a Tale to impose on the Unwary, is well acquainted with the lower Parts of the Country, having constantly rode with me for some Years past, and has been used to waiting from his Infancy. He was seen a few Days before he went off with a Purse of Dollars, and had just before changed a five Pound Bill; most, or all of which, I suppose he must have robbed me off [sic], which he might easily have done, I having trusted him much after what I thought had proved his Fidelity. He will probably endeavour to pass for a Freeman by the Name of John Christian, and attempt to get on Board some Vessel bound for Great Britain, from the Knowledge he has of the late Determination of Somerset's Case. Whoever takes up the said Slave shall have 5 l. Reward, on his Delivery to GABRIEL JONES. "

From here, also cited in "Slave Nation". It's not an ex post facto rationalisation - slave owners at the time were blaming Somerset for inciting slaves to run away.

*Oh yeah, Mansfield had not even declared slavery illegal in Britain as such; he "merely" said that English Common Law offered no support to slave owners looking to retrieve their "property" (which technically it still was) within the mother country. It even explicitly opened the door to such protection, in the even that Parliament passed "positive law" to the effect; years after the decision, the courts were still revisiting the case as slave owners still sought to "reclaim their property" in London.
That, to put it mildly, is to invert the sense and meaning of what Mansfield said. He declared of slavery that "It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law" - which is to say that it cannot be upheld by custom and practice or the Common Law, but that a government had to explicitly legislate to allow it. It wasn't an invitation to the government to do so - it was a rebuke to the slavery advocates who claimed there was anything natural or normal about their cause. Mansfield's point about positive law was noted in at least one quarter however - when they came to write the US Constitution, the Founding Fathers inserted a Fugitive Slave Clause to ensure there could be no repeat of the Somerset Case in America.

By the way, and with regard to your earlier point about the revolution starting in Massachussetts, it may or not be relevant that James Somerset was bought and paid for in Boston of that colony which is where his owner was living and working until he went to Britain.
 
But to repeat, Somerset was in 1772 - how that was supposed to have been inspired by the aRW, rather than the other way round, I have yet to hear a coherent explanation for.
And, btw, he never said that.

Nobody said it was the sole cause of the ARW, just that it was a major one, especially in the South.
No, it wasn't(even anti-slavery feelings were largely on the backburner) . Not even in the South.

That would be the declaration written by a slave owner, would it not? The passage on slavery was deleted - on the insistence of other slave-owners - before approval in any case, and replaced with the bit about inciting "domestic insurrections amongst us" - which shows what the real concern of the revolutionaries was, that the British were encouraging slaves to think they could be free if they sided with the Crown.
Sure.....right. :rolleyes: Are you honestly serious? Many of the Founders didn't even own slaves at all. And what of the fact that many northern states almost immediately worked towards eliminating slavery after the Revolution ended? If that doesn't tell you something.....



Well, there's this, forex -



From here, also cited in "Slave Nation". It's not an ex post facto rationalisation - slave owners at the time were blaming Somerset for inciting slaves to run away.
A *few* may have. But again, Somerset was hardly at any forefront for the Revolution; in fact, even then, it wasn't all that well-known outside of some circles.

That, to put it mildly, is to invert the sense and meaning of what Mansfield said. He declared of slavery that "It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law" - which is to say that it cannot be upheld by custom and practice or the Common Law, but that a government had to explicitly legislate to allow it.
At this point, TBH, I'm somewhat inclined to believe, that he really only meant slavery in Britain proper.

It wasn't an invitation to the government to do so - it was a rebuke to the slavery advocates who claimed there was anything natural or normal about their cause.
Mansfield may genuinely have disapproved of slavery in Britain proper, as mentioned above, but I don't take this as evidence that he also meant for this to be applied elsewhere(which would have been, to be frank, a potential career killer in 1772's Empire).

Mansfield's point about positive law was noted in at least one quarter however - when they came to write the US Constitution, the Founding Fathers inserted a Fugitive Slave Clause to ensure there could be no repeat of the Somerset Case in America.
Wait, what? I'm not questioning the fact that there was a Fugitive Slave Clause, of course, but again, where's the evidence for this assertion of yours, that this relatively obscure British court case directly led to said Clause?

By the way, and with regard to your earlier point about the revolution starting in Massachussetts, it may or not be relevant that James Somerset was bought and paid for in Boston of that colony which is where his owner was living and working until he went to Britain.
Which may be true. However, though, nobody has provided ANY real evidence that the fear of abolition was even a notable cause of the Revolution, let alone any of it's instigators.

PRFU said:
On this point I disagree also, James Edward Oglethorpe banned slavery in the colony of Georgia, making him deeply unpopular with the settlers in both Georgia and the neighboring Carolinas, whose runaway slaves found refuge in Georgia. Although this ban was lifted after Oglethorpe left, no doubt the settlers kept a close eye on the abolitionists in Parliament thereafter. __________________

That may have been true, but the problem is, though, the fact that slavery was re-legalized right after Oglethorpe left, actually disproves your point, and instead proves the one that J.F.P. and I have been making: that the heads of the British government, themselves, had no real overarching desire to eliminate the slave trade, even if some in the middle might have had other ideas.
 
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Morty Vicar

Banned
That may have been true, but the problem is, though, the fact that slavery was re-legalized right after Oglethorpe left, actually disproves your point, and instead proves the one that J.F.P. and I have been making: that the heads of the British government, themselves, had no real overarching desire to eliminate the slave trade, even if some in the middle might have had other ideas.

No my point was that Britain wasn't a uniform entity, some were against slavery, and some for it. Oglethorpe may have been something of an exception at the time, but he was characteristic of a growing number of individuals in influential positions who were against slavery, not just in words but actions. As this movement against slavery grew (in both the United Kingdom and America) the slave owners would be well aware of their agitations.
 
OK, my apologies for not getting back to this earlier; not sure when I'll be able to do a full response, but in the meantime:

It's clear that his point is, now that Britain no longer rules America, that Britain no longer has to take American views in account and is free to pursue a more moral policy. Pretty much the opposite of the interpretation you are implying, which seems to be that that Clarkson was citing the moral example of the revolution as providing a boost to abolitionism.

I implied no such thing. My contention has been simply that British loss in the American Revolution played a key role in the political organization and successes of the abolitionist movement, and that absent that change the slave trade would have lasted longer. Nothing more, nothing less; I make no claim of this as a point of moral shame for Britain, much less moral pride for America. It should really go without saying that any attempt to derive the latter is ridiculous.
 
No my point was that Britain wasn't a uniform entity, some were against slavery, and some for it. Oglethorpe may have been something of an exception at the time, but he was characteristic of a growing number of individuals in influential positions who were against slavery, not just in words but actions.

A very slowly growing number, however. In fact, as has already been pointed out, abolitionism in Britain made little significant progress until after the ARW, Somerset notwithstanding(as far as that's concerned, Mansfield may not have even been terribly concerned about slavery in North America).

As this movement against slavery grew (in both the United Kingdom and America) the slave owners would be well aware of their agitations.

And yet, there is nothing that I've ever found that says that more than a few slave owners were actually aware of abolitionism in Britain proper. And really, the large majority of North American abolitionists at that time had been born in America, and many of them were Patriots at that.

I implied no such thing. My contention has been simply that British loss in the American Revolution played a key role in the political organization and successes of the abolitionist movement, and that absent that change the slave trade would have lasted longer. Nothing more, nothing less; I make no claim of this as a point of moral shame for Britain, much less moral pride for America. It should really go without saying that any attempt to derive the latter is ridiculous.

I can see where you're coming from. (BTW, my apologies for an earlier misunderstanding on my end: in case you caught it, I've since edited it out).
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I'll just contribute another poster's mini-TL on a similar thread I made:

800s - Arab geographer Al-Yaqubi reports that African tribes sell their own people without justification or cause of war. Africans are then exported to other Muslim nation starting an international slave trade.
Middle Ages - Feudalism exists allowing lords in Europe to enslave their own people.
1444 - Portuguese slavers capture 225 people in west Africa to force into labour. The pope allows and promote European slavery of anyone who is not Catholic.
1450 - The Number of Enslaved Africans in Portugal grows to 1,000
1619 - The first slaves were brought to the English colonies by the Dutch.
1650 - There are over a million and a third African slaves from Angola alone alone. Spain introduces slaves to the Canary and Balearic islands.
1663 - British merchants join the African slave trade.
1679 - Hebeas Corpus is not universally ratified in to law, there are some exceptions made.
1688 - Aphra Behn passes away before her novel Oroonoko Or, The Royal Slave could be written.
c1700 - Laws pass that make punishments for bond-servants no different than impressed sailors (they are universally harsh)
18th c. - The triangle trade route was developed.
1743 - John Newton avoids the ferries when visiting some friends and is not pressed into service. He would not go on to become a preacher nor speak out about the horrors of the slave trade.
1765 - Granville Sharp attempts to take an owner to court for assaulting a slave, the owner filed a counter suit that Sharp stole his property (the slave). The case is dismissed because there was no formal agreement that Jonathan Strong was a slave.
1770 - 15,000 slaves reside in England alone. Several thousand more in Scotland. The Methodist movement is suppressed for not being Anglican, the Wesley brothers flee the country, losing a major supporter of abolition.
1771 - James Somersett escaped from his master but was recaptured.
1772 - Granville Sharp attempts to secure the release of Somersett under Hebeas Corpus but fails to do so due to loopholes.

OR

1772 - Granville Sharp secures the release of Somersett under Hebeas Corpus, a landmark case begins where he quotes a case 200 years earlier where Queen Elizabeth said "England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in." He fails his case setting a president in England to permit slavery in statutes.
1776 - Adam Smith states in his book The Wealth of Nations that slave labour is preferable over free labour because it keeps expenses down, thus maximizing profits.
1787 - The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is established but it faces an uphill battle.
1789 - Thomas Clarkson sails to revolutionary France to include abolition in their charter of liberties. They fail to comply. Clarkson's health fails dramatically and he is forced to return to England, he dies on the return voyage before he could recruit a young William Wilberforce to his cause.
1796 - John Graves Simcoe attempts to make Canada the first British colony to abolish slavery, but an armed revolt by plantation owners forces him to back down.
1799 - The French Revolution come to an end and the Revolutionary Wars begin. The focus of parliament is shifted on the growing threat rather than social issues.
1815 - The Revolutionary Wars come to an end and abolitionists head to Vienna to influence the treaty, with the absence of several key figures ITTL, their clauses fail to be added and the politicians there split France up into Orleans, Brittany, Normandy and France so they could never join forces and take over Europe again. English Radicals like William Blake and Thomas Paine say that after the wars, their social justice movements never picked up steam again and despite their petitions, they were forgotten.
1823 - An uprising in slaves in Dutch Guiana sees many deaths, abolitionist John Smith is hanged for his involvement in the rebellion giving abolitionists a bad reputation.
1832 - Jamaica secedes from Great Britain and joins the united states in order to deregulate trade, it was a successful venture. Great Britain increases the slave trade to their other holdings and give incentives to trade with their colonies instead to discourage any more secessions and to try and economically strangle Jamaica.
1840 - The World Antislavery convention had to be held in private for fear of violence against them.
1861 - The South Carolina secession crisis was nearly averted but with the exile of Quakers and Methodist and their diaspora growing ever larger, they pressed the issue and it blew up. The grandson of Charles Wesley wrote to Britain for them to "keep up their good fight". The war rages for about a year, but then popular interest turns and the federal forces stand down. The north sued for a white peace, to many down the line the war is declared inconclusive.
1890 - Zanzibar becomes a British holding, politicians there took advantage of the preexisting slave structure set up by the Muslims and the export of slaves for the colonies skyrocketed.

Some other suggestions from that thread were:

* William Wilberforce being butterflied away
* Britain gains more sugar colonies in war
* Exodus of Quakers and Methodists to the US
 
Again I think American history suffers from an overemphasis of the importance of the US, when from a global perspective, or even from a UK perspective, the USA isn't the only consideration, or even the most important one.

The division of the British Empire into a "First" and "Second" Empire is not an invention of American historians, FWICT; the Wikipedia page I consult sources the Oxford History of the British Empire; Piers Brendon's Decline and Fall of the British Empire covers this as well, beginning with a British Empire that looks doomed, only to reach new heights. Respectfully, I think it's you who is vastly underplaying the importance of the American Colonies at the time of the Revolution -- they really were the bulk of the Empire, the most populated of the possessions, and the blow that their loss to the British Empire represented really cannot be underestimated. The "modern" British Empire as we know it began with their loss, and it is beyond thick to assume that had they not suffered the loss the Empire would have still expanded and evolved as it did OTL.

And yet US slavery would continue for over a century after the American revolutionary war.
<much of this>

This is kind of missing the point; the idea isn't that the American Revolution was secretly about abolitionism, any more than it was secretly about protecting slavery; only that the anti-slavery sentiment that played a role and was agitated by the war belittles any claim that the protection of the institution could be among the causes, particularly one that somehow goes unexpressed as the other known causes.

On this point I disagree also, James Edward Oglethorpe banned slavery in the colony of Georgia, making him deeply unpopular with the settlers in both Georgia and the neighboring Carolinas, whose runaway slaves found refuge in Georgia. Although this ban was lifted after Oglethorpe left, no doubt the settlers kept a close eye on the abolitionists in Parliament thereafter.

The story of Georgia's founding is somewhat more complex that that: reading Christopher Leslie Brown, the invocation of "broad moral principles" on either side of the debate was a rare occurrence. "In the 1730's and 1740's, few participants in the Georgia experiment [colonists or trustees] cared much about the injustices to the enslaved. At the time, there were no abolition societies, no antislavery petitions, and no dedicated propagandists prepared to campaign against slavery in the Americas. Those who participated in the debate on the Georgia plan had a direct interest in the outcome. The Georgia trustees believed slaveholding a danger to the community they wised to create. Yet they would not go so far as to describe slavery as morally wrong, in Gerogia or anywhere else. The would lift the ban in the 1740's [on the importation of slaves -- slavery itself had never actually been outlawed in Georgia] once the Spanish threat from the south seemed less acute, once they believed their goals could be achieved through less stringent measures, once it became clear that both the colonists and Parliament had lost patience with the experiment." (MC, pg 84)

Well, there's this, forex -

I'll do you one better -- when word of the Sommerset case reached the colonies, slaves and freedmen held meetings in New England and New York* to discuss the news; the Governor of New York even clamped down on these meetings. And yet, so far as I can tell, none of this caused any kind of panic among colonists. And yet, for all that, there's no documentary evidence (I know of) of white colonist fear resulting from this decision (and it's not like colonists weren't in the habit of leaving documentary evidence of their fears and outrages on British developments).

What we have here are the white and black colonists having two very different interpretations of the importance of a decision -- as far as the colonial slaveholders are concerned, the decision does not warrant much attention because it only applies to an island 3000 miles away; for the slaves and freemen, it offers hope that their liberty might have legal precedent, and in the more short term offers a haven for some of them to seek it. It almost parallels the divide in Britain itself with how the elites vs the black working class and their antislavery allies saw the case.

*Actually, if I'm not mistaken, this is another hole in the idea that slavery played a major role in the Revolution in the South, which was distinct from that in the North -- I'm fairly sure New York at this time actually held one of the largest slave populations of any of the colonies at this time. (Again, could be mistaken, but that's what I remember.) But either way, it bears remembering that at the time of the Revolution, the existence and role of slavery did little (or at least far, far less than it latter would) to divide the Northern and Southern colonies.
 
OK, my apologies for not getting back to this earlier; not sure when I'll be able to do a full response, but in the meantime:



I implied no such thing. My contention has been simply that British loss in the American Revolution played a key role in the political organization and successes of the abolitionist movement, and that absent that change the slave trade would have lasted longer. Nothing more, nothing less; I make no claim of this as a point of moral shame for Britain, much less moral pride for America. It should really go without saying that any attempt to derive the latter is ridiculous.

Whilst it may be possible to argue the limits of the abolitonist sentiments in britain as a cause of the ARW it seems that any independent assessment of what the books you cite actually says does not in any way support your main contention. The quotes you have included clearly suggest that the only way that the ARW influenced Britain was to remove the impediement within the Empire of the pro slavery southern states.
In this sense the arguement is in no way one of drawing a lesson, at least in regard of this issue..
The main lesson Britain drew from this war was the one implemented in the Durham report of 1867 and had very little to do with slavery.
 
Does the book offer anything more than the "Sommerset scared Southern plantation owners" argument, where our discussion is concerned? Because as often as I've seen that idea brought up, I've seen very little in the way of evidence (as opposed to speculation), and from what I've read about the book, it offers very little as well. This is particularly important when the argument is that plantation owners were concerned a case that explicitly only applied to the British home island, and wasn't even fully settled* by 1775, was somehow an imminent threat to their property and livelihood.

More to the point if THAT were the case you would have expected the revolution to break out in the Carolinas or Georgia not Mass. Also Thomas Jefferson wouldn't have put the slave trade as one of the wrongs the British Empire committed in original draft of Declaration of Independence.
 
Whilst it may be possible to argue the limits of the abolitonist sentiments in britain as a cause of the ARW it seems that any independent assessment of what the books you cite actually says does not in any way support your main contention. The quotes you have included clearly suggest that the only way that the ARW influenced Britain was to remove the impediement within the Empire of the pro slavery southern states.

On the second sentence, I think it manages to be both unduly narrow in interpretation, and dismissive of the conclusion said restriction allows for; as such, I'm not sure how to argue with it, or whether it even serves a purpose. As to the italicized part, I have no idea what you're getting at -- I know I haven't been arguing that Britain's pro-slavery imperial policies helped cause the Revolution, and I don't know anyone else on this thread who has been.

(I mean, suppose if somebody wanted to make the case that "British slave power" or "insufficient abolitionism" provoked the Revolution, one could point to the royal vetoes in Virginia against limiting or banning the importation of slaves. But while that did playe a significantly greater role in Virginian revolt than, say, the Somerset case did, it still doesn't hold water as having really anything to do either way with "abolitionism"; Virginians were primarily concerned with the threat of slave revolts, while the royal authorities were concerned primarily with control of trade policy. So even there, not sure where this comes from.)
 

Pomphis

Banned
A *few* may have. But again, Somerset was hardly at any forefront for the Revolution; in fact, even then, it wasn't all that well-known outside of some circles.

Though, if I look at that quote from the Virginia Gazatte in Post 23, the writer seems to have believed that the readers would know what he was talking about without any explanation beyond the name.
 

Morty Vicar

Banned
A very slowly growing number, however. In fact, as has already been pointed out, abolitionism in Britain made little significant progress until after the ARW, Somerset notwithstanding(as far as that's concerned, Mansfield may not have even been terribly concerned about slavery in North America).

Mansfield was aware of the precedent he was setting, both in Britain and her territories. However the case was limited to a particular set of circumstances. It was important because it set a legal precedent, and highlighted the fact that slavery was not expressly permitted by law. Furthermore here was a significant figure of authority stating that slavery was despicable, I can't imagine he felt differently about slavery in any other part of the World, I think in this case you'd need a citation to make me think otherwise.

The division of the British Empire into a "First" and "Second" Empire is not an invention of American historians, FWICT; the Wikipedia page I consult sources the Oxford History of the British Empire; Piers Brendon's Decline and Fall of the British Empire covers this as well, beginning with a British Empire that looks doomed, only to reach new heights. Respectfully, I think it's you who is vastly underplaying the importance of the American Colonies at the time of the Revolution -- they really were the bulk of the Empire, the most populated of the possessions, and the blow that their loss to the British Empire represented really cannot be underestimated. The "modern" British Empire as we know it began with their loss, and it is beyond thick to assume that had they not suffered the loss the Empire would have still expanded and evolved as it did OTL.

I'll ignore the insult there, and just restate that the American colonies were not the only holdings of the British Empire, and they are not the only international concerns britain has at this point.

This is kind of missing the point; the idea isn't that the American Revolution was secretly about abolitionism, any more than it was secretly about protecting slavery; only that the anti-slavery sentiment that played a role and was agitated by the war belittles any claim that the protection of the institution could be among the causes, particularly one that somehow goes unexpressed as the other known causes.

I am not arguing that the ARW was fought in defence of slavery, although it's an interesting theory. But I do dispute your assertion that the ARW somehow inspired the British Abolitionist movement, for several reasons. The British abolitionist movement predates the ARW by some years, and is thereafter traced through a growing movement, gradually gaining momentum until it's realisation, some time after the ARW. Remember correlation (if 24 years can be called such) is not causation.

The story of Georgia's founding is somewhat more complex that that: reading Christopher Leslie Brown, the invocation of "broad moral principles" on either side of the debate was a rare occurrence. "In the 1730's and 1740's, few participants in the Georgia experiment [colonists or trustees] cared much about the injustices to the enslaved. At the time, there were no abolition societies, no antislavery petitions, and no dedicated propagandists prepared to campaign against slavery in the Americas.

So an actual case of Britain preventing slaves being imported to a State had no bearing on the colonists whatsoever, and yet this colony, who at that time have no abolition societies, somehow inspire a British abolitionist movement after the war of independence? I don't understand the disconnect here.

More to the point if THAT were the case you would have expected the revolution to break out in the Carolinas or Georgia not Mass. Also Thomas Jefferson wouldn't have put the slave trade as one of the wrongs the British Empire committed in original draft of Declaration of Independence.

I think we can put a huge amount of the DoI down to propaganda, and possibly some amount of blame-shifting. However even if you take the DoI as gospel, in Britain the atrocities committed by the revolutionaries against the British and her allies, native Americans and ex-slaves etc, are well known, and there is little sympathy for the rebels, let alone admiration.

Anyway I think it's probably useless to continue this debate further, we seem to be at an impasse, or going round in circles. Perhaps we are both attemtping to assuage some white guilt, or are to some extent biased by nationalist ideals. Or perhaps it's just that history is never quite as black and white as right and wrong, and good and evil.
 
But I do dispute your assertion that the ARW somehow inspired the British Abolitionist movement, for several reasons.

And were I actually making such an assertion, I might care about them. However, I nor anyone else on this thread has claimed that the ARW "inspired" the British abolition movement, only that it created the necessary context for its organization and successes (as opposed to it's sentiments).
 
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