Not necessarily: there are suggestions that elements of the working classes get quite pissed off by the middle-class interest in antislavery over, say, factory legislation. What the American example might do is persuade the British to extend the franchise lower than they did historically, say to £8 rather than £10, or to replace the old working-class borough freeman franchises with something intended to give representation to the respectable working class (i.e., those who think and act like the middle classes).
I suppose that may be true; it was certainly a problem here in America, up until about 1860.
The thing is, at the moment you appear to be arguing that it's more likely that the South overcomes all the disadvantages of geography and economy to become an industrial powerhouse by the 1830s than it is for the British antipathy to antislavery to become a fully-fledged abolitionist movement. That doesn't seem tenable.
To be fair, I may need to clarify a few things: I did say that the South gaining a significant amount of additional industry compared to OTL was indeed possible, and could present an issue.
I also don't believe that the failure of the Revolution or no Revolution at all would have stopped the abolitionist movement altogether(you and I probably agree on this.); however, considering the OTL circumstances, it does seem likely, sadly, that either scenario would present at least a slight delay in the success of British abolitionism, also depending on other circumstances that follow afterwards.
Except that Mansfield deliberately went out of his way to describe slavery as odious and unsupportable by anything other than positive law, giving institutional recognition to antislavery morality.
That much is true. But he also did not extend his ruling to go beyond Britain's borders as well; had it happened some 20 years or so later, that might be a different story-but in 1772, sadly, the momentum just wasn't there yet. Mansfield no doubt recognized this.
What it shows is how far antislavery attitudes had spread through British society, particularly considering that Mansfield consulted with Blackstone before making the judgement.
It certainly does show that it got the attention of the more enlightened members of the upper class, by then, yes. The same can also be said of those in America circa 1825 as well; but it would be a quarter of a century before it truly started to become mainstream-in Britain's case, it wasn't that much shorter.
Taney chose to use the Dred Scott case as an opportunity to deny black people their rights: Mansfield used Somerset as an opportunity to affirm them.
No disagreement from me in regards to Taney, but I'm not so sure Mansfield was willing to go quite that far; he did affirm the wrongness of slavery, but didn't really go any further than that.
Of course, this is highly inconvenient if you're trying to make the case that British antislavery is a product of the Revolution, leaving the only solution as talking in very limited terms about the scope of the judgement rather than the scope of Mansfield's comments in the hope of playing down the attitudes which they display.
Again, I never said, or intended to imply, even, that British antislavery was entirely a product of the Revolution; in another thread, I even brought up the example of James Oglethorpe, who was one of the founders of Georgia.
You know saying it doesn't make it true, right? I'm sure you fell that Edward Long and Samuel Estwick, two leading British slavery apologists, conceding in the aftermath of the Somerset case that slavery is 'repugnant to the spirit of English laws' doesn't disprove your case, or the first plan for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies being published in 1772 by Maurice Morgann, or Adam Smith calling colonial slave-owners "the refuse of the jails of Europe" in 1759, or Robert Robertson complaining in 1741 that "many Gentlemen of Figure... [insist] that to have any Hand in bringing any of the Human Species into *Bondage* is justly execrable, and that all who partake in the Sweets of *Liberty*, shou'd spare for no Cost to procure the same, as far as possible, for the rest of Mankind every where."
Which does show that the sentiment existed for some time before then, but again, I've never argued otherwise.
Which really begs the question of how much evidence for pre-Revolutionary anti-slavery sentiment you'd require before you change your view that there wasn't a critical mass of sentiment prior to 1775.
Well, considering that the Slave Trade Act wasn't actually passed until 1807, and that slavery as a whole wasn't banned until the mid 1830s, it certainly does strongly indicate that the critical mass of sentiment came sometime after 1775.
Except the first plan to use freed slaves against their masters was proposed by Commodore John Moore against the French in Guadeloupe in 1759. So the roots of the idea are about 20 years earlier than you claim.
Well, okay, didn't know about the Moore incident, but that doesn't really change much in regards to the American Revolution.
It was dramatically more prevalent, even compared to the North- where many states banned free blacks from living or voting. Look into the evidence of Frederick Douglass, Reverend Jeremiah Asher, Reverend Samuel Ringold Ward, William Wells Brown, John Brown, Amanda Smith, or William and Ellen Craft.
It probably helped that, by the 1850s, a substantial portion of British society was fairly sympathetic to African-Americans in general(again, it is true that slavery was seen as bad by most!), and William Brown and Frederick Douglass being abolitionists no doubt gained them rather more respect than they would have gotten otherwise.....but then again, this doesn't mean that racial prejudice was not widespread, merely that it was even lesser than in the Northern U.S.(and far removed from what could be found in the South!)
Did you know Queen Victoria had a black goddaughter?
Which no doubt would have been fairly controversial back in the day, even in the more liberal sections of British society, sad to say. (But it does show that the Queen was fairly progressive in some matters!)
Sure. Here's some quotes from American newspapers in 1859:
Consistently with national honor, there can be but one conclusion of this arrogant pretention of Great Britain, and we are confidant that our Government will never peaceably yield an inch of soil to this shallow, absurd and preposterous claim of a power, who for hundreds of years have pursued the policy of claiming strong and important military and naval stations, girdling the earth with her strongholds, as witness Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore...
[America] will not now, in the prime of manhood; in the plenitude of strength; justified by treaties; sanctified by every principle of right and necessity; permit the invasion of our soil, the violation of treaties, the planting of British Colonies upon AMERICAN SOIL.
"Our Rights and No Compromise... [Palmerston's government are] the hereditary haters of American progress and influence.... when it does come, that conflict must never cease till the last British soldier is driven from the American continent, either North or South of us."
Again, none of this proves your particular contentions about fears regarding Britain playing any major overall role in the slavery debate.....only that it did play a significant role in Manifest Destiny.
In fact, I don't see how you can understand American foreign policy (Oregon, Maine, Texas, anti-slave trade measures, Monroe doctrine etc.) without understanding that they perceive Britain as a threat.
Texas had very little to do with Britain, and rather more with Mexico. You are partly correct about Oregon, at least, but there wasn't much talk about slavery or anti-slavery, as there was the hope of completing Manifest Destiny, one way or the other.
Of course, I never actually said "Britain"- what I said was that they feel "the Union is under continual attack from the forces of monarchy and reaction".
Monarchy? Perhaps so, in the case of Britain themselves. But reaction? I'm sorry, but no, for quite obvious reasons that I need not state, or restate.
Britain is one manifestation of that, but inherent in American exceptionalism is the idea that other countries are trying to bring down "the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government".
And? And?
Sure. Heard of the New York Herald? Circulation of 105,840 copies on 7 November 1860? This is how Douglas Fermer's James Gordon Bennett and the New York Herald describes its views.
[1861]: "He accused the British of having saddled America with the Negro in the first place, but having brought him it appeared the worst evil which Britain could inflict on America would be the ruin of her prosperity by fostering the emancipation movement." (p.63)
[1864]: "With increasing ill-temper, the Herald elaborated its pet theory that the Civil War had been caused by the British aristocracy's jealousy of American prosperity. Pre-war British interest in American abolition societies was evidence, Bennett proclaimed, that the anti-slavery movement was merely a tool of an anarchic British conspiracy to destroy the Union. Yet British slavers had first saddled America with the Negro and now, with typical duplicity, 'perfidious Albion' was doing everything in its power to aid the Confederacy. Herald readers were assured that British gold was the sinister root of all America's troubles." (pp.48-9)
There seems to have generally been one newspaper in each major American city which argued that abolitionism was a British plot to split up the United States: Klees' 1999 study cited as examples of these the Cincinatti Inquirer, the Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, and the Chicago Times.
Sorry, but this isn't *nearly* enough to prove your particular point. I'm not doubting for a moment that there were a fair number of Northern paranoid cranks(perhaps especially people like the Know-Nothings, etc.) who actually believed these rumors,
but you seem to be implying that such beliefs were basically widespread; there is no evidence, in the proper context, to suggest that they were, nor is there any evidence anti-British sentiment played any more than a minor role in the overall slavery debate.
No: in defence of slave ships, active in a trade which the US government had ruled to be piracy fifty years before, just because it's the British trying to crack down on it.
Again, there is no solid evidence that backs up this particular claim, though.
That would be the Lincoln who was elected to restrict the expansion of slavery, not to abolish it, and at his inaugural said explicitly he wasn't there to oppose it? That, in fact, he would retain slavery if it shored up the Union?
Truthfully, you have to understand that, like many other politicians, Lincoln often had to softball his agenda in order to play to moderates; in private, he despised slavery with all of his being, although he did initially hope that he could preserve the Union before getting rid of slavery. (His famous quote in that regard is often taken out of context.)
This is the man whose election is conclusive proof that the North is moving towards abolitionism, despite the fact that many of the people who voted for him just wanted to keep black people from undercutting the white man's wage in the North?
Some, yes, but not many; the situation was rather more complex and nuanced than you seem to realize.
Pretty sure we can: you can't mobilise opinion against another member of the in-group in the way you suggest.
You can, under certain circumstances; look at how Southerners who refused to sign up for the Confederate war effort voluntarily were often treated, and that's if they didn't cross the line and fight for the Union.
In the War of Independence, the colonies appealed to an American identity in opposition to the British: in the Civil War, the Confederacy appealed to a Southern identity in opposition to the North.
Yes, true, but how do you believe that this proves your point?
The slaveowners might try to construct an identity against antislavery Britain and the North, but by definition this is going to be less significant than an American identity built on not being British.
Only the South didn't build it's identity on not being British, but by not being "damn Yankees".
I think I've conclusively proved already that British antislavery attitudes are far stronger than you claim,
Unfortunately, Rob, not quite.
so the main thing to do is contradict the idea that abolitionism results from the War of Independence.
Although, as I pointed before, I never once claimed that British abolitionism was borne from the Revolutionary War; merely, that, for various reasons, at least some of them related to the loss of the Colonies, that it did enjoy a significant much-needed boost post-1780.
Firstly, the link between the language of the rebels and antislavery is far weaker than you claim: for generation after generation, the Americans see no inherent contradiction between "all men are created equal" and applying property qualifications to black voters, banning free blacks from settling in states, et cetera ad nauseam.
Many didn't, yes: the sad truth is, the Revolution, great phenomenon that it was, did not exactly change attitudes overnight, and many of these political realities were difficult to overcome(in fact, even some white men couldn't vote until the Jackson era), even if many of the Founders *did* desire to ultimately allow all free men to vote.
However, the British belief that slavery is fundamentally immoral requires a far smaller push to turn it into abolitionism:
*Somewhat* smaller, yes, I'll gladly grant you that. *far* smaller its really pushing it, though.
just the belief that it's right to impose British moral customs on the dependent plantation societies in the Americas.
I'm afraid that's not accurate.
This attitude is far more likely to emerge if Britain establishes its suzerainty in the Americas than if it loses the war.
If we grant your assumption that the language does count, then we have two scenarios. In the first, if slavery is America's "original sin" (Madison), and the American rebels lose the war in large part because the British free slaves,
Which wasn't at all likely to happen, seeing as genuine abolitionism had not yet hit critical mass at that point in time, and that Loyalists only freed slaves(and not all that many! It actually seems possible, to me at least that the Patriots might have freed more overall, though I may be mistaken.) in many cases(such as with Lord Dunmore) to provide additional fighting forces.
why wouldn't former rebels throw themselves into the antislavery cause with far more vigour than they did historically after God has given a clear judgement against it?
The problem with this argument, however, is that, as I'd pointed out earlier, many people in Great Britain who *did* sympathize with the Patriots, saw their victory as a victory for the ideals of the Enlightenment, which many abolitionists took advantage of.
In the second, if the constitutional question is settled peacefully, what other significant causes do potential rebels have to campaign for than the abolition of slavery?
It depends on the scenario. For example, are the colonies still unfairly taxed? Do they not enjoy adequate representation?
How much more effective would those antislavery advocates be if they could communicate and collaborate freely with British abolitionists?
Distance would be a problem, though, as well as local laws in the Southern colonies that might hinder abolitionist publications, etc.
How many more people might Garrison have won over if he didn't have to call for the end of the Union in order to free the slaves?
Who knows? Assuming William Garrison isn't butterflied, it really would depend on the situation that developed after the war.
Bottom line seems to be that.....you're too wedded to your interpretation of how abolitionism grew to consider that similar results might have been obtained in a different way.
As I pointed out earlier, I do recognize that the abolitionist movement was around for quite a while beforehand, and I don't deny that, with the right PODs, there are at least a few different avenues that could have been quite plausibly taken. But we cannot deny that, IOTL, more than a few in Britain, particularly many who'd outright sympathized with the Patriots in North America, saw a bright future for the Enlightenment post 1780; and the abolitionists of the day took that sentiment and ran with it, eventually winning over enough of the public to see their noble aims come to full fruition.
But, to be honest, and I mean no offense, I'm afraid your perspective does seem to be a tad limited in scope, based on what I've read here.