Somerset and the Slave Trade

Lately a number of historians have been arguing that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery.  According to this theory, slave holders in the American colonies became worried about a growing anti-slavery movement in England, so they declared independence in order to preserve their peculiar institution.  This idea has been around for a couple decades, but it gained some attention when it was put forward in the book Slave Nation by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen and by Simon Schama in Rough Crossings, both published in 2006.  Since then it’s been accepted rather uncritically by any number of journals, web sites and lesser publications.

It’s the kind of theory that catches on quickly.  It seems to overturn the old notion that the Revolution was fought over high ideals, while it reassures the modern audience that they are more socially enlightened than earlier generations.  However, the theory has a number of flaws.  It exaggerates the strength of the English abolitionist movement; it ignores the emerging abolitionist movement in the colonies, and it underestimates the importance of the slave trade in the English economy.  In particular, it’s partly based on a misunderstanding of the Somerset case of 1772. 

James Somerset was a slave held by an British official named Charles Stewart who was living in Boston.  When Stewart brought Somerset to England, Somerset escaped.  During this time he met some prominent abolitionists, including the lawyer Granville Sharp.  Eventually Stewart located Somerset and had him seized and put on a ship bound for Jamaica, but Somerset’s new friends had a writ of habeas corpus issued before he could be sent back into slavery.

Granville Sharp was hoping to use this case to overturn the York-Talbot decision from 1729 that said, in part, “a slave by coming from the West Indies into Great Britain or Ireland, either with or without his master, does not become free, and … the master may legally compel him to return again to the plantations.”  However, with roughly 15,000 slaves in England at the time the judge, Lord Mansfield, was reluctant to suddenly set them all free.  Instead, he ruled that there was no legal basis for holding Somerset prisoner on board the ship. 

Many people misinterpreted the ruling as having ended slavery in England, and there’s evidence of slaves in the colonies trying to escape to England for this reason.  In fact, it only meant that once in England masters could not compel their slaves to return to the colonies against their will—and even this may not have been enforced.  London newspapers continued to advertise the sale of slaves and post rewards for the capture of runaways.

The British slave ship Brookes

By the 18^th century sugar, cotton and other plantation crops had become a major part of England’s economy.  As a Parliamentary Act stated in 1749, “the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great Britain and necessary for supplying the plantations and colonies thereunto belonging, with a sufficient number of negroes at reasonable rates.”  The abolitionist movement had been growing for some time, but it was no match for powerful financial interests.

At the same time, abolitionism was gaining strength in the colonies as well, and several attempts were made to limit or abolish slavery.  In 1767 the Massachusetts legislature debated a bill to end slavery in the colony, but eventually it was rewritten as a tax on the sale of importation of slaves.  Then in 1771 another bill was proposed to end the importation of slaves entirely, and a similar bill was raised in the Virginia legislature the next year.  Finally in 1773 a group of slaves petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to end the slave trade, release all slaves in the commonwealth and give them land to build village of their own.  

Unfortunately all four bills met the same fate.  They passed the legislatures only to be rejected by the royal governors.  There’s no evidence that Parliament took an active part in vetoing these bills, but the Massachusetts Governor Hutchinson sent a copy of the 1771 bill to England to get the king’s advice.

Neither Massachusetts nor Virginia made any immediate effort to end slavery once they had their independence.  However, the southern states thought the risk great enough that they inserted a clause into the Constitution preventing the federal government from abolishing the slave trade before the year 1808.  This did not prevent Congress from prohibiting U.S. ship from transporting slaves in 1794, and as soon as 1808 came around Congress banned the importation of slaves.

This last act may have been moot as England had already abolished the slave trade in 1807, and British ships were actively enforcing this ban throughout the Atlantic.  A bill to end the slave trade had failed in Parliament in 1805, but the economic importance of slavery had waned as a greater part of England’s wealth was coming from Asia.  The relative influence of wealth and morality could be seen a quarter century later in 1833 when slavery was abolished throughout the English Empire 1833 except in areas controlled by the East India Company.

Of course all this was more than 50 years in the future when the American colonies signed the Declaration of Independence.  At that time the slave trade and colonial plantation wealth were the foundation of the English economy.  Some people may have misinterpreted the Somerset decision as evidence that England was turning against slavery, but no body selling his cotton in English ships would have made that mistake.  With abolitionist sentiments coming out of the northern colonies and even Virginia, no southern slave holder would have thought the best way to preserve slavery lay in severing ties with England.