American Slavery - The Free Labour Movement
Dublin Core
Title
American Slavery - The Free Labour Movement
Subject
Description of Henry Highland Garnet's visit to England and lecture on free produce
Description
It is already known to our readers -- for we have repeatedly brought the fact under their consideration -- that a movement is on foot in this country to undermine the institution of American slavery, by withdrawing, as far as may be, its foundation and support -- the consumption of its products -- its cotton, and sugar, and race -- raised by the enforced and unrequited toil of the negro. With this view tracts have been circulated making known to housekeepers what countries and colonies produce their goods by slave labour, and what by free labour -- that, in making their purchases, they may choose the free in preference to the slave -- may prefer, for instance, the sugars and coffees of the British West Indies to those of Cuba or the Brazils, the rice of Patras or Java to that of Carolina, the cocoa of Trinidad or Grenada to that of Brazil. But the friends of the free-labour movement have chiefly endeavoured to promote the cultivation and supply of cotton by voluntary and remunerated industry, as the most effectual means of competing with the American slaveholder, and wounding him to the quick. There are great difficulties in the way of this enterprise; but they are not insurmountable, and already some wholesale mercantile houses have placed themselves in a condition to supply free-labour goods to retail tradesmen. Moist sugar, coffee, and rice, the produce of voluntary labour, may be obtained from any wholesale house; loaf sugar, from Stantin & Fry, London; prints for ladies' dresses, Crewdson's fine shirtings, Morris's white and grey calicoes, coloured glazed linings, sewing cottons, tapes, &c., from J.F. Browne & Co., Manchester; white and grey calicoes, knitting cottons, &c., from Barrow & Satterthwaite, Lancaster; hosiery, from J. & R. Morley, Wood-street, Cheapside, London; Strutt's three-thread knitting cottons, from Burtenshaw & Gaude, London. In Newcastle, Richardson & Coxon and Mr. Charles Bragg, and in Gateshead Mr. F. Clark, drapers, keep free-labour goods; and other tradesmen will doubtless also procure them -- and the more readily if their fair customers ask for them.
To induce our countrywomen on whom the success of this movement mainly (we might say altogether) depends, to make this request -- to desire the shopkeeper to serve them with goods that have been freely procured for market wages, in preference to those the slaveholder has raised by the labour of his bondsmen -- not only, as we have already stated, has the press been set in motion, but MR. HIGHLAND GARNET, a coloured gentleman, of pure African descent, born in slavery, but now happily emancipated, has been induced to visit this country, and appeal from the platform for sympathy and support. His arrival in this country was announced in a previous number of the Gateshead Observer, and we have not to report his first appearance before a public meeting. This was held on Monday evening, the 16th inst., in the Weslyan school-room, Gateshead--the most spacious apartment in the borough, yet crowded from end to end. A hymn had been sung, prayer was offered up by the Rev. Mr. RATTRAY, of Swalwell, and the Rev. T.K. ANDERSON, Presbyterian minister, was called upon to take the chair.
Mr. GARNET was most kindly and cordially received when he rose to address the meeting. After a few words of introduction, he stated that he appeared before an English audience on behalf of an oppressed and injured race on the continents of America and Africa, and of countless numbers on the islands of the ocean, who lifted up their fettered hands to Heaven, and prayed for liberty. He was there as their advocate, not only because he was of the same race, every drop of blood in his veins being African; but also because he was a man. (Applause.) Mr. Garnet read a letter -- one of the last letters ever written by John Wesley -- which was on the subject of slavery, and was addressed to William Wilberforce, animating him to renewed zeal and courage in his philanthropic enterprise, and stigmatizing American as the worst form of slavery which had ever existed under the sun. The institution thus justly described by Mr. Wesley had now three millions of victims; or, in other words, there were as many human beings held in bondage in the United States as there were inhabitants -- men, women, and children -- in all Scotland. (Sensation.) And the physical horrors of slavery -- on which it was not his intention to dwell -- were not its worst and most appalling consequences. Its moral effects were still more fearful and lamentable. Yet of these the slaveholder was accustomed to make his boast. When he had blotted out from his victim the natural, inborn love of liberty; when he had extinguished within him all those high and holy aspirations and affections which gave dignity to human nature; then, with his foot upon the neck of his prostrate slave, he exulted in his work, and proudly proclaimed that the crouching and abject serf was -- CONTENT! (Hear, hear.) But, as a class, they were not content. If they were, how came it that thousands of them fled the house of bondage? The slaveholder bitterly complained of the loss of his property--he was angry that they sought and found an asylum in Canada -- that, flying from the shadow of the Republic, they took refuge under the shelter of the English Monarchy. (Applause.) But what would have become of the United States, if the forty thousand negroes now in Canada had ben retained in bonds? Canada, in fact, was the safety valve of American Slavery -- the protection of the Republic from a destructive explosion. Thither it was that the aspiring negro, whose resolve was liberty or death, directed his fugitive feet; and woe to the United States if no such asylum existed for the mounting and untameable spirits of his (Mr. Garnet's) race! (Applause.) Virginia and Maryland, Mr. Garnet stated, were states whose chief exports were slaves; and the average duration of an exported negro's life did not exceed from five to seven years. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Garnet exhibited one of the whips wielded by the drivers-- a whip, he said, which had frequently been used in lashing men and women. He also produced the chains imposed upon the necks and limbs of the slaves. But, he said, for these he was indebted, not to America, but to England. Yes! Birmingham was the place in which the shackles were forged which the manstealer placed upon his prey. (Sensation.) But let the forgers beware! Lord Brougham, in. 1840, obtained a law which made it felony to aid and abet the Slave Trade; and the men who made these chains, and who were well known, might be transported. (Applause.) While America built the fleetest vessels in the world -- the Baltimore clippers -- to waft the poor negro from slavery, Portugal and Spain supplied the crews, and England wove the fabrics that were given in exchange for the captive African, and forged his chains. (Hear, hear.) A rude song, said to be the composition of a slave, was frequently sung in the United States on the occasion of processions of the captured gangs. He (Mr. Garnet) had no pretensions to be considered a vocalist, but h would sing the words:--
See these poor souls from Africa
Transported to America.
We are stolen, and sold to Georgia:
Will you go along with me?
We are stolen, and sold to Georgia:
Come sound the jubilee!
See wives and husbands sold apart:
Their children's screams will break my heart.
There's a better day a-coming:
Will you go along with me:
There's a better day a-coming:
Go sound the jubilee!
O, gracious Lord! when shall it be
That we poor souls shall all be free?
Lord, break them slavery powers:
Will you go along with me?
Lord, break them slavery powers:
Go sound the jubilee!
Dear Lord! dear Lord! when slavery'll cease,
Then we poor souls will have our peace.
There's a better day a-coming:
Will you go along with me?
There's a better day a-coming:
Go sound the jubilee!
(These simple lines, set to a plaintive air, produced a marked impression on the meeting.) Mr. Garnet proceeded to say, that the only way in which Britain could, legitimately assist in the emancipation of the American slave, was by argument; and the most powerful argument would be the discontinuance, as far as possible, of the consumption of slave-labour products. A former generation gave up, for the sake of the negro, the use of slave-grown sugar; and this was done when free labour sugar was not to be had. A less sacrifice was now demanded of the British public. It was simply asked of them to prefer free-labour to slave-labour sugar, coffee, cotton, rice, &c. This he believed they would many of them do. He had been encouraged at Frankfort, while visiting that city as a delegate to the Peace Congress, by the request of the chief magistrate that an anti-slavery meeting should be held. This suggestion was carried out, and it was resolved that free-labour stores should be established in Germany. Mr. Garnet exhibited cottons and cotton prints the products of free labour, now on sale in Newcastle, Gateshead, and elsewhere. There were British colonies, he said, which could produce cotton with even more advantage than the United States; and he trusted that every encouragement would be given by Britons to this branch of British industry. (Applause.) Mr. G., of whose address we give but a bare outline, resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, -- We find that we have omitted to allude to one of the dark features of American slavery, presented by Mr. Garnet the law by which the negro child is bound to follow the fortunes, not of its father, but of its mother. If the mother was born free, so was the child. The motives of the lawmaker was obvious. If, the father being free, the child was free also, the licentious slaveholder would lose much "property." It was therefore decreed that the child must be a slave, if its mother was a slave; and hence there were many men and women in bondage who were as fair as any of the ladies and gentlemen whom he had the honour of addressing. In illustration of this portion of his lecture, Mr. Garnet exhibited several daguerrotype portraits of fugitive slave-girls, "guiltless of a skin not coloured like our own;" yet all the Saxon blood that circles in their vein does not atone, in the eye of the American, for the slight remaining taint of the African.
At the close of the meeting, a collection was made in aid of its object; and thanks having been voted to Mr. Anderson, and to the trustees for the use of the room, a benediction was pronounced and the proceedings closed.
To induce our countrywomen on whom the success of this movement mainly (we might say altogether) depends, to make this request -- to desire the shopkeeper to serve them with goods that have been freely procured for market wages, in preference to those the slaveholder has raised by the labour of his bondsmen -- not only, as we have already stated, has the press been set in motion, but MR. HIGHLAND GARNET, a coloured gentleman, of pure African descent, born in slavery, but now happily emancipated, has been induced to visit this country, and appeal from the platform for sympathy and support. His arrival in this country was announced in a previous number of the Gateshead Observer, and we have not to report his first appearance before a public meeting. This was held on Monday evening, the 16th inst., in the Weslyan school-room, Gateshead--the most spacious apartment in the borough, yet crowded from end to end. A hymn had been sung, prayer was offered up by the Rev. Mr. RATTRAY, of Swalwell, and the Rev. T.K. ANDERSON, Presbyterian minister, was called upon to take the chair.
Mr. GARNET was most kindly and cordially received when he rose to address the meeting. After a few words of introduction, he stated that he appeared before an English audience on behalf of an oppressed and injured race on the continents of America and Africa, and of countless numbers on the islands of the ocean, who lifted up their fettered hands to Heaven, and prayed for liberty. He was there as their advocate, not only because he was of the same race, every drop of blood in his veins being African; but also because he was a man. (Applause.) Mr. Garnet read a letter -- one of the last letters ever written by John Wesley -- which was on the subject of slavery, and was addressed to William Wilberforce, animating him to renewed zeal and courage in his philanthropic enterprise, and stigmatizing American as the worst form of slavery which had ever existed under the sun. The institution thus justly described by Mr. Wesley had now three millions of victims; or, in other words, there were as many human beings held in bondage in the United States as there were inhabitants -- men, women, and children -- in all Scotland. (Sensation.) And the physical horrors of slavery -- on which it was not his intention to dwell -- were not its worst and most appalling consequences. Its moral effects were still more fearful and lamentable. Yet of these the slaveholder was accustomed to make his boast. When he had blotted out from his victim the natural, inborn love of liberty; when he had extinguished within him all those high and holy aspirations and affections which gave dignity to human nature; then, with his foot upon the neck of his prostrate slave, he exulted in his work, and proudly proclaimed that the crouching and abject serf was -- CONTENT! (Hear, hear.) But, as a class, they were not content. If they were, how came it that thousands of them fled the house of bondage? The slaveholder bitterly complained of the loss of his property--he was angry that they sought and found an asylum in Canada -- that, flying from the shadow of the Republic, they took refuge under the shelter of the English Monarchy. (Applause.) But what would have become of the United States, if the forty thousand negroes now in Canada had ben retained in bonds? Canada, in fact, was the safety valve of American Slavery -- the protection of the Republic from a destructive explosion. Thither it was that the aspiring negro, whose resolve was liberty or death, directed his fugitive feet; and woe to the United States if no such asylum existed for the mounting and untameable spirits of his (Mr. Garnet's) race! (Applause.) Virginia and Maryland, Mr. Garnet stated, were states whose chief exports were slaves; and the average duration of an exported negro's life did not exceed from five to seven years. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Garnet exhibited one of the whips wielded by the drivers-- a whip, he said, which had frequently been used in lashing men and women. He also produced the chains imposed upon the necks and limbs of the slaves. But, he said, for these he was indebted, not to America, but to England. Yes! Birmingham was the place in which the shackles were forged which the manstealer placed upon his prey. (Sensation.) But let the forgers beware! Lord Brougham, in. 1840, obtained a law which made it felony to aid and abet the Slave Trade; and the men who made these chains, and who were well known, might be transported. (Applause.) While America built the fleetest vessels in the world -- the Baltimore clippers -- to waft the poor negro from slavery, Portugal and Spain supplied the crews, and England wove the fabrics that were given in exchange for the captive African, and forged his chains. (Hear, hear.) A rude song, said to be the composition of a slave, was frequently sung in the United States on the occasion of processions of the captured gangs. He (Mr. Garnet) had no pretensions to be considered a vocalist, but h would sing the words:--
See these poor souls from Africa
Transported to America.
We are stolen, and sold to Georgia:
Will you go along with me?
We are stolen, and sold to Georgia:
Come sound the jubilee!
See wives and husbands sold apart:
Their children's screams will break my heart.
There's a better day a-coming:
Will you go along with me:
There's a better day a-coming:
Go sound the jubilee!
O, gracious Lord! when shall it be
That we poor souls shall all be free?
Lord, break them slavery powers:
Will you go along with me?
Lord, break them slavery powers:
Go sound the jubilee!
Dear Lord! dear Lord! when slavery'll cease,
Then we poor souls will have our peace.
There's a better day a-coming:
Will you go along with me?
There's a better day a-coming:
Go sound the jubilee!
(These simple lines, set to a plaintive air, produced a marked impression on the meeting.) Mr. Garnet proceeded to say, that the only way in which Britain could, legitimately assist in the emancipation of the American slave, was by argument; and the most powerful argument would be the discontinuance, as far as possible, of the consumption of slave-labour products. A former generation gave up, for the sake of the negro, the use of slave-grown sugar; and this was done when free labour sugar was not to be had. A less sacrifice was now demanded of the British public. It was simply asked of them to prefer free-labour to slave-labour sugar, coffee, cotton, rice, &c. This he believed they would many of them do. He had been encouraged at Frankfort, while visiting that city as a delegate to the Peace Congress, by the request of the chief magistrate that an anti-slavery meeting should be held. This suggestion was carried out, and it was resolved that free-labour stores should be established in Germany. Mr. Garnet exhibited cottons and cotton prints the products of free labour, now on sale in Newcastle, Gateshead, and elsewhere. There were British colonies, he said, which could produce cotton with even more advantage than the United States; and he trusted that every encouragement would be given by Britons to this branch of British industry. (Applause.) Mr. G., of whose address we give but a bare outline, resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, -- We find that we have omitted to allude to one of the dark features of American slavery, presented by Mr. Garnet the law by which the negro child is bound to follow the fortunes, not of its father, but of its mother. If the mother was born free, so was the child. The motives of the lawmaker was obvious. If, the father being free, the child was free also, the licentious slaveholder would lose much "property." It was therefore decreed that the child must be a slave, if its mother was a slave; and hence there were many men and women in bondage who were as fair as any of the ladies and gentlemen whom he had the honour of addressing. In illustration of this portion of his lecture, Mr. Garnet exhibited several daguerrotype portraits of fugitive slave-girls, "guiltless of a skin not coloured like our own;" yet all the Saxon blood that circles in their vein does not atone, in the eye of the American, for the slight remaining taint of the African.
At the close of the meeting, a collection was made in aid of its object; and thanks having been voted to Mr. Anderson, and to the trustees for the use of the room, a benediction was pronounced and the proceedings closed.
Creator
Henry Highland Garnet
Source
Anti-Slavery Reporter
Date
10.01.1850
Collection
Citation
Henry Highland Garnet, “American Slavery - The Free Labour Movement,” No Stain of Tears and Blood, accessed October 22, 2026, https://productsoffreelabor.com/items/show/72.
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