Another Colonial Abolitionist

Earlier this year, I wrote of John Laurens and his efforts to speak out against slavery. Tamera Kraft wrote about abolition in early America, and then Roseanna White shared how Georgia was first seen as opportunity to show charity to London's poor. While researching on the roots of slavery in our country for my new release, The Rebel Bride (a Civil War story, part of Daughters of the Mayflower), I discovered murmurs that the South, despite stereotypes to the contrary, was actually at one time opposed to slavery, while it was New England merchants and ship owners who saw the trade as most lucrative. (I think my personal writing brand should be, "Exploring the Contradictions of History" ...)

Statue of Oglethorpe in Augusta, Georgia

Further digging revealed that James Edward Oglethorpe, founder and trustee of the colony of Georgia, not only envisioned using the land and its resources to extend help to the less fortunate in England, while encouraging industry and trade (a somewhat brilliant idea, even if it failed in execution), but was stridently antislavery in the process. It's remarkable that together with the other Georgia Trustees he managed, at least at first, to ban slavery in the colony--and to promote fair trade with the native peoples.

Shortly after his departure for England, however, in 1744, the other trustees caved to demands to legalize slavery. Oglethorpe remained outspoken against slavery for the rest of his life, and also argued on behalf of the colonies during the American Revolution.

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For more reading:

• James Edward Oglethorpe at the Oglethorpe University site
• James Oglethorpe at Wikipedia
• Slavery in Colonial Georgia
• Why Georgia Was Founded as an Antislavery Territory

Colonial Abolitionist John Laurens

A miniature of Laurens by Charles Wilson Peale

The popularity of the musical Hamilton has brought some refreshing familiarity with the colonial era and some of its more obscure inhabitants to general society in the past couple of years. One such figure is John Laurens, son of Henry Laurens, South Carolina planter and first president of the Continental Congress. (Also later a prisoner in the Tower of London.)

Like many planters’ sons, John went overseas for his education. While there, he married Martha Manning, the daughter of one of his father’s business associates—but by his own admission, out of “pity,” to save her reputation and the legitimacy of their child, which Martha was already expecting. Because of the outbreak of the American Revolution, he left Martha in England shortly thereafter and threw himself into the war effort, where he distinguished himself as brave to the point of recklessness, won the approval of George Washington, and found immediate friendships with Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette.

The Laurens family cemetery, Berkeley County, SC

It was in 1779, however, when the British had just launched the Southern Campaign, that John Laurens’s character as a political and social maverick truly came to the fore. He argued with his father that after the fall of Savannah, Georgia, Charles Towne could be most effectively defended if the Continental Army would only enlist blacks. Henry Laurens had claimed to be in favor of abolition, despite making much of his fortune from slave trading and growing rice, and even went so far as to agree to give John forty of his enslaved men to form the core of a black regiment, with the promise of freedom at the end of the war if they served faithfully—a move that would have caused John to effectively forfeit his own inheritance. The idea was met with much resistance from other South Carolina planters and political leaders. Henry Laurens, feeling the pinch of that opposition from his own peers, and doubtless feeling caught between what he saw as reality vs. idealism, responded to his son with what basically amounted to, This will never be agreed to; sit down and stop rocking the boat, because you don’t understand the reality of our times and culture. John tried three different times to bring the measure before the South Carolina legislature, only to have it refused every time—and in May 1780, Charleston did indeed fall and remained under British rule until December 1782.

Blue hyacinth marking the grave of John Laurens

In August, during the last year of British occupation, John Laurens met an early death, the result of his famed recklessness in battle. He was buried on the banks of the Cooper River, beside family at Mepkin Plantation, now known as Mepkin Abbey. Though John’s vision died with him, many feel that such forward-thinking suggestions, and his insistence that enslaved Africans were indeed persons of worth and potential equal to any of European descent, set the stage for later abolitionist movements. His attempt to see blacks armed in the defense of our country, and later freed, definitely foreshadowed the debates of the Civil War era. Many have argued that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was merely a strategical military move and not in the best interest of enslaved Negroes in general, but by the end of the Civil War, even the Confederates had reluctantly agreed to offer freedom to enslaved black men in exchange for military service—but too late to save the Confederacy. The parallels, however, are fascinating.

Abolitionism in Colonial America

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Most people think abolitionism didn't really come to be until the early 1800, but abolitionist views in America started almost as early as slavery in America.

The first Africans that came to America, according to some historians, were sold to Jamestown colonists in 1619 as indentured servants although some say there were already Africans there. The twenty men had been stolen from a Portuguese slave ship and were allowed land and freedom when there period of service was done, but by the 1630s, some colonists were keeping African servants for life. John Punch, in 1640, was the first documented indentured for life servant. In 1662, the law recognized slavery and instituted statutes that any children born would follow the status of their mother making it so children could be born slaves.

The first dispute against this practice was that Christians could not own their brothers in Christ. If a slave was baptized in the faith, he had to be freed. In 1667, the General Assembly outlawed freedom by baptism. By 1705, an array of slave codes were enacted, and half of the labor force in Virginia. In the 1620s, the Dutch West India Company introduced slavery to New England, and be 1700, slavery was established as an institution there as well.

Even though slavery was being established in the colonies, there was a movement growing to end the practice. Throughout the 17th century, many evangelicals and Quakers came out against slavery.  As early as 1688, four Quakers in Germantown signed a protest against the practice of slavery and made their case that the practice was not Christian and against Biblical precepts. In the 1730s and 1740s, during the Great Awakening, preachers decried owning slaves as sin.

During the American Revolution, Moravian and Quaker preachers convinced over a thousand slave owners to free their slaves. The newly formed states debated whether to allow slavery to continue. It was finally decided to outlaw the slave trade within twenty years and allow each state to decide for itself. The economy in the South was also encouraging freedom for slaves. Planters were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco to mixed-crop cultivation and needed fewer workers.

After the American Revolution, northern states gradually outlawed slavery. In 1808, the United States criminalized the slave trade and outlawed any new slaves being brought to America. If it hadn't been for Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent in 1794, slavery may have only been a footnote in history. The cotton gin overnight made the practice of slavery profitable. We'll never know if the invention had been delayed twenty years, if that would have ended slavery. Either way, it didn't end abolitionism. The abolitionist movement that started in Colonial times would continue to grow until a war forced the end of slavery in the United States.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and was a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest. Her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.