The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) operated from 1839 through the late 1860s, tackling issues such as the apprenticeship system in the West Indies, the Cuban slave trade, American slavery, the safety of fugitive slaves, and the role of the church in the struggle to end slavery. The society became the most influential British abolitionist organization of the nineteenth century as it helped mold British public opinion through a barrage of lectures, advertising and publishing campaigns, economic boycotts, and lobbying efforts.
Prior to the founding of the BFASS, the British anti-slavery movement had secured a series of crucial victories, including the abolition of slavery in England in 1772, the end of the British slave trade in 1807, and the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833. Despite these significant achievements, British antislavery activists continued their struggle when they learned that slaveholders in the British colonies of the West Indies had instituted an apprenticeship system for former slaves that hardly differed from slavery. British abolitionist Joseph Sturge traveled to the West Indies to gather evidence and, with the formation of the Central Negro Emancipation Committee in 1837, he successfully lobbied Parliament to end the apprenticeship system by 1839.
Celebrating their victory, committee members then launched the BFASS on April 17, 1839, in order to fight slavery throughout the world. John Scoble, a dogmatic, unpopular conservative who served as the BFASS ’s secretary from 1839 through 1852, toured Britain along with Sturge that first year to raise support for auxiliary groups. By 1869, over one hundred local groups had emerged. Members of the society tended to be middle-class religious humanitarians, especially Quakers and Nonconformists. They appealed to distinguished aristocrats, scholars, ministers, and the working class to support their struggle and advocated traditional political tactics such as petitioning, voting, and parliamentary lobbying.
Although concern about the apprenticeship system in the West Indies had provided the impetus for the creation of the BFASS, the society quickly focused its efforts on ending slavery in the United States. In 1842, Great Britain and the United States signed the Anglo-American Treaty that required British citizens to return fugitive slaves who had sought refuge with them. The BFASS refused to comply, and many of its members aided fugitives who had escaped to Canada and Britain. In the following year, the society resolved to focus solely on abolishing slavery in America.
In 1844, the Free Church of Scotland sent delegates to the United States to raise money among southern Presbyterians, many of whom were slaveholders. But the purist Garrisonian abolitionists perceived any alliance with slaveholders as potentially corrupting and sinful. They initiated a “Send Back the Money” campaign to pressure the Free Church to return the funds it had raised among southern white Presbyterians. The BFASS joined the successful campaign, proclaiming the “excommunication” of religious slaveholders. In the 1840s, the society feared that the U.S. annexation of Texas would lead to the further extension of slavery and urged the British government to recognize the Republic of Texas on the condition that it abolish slavery.
While BFASS members sought to collaborate with American abolitionists, efforts at transatlantic cooperation were strained from the beginning. In 1840, shortly after the founding of the BFASS, the society invited American abolitionists to attend a World Convention in London. Unbeknownst to British antislavery activists, the American abolitionists movement had divided over the role of women in the antislavery struggle. When American radical William Lloyd Garrison, a champion of pacifism and women’s rights, arrived at the convention with several women delegates, the BFASS refused to seat them on the grounds of “Evangelical custom.” Protesting the exclusion of women, Garrison, Charles Remond, and other American delegates decided to sit in the women’s section behind a curtain in the balcony. The incident generated bitter rivalry between the society and the Garrisonians until the 1850s, when a younger generation filled the membership ranks of the BFASS. Led by Louis Chamerovzow, who had replaced the conservative Scoble as BFASS secretary in 1853, the new generation attempted to heal divisive relations between the society and the Garrisonians by sponsoring another world convention in 1854. That year, the convention received two women delegates; however, their seating resulted only in a modest improvement of the relationship between the BFASS and American abolitionists.
Throughout the 1850s, the society continued to champion the abolition of slavery in the United States. It challenged American churches to support abolition and urged them to deny membership to slaveholders. Moreover, the BFASS advocated a boycott of slave-grown products and greater reliance on Indian cotton. Quaker and BFASS member Anna Richardson led the society’s free-produce movement, and by 1851 helped establish at least thirty stores that carried goods produced exclusively by free labor. While many British women purchased only free-labor cotton, their efforts did not succeed in reducing the imports of American cotton, which tripled between 1840 and 1860. Yet, the free-produce movement had a curious side effect. Through the organization of fund-raising efforts and economic boycotts, women assumed a greater role in the BFASS. As a result, they joined the society in increasing numbers and soon women’s local auxiliaries began to outnumber men.
The activities of the society diminished with the advent of the U.S. Civil War. Some BFASS members voiced support for the secessionist states on the condition that the Confederacy suppress illegal slave trading. Others joined abolitionists George Thompson and F.W.Chesson, who created the London Emancipation Society in 1859 to encourage support for the Union’s cause. Meanwhile, the BFASS succeeded in pressuring the British government to end the illegal Cuban slave trade. In 1862, Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, whereby both parties agreed to patrol and search for slaves on board American and British vessels leaving Cuba. In January 1863, when Abraham Lincoln announced the emancipation of the slaves and the abolition of slavery as one of the Unions war aims, BFASS and Garrisonian abolitionists united for the first time and launched the freedmen’s aid movement. Both groups joined forces to distribute clothing items, religious materials, educational supplies, and financial aid to the newly freed slaves. The BFASS continued to support the former slaves until its demise in the late 1860s.
BFASS played a crucial role in shaping British public opinion of slavery and generating support for abolitionism in the 1840s and 1850s. Through lobbying efforts and public education campaigns, BFASS members succeeded in pressuring Parliament to end the Cuban slave trade and encouraging members of the clergy to view slavery as a sin. Moreover, the society’s economic boycotts and free-produce movement helped usher in a new era of women’s political involvement, in spite of its initial opposition to women. While the society’s numerous and diverse campaigns against slavery stimulated the political activism of many British men and women, BFASS’s greatest weakness was its inability to overcome its differences with the Garrisonians prior to the Civil War.
FURTHER READINGS
Coupland, R. The British Anti-Slavery Movement. London: Thornton Butterworth, Limited, 1933.
Midgley, Clare. Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870. New York: Routledge Press, 1992.
Temperley, Howard. British Antislavery, 1833–1870. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.
Turley, David. The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780–1860. New York: Routledge Press, 1991.
Kristine Boeke
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