By Iain Whyte

This is the third in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

In the various commemorative items produced in 2008 to mark the bi-centenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade, the names and portraits of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton appeared frequently and less so those of the formerly enslaved such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho.  But one name almost universally absent was that of Zachary Macaulay. Better known as the father of Lord Thomas Macaulay, the historian and politician, Zachary played an invaluable role both in the Parliamentary campaign against the trade, and later plantation slavery in the British Empire, and in galvanising public opinion through local committees. A shy and in many ways inhibited man, he never made a speech, but his first hand experience in Jamaica and along the Sierra Leone river enabled those in Parliament to speak with authority, and above all the research and writing he did in the 1820s to expose the reality of slavery, provided ammunition against the powerful attempts to shore up the profitable system. This was most marked in his founding in 1825, and editorship throughout the vital campaigning years, of the Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, a magazine that survives to this day under the auspices of the charity and campaigning group Anti-Slavery International.

Macaulay was born the son of a Church of Scotland minister in a highland manse in Inverary in North West Scotland. After his father  moved to a parish in Cardross, some miles west of Glasgow, the young Macaulay was sent to work in a counting house in the city. In 1778 at the age of fifteen he was forced by some serious misdemeanour  to flee to Jamaica, the largest slave island in the West Indies, where, through a contact of his father, he found a job as a ‘book-keeper’ (a polite term for overseer of enslaved people).

At first he was appalled at the conditions, but soon accommodated  himself to the brutal cruelty and even (as he later confessed)  laughed at it. A serious, near fatal illness made him determined to return to Britain, but that was impossible until 1787. His parents had died and his older sister had married a wealthy landowner from Rutland, Thomas Babington, who was a close friend of William Wilberforce and a keen abolitionist. Zachary then found a temporary home with the Babingtons in Rothley.

Wilberforce and Babington were involved in the Sierra Leone Company, an experimental scheme to settle formerly enslaved African Americans in a colony established around the new settlement of Freetown on the Sierra Leone river, a major route for the slave trade. It was arranged that Zachary should go out there in 1792 and for the next seven years he served as Assistant Governor and then Governor. He had to contend with multiple problems – the frustrations of the settlers, the hostility of surrounding chiefs and tribes, dependence for supplies on slave traders, and an invasion of the colony by the French navy. However it gave him more firsthand experience that the abolitionists were able to use in the Parliamentary Enquiry Into the Slave Trade in 1799. [1]

Zachary in the meantime married a Quaker teacher from Bristol and they settled in London as part of a group of evangelical Anglican abolitionists known as the ‘Clapham Sect.’  He was employed as Secretary of the Sierra Leone Company and at the same time edited The Christian Observer, giving him vital experience in journalism. The Observer’s purpose was  to counter ‘doctrines subversive of all morality’ and this certainly included the justification of the slave trade and slaver.[2] In 1805 the journal published a long account entitled ‘The Horrors of West Indian Slavery’ with descriptions of the most horrific punishments. The following year much information was laid out on conditions endured by those shackled on the ships.[3] All this was to be for Macaulay a pattern for the future. In 1823 a cautious approach of the British Government to ‘reform’ or ‘mitigate’ the system was supported by the newly founded Campaign for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Twelve days before the launch the editor of the Imperial Magazine received a request for ‘an opportunity of personal communication’ with the author of an ‘excellent paper’ on West Indian slavery in the the magazine. The request was from Zachary Macaulay.[4]

At the same time an anonymous pamphlet was published in London with the copious title Negro Slavery or A View of the Most Prominent Features of that State of Society as it exists in the United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies Especially in Jamaica [5]. It drew on extensive research of first hand accounts in America and personal experience in Jamaica. The author deliberately masked the authorship since he felt that this might prejudice readers but Henry Brougham, the former Edinburgh lawyer, revealed in the House of Commons in May 1823 that it was in fact Zachary Macaulay.[6]

Macaulay’s prodigious research produced two pamphlets in 1823 and 1824 on the advantages of using East India sugar supposedly produced by free labour.    Again they had no author attributed to them but the style was clearly Macaulay’s. The pamphlets challenged the privileged position of the West Indian planters whose sugar production was subsidised by Britain, whereas with no subsidies the fertile soil of Bengal would be many times more productive.[7]

Another pamphlet, The Slave Colonies of Great Britain or A Picture of Slavery Drawn by the Colonists Themselves used local West Indian sources which was to be a standard feature in the Anti-Slavery Reporter. It focussed on what the colonists reported about themselves and the system and it was their evidence that was held up to the light of day. Macaulay concentrated on Jamaica, Barbados and Demara and it was the reports of the trials against supposed ‘insurgents’ that gave him excellent ammunition. What he described as ‘the most ludicrous specimen of colonial regulation’ were the prescribed penalties of thirty nine lashes by the cart-whip or cat of nine tails imposed on enslaved people who swore, moved faster than a walk, or ill-treated a horse or mule. He invited the audience to transpose this law to England. At the same time he claimed ‘it is instructive to compare the total immunity which has attended the insurrection of the whites with the massacres which follow the insurrection of the blacks.’[8]

All this pamphleteering and the research behind it was ideal preparation for the launch of the Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter in June 1825. In the first edition Macaulay spelt out its aims. These were to correct misinformation about the recently formed anti-slavery society, to strengthen the abolition cause, and to win support for it by providing firsthand information about the reality of conditions in the colonies. The price, between one and two pence a copy, made it widely affordable. It was commended to ’the blessing of God and to the favourable acceptance of all who wishes to deliver their country from the guilt of supporting that system of oppression and wrong, which is the disgrace and curse of so many of the colonial dependancies of Great Britain.’  For a man whose profile in public was reticent and who never made a speech, he nailed his colours firmly to the mast in print.[9]

In the late 1820s there were three main themes – reports taken from Government Gazettes and Colonial newspapers, selected to highlight the reality of slavery; specific cases of cruelty taken from the court records, a focus on certain islands and colonies indicating the lack of progress towards ‘mitigation’ of slavery; and the activities and proceedings of anti-slavery societies throughout Britain, with particular mention of those in Scotland.

In April 1829 the Reporter carried an account of the Dispatches between the rather ineffective Colonial Secretary, William Huskisson, and the Governor of the Bahamas, not by any means the most notorious part of the Caribbean for tales of cruelty. Possibly because of this Macaulay cited a horrific case of a couple, Henry and Helen Moss, who had flogged their female slave to death the previous year. It enabled him not only to expose the violence of the crime but also to contrast this with the totally inadequate protection in law for enslaved people in the Caribbean. The grand jury set up on the islands turned down a murder charge and gave the Mosses a fine and a mild jail sentence which itself led to petitions to the Governor from many whites calling for these penalties to be rescinded.[10]

A case extensively covered in the Reporter the following year involved a prominent Anglican clergyman in Jamaica, Rev. George Bridges. Bridges had long been an enthusiastic supporter of plantation slavery and made many friends among the planters and the West Indian party in the UK Parliament, advising them to expel many of the missionaries whom he saw as undermining the slave system. Bridge’s cook, Kitty, had prepared food in error for a guest of Bridges who had cancelled a dinner appointment and in anger he stripped her naked and gave her a brutal flogging. With great courage she had sought redress from the magistrates but the case was dismissed on the spurious grounds of no white witnesses being present on the occasion. Once again the source was an exchange of letters between the new Colonial Secretary Sir George Murray, a fellow Scot, and the Governor of Jamaica. Macaulay knew well that the familiar practice of punishment on a female naked body exercised particular horror in the sensibilities of Victorian Britain.[11] From time to time the Reporter would simply transcribe advertisements in The Royal Gazette of Jamaica for enslaved people who had attempted to liberate themselves on the island and could be identified by a ‘missing’ ear or limb, by branding on the shoulders or breasts, or by the ridge marks on their backs – an easy sign for their pursuers but also an indication to his readers that this was a ‘vile system’ that should not ‘pollute any territory subject to the British crown.’ After one such description he pledged ‘we will not cease to call the attention of our countrymen to these abominations, so long as they are suffered to exist.’[12]

In the first year of the Reporter Zachary Macaulay brought the attention of readers of the Reporter and Parliamentarians to an area well outside the Caribbean but on which the spotlight had not yet focussed. His great grandson wrote that ‘as early as 1825, Zachary’s lynx eye had brought to light the Mauritius scandal.’[13] Britain had acquired the island from France through the Treaty of Paris and had inherited an even more vicious system of slavery there. In a three-page account in August the Reporter claimed that Mauritius was ‘characterised by a cruelty which very far exceeds that of our Western Colonies.’ [14]

Thomas Fowell Buxton raised the matter in the House of Commons, citing evidence from his contacts with a former Commissioner of Police on the island, but Macaulay lacked the specifics that made his Caribbean revelations so devastating. When the son of a close friend in the campaign, James Stephen, was appointed to gather evidence for a Parliamentary Enquiry, and described conditions, the Reporter held back but in 1828 and 1829 the magazine saw extensive coverage on Mauritius.[15] Macaulay was highly critical of the island’s slave code and of successive Governors who had done little to ameliorate conditions. Tellingly, however, Sir Robert Farquar, the first Governor, had become a Vice President of the Anti-Slavery Society when he returned home in 1823. Readers of the Reporter needed strong stomachs as the edition of January 1829 detailed floggings of three hundred lashes, teeth torn out, severed ears and dogs set on wounded slaves, from the evidence of court cases and a few prosecutions in Sir Robert’s time.

The Reporter kept a check on the progress, or mainly lack of it, on ameliorating slavery, and it gave regular, and very time-consuming for the editor, updates, island by island. Three years after the founding of the Anti-Slavery Society and the British Government’s attempt to effect gradual change, the Reporter devoted most of its April 1826 edition to ‘a brief view of the real advance made since April 1823′. Towards the end of the decade frustration at the facts so well laid out in the Reporter led increasingly to a dropping of the cautious call for ‘gradual’ abolition to a call for ‘immediate’ action. There was plenty of material in the Reporter to induce horror, revulsion and anger in its readership which amounted to twenty thousand paid subscribers and  many more who read it within abolition groups. But it was also an important source of encouragement, in areas not always looked on with favour amongst the abolitionists. In contrast to William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay strongly supported the involvement of women in the anti-slavery cause from early days and this was reflected in the Reporter.[16] Of course he was also very quick to celebrate progress in his native land, citing the newly formed Society in Aberdeen.[17]

Zachary Macaulay’s editorship of the Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter was dogged and uncompromising. Such single-mindedness drew fierce opposition from those who sought  to discredit and sometimes malign him. One such was a former planter in Grenada, and former editor of the newspaper which became the mouthpiece of the Glasgow West India Association, James McQueen, later to edit the notorious John Bull in London, where he parodied Macaulay’s moral fervour and tried to undermine his facts by various polemics.[18] Macaulay was of course vilified in the West Indies and in the powerful West Indian interest group in Parliament. This took its toll, but it never deflected him for a moment from his task.

There is no doubt that Zachary Macaulay’s most significant contribution to the abolition movement in Britain was his editorship of the Anti-Slavery Reporter. Even when his health was failing and after he suffered the death of his wife Selina in 1831 he remained dogged in his devotion to the task of disseminating information monthly through the Reporter. It was said that William Wilberforce repeatedly advised his parliamentary colleagues to ‘look it up in Macaulay.’[19] His friend James Stephen, architect of the bill prohibiting the slave trade,  wrote to him in 1830 ‘look after yourself, if only for the sake of our poor unfortunate cause. You are its sheet anchor.’ [20] His close friends knew of his sifting through papers and documents night after night in order to produce an effective product in The Reporter and that all this was to the detriment of his health, let alone his family life. Wilberforce’s successor, Thomas Fowell Buxton, told him that he had done more than anyone towards the ‘consummation’ of abolition and at a dinner in London after a final lobbying of government in London to bring forward the 1833 Abolition Bill Buxton proposed a toast to the now failing Zachary Macaulay: ‘the anti-slavery tutor of us all.’[21]

[1] There are various biographical accounts of Zachary Macaulay’s life before he edited the Anti-slavery Reporter:
Knutsworth, M., Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay (London: Edward Arnold,1900), Booth, C.,  Zachary Macaulay, His Part in the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery (London:Longmans, 1934),  Whyte, I.,  Zachary Macaulay, 1768-1839 The Steadfast Scot in the British Anti-Slavery Movement (Liverpool:University Press, 2011), Hall, C., Macaulay and Son, Architects of Imperial Britain, (New Haven, Yale University Press , 2012). [Back]

[2] The Christian Observer, 1802,Vol.1 Preface [Back]

[3] The Christian Observer., 1805  Vol 4. pp. 217-221.1 [Back]

[4]  Zachary Macaulay to The Editor of The Imperial Magazine. In the possession of the author (see Fig. 4.) [Back]

[5] Macaulay, Z., Negro Slavery or a View of Some of the most Prominent Features of That State of Society as it exists in The United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, especially in Jamaica, London, Hatchard and Son, 1823 [Back]

[6] Zachary Macaulay to Thomas Babington, 17 May 1823 . TCC BP 27/61 [Back]

[7] Macaulay, Z., East and West India sugar, or, A refutation of the claims of the West India colonists to a protecting duty on East India sugar (London: Hatchard, 1823) and East India Sugar or An Inquiry Respecting the Means of Improving  the Quality and Reducing the Cost of of Sugar Raised by Free Labour in the East  Indies (London: Hatchard, 1824) [Back]

[8] Macaulay, Z., The Slave Colonies of Great Britain: or a Picture of Negro Slavery Drawn by the Colonists Themselves London: Ellerton and Henderson, 1825,  pp. 11-15, 19, 20, 22-27 and 36 [Back]

[9] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 1, June 1825, pp. 1, 8 [Back]

[10] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 47, April 1829, pp. 462-468 [Back]

[11] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 64, Sept 1830, p. 37 [Back]

[12] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 9, Feb 1826, pp. 94-96 [Back]

[13] Booth, C., Zachary Macaulay, 1934, p.90 [Back]

[14] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 3, Aug 1825, pp. 20-22 [Back]

[15] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 44,  Jan 1829, pp. 462-468 [Back]

[16] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 3, Aug 1825, p. 23 [Back]

[17] Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, No. 4, Sept 1825, p. 32 [Back]

[18] John Bull, 7 Jun 1824, p. 188; 28 Jun 1824, p. 213; 5 Jul 1824, p. 188, 220; 9 Dec 1825, p. 404 [Back]

Also  McQueen, James, The Colonial Contraversy containing a Refutation of the Calumnies of the Anti-Colonialists… in a Series of Letters to the Earl of Liverpool with a supplementary letter to Mr Macaulay (Glasgow: Khull, Blackie and Co., 1825), p. 10

[19] Booth, C., Zachary Macaulay, 1934, p. 65 [Back]

[20] James Stephen to Zachary Macaulay,  9 Mar 1830.  Huntington Library, California, Macaulay Papers, Box 12 [Back]

[21] Buxton, C., Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (Philadelphia: Longtreth: 1849), p. 271 [Back]