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The Road To Freedom
Celebration
of Emancipation on August 1, 1838 in the Square of Spanish Town, the then
capital of Jamaica. There was a procession of the Baptist Church and
Congregation of Spanish Town under the Rev. J.M. Phillips, with about
2,000 school children and their teachers to Government House. Amid
tremendous rejoicing, Governor Sir Lionel Smith read the Proclamation of
Freedom to the large crowd of about 8,000 people, who had gathered in the
Square. The governor's carriage is seen in the foreground. -
"The hour is at hand, the Monster is dying...in recounting the mood
in his church that night he said - "the winds of freedom appeared to have
been set loose, the very building shook at the strange yet sacred
joy." - William Knibb, non-conformist Baptist preacher and
abolitionist,
at the dawning of Aug. 1, 1838
Freedom can
be said to have arrived in two stages; the first being the early morning
of Friday, August 1, 1834. On that day many slaves were said to have
walked up hills and climbed trees so as to clearly witness the literal
dawning of their freedom. Around the island thousands attended "Divine
Services" to give thanks and praise. August 1, 1834, marked the
emancipation of all slaves in British colonies but it was a case of
freedom with conditions. Although the Abolition Act stated that slavery
shall be and is hereby utterly abolished and unlawful, the only slaves
truly freed were those not yet born and those under six years of age. All
other slaves were to enter a six-year 'apprenticeship' during which they
were to be 'apprenticed' to the plantations.
| APPRENTICESHIP
The tenets of
'apprenticeship' stated that the ex-slaves would work without pay for
their former masters for three-quarters of every week (40 hours) in
exchange for lodging, food, clothing, medical attendance and provision
grounds in which they could grow their own food during the remaining quarter of
the week. They could also, if they chose, hire themselves out for more
wages during that remaining quarter. With this money, an
ex-slave-turned-apprentice could then buy his freedom.
Overall, though
apprenticeship proved confusing for the ex-slaves - they were told they
were free but they were not really free. Indeed, for many, the quality of
their lives had not undergone any great change. In smaller islands like
Antigua and Bermuda, there was no need for a system of apprenticeship as
all of the land was under cultivation, so the slaveholders knew the
ex-slaves would have no choice but to work on the
plantations.
Apprenticeship ended
two years short of its intended six-year term on August 1, 1838. This
marked the second stage of freedom, the day all slaves were made
free. In Jamaica on that "full free" August morning, peaceful
demonstrations and celebrations occured across the island. A hearse
containing shackles and chains that had been used to shackle rebellious
slaves, was driven through the streets of the capital Spanish Town, and
ceremoniously burned.
The road to full
freedom was a long one, paved with rebellions and sermons by anti-slavery
missionary preachers in the colonies as well as debates and the passage of
crucial reforms in Britain.
Indeed, once full
emancipation came into effect and free villages began to be established,
the plantation system began to fall apart wealth was increa
singly determined by the
amount of money a man had and not by the amount of slaves a man
owned.
WHAT LED TO EMANCIPATION The tide was changing,
struggles to keep down the number of runaway slaves and slave revolts
(famous Jamaican revolts included Tacky's 1760 Rebellion and Sam Sharpe's
1831 Rebellion) seemed harder, and the ripple effect of the successful
1789 slave revolt in St. Domingue, (what is now Haiti and the
Dominican Republic) was impossible to ignore. Public opinion began to
shift in Britain heavily influenced by the work of abolitionists
like Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce. Sharp tirelessly circulated
the proceedings of the 1781 case of the Liverpool slaver, The Zong, in
order to bring the evils of slavery into full view.
Wilberforce, the
leader of the anti-slavery movement in Britain, carried the fight into
Parliament, year after year moving resolutions to abolish the slave trade
and slowly but surely the support of the British people was won. Britain
abolished the slave trade on January 1, 1808.
Abolition of the slave
trade was only the first step towards full emancipation. By the 1820s
British Parliament began to send planters directives specifically
concerned with the amelioration of the slaves' working conditions. These
included forbidding the use of the whip in the field, the flogging of
women and allowing slaves religious instruction. Jamaica, governed by an
Elected Assembly, refused to follow these directives and news of this soon
spread to the slaves. Numerous instances of civil unrest followed as
slaves felt they were being denied certain benefits that had been
conferred on them in Britain. Anti-slavery sentiments were increasingly
expressed in the colonies through the work of nonconformist missionaries,
particularly Baptists such as William Knibb and Thomas Burchell who were
arrested for inciting slaves to rebellion. In Jamaica, the strongest
example of unrest as a result of the fervor to put an end to slavery was
the Christmas Rebellion of 1831. Also known as Sam Sharpe's Rebellion, it
began when slaves in the western part of the island, led by Sharpe,
believing they had been freed in England but kept enslaved by the planters
in Jamaica, conducted a peaceful strike. Sharpe, a Baptist preacher, was
literate, unlike many of his fellow slaves. He had read many anti-slavery
bulletins from Britain and communicated their messages to his followers.
Yet Sharpe's peaceful protest soon turned into the largest slave rebellion
in the island's history. Great houses and cane fields in the west were
burned and hundreds of lives lost. This insurrection, however, became
pivotal to hastening the process of emancipation. Sam Sharpe, now a
Jamaican National Hero, was hung in 1832 for his role as organizer. Soon
after, the British House of Commons adopted a motion calling for a Select
Committee to be appointed to put an end to slavery throughout the British
Empire. One year later, in May 1833, the British House of Commons stated
unequivocally that the British nation must, on its own initiative,
suppress slavery in all British Dominions.
EMANCIPATION TRUTHS
Emancipation did not
mean the beginning of good times. According to Sherlock and Bennett in
"The Story of the Jamaican People" (1998): "Emancipation gave them the
right to free movement, the right to choose where and when they wished to
work, but without basic education and training many were compelled to
remain on the plantation as field hands and tenants-at-will under
conditions determined by the landlord, and for wages set by him."
Yet, in testimony to
the impact of freedom, Joseph John Gurney, a friend of American statesman
Henry Clay, who visited Jamaica in 1840, wrote letters to Clay contrasting
slaves in the southern US and the freed slaves in the West Indies. Gurney
was arguing for the benefits of freedom in economies of scale as well as
in moral, religious and political terms. Particularly impressed with what
he saw in Jamaica, Gurney described ex-slaves as working well on the
estates of their former masters, their personal comforts having been
multiplied, their moral and religious lives strengthened. He exhorted Clay
that with freedom "The whole population is thrown on the operation of
natural and legitimate principles of action, every man finds his own just
level, religion spreads under the banner of freedom, and all its
quietness, order and peace. Such is the lot of the British West Indian
colonies: and such, I humbly but ardently hope, will soon be the happy
condition of every one of the United States."
-Rebecca Tortello
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