Mitigation of Slavery, in Two Parts. Part I: Letters and Papers of the Late Hon. Joshua Steele. Part II: Letters to Thomas Clarkson, Esq. M.A.

[Abolition] Dickson, William; Steele, Joshua; Clarkson, Thomas

Published by Printed by R. and A. Taylor.and Sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London, 1814

About this Item

Mid- nineteenth-century brown polished calf rebacked to style. Octavo. xxxiii, 528 pp. Complete, with index and errata. Gilt spine with red morocco label. Marbled endpapers and edges. Ink gift inscription, dated 1846, to preliminary blank. A bright, fresh copy, clean throughout with just a bit of foxing to first and last few leaves. A Near Fine copy of a rare abolitionist work that has only appeared at auction once in the last forty years. This is the only copy currently on the market. William Dickson (1751 - 1823) published Mitigation of Slavery at a turning point in the British abolitionist movement: in 1807, Dickson and his abolitionist allies had reached their goal of ending the British slave trade, but it was not until 1833 that the actual practice of slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Dickson, like many contemporary activists, had initially taken up the cause of ending the slave trade as a more feasible and politically viable goal than completely overhauling the British Empire's slave economy; after 1807, however, Dickson was forced to admit that the end of the trade had not improved the lives of enslaved individuals in the ways he had hoped. In Mitigation of Slavery, Dickson still did not press for immediate emancipation, but argued that swift reform must be followed by a gradual process of emancipation. To that end, Dickson compiled the writing of Joshua Steele (c. 1700-1796), a plantation owner in Barbados who had instituted reforms that Dickson hoped to implement throughout the West Indies: after inheriting a plantation from his late wife, Steele had traveled to Barbados, where he ended beatings against the people enslaved on the plantation and began paying wages and renting them land. To Steele's writing, Dickson added sixteen of his own letters addressed to Thomas Clarkson (1760 - 1846), an abolitionist leader whose major accomplishments included leading the London Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founding the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (active 1823 - 1833), and recruiting William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833) into the movement. Dickson's letters suggest "his own ideas on how the lives and conditions of these slaves could be improved. As a prelude to their gradual emancipation, he suggested improvements in their economic situation and in the judicial system, and advocated greater efforts to educate them and to convert them to Christianity" (Oxford DNB). Dickson, as a member of the London Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was a crucial figure in the antislavery movement for decades. After living in Barbados for thirteen years, he returned to England and published his Letters on Slavery (1789), an influential work that garnered praise both from white reformers and from members of the Sons of Africa, a Black abolitionist group. The work also caught the attention of Clarkson and Wilberforce, who involved Dickson in the London Committee. Dickson began writing and researching for the committee (with Clarkson himself admitting that Dickson did much of the work for the committee's major evidentiary publications) and undertook campaigns across England and Scotland to garner support from civic leaders, churches, universities, and local abolitionist groups. Though Dickson did not live to see the end of slavery in the British Empire, his extensive coalition-building efforts and his work with the London Committee were essential in the fight to end the slave trade and in laying the groundwork for the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Oxford DNB. Sabin 20095. Near Fine.

Seller Inventory # 7256

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mitigation of Slavery, in Two Parts. Part I: Letters and Papers of the Late Hon. Joshua Steele. Part II: Letters to Thomas Clarkson, Esq. M.A.
• Publisher: Printed by R. and A. Taylor.and Sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London
• Publication Date: 1814
• Edition: First edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Philosophy and Social Thought
  • BIPOC