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Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of, 1784-1860,. British abolition movement papers, 1821-1887.

Title: British abolition movement papers, 1821-1887.

Correspondence and documents relate to the anti-slavery movement in America and to the abolition of slavery in Africa and South America, 1821-1887. The collection contains commissions by King William IV and Queen Victoria, and signed by Palmerston, Wellington and Aberdeen, to Henry William Macaulay as Commissary Judge and Walter William Lewis or Charles Pettingal as Commissioner of Arbitration persuant to treaties or conventions with Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands and Portugal on the abolition of the slave trade. With the commissions are official letters of instruction from Aberdeen and Stratford-Canning on disposition of slaves liberated by Portugese cruisers. Much of the correspondence consists of letters written to Thomas Denman, Margaret Denman Cropper, and Henry William Macaulay on English efforts to abolish the international slave trade. Of interest are letters from Sierra Leone residents seeking employment or making other requests of Henry William Macaulay or William Wilberforce. Items of United States interest include a letter from Thomas Clarkson on slave-holding clergy in the South and letters from Frederick Douglass to Margaret Cropper on the anti-slavery cause, the aid of the Liverpool Society, gifts from Mrs. Cropper, and the destitution of escaped slaves. There are also a few letters from Thomas Babington Macaulay to Mrs. Henry William Macaulay on family matters and a request for documents from the 1690s. Miscellaneous letters include one from a gunner on the "Scylla," captured and imprisoned by the Carlists, and one from Robert Cecil on winning over the Roman Catholics of Ireland. The papers also contain a few letters collected by the compiler for their autograph value and having nothing to do with abolition. These include two letters from the Duke of Wellington on a railway from Warrington to Liverpool, social notes from Disraeli and Bulwer-Lytton, a letter forwarding orchids from Robert H. Schomburgk, a letter from George Biddell Airy on a magnetic disturbance on an iron ship, a letter from John Taylor Coleridge conveying family news, and an envelope addressed in 1871 by one of the last survivors of Waterloo. Miscellaneous items include broadsides from the Sierra Leone Turf Club and one regarding a regatta, and an invitation to the coronation of William IV.

ArchivalResource: 60 items.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53923716 View