Thomas Clarkson - Key Events: The Abolition of Slavery Project.
Papers relating to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery; papers relating to the Republic of Haiti and the Kingdom of Haiti; papers relating to the Clarkson Family, including Catherine Clarkson, and friends; and miscellaneous papers including those relating to recent research into Clarkson's work.
Thomas Clarkson was an Anglican clergyman in deacon’s orders and a graduate of Cambridge University. He remained at Cambridge after receiving his BA, and in 1985 entered an essay competition on the morality of slavery. Clarkson won the prize for the essay and realised, as he later wrote, “that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was.
Clarkson’s essay was a great success and led to the creation of an informal committee to lobby MPs. Through Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce was recruited to the cause and by 1787 had agreed to bring his concerns about slavery before the House of Commons.
Thomas Clarkson 28 March 1760 - 26 September 1846. Thomas Clarkson was one of the main architects of the anti-slavery movement and led an extraordinary campaign against the trade. Read on to explore more about Thomas Clarkson and his life.
Clarkson entered St John's College in 1779, and in 1785 won a University essay prize on the topic 'Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare?’ (Is it right to make slaves of others against their will?). In studying for this essay, Clarkson was appalled by the accounts of slavery he read.
Slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson devoted his life to abolitionism. His An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786) brought him into association with Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and other opponents of slavery; Clarkson joined them in forming a society for the abolition of the slave trade. He visited British ports to collect facts for his pamphlet A Summary View.
Clarkson met William Wilberforce in 1786 and co-founded a committee for the suppression of the slave trade in 1787. He travelled to France in 1789 in an attempt to persuade the French Government to abolish the slave trade and continued to travel widely in Britain in support of the cause until forced by ill health to retire from his work in 1794.