Historian finds new proof that Henry Dundas was an abolitionist
British historian uncovers archival evidence that shows Henry Dundas genuinely sought to abolish the slave trade
SUMMARY: A British historian has unearthed new archival evidence that refutes claims that that Henry Dundas was seeking indefinite delay of the abolition of the slave trade. The documents include letters from abolitionists and a pro-slavery advocate. They confirm three facts about Dundas, Scotland’s most powerful politician and a Secretary of State for the British government in the 1790s, and his role regarding abolition: (1) he was making a genuine effort to end the slave trade by proposing a middle ground between two extremes, (2) key abolitionists wanted to help him achieve this goal, and (3) pro-slavery interests saw him as an adversary and lobbied against his proposals to end slavery and the slave trade.
The article builds on Professor McCarthy’s two earlier articles on the controversy over Henry Dundas, including one that exposed wide ranging errors in an article by anti-Dundas scholar Dr. Stephen Mullen.
Background
In 1792, Henry Dundas proposed abolishing the slave trade in less than eight years, first by ending the trade with foreign territories (44% of the trade), and imposing burdensome regulations that would diminish the trade over time. He presented the plan as a workable compromise between leaders of the abolition movement, who said they would tolerate delay of no more than five years, and slave-owning interests, who said 10 years was the minimum they would accept.
Dundas also proposed mandatory education for the children of slaves, which he said would lead to “the total annihilation of the slavery of these children.”
Dundas’ plan was attacked as a suspected ploy to delay any abolition indefinitely. These attacks ignored Dundas’s lifelong opposition to slavery and the slave trade, which started in 1776 when he began the fight for the freedom of a slave in Scotland, a battle that he won in 1778 when he also persuaded Scotland’s highest court to declare that no one could be a slave on Scottish soil. The attacks also ignored his lifelong associations and friendships with abolitionists.
Historian unearths previously unexamined archival evidence
Recently unearthed documents from British archives are shining a new light on the controversy.
The documents are discussed in a peer-reviewed article in the journal Scottish Affairs[1] by Professor Angela McCarthy, an expert in Scottish and Irish history. They confirm Dundas’s own statements that he was trying to reach a middle ground between two implacable positions: those seeking immediate abolition and those wishing to ensure its continuation forever.
The letters also reveal that key abolitionists supported Dundas:
- In one letter, longtime abolitionist William Dolben confirmed that he and at least three other leaders of the abolition movement supported Henry Dundas’s approach.
- The other leaders, who included Bishop Sir Beilby Porteus, MP Charles Middleton and “a few others,” encouraged Dolben to work cooperatively with Dundas.
- These abolitionists and their supporters accepted that to make progress on abolition, and ensure the cooperation of pro-slavery interests, it would be necessary to compromise.
Historians have long been aware that gradualism had significant support among moderate politicians, such as Edmund Burke, and a large segment of the public. The important contribution of Professor McCarthy’s latest article is that key leaders in the abolition movement also believed that compromise was necessary.
Evidence of slave owners’ opposition to Henry Dundas’s plan
Professor McCarthy also found a letter from the most powerful advocate for West Indian interests — Stephen Fuller, the agent hired by the West Indian planters to defend slavery and the slave trade — which revealed that he saw Henry Dundas as a supporter of abolition who needed to be defeated.
In 1794, two years after Dundas first proposed his plan for gradual abolition, Fuller wrote to Simon Taylor, the wealthiest plantation owner in the West Indies. He stated that his “two great objects” included:
“the total and final defeat of the plan of Mr. Wilberforce together with that of Mr. Dundas for gradual abolition.”
Professor McCarthy says the letter reveals that Henry Dundas was just as much an enemy of the slave traders as William Wilberforce:
“Here is unambiguous evidence of some planting interests agitating against both forms of abolition attached to their main architects: Wilberforce for immediate abolition, and Dundas for the gradual approach.”
Stephen Fuller warned in 1792 that Dundas’s proposal for gradual change was “more dangerous to the Colonies” than immediate abolition.[2] The newly-unearthed letter from 1794 shows this was a persistent fear, and that slave owners remained hostile to Dundas’s approach to abolition long after the critical abolition debate in 1792.
This evidence decisively refutes allegations by anti-Dundas historian Stephen Mullen, who speculated in 2021, without evidence, that Dundas had secretly cooperated with slavers to delay abolition.[3]
Commentary by Scotland’s most eminent historian
The Times Scotland recently quoted Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine, who wrote Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past and over 140 other publications on Scottish history, regarding his assessment of McCarthy’s article:
“Professor Angela McCarthy has emasculated the bogus accusations against Henry Dundas as the ‘Great Delayer.’”
“Reason and careful academic analysis has therefore eventually triumphed over … the shameless axe-grinding, without evidence, of populist politicians in both Toronto and Edinburgh.”
CONCLUSION:
The archival evidence unearthed by Professor McCarthy decisively demonstrates that Henry Dundas was genuinely trying to find an effective way to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. The discoveries refute allegations that Henry Dundas was defending pro-slavery interests when he advocated for gradual abolition. Key abolition leaders understood that Dundas was serious about ending the slave trade, and slavery. Slavers in the Caribbean also understood this.
The evidence strongly corroborates the view that Dundas was making a genuine effort to abolish the slave trade in less than eight years, and to eradicate slavery within a generation. Any other interpretation is inconsistent with these newly-discovered archival documents.
[1] Angela McCarthy, “Henry Dundas and Abolition of the British Slave Trade: Further Evidence,” Scottish Affairs 32.3 (2023): 334–346
[2] M. W. McCahill (ed.), The Correspondence of Stephen Fuller, 1788–1795: Jamaica, the West India interest at Westminster and the campaign to preserve the slave trade (Chichester, 2014), 190–2
[3] Stephen Mullen, “Henry Dundas: a ‘Great Delayer’ of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” The Scottish Historical Review, Volume C, 2: №253: August 2021, 218–248 at 231, 242. In an earlier article, Professor McCarthy exposed wide-ranging errors in Dr. Mullen’s paper, stating:
“…historians have the right to interpret facts differently but not to knowingly misrepresent them (Hare, 2006: xiv). Such high standards are especially crucial when the past is so often invoked — but often distorted, manufactured, or misrepresented — to justify the politics of the present.
…allegations that Henry Dundas was solely responsible for the enslavement of more than half a million Africans, as asserted on the Dundas plaque in Edinburgh, or that abolition would have been achieved sooner than 1807 without his opposition, are fundamentally mistaken.”
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From: Henry Dundas and Abolition: The Missing Pieces, by Jennifer Dundas, BAA SF LLB, Chairperson, Henry Dundas Committee of Ontario
