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Bobby Finger (3:41)

Max. So, yeah, when we left off here, there's just been. We had that case and then we had Gregson v. Gilbert. Like, they revisited it to see, like, should we, you know, retry Gregson v. Gilbert? And they decide, yeah, probably. And then Gregson was like, actually, no, I. I know I'm at a loss, so I'm just kind of bouncing. And so the abolitionist movement is left with. We've had this big win, but it didn't really change anything. But now we've got a group of people who are kind of like, increasingly motivated and angry to fight against slavery. And the head of the group is Granville Sharp. Right. And Granville's like, well, in the wake of this case, since we're not gonna continue it, my priority is I need to document every single horrific detail about what happened or on the Zorg, and in general, everything I can get about how common some of these other awful things that happen are just in the slave trade as a whole. And I need to publicize that so as many people can read it as possible in order to build support for an end to the whole institution. So he has the notes from the court case transcribed. He conducts a further interview with Robert Stubbs and another crew member as part of his attempt to secure murder charges against them. I don't think they have to sit down for this. So it's weird that Stubbs and Kelsall do.

Robert Evans (5:07)

Stubbs never misses a chance to fuck.

Bobby Finger (5:09)

Himself over himself over every wrong step he can take. Ol Stubbs. He's gonna take. On June 2, 1783, Sharp sends a 180 something page document to the Lords of the Admiralty demanding murder charges and quote, an entire stop to the slave trade, which he argued would damn the entire country and unquestionably mark it with the avenging hand of God, who has promised to destroy the destroyers of the earth. This doesn't work. Somehow they don't take this seriously like you respect. But yeah, I'm not surprised that they see like he sent us like 200 pages and he says that God's gonna kill us if we don't shut down the money funnel. Ah, let's just keep being rich, right?

Robert Evans (5:54)

It's one in the manifesto bucket.

Bobby Finger (5:56)

Yeah, yeah. Classic Lords of the Admiralty behavior. So his letter to them is ignored, but he doesn't stop pushing forward. He sends the info he was gathering to the Prime Minister and to other public figures, warning them that go would smite the whole empire if they keep doing this shit. Most of these letters were ignored, but one of the letters he sent to prominent members of the Anglican community did provoke a response from a Reverend named Peter Peckard, who had. Which is. We'll just move past that name, but will we? Silly, right? Peter Peckard. It's silly. It's a silly name, but he's a good guy, so whatever, we'll give him a pass. Now, Peckard had been paying attention to Gregson v. Gilbert, and he had concluded from the information in the case that. That the slave trade was a crime against humanity. The two became friends and their correspondence influenced Peckard when a year or so later, he was made Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University. So this guy gets kind of radicalized by this case and by his friendship with Sharpe. He reads what Sharpe collected and he gets increasingly horrified. And then he gets a really prominent position at Cambridge. And one of his duties at this position is to organize the annual Latin essay contest. And so in 1785, he picks this topic for the contest. Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will? Now, putting aside for a moment the question of how might you make a person a slave? Not against their will. This topic was. Yeah, I mean, there are, there were like in Greek, some Greek people would sell themselves into slavery during the Roman Empire and work as like basically household tutors to rich folks and stuff. But still, making someone a slave implies against their will, I would argue. Anyway, the topic provokes a high degree of involvement from divinity students at Cambridge, one of whom is a young man named Thomas Clarkson. And he's the next hero. We're going to learn about in detail. Born March 28, 1760 in the Isle of Ely, he was the oldest son of a reverend and a headmaster. His mother, I assume, was a very nice person. We have basically no details on his childhood or early life, but he comes from what you might call an upper middle class background and enjoyed a good education and. And as much stability as anyone got to have back in those days. Right. So this is a. He's a child of privilege, like for certain, you know, not like crazy rich, but very comfortable. Clarkson is an excellent student and, and he was admitted to St John's College at Cambridge in 1779. He gets his BA in 1783. And he continues at Cambridge with a plan of following in his father's career as a reverend. Right. So he's continue his education to become like a religious studies expert or whatever, so he can be a reverend. He's ordained in 1783 as a deacon. But his original plans for a life spent serving the church are derailed by a Greater Cause in 1785 as a result of that essay contest. So when that contest is announced, he is still planning. I'm gonna be, you know, I'm spend my life in the church like my dad did. Right. And then he starts working on this essay to try to win this contest. And this is maybe the single best historic example of how one good teacher can change the world. Because Clarkson's whole life and the lives of millions, millions of people turn in part as a result of this essay, per the Zorg by Siddharth Kara. A towering figure with reddish hair and a compassionate gaze, Clarkson confessed he was wholly ignorant of the slave trade. When he first began his research for the contest. He read everything he could find on the subject and was most impacted by a pioneering abolitionist tract authored by an American Quaker, Anthony Benezet. Quakers were among the first communities to advocate against slavery, believing it was necessary for every lover of God and man to use their best endeavors that a stop may be put to this unnatural embargo. Barbarous traffic. Following the Somerset case, Benezet became a staunch ally of granville Sharp. The two abolitionists collaborated in 1772 on a petition to King George III against the toleration of slavery in the colonies. In 1775, Benezet founded the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes, Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first anti slavery organization in America. One of its earliest presidents was Benjamin Franklin.

Robert Evans (10:02)

Right.

Bobby Finger (10:02)

So Benazet, really influential guy and a partner with Sharpe. And he writes this book that Clarkson reads while he's prepping for this essay called Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants, With An Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade. Again, we didn't know how to write titles back then. There hadn't been a good one come up with.

Robert Evans (10:23)

No one discovered that.

Bobby Finger (10:24)

No. The first good title is Moby Dick. Right. Yeah.

Robert Evans (10:32)

I like Equiana. She just calls it an interesting narrative. You don't know what you're going to get, but it's going to be interesting.

Bobby Finger (10:38)

It is interesting how fucking crazy your life was.

Robert Evans (10:40)

Yeah, you're right.

Bobby Finger (10:41)

Equianu knew how to title a fucking book, but none of these other guys do. That said, the quality of the book is good, even if the title is kind of unwieldy, and Clarkson devours it. He is horrified by each new fact he learns, and he finds himself obsessively driven to read and learn more. He writes later. It was but one gloomy subject from morning to night. In the daytime, I was uneasy. In the night, I had little rest. I sometimes never closed my eyelids for grief. Which is a relatable way to feel about reading too much about the realities of the Atlantic slave trade and plantation systems. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of an relatable view of it. An ending nightmare.

Robert Evans (11:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Bobby Finger (11:23)

I think anyone who spent a period of time studying this is like. Yeah, kind of is just consuming for a while. It's really bad.

Robert Evans (11:30)

Oh, yeah. It's one of the worst things that humans have ever done to each other. Yeah.

Bobby Finger (11:35)

Very upsetting stuff. So that summer, Clarkson finishes and submits his essay. For the essay contest, he cites Granville Sharp in it and the court case against the Gregson syndicate two years previously in his introduction, and he describes the massacre of enslaved prisoners aboard the Zorg as a deed unparalleled in the history of man, and one he was worried that future generations wouldn't believe that. Like, if we don't document this well enough, they won't believe anyone did anything this bad. It's so crazy evil right now. The essay itself is a banger. It is animated by the kind of inchoate rage that academics rarely allow themselves to express. Clarkson gave voice to the kind of repellent nausea any decent person ought to feel upon investigating the slave trade. He wrote in a section directed to slave traders. You have no right to touch even the hair on their heads without their own consent. It is not your money that can invest you with a right. Human liberty can neither be bought nor sold. How wicked must be that servitude which cannot be carried on without the continual murder of so many innocent persons. No custom established among men was ever more impious, since it is contrary to reason, justice, nature, the principles of law and government, the whole doctrine, in short, of natural religion and the revealed voice of God. Pretty good stuff.

Robert Evans (12:53)

It's a kind of a banger, actually.

Bobby Finger (12:55)

Yeah. Yeah, I like the. Yeah. You have no right to touch even a hair on their heads if they don't say you can. Like, how dare you think otherwise? That's nuts. Yeah.

Robert Evans (13:07)

Even God hates you.

Bobby Finger (13:08)

He wins. Even God hates you for what you're doing. And he wins first prize. It's a good essay. And because he wins first prize, he gets to read his whole essay in Latin to the Senate House at Cambridge. Again, it's a Latin contest. The abolitionist cause is, at this point, not yet a mass movement in England, but it's becoming one. And Clarkson's success here is evidence that even in the halls of power, something had started to change. When you're winning this essay contest at Cambridge, this is not like a fringe radical thing entirely anymore. Right now, something had started to change within Clarkson, too. On paper, he's still following the path that he would need to take in order to become a reverend. But as he, like, rides a horse from Cambridge back to London, right, when he's kind of. And I think he's heading to London to continue his. The process of becoming a reverend, and in the middle of that journey, he has an awakening, and here's how he describes it. I became at times very seriously affected while upon the road, I stopped my horse occasionally and dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my essay could not be true. The more however, I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming inside of Wade's Mill in Hertfordshire, I sat down, disconsolate, on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here, a thought came into my mind that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time Some person should see those calamities to their end, which is such an interesting way for that to go, where he's like, I couldn't have been writing about real stuff, right? It's too fucked up. It's too fucked up. And has. He's just. Yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (14:49)

He's just like, no, that's happening. I think there is a difference, right, between, like, these colonial metropoles that were somewhat removed from the violence and the experience, say, in parts of the southern United States where like the violence of chattel slavery was right there.

Bobby Finger (15:06)

Right.

Robert Evans (15:06)

Like it was visible to everyone. And it's remarkable, I guess, that like the, the people who come to first come. I mean, it's not that there weren't anti slavery people in the United States. There were, including presumably all of the enslaved people. But like the fact that they, the people who come to this realization that, yo, this is fucked up and organized are the ones removed from it at first. Like it's.

Bobby Finger (15:32)

Yeah. And that's. I think you would find similar sentiments of like, this can't be real from a lot of people in the north during like the worst of the period leading up to the Civil War. Right. Like, you run into that a lot. This is just too fucked up. It can't be this bad, right? Yeah.

Robert Evans (15:48)

Right. I think especially at a time when, you know, all you had to trust was a text. Right. Like, it's not like you can see a video. Right. It can't be that bad. No one would do that. Humans would do that to each other.

Bobby Finger (16:00)

And the norm for people in this position. Right. Is to like convince themselves. I'll just forget about it. Right. And it says a lot about his moral character that he goes through this day long period of like walking back through the sources in his head and being like, no, these are really solid sources. And so if this is true, the only step I can take forward is to dedicate my entire life to destroying this slavery. Right. Like, there's no other option at this point, right? Yeah.

Robert Evans (16:31)

And it makes sense from looking back, but like for him, that's a remarkable choice to make, right?

Bobby Finger (16:36)

Yeah, it's a really significant leap that he goes on there. So now that he's set on this new path, Clarkson starts meeting with Quaker anti slavery activists, including one who owned a printing shop and had already been publishing pamphlets and tracts. The next year, his essay was published as one of these tracts, and it starts to circulate widely among educated Englishmen. This helps Clarkson get into contact with other seasoned veterans of the fight, including Granville Sharp, who he meets in mid 17, 1986. The two hit it off famously, and I kind of think Sharp picks this kid right away as the heir apparent to his own efforts to fight slavery, where he's like, this is gonna be the guy who like keeps the fight going after I'm gone. Right? You just kind of get that feeling. And while public support for the cause is the highest it's ever been, there's still not a unified anti slavery movement, nor even an agreement as to how one should look. Again, a lot of people just want to ban the Atlantic trade but leave slavery intact otherwise. I think for most of these people it's just pragmatism where they're like, well, we just, we're never going to get that done, but we can at least stop the worst part of the system. I'm sure some people are like, well, slavery wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for this other part. Right. Those are definitely some people, you know, type of guy.

Robert Evans (17:47)

Yeah, yeah.

Bobby Finger (17:48)

There are other divisions. Quakers, as I've repeatedly noted, have been central to the anti slavery cause from the beginning. But because of their niche religious views, they're also opponents of a bunch of other stuff like being in the military or paying taxes or following the Anglican Church. And so a lot of people who might be open to the broader cause are like, well, I don't want anything to do with Quakers. Right. They're nuts. You know, that's how Quaker listeners. I'm not shit talking here. That's how a lot of people feel at the time.

Robert Evans (18:16)

Right.

Bobby Finger (18:16)

Who are otherwise maybe down for the cause. Yeah.

Robert Evans (18:20)

The idea of being teetotal is not comprehensible to average 18th century British person. Right.

Bobby Finger (18:26)

Kill people?

Robert Evans (18:27)

Well, what do they do all weekend?

Bobby Finger (18:31)

Yeah, look, I'm fine with getting rid of slavery, but I draw the line at not drinking and shooting Frenchmen, you know, so it was clear to Sharpe and to Clarkson and their fellows that the cause needed a central organizing hub that lacked any of this baggage and could act as a big tent. So they formed a committee and they all met together to hash things out. Here's how Mike Kay described what happened next. Clarkson and Sharp brought more than their individual skills to the community. They were important figureheads who could forge alliances with people the Quakers could not reach. They were instrumental in bringing the movement into the mainstream by forming partnerships with people like William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament who later became the movement's parliamentary spokesperson. We're not going to talk enough about Wilberforce in these episodes, but he's also a big hero here. The committee agreed to focus on the slave trade as a first step towards total emancipation and called themselves the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This society had a clear objective. Access to a printing press and a distribution network and a growing number of influential allies. What they needed was evidence to prove that what they said about the slave trade was true. Right, so this is going to send Clarkson on a personal quest. He's gonna be the member of the society who goes out into the world to gather this information and bring it back, right? So that they can prove to everyone that this is not just the Zorg wasn't a one off. This is just how bad things always are in this, in the slave trade. And we'll return to Clarkson a bit later. He's heading off right now to go find a bunch of dirt on the slave business. Right. And while the society is getting itself up off the ground, other activists who are not a part of this group are hard at work providing firsthand documentation of the hideous evils of the slave trade. And this brings us back to our friend Equiano. Right? And another guy. Because the next year, 1787, the same year Robert Stubbs dies, a former slave named Otoba Cuguano publishes his autobiography, biography. He'd been kidnapped at age 13 and trafficked to England in 1772. Kuguano is a close friend of Olada Equiano, and his example likely helps to convince Equiano to write the autobiography that I quoted from earlier in the Last Episode. It was published two years later, and both books become best sellers in their time and are reprinted in multiple languages. They're very influential, right? And these books have a huge influence on the course of the abolitionist movement. Previously, most ideological bystanders in England had passively accepted the claims made by pro slavery advocates that Africans were happy being forced laborers and that life on plantations was an improvement from their situation back home. Equiano and Koguono's books blasted those myths apart. Right. You can no longer believe that when you're reading these guys being about, like, here was my life before I got enslaved, you know, as Mike Kay wrote, it was difficult for those who read the book not to associate themselves with the African hero who was courageous, resourceful, literate, cultured, and Christian. All qualities, Right? Like, you can no longer view these people as somewhere less than you. When you've read the whole book. One of them wrote about his incredible life, right? And that makes you start, yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (21:41)

Like, this guy's done things that most people in Britain, even wealthy people, wouldn't have dreamed of doing, Right. Like, it's very hard to see him as a lesser human being.

Bobby Finger (21:50)

No. And then once you start being like, wow, this, this one guy was really incredible in a way. They said none of these people are. Is it possible that they're all just people and that what we're doing is one of the greatest crimes in human history? I'm gonna have to think on that before I get back to my job. Dying of the black lung, which is what I assume most English people are doing at the time, or on boats.

Robert Evans (22:13)

You know, those are our two main industries, scurvy and black lung.

Bobby Finger (22:17)

Scorpion, black luck.

Robert Evans (22:18)

Yeah, that's a cornerstone to the economy.

Bobby Finger (22:21)

So Equiano organizes a group of formerly enslaved black men together called the Sons of Africa. And together they begin campaigning independently of white allies like Sharpe in order to spread public disgust at the institution of slavery. And this is a really important fact, right? Equiano and his fellow freedmen have no political power, and they start from a position of basically zero cultural influence. And they aren't just being like, oh, thank God I met a nice white person who was able to take the fight for me. They never do that. Equiano, not like he and Kaguano publish books that give them cultural influence because they're so popular. And then they start organizing other freedmen to become a political lobby in their own right and start writing letters and having meetings with members of the government and people of cultural influence in order to push abolitionist sentiment. They are very much active, active and strategic participants in the abolitionist cause. Right. That's really important. So Equiano orchestrates a nuanced and elaborate PR campaign augmenting the work. Granville Sharp and the other folks on that side of things are putting together. The Sons of Africa do these letter writing campaigns, and they succeed in, you know, it's an uneven progress, right. Because the society right around this time gets hearings before the Privy Council on the abuses of the slave trade, and none of the sons are called to testify. So Equiano writes directly to the chair of the council and then publishes the letter he wrote that guy in a prominent newspaper so that no one could ignore it, right? To be like, and I sent this to this guy. If he ignores it, he has it, you know. By 1788, Equiano is considered one of the leading abolitionists in the country. A newspaper at the time described him as well known in England as the champion and advocate for procuring a suppression of the slave trade. He and Kaguano spent years touring the country with their books, bringing hundreds of new activists into the cause every single year. Right. They're showing up and they're meeting face to face with people and basically radicalizing folks one on one to get involved, you know, that's like a big part of their conscious effort here. Yeah, cool guys, you know, who also radicalized people, the products and services that support the show. That's right. They radicalized me to advertise for them.

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Bobby Finger (25:08)

Okay, if you thought season two of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions was spicy, buckle up. Season three is here and Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are taking things deeper. They're tackling trending topics, offering practical advice, and having hilarious and heartfelt conversations with a range of queer celebs and sexperts who know their stuff. This season they're covering it all. From circuit culture to hookup horror stories to locker room shenanigans. No stone is left unturned. And let's be real, 2025 hasn't exactly been a breeze. So Gabe and Chris are doing the work, keeping the community informed with chats on prep, harm reduction and how to cruise smart in a wild political climate. Oh, and this season they want to hear your stories. Their call in segment is getting even hotter and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air. No pressure. So if you're ready for round three, just push play Sniffy's Cruising Confession, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences. Now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday, 10 athletes will.

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Bobby Finger (26:31)

This is where mindset comes in.

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Bobby Finger (27:01)

And we're back. So by 1789, the lobbying of the society and in particular Member of Parliament Sir William Wilberforce had brought another William into the fold. Sir William Dolben Williams are pretty load bearing for this part of the anti slavery campaign he proposed a bill dolben did, known as the Dolben act, that he described as the first bill to put fetters upon the barbarous and destructive monster that was the slave trade. This is the definition of an incrementalist solution. It is not banning anything. It is not saying these people aren't property. But it requires slave ships to hold no more than two slaves per ton for the first hundred tons of weight of the vessel, and no more than one slave per ton after that. This is directly inspired by the Zorg, which had held roughly four slaves per ton for most of its journey. The act also reforms some of the language around insurance policies to make sure someone like this Gregson syndicate doesn't try another similar gambit again. And while the bill is being pushed forward, Equiano leads a delegation of free black men to the House of Commons. There they meet with the Prime Minister as well as Dolben and several other members of Parliament. Right. Which is a really important moment. These guys have gone from nobody who don't even get called to talk to the Privy Council to their meeting with the Prime Minister and a bunch of NPs about the passage of an act regulating the slave trade. That's a big deal, you know, just in the history of English democracy. Right, Right. Yeah.

Robert Evans (28:28)

Black dudes meeting with the Prime Minister at that point in time, it doesn't.

Bobby Finger (28:33)

Seem like it had happened a lot. Right. And their testimonies, the fact that these guys are all talking about what happened to them, don't stand alone. Right. So in it, the Dolben act is not just like. It's not just kind of the testimonies of these folks, form of these freedmen that is influencing how people think at the time. One of the most influential firsthand accounts of the slave trade that comes out in 1788, which helps spur support for the abolitionist cause, is written by a former slave ship captain, a guy we talked about in our first episode, John Newton. Newton published his book Thoughts upon the African slave trade in 1788. He'd been born and he's. You know, I don't know if we call him a hero, but he's on the right side by the end of his life. This is a complicated man, Right, that we're gonna talk about here, but let's get it. He's a fascinating guy, too. His story says a lot about why people became slave ship captains. Like, who got into that business, Right. Yeah. He was born in 1725 to a father who captained merchant vessels in the Mediterranean and a mother who was a Protestant. Nonconformist. I don't understand this super well, but I think from what I can gather, it means she rejected the legitimacy of the Church of England but was still super religious. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Biographer John Donne writes that the boy as a child, Newton, quote, feared his father and dreaded the times when the old sailor was home from the sea. And from what we can tell, when his dad's home, he spends most of his time drinking. One of John's earliest memories is his father heading off to the bar and his mother using the opportunity to have him memorize essays and tracts written by religious scholars she admired. Mrs. Newton wanted her son to become a reverend, but she died two weeks before his seventh birthday. I think it was tuberculosis. You know, probably a little bit of guesstimating just based on the symptoms, but yeah, after this point, none of the adults in John's life really care about his religious instruction or him. He prays alone sometimes, but he drifts further and further from belief as his childhood gets steadily worse. His father forces him to attend a boarding school for two years with an incredibly cruel headmaster who's very abusive. And by the time John leaves the school at age 10 or 11, he is no longer religious. He's just not interested at all. His dad has, by this point, gotten hitched to a new wife, but at age 11, he takes his son to sea for the first time. Now, the upside of this is that because his dad is the captain, John gets to stay in the spacious captain's quarters. The downside is that his dad is his dad, which means he's trapped in a fairly small room with an incredibly abusive father, right? Newton later wrote, I was with him in a state of fear and bondage. This is a very unpleasant childhood. He and his dad go on six voyages together. John has two near death experiences at sea during this time at age 12, and then at age 15. And he becomes very anxious about dying unsaved. So periodically he'll work himself up into a lather about this and he'll try to get back to being faithful. He'll try to get into the rhythm of praying regularly and attending services, but he keeps falling out of it. Nothing seems to. He would later write, I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell, but I loved sin and was unwilling to forsake it. Just a funny way. I was just such a big fan of sin.

Robert Evans (31:55)

What a universal human sentiment.

Bobby Finger (31:59)

God, I don't want to go to hell, but sin is awesome.

Robert Evans (32:02)

Yeah, I enjoy sinning. What are you Going to do.

Bobby Finger (32:06)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (32:06)

What? Perfect. I love that he wrote that as well.

Bobby Finger (32:10)

Yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (32:10)

No shame. No shame about it.

Bobby Finger (32:12)

Okay. The elder Newton gets his son an apprenticeship on a different ship. But teenage John is too rebellious. Dunn describes him as switching between fits of aggressive rage and nonconformity, followed by days of obsessive meditation and prayer, begging God to forgive him for his sins. He would fast for days at a time, which was also not conducive to his career. And 17, yeah. It's just not. Not great working at a boat while starving. Although a lot of sailors are starving a lot of the time anyway, so it's not that weird either.

Robert Evans (32:44)

Sailing, it's good. If you could. The points when you don't have to be starving if you can not be starving. It's probably better for your longevity if you don't.

Bobby Finger (32:51)

Yeah, yeah. You really want to eat when there is food because it might always be 1740. Yeah. Cause you're on a boat.

Robert Evans (32:58)

Yeah.

Bobby Finger (32:59)

In 1742, his dad retires. John is now 17, and his father tries to secure him another job. This one is the overseer on a Jamaican plantation one of his friends owned, right? And he's like, look, it's a great job. You'll make money. It's safe. You know, you can get rich and then come home with money. Right. John doesn't flake because he doesn't want to be a slave overseer. He flakes because he falls in love with a 15 year old, right. And he really wants to marry this teenager.

Robert Evans (33:26)

Oh, no, that's not the kind of sin I'd been hoping he was into, to be honest.

Bobby Finger (33:33)

To be fair, he's not a lot older than her, Right. I think she's actually like 13 or so. But when they fall in love. So it is a little weird. But he's not that like he's a teenager too. I think when they start, he starts flirting with her. But yeah, it's not good. It's not great. That said, he feels like things are settling into place in his life. He gets another job, he's working on a boat. He feels like he's definitely gonna marry this girl. He gets over the worst of his religious anxieties and becomes basically an atheist, right. Which he writes about some. And it's kind of. It's fairly interesting if you do read his book, him talking about how he kind of comes to that conclusion. And then in 1744, while hanging out with some friends one night, Newton gets press ganged and forced to serve in the Royal Navy. Right? This is how a lot of boat stuff worked at the time. You know, both the Navy and also a lot of slave ships. By the way, even a lot of the white guys running slave ships in the early period of the slave trade are not there of their own free will. They were picked up drunk one night and made to work on a boat. This is something the Navy's gonna crack down on around a little later. But, yeah, not by the time when he's a teenager. That said, his dad is a man of influence within the, say, within the boat world. And he finds out his son's been kidnapped and he's able to basically, like, hey, I think he needs a job, so keep him on the boat, but you gotta promote him to midship. You know, you gotta give him a better gig. So Jack gets promoted and he actually likes his new job. Things are going well until his boat, the Harwich, announces their next mission is going to take five years. And again, he's pretty sure he's gonna marry this girl, right? Who is by this point. He's a little older now. She's 15 now. And he goes to her parents and they're like, never come here again.

Robert Evans (35:21)

Right?

Bobby Finger (35:23)

Like, nah, yeah, I better get married.

Robert Evans (35:28)

Then leave for half a decade. It's probably not the best pitch.

Bobby Finger (35:32)

It's not a good pitch. So Jon goes kind of crazy and he tries to desert from the Harwich. He gets caught and he gets punished. And here's Dunn describing what happens to him after he gets caught trying to go AWOL. All 350 of the crew were assembled on deck to witness Newton's court martial and flogging. The captain was determined to make an example of him and so discourage any other malcontents from thoughts of desertion. He was stripped and lashed to a grating. Give him the first dozen. The cat O9 tail swung repeatedly, lashing his bare back until his white skin was red with lacerated flesh. His audience watched in sickened silence. One young Marine fainted. Lash after lash pounded his torn back. Eight dozen strokes in all. Stripped of rank and degraded to his original position, his former comrades now dared not even acknowledge that they had ever known him and were forbidden by the captor to have any communication with him. Him. So this fucks him up. This leaves. This does some damage to Newton. Right?

Robert Evans (36:26)

Can I imagine?

Bobby Finger (36:27)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a lot of lashes. Yeah.

Robert Evans (36:33)

Right. That's like a potentially dying from loss of blood amount of lashes.

Bobby Finger (36:36)

Yeah. And it's because he's trying to make an example of him. Right. So Newton's not happy after this. He makes plans to murder the captain and then kill himself, but he never goes through with it. Instead, he manages to use his clout to transfer to his dad's clout to transfer to a different boat, the Pegasus, which is a slave ship working the, you know, doing the slave trade thing. Right. So this is how he starts working on a slave boat. But he doesn't like it immediately. It proves a worse fit than the Harwich at first because Newton is by this point, an angry atheist. And his main hobby, when they're not working, is making fun of everyone else's religion and then trying to convince them to commit sin. Sins. Right. And this does not make him popular with the crew. Yeah, people don't like it when you're stuck in a boat together and you keep calling them stupid for believing in whatever they believe in. Yeah. So he gets left in West Africa. It's a little unclear. Do they fully strand him or is there partly mu. It seems to have been somewhat mutual. Dunn's book suggests Newton makes a. There's a passenger on board is a slave dealer named Amos Clow. And Newton's like, shit, being a slave dealer, I could just get rich, you know, and then I could go home and I can marry that teenager.

Robert Evans (37:53)

Right?

Bobby Finger (37:54)

You just do some slave dealing for a few years and then marry that teenage girl I like. Yeah, perfect plan. So Amos is like, well, I'm heading. I'm heading back home. Hang out at home for a while. I live on this island off the coast of Africa. You want to come, like, chill with me. I'll teach you the ropes. Right? And I think Klaus sort of calms Newton, right? Because when they get dropped off at this island, the only people there are clo, his mistress, wife, who's apparently a princess in a local tribe. I don't know if they're telling the truth about this. I don't know if Newton's telling the truth about this. He's not a perfectly reliable narrator, but basically he's on an island with a slave dealer, his wife, and their household. Right? And his wife does not like Newton. She immediately hates this guy. As Dunn writes, Clow immediately set him to work building a house, though he refused to pay Newton any wage at all for his hard work. Klaus lady had no liking for Newton and viewed him with suspicion and hostility. The combination of climate and hard manual labor soon took its toll and the 19 year old succumbed to fever. Newton was too ill to accompany Clow on his next trip and was left in his wife's care. Far from looking after him, she virtually left him to die. I had sometimes not little difficulty to procure a draught of water when burning with fever, My bed was a mat spread upon a board or chest and a log of wood for my pillow. She lived in plenty herself, but hardly allowed me sufficient to sustain life, except now and then, when in the highest good humor, she would send me victuals in her own plate after she had dined. Again, I don't know if he's lying because he just didn't like this lady. I don't know if this is true. The way he describes it, he's basically made into a forced laborer for a period of time by a black woman primarily. So again, I don't know. But also, she's the wife of a slave dealer. And I could totally believe a slave dealer would be like, yeah, man, I'll teach you the ropes, but first you gotta build a house for free and then just leave. Right. That also doesn't seem impossible.

Robert Evans (39:55)

So, yeah, no one's a good person here, right?

Bobby Finger (40:00)

Yeah. Unclear to me what the truth is here, but this is his story, right? And if this is true, you might think the experience would have made him more sympathetic to people who were enslaved, but it does not. At least not immediately after he's rescued because his dad sends a rescue when he finds out what's happened, and he gets saved in 1748. And kind of on the journey back to England, his boat encounters a storm or something. He has another near death experience and he converts back to Christianity. Right? So he lands in Liverpool and as soon as he's back, he immediately gets a job on a different. Different slave ship. He becomes first mate due to nepotism. His dad's influence is apparently pretty far reaching and starts his career right. In 1750, after just two years, he's made captain and he leads three successful voyages before having a stroke in 1754 which forces him to quit captaining slave ships. But he starts just taking the money he has and investing in slave ships now. Right? And that's how he makes his money for a while. Right? Right.

Robert Evans (41:00)

Okay.

Bobby Finger (41:00)

So his life goes on. At this point, he's guilty. Not because of the slaving initially, but because of his years as a nonbeliever. And this eventually pushes him to become a reverend and fulfill his mother's hopes for him that he would get into the clergy and make religion his life. And over the course of years, he starts to rethink a lot of the things that he had accepted as a younger man. I don't know when he becomes an abolitionist exactly. I think it's the kind of thing that happened in stages. Right. But by the late 1780s, he had fully rejected his past life, describing it as an unhappy and disgraceful trade that stood against the feelings of humanity and was ashamed of the entire country. Right. Like he writes pretty, like clearly about like, it was a terrible thing I did. It's a terrible thing that still exists. I can't believe I did it. It's completely contrary to my current beliefs. Right. Like that's essentially his line from this point forward. Right. And Newton, by the time that he comes out against slavery, is a fairly prominent religious leader. He's kind of controversial for reasons I don't fully understand, very Anglican stuff, but he's also fairly prominent and a lot of people respect him. And one of the people who respects him is a young politician, William Wilberforce, who comes to meet with him in 1785. Right. Not about slavery, just because he needs advice. And Newton becomes his mentor. Right. But this is a two way street. And as Wilberforce grows more involved in the fight against slavery, he seems to have influenced Newton to write an account of his own experience as a captain in the slave trade, which hit at a perfect time to shock and horrify Britons. Newton wrote unsparingly about how most slave ship captains governed through ferociousness, both against their crews and the chained humans kept below decks. So much money was at stake and insurrection was such a constant terror that cruelty was seen as pragmatic. He described how sailors were whipped, bloody, and had their wounds rubbed with pickle spices. He discussed how an obsession with maximizing profit led captains to cram their boats with every kind of merchandise they could find, further cramping the already pestilential confines of the slavehold and leading many captains to bring insufficient amounts of food and water, working their crews and keeping their slaves at the brink of famine. He described how women were loaded onto slave ships naked, trembling, terrified, perhaps almost exhausted with cold, fatigue and hunger. As they were forced below decks, these women were exposed to the want and rudeness of white savages. And he's kind of incent, like, you know this. He's talking about the sexual violence that occurs here. Right. In a way that's palatable for this audience. But that's what he's talking about. Newton expressed revulsion that I was once an active instrument in a business which at which my heart now shudders. So while the sons of Africa are lobbying and Newton's book is starting to, like, fly off the shelves. Clarkson is spending several years engaged in deep on the ground investigation, traveling to Liverpool and other key ports for the slave trade, where he would sneak aboard to document living conditions, conduct interviews with sailors and auctioneers, and generally gather as much documentation as he could about the ongoing crime against humanity. And he's in a lot of danger doing this. He has to have a bodyguard with him. After a certain point, he's like, armed, right, because people want to kill him for what he's doing. He's fucking with the money. Yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (44:14)

He's fucking with the bag. That's what a remarkable transformation.

Bobby Finger (44:19)

Yeah, yeah. From like a kid who wanted to be a reverend to he's now doing like dangerous investigative journey journalism, trying to like, blow the lid on the most evil industry of the day. Right. That's really a lot of what's going on here, you know? Yeah.

Robert Evans (44:34)

Remarkable.

Bobby Finger (44:35)

Yeah. Per that article in antislavery.org, clarkson himself had carried out interviews with sailors in London, Bristol and Liverpool to document the conditions and treatment African slaves were forced to endure. In Liverpool, Clarkson bought shackles, thumb screws and a device for force feeding slaves who went on hunger strike. To provide physical evidence which confirmed the testimonies he collected, Clarkson and a friend, Richard Phillips, also went through official records which allowed them to document exactly what happened to British sailors on slave ships. On average, 20% of each ship's crew died from disease or ill treatment before the ship returned. Of the 5,000 sailors engaged in the British slave trade in 1786, 2,320 came home. 1130 died, 80 were discharged in Africa and unaccounted for, and 1470 were discharged or deserted in the West Indies, which is.

Robert Evans (45:25)

It's a pretty remarkable attrition rate.

Bobby Finger (45:27)

Right.

Robert Evans (45:27)

You're getting less than half of them back.

Bobby Finger (45:30)

Yeah, that's nuts. Like, that's a crazy rate of death. And again, I know, like, the instinct is not when we're talking about slavery to feel bad for the poor slave ship crews. But again, a lot of these guys are forced to work, they're press ganged. Right. They don't have much of a choice here either. And they're being worked to death in a nightmare. Right. Like, this is, yeah, a pretty bad situation all around here. It's also important, like, this matters in part because of how they're talking, how the pro slavery side of things is talking about what the slave trade does for British sailors. Right. Britain is a naval power. The Navy is what keeps Britain free. And what keeps it influential? And one of the arguments the pro slavery side will make is that, like, well, these slave ships are a great training ground for British sailors, right? This is actually important to national defense because all of these guys are learning the rope of how to work in very difficult conditions that can then come and fill our navy with skilled sailors. And that makes all of us safer. Right? And Clarkson's research proves that's a lie, because he's like, no, man, they're all fucking dying. Like, they're being forced to work. They don't want to be sailors, and you're killing half of them. This is not making the navy stronger. You're fucking crazy. Like, yeah, no one's gonna want to.

Robert Evans (46:42)

Be a fucking sailor after half your friends die.

Bobby Finger (46:46)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (46:46)

This is a career for me.

Bobby Finger (46:48)

Yeah. You know what I want to do again? Get on another death boat. This one with guns.

Robert Evans (46:54)

You add fighting to that, it's not going to get better.

Bobby Finger (46:57)

Yeah, boy. The only thing that could have made that trip, that killed all my friends better is if we'd fought the French at some point. So Clarkson also befriends some of his sources. One of them is a sailor named James Stanfield, who'd worked on slave ships. And he convinces Stanfield to publish an account of his experiences in the slave trade, which also comes out in 1788. So alongside Newton's account, you've got this kind of barrage of both the Sons of Africa's accounts of what it's like being enslaved and being a victim of this system, and then on the other side, the people actually working the ships who are also being. No, no, no. This is as bad as they're saying, and I used to run the boats. Like that all matters. It matters that it comes out this way like that makes this a lot more convincing. Clarkson inspires another writer, Alexander Falconbridge, to investigate and publish an account of the slave trade that was also released that year. Educated Britons were thus deluged and detailed, reputable accounts about the evils of the system. William Wilberforce, the Member of Parliament that is like the major act like activist in Parliament, is inspired that year by Clarkson's essay to sponsor a bill in the House of Commons to ban the slave trade. This led to the first parliamentary investigation into the Atlantic slave trade, which in turn inspired the slave syndicates and their agents in the West India Committee, an organization that still exists today, but was founded to promote trade with the Caribbean to strike back. It's still around, but at this point, it's just how slave owners like, do their propaganda.

Robert Evans (48:28)

It's amazing. What does it do now?

Bobby Finger (48:31)

I think it's just about promoting trade with the Caribbean, I guess. Okay.

Robert Evans (48:36)

But they didn't see any need to shut that one down.

Bobby Finger (48:38)

Rebrand it maybe to make a new one. Yeah. Imagine getting onboarded there and being like, so, yeah. How did this start? Well, it started in 1735. Oh, yeah? Doing what?

Robert Evans (48:48)

Well, we don't really need to talk about that.

Bobby Finger (48:51)

Yeah, that's best. You don't really think about it.

Robert Evans (48:55)

They don't have the old photos on the walls as you go in. You know, they pick up a bit later.

Bobby Finger (49:00)

Yeah. Wild. You know what else picks up a little later?

Robert Evans (49:04)

The products and services that support the show.

Bobby Finger (49:07)

Hims. That's right. Yep. Hims.

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Bobby Finger (49:43)

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Bobby Finger (51:52)

So we're talking about the pro slavery lobby striking back via the West India Committee. The committee brings witnesses before parliament who make claims that, like, one of their big claims is that slave ships are actually really nice. Like, I don't know what these guys are talking about. I would love to be in a slave ship, honestly. They just won't let me on.

Robert Evans (52:10)

Right.

Bobby Finger (52:11)

Because I'm not a slave. So they bring on. They bring on a captain who. The space between the decks is sufficiently large to contain the number of people loaded on board. And the slaves in general do not show any great concern on their first coming on board. They're comfortably lodged in rooms fitting for them. When they come on deck, there are two men attending with cloths to rub them perfectly dry in another to give them a little cordial. They are amused with instruments of music peculiar to their own country. And when tired of music and dancing, they go to games of chance. It's basically a cruise. We give them a little drink.

Robert Evans (52:43)

Yeah, yeah. He's talking about a cruise.

Bobby Finger (52:46)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (52:47)

What a fucking insane thing to say. Yeah.

Bobby Finger (52:50)

And they have. They also bring on, like, plantation owners who are like, they love working on plantations. They barely even work. They're dancing all the time. Dancing.

Robert Evans (53:01)

Jesus.

Bobby Finger (53:03)

Yeah. So the society and its allies fight back with skilled propaganda of their own as well as factual legal arguments. Josiah Wedgwood, an anti slavery activist, hires a woodworker to make a seal for the movement, which features an African man kneeling and raising his chained hands above the slogan, am I not a man and a brother? This becomes the logo of the movement and it goes, like, really 18th century viral. It is printed on flyers and books and sold in medallions. We'll show you a picture of like, this is like a medallion. Some of the merch that they had for this but like, you know, it's a very effective piece of visual advertising art. I mean it's. Yeah. I don't know exactly how you want to categorize it, but yeah. Perhaps the most influential image in the whole campaign is a diagram of a slave ship sent to Clarkson by an abolitionist group in Plymouth, Massachusetts. And one thing you're seeing here is the abolitionist movement in the States is much less advanced, but they're starting to not just get things organized, but they're also connecting from an early point directly across the sea. This is from fairly early point an international cause. Right. Among these abolitionists. Right. And so these, these, these folks in Plymouth send a diagram of like a slave ship's slave quarters in and it becomes one of the most like, important pieces of like, propaganda that they, the anti slavery cause uses. Per the website anti slavery.org they sent Clarkson a plate or diagram of a slave ship, the Brooks, which showed sections of the ship from different angles and graphically illustrated how inhumane the conditions were for the slaves. Clarkson and other abolitionists reworked the DIA to show the Brooks loaded with 482 slaves. The ship had carried over 600 slaves in the past, but they did not want to be accused of exaggeration. In 1789 they printed 7,000 posters of the slave ship. And soon the shocking and iconic image was appearing everywhere. And I mean you can see in the image there, particularly in the bottom right corner. It's the bottom of this vessel is almost black with the number of people drawn in just because like they're covering every available inch. There's no room in this thing whatsoever.

Robert Evans (55:13)

No, like they're actually like sardines in a can of sardines. Right. They're like.

Bobby Finger (55:17)

And this isn't the fullest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Front to head. Yeah.

Robert Evans (55:21)

It had 50% more people than this.

Bobby Finger (55:24)

Yeah, yeah. At times. Yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (55:27)

It's like they're, yeah, they're geometrically maxed like that little triangle at the top there. It's wild. Think of packing human beings in like that.

Bobby Finger (55:37)

Yeah. So you can see why people are getting pissed and why this starts to have an effect. By the start of 1789, nearly 200 petitions had been sent to Parliament with tens of thousands of cumulative signatures. Popular momentum is clearly with the cause of abolition, but the society's progress was interrupted by a constitutional crisis over whether or not King George was crazy. So we're not gonna get into that, but it does, it puts a stopper to things for a little while. Right.

Robert Evans (56:07)

Great system.

Bobby Finger (56:07)

And the answer is Kind of no nos. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Evans (56:10)

The answer is they're all kind of crazy. Except any kind of crazy. Centuries.

Bobby Finger (56:14)

Yeah. Old Mad King George. So things grind to a halt for a little while until in late 1791, the Haitian rebellion launches in Saint Domingue. Right. And two months later, former slaves are in charge of much of the island. Thousands of white slavers are dead. More than a thousand plantations have been looted. And white people who are pro slavery are kind of freaking out about this. Right. Parliament doggedly refuses to consider outlawing slavery. But the success. I was surprised to hear this. The success of the rebellion, its primary influence on, like, in England, is to fuel abolitionist sentiment. Because a lot of people, instead of being like, oh, my God, it's so scary. Look at, like, this uprising and what they did, they're like, wait, the only way we can keep these people slaved is by, like, holding guns at them at all times. Is this evil? Is this bad? They don't seem happy over there.

Robert Evans (57:04)

Yeah, I don't think they really are going on a cruise.

Bobby Finger (57:08)

They burned a lot of plantations, if they like plantations. I don't know why they do that. If they're fans of them.

Robert Evans (57:15)

Sure seems like they weren't having a nice time. Yeah.

Bobby Finger (57:18)

That same year, 1791, a series of popular pamphlets incite a boycott of sugar produced on slave plantations. And incredibly, some 300,000 people get on board. This is like a big, big deal. William Wilberforce. Yeah. Which is like, yeah, good thing to be boycotting. Yep.

Robert Evans (57:35)

Yeah, go for it. But it's very early for that kind of, like, consumer activism to be so effective.

Bobby Finger (57:43)

This is pretty foundational in a lot of ways in just like the history of Western activism. William Wilberforce capitalized on the newfound momentum in 1792, introducing a new bill to abolish the slave trade. This time, public support was so strong that Parliamentarians actually feared opposing the bill. They didn't wanna pass it. Cause again, money. But they were scared to piss people off. Right. Which is an important sea change. It passes the House of Commons in a compromised form. Right. And the version that passes has an amendment that says we'll gradually abolish slavery. Right. We're not gonna do it all at once, right?

Robert Evans (58:17)

Yeah.

Bobby Finger (58:18)

But it doesn't get through anyway. Cause the House of Lords has a say and they block the bill. Cause they're the House of Law Lords. Right. It's. It's the chunk of Parliament, all of the assholes in it. Yeah. Well, no, no, that's not fair.

Robert Evans (58:32)

But there are some assholes in the House of Commons as well.

Bobby Finger (58:34)

You're right. You're right. It has a higher portion of assholes in it.

Robert Evans (58:38)

Right? Yeah.

Bobby Finger (58:40)

In 1793, war with France interrupts the anti slavery cause. Again, the whole, you know, that Napoleon stuff is getting going and it makes it hard to want to do things that might upset the economics of the entire empire. Like when they. They're now fighting a series of wars. And now because a war is on, there's anti sedition laws that makes it difficult to organize during the war years. So this is again another kind of period of time in which things get delayed and off track in terms of the abolitionist cause. But history keeps happening. And during the war years, there's a series of slave rebellions in the Caribbean. Right. They're not as successful as the Haitian one, but they keep the human and financial cost of forcing slavery on Africans. In the public consciousness, people are constant hearing, oh, a bunch more people died in this horrible slave uprising. Right. They really don't seem happy. You know, by 1806, it's time for things to move forward again. And finally, the Abolition of the Slave Trade act is passed on March 25th in 1807, which brings an immediate ban to the Atlantic slave trade. The Royal Navy is now pressed into service searching for slave vessels. Right. So this is. Is the culmination of Sharpe and Clarkson and Equiano and Newton and all of these people's efforts is they ban the slave. The Atlantic, the slave trade. Right. In 1807, within or the Empire. Right. You cannot. British ships are no longer supposed to be taking slaves, and they're not supposed to be importing them to British colonies. Right. This is again, not enough. You know, this is not at all an end to slavery. There's still slavery in the Empire, but it's the beginning of the end for slavery within the Empire and it's the end of the beginning for the abolitionist fight. Now, there is one of the downsides is because this is a big victory, there's a loss of momentum within the cause. Right. Because people are like, well, isn't that enough? A sizable chunk of people are. Sharpe is not. Clarkson isn't. But a lot of people are like, I feel like we did okay, you know.

Robert Evans (60:46)

Move on to something.

Bobby Finger (60:47)

Yeah. So there's a loss of momentum. But abolitionists, the most dedicated ones, do continue to mobilize and fight, while the British government uses its power to pressure other European states to pass laws prohibiting the slave trade. And this is happening at the time. Right. It starts with just being a British thing, but they are able to get other European states to sign on to basically saying, yeah, we're not going to participate in this anymore. Right. And that is an important step, too, towards full abolition. Abolition. It's gonna take until 1833 for slavery to be abolished in the British Empire. And that is another story that we're not. Cause it's again, about the slave trade being ended. But that fact, the fact that they do abolish slavery in 1833 is directly tied to the abolition of the slave trade. Right. And even this act is imperfect. You know, when slavery is abolished, slave owners are compensated financially for the slaves they don't have anymore, which is not great. Nope. But it's better than the situation that had existed previous. And it provides a shot in the arm to the abolitionist cause in the United States. And in fact, everything we've talked about in these episodes helps to form and inspire the abolitionists who fought to end slavery in the U.S. granville Sharp, our goat, never lives to see full abolition, but he plays a major role in the 1807 abolition of the slave trade. And he lives to see that it comes at the end of 42 years of ceaseless work on his behalf. By the end of his life, Sharp was one of the most admired men in the world. John Adams wrote that he, quote, merited the esteem and respect of all men among whom liberty and humanity are not disregarded. He dies in 1813, aged 77. His protege, Thomas Clarkson, continued the fight and saw it through to the general abolition of slavery in the Empire. After that was done, he devoted himself seamlessly to ending slavery in the Americas. Clarkson's like, okay, we got that done. Time to get over to the States. Like, that's the next fight, right?

Robert Evans (62:41)

What a chad.

Bobby Finger (62:41)

Yeah, yeah. What a cool guy. What a really cool dude. Yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (62:47)

I'm glad he went for that horse ride.

Bobby Finger (62:49)

The note we end on is so fucking cool. I can't wait to read it to you here. But yeah. So in 1840, the first world anti slavery Convention is held in London. To commemorate the event, a painting is commissioned by one of the best known British artists of the day, JMW Turner. Inspired by Clarkson's writing and the horrible case of the Zorg, Turner made a painting called Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, which Sophie's gonna show you. It's a very affecting piece. And it's. I mean, it's not directly named after the Zorg, but it's people being thrown. It's enslaved people being thrown overboard to die in the Ocean. Right. And this is kind of like the. The head image of the conference. Right. To remind people, again, they're harkening back to the Zorg to remind people of the inhumanity of what they're fighting for. Because it is such a difficult, difficult fight and a painful fight. You need to do that. Right. Clarkson gives the keynote speech at this conference, and he urges his American allies to continue their fight against the planters in the south and persevere to the last in their quest to abolish slavery. Six years later, at another abolition movement gathering near the very end of his life, Clarkson meets with Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd. Garrison Douglass viewed Clarkson as a hero, and he wrote later about the moment that he met Clark. And this is one of the most affecting things I have ever read. This is Frederick Douglass talking about meeting Clarkson. He took one of my hands with both of his and in a tremulous voice said, God bless you, Frederick Douglass. I have given 60 years of my life to the emancipation of your people. And if I had 60 years more, they should all be given to the same cause. Yeah. Wow. And he dies a couple of weeks after this at the age of 86.

Robert Evans (64:29)

Geez. Yeah.

Bobby Finger (64:31)

Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Robert Evans (64:34)

What a hero.

Bobby Finger (64:36)

Yeah. Cool guy. Some cool guys in the story. Yeah. Nice. You picked a. You picked a good story. Yeah, that last bit gets me.

Robert Evans (64:47)

Yeah, yeah. That's wild to think, like, and then, like, the direct link from straight to.

Bobby Finger (64:55)

Fred hand to hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert Evans (64:57)

For Frederick Douglass to, you know, look at that. It goes to women's suffrage in the civil rights movement in the United States. And, like, many of the best things happen in the last 200 years.

Bobby Finger (65:06)

Yeah. Yeah. All because a lot. Some. A number of people, you know, Equiano and Sharpe and Clarkson and, you know, all of their allies. Wilberforce got the ball rolling and spent years fighting for very little at a time. It would have seemed like that. Constantly. That, like, well, we got folks. This was years of effort, and what did we get? You know, Right.

Robert Evans (65:28)

So much human suffering in the meantime. It would have been so easy to.

Bobby Finger (65:31)

Give up, nightmare continuing and just be like, it's impossible. Things are just fucked forever. You can't fix any of this. But they didn't. Again, Clarkson was fighting 60 years.

Robert Evans (65:45)

Yeah. Like an entire lifetime of struggle. Yeah.

Bobby Finger (65:49)

Wow.

Robert Evans (65:50)

Inspiring. Very inspiring.

Bobby Finger (65:54)

Sorry. Truman's yelling at me because I'm carrying her sister.

Robert Evans (65:58)

Not her, but y got a double dog carry, so.

Bobby Finger (66:03)

So this is the last episode of the year. I thought the audience deserved an Anderson yawn. That's Right. You're getting one for me, too. I'm tired.

Ad Read 2 (66:11)

I'm tired.

Bobby Finger (66:13)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (66:13)

It's been a long year, friends.

Bobby Finger (66:15)

Yep.

Robert Evans (66:16)

Hopefully the next one is better.

Bobby Finger (66:19)

Yeah. Yeah. Be the Clarkson you want to see in the world or Second Dog. Second Dog or someone.

Robert Evans (66:29)

Hit the podcast.

Bobby Finger (66:30)

A second dog has hit the podcast.

Ad Read 3 (66:35)

James, do you want to plug your.

Bobby Finger (66:36)

Book one more time?

Robert Evans (66:37)

I would love to plug my book. Yeah. If you want to read more about people who are struggling to make the world better, you can buy my book. You can pre order it now at ak press akpress.org against the state. But we'll have a link for you. The book is called against the State. Looks at the revolutionary struggles in Myanmar, Rojava, and in Spain. If you don't know what Rojava is, you can also listen to Robert's excellent podcast, the Women's War. But I hope that just like this podcast, my book leaves you feeling a little hopeful and certainly like the time that Robert and I have spent talking to young people fighting for liberation in Myanmar is one of the things that I go back to when I need a little hope these days. So I hope the book can share some of that with all of you.

Bobby Finger (67:23)

Yeah, I hope that too. And I hope you all have a good whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate or just a good End of December or a good Christmas or if I assume there's other holidays this time of the year. Year, sure. New Year's, whatever. Have fun.

Robert Evans (67:38)

Yeah, you don't have to work. That's nice, isn't it?

Bobby Finger (67:41)

We'll be back. We'll be back with some new episodes in 2026. Yes, we will.

Robert Evans (67:47)

So many new episodes.

Bobby Finger (67:48)

So many episodes. Bye bye. Bye bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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Bobby Finger (69:10)

This is where mindset comes in.

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Bobby Finger (69:16)

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Bobby Finger (71:02)

Guaranteed Human.