The Clapham Sect by Stephen Tomkins

Author:Stephen Tomkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Hudson
Published: 2010-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

15

Sons and Lovers: Macaulay and Stephen

Cato Perkins and Isaac Anderson arrived back in Freetown in June 1794 with the news that the directors had rejected their petition, like firebrands in a powder keg. Dawes had returned to England to recover his health and marry, leaving Macaulay as governor, and the settlers were more dissatisfied with colonial rule than ever.

On 30 November 1793, the company’s ship had caught fire in the harbour with £15,000 worth of cargo on board, and settlers not only refused to raise a fire brigade but, says Macaulay, openly “rejoic[ed] in the calamity as a just judgment of God on their oppressors”.1

On 16 June 1794, Macaulay enraged the Freetowners by sacking two of them, Robert Keeling and Scipio Channel, for “disrespectful conduct” after they rounded up a crowd to harass the slave captain Alexander Grierson, who had got into an argument with them and told them “in what manner he would use them if he had them in the West Indies”. As the Sierra Leone Company had made itself their only way of getting a living, the parliament of tithingmen and hundreders demanded their reinstatement on pain of mass resignation, and proposed that no one should be dismissed without the consent of their peers. Macaulay refused, telling them: “No one within the colony has a right to censure the governor.” Freetowners insulted and threatened him. On 20 June the loyal black town marshal Richard Corakapone was threatened with hanging when he tried to break up a mob, and when he tried to arrest the leaders the tithingmen and hundreders refused to back him. Settlers were on the point of revolution, and prepared to attack Macaulay that night.

Macaulay announced that from the first act of violence all salaries would be stopped, and he armed white employees and black loyalists under David George against the insurgents. There was rioting through the night and Pepys made three arrests. When a crowd gathered outside Macaulay’s house demanding their release, he set a cannon at the gate. Rioting continued through the next day, but there was no attack on Macaulay or his officials, and by Sunday 22nd it had blown over. He issued a proclamation to be read in all churches warning them that if they threw off the yolk of the company they would lose the employment, education, and civilization it provided and be “reduced to the situation of the natives”, in all probability ending up as slaves again; and that they would also wreck their mission to civilize and Christianize Africa. He offered free transportation back to Nova Scotia for any who wanted it and went as far as to fit up a ship, but no one sailed. Those who stayed, he said, had to accept his government, including the right to dismiss employees, “which he will always exercise”.2 He dismissed all known rioters and sent eight rebels to England to be tried, along with seven witnesses. Granville Sharp pleaded for leniency and they were banished from Freetown for life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.