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Slide1
What makes a great speech ?
Click right for free supporting resources
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Activity Navigation
Starter : Speech Examples
Main : Abolitionist Speeches Slide3
Starter… listen to some all of the speeches and discuss why they are powerful ?Slide4
William Wilberforce
‘I must speak of the transit of the slaves in the West Indies. In my opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject. I will not accuse the Liverpool merchants: I will believe them to be men of humanity, if it were not for the enormous magnitude and extent of the evil which distracts their attention from individual cases, and makes them think less feelingly on the subject. Let any one imagine to himself 700 of these wretches chained surrounded with every object that is nauseous and disgusting, diseased, and struggling under every kind of wretchedness! How can we bear to think of such a scene as this? The slaves has been described by Mr. Norris, one of the Liverpool delegates, in a manner which, I am sure will convince the House how interest can draw a film across the eyes that total blindness could do no more. It is our duty therefore not to trust not to the reasoning of interested men.’
William Wilberforce was an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. This speech was given in the House of Parliament in 1789.
Slide5
Ann
yearsley
– Slavery a Poem
c1785
I know the crafty merchant will oppose
The plea of nature to my strain, and urge
His toils are for his children: the soft plea
Dissolves my soul—
but when I sell a son,
Thou God of nature, let it be my own!
The
wish'd
-for gold, purchase of human blood!
Away, thou seller of mankind! Bring on
Thy daughter to this market! bring thy wife!
Thou selfish Christian, for thy private woe,
Whence comes thy right to barter for thy fellows?
Luco
( a slave) is gone ( sold ) ; his little brothers weep,
While his fond mother climbs the hoary rock
Whose point o'er-hangs the main. No
Luco
there,
No sound, save the hoarse billows.
Too hapless mother, thy indulgent arms
Shall never clasp thy
fetter'd
Luco
more.
See Incilanda! artless maid, my soulKeeps pace with thee, and mourns; (cries ) Slide6
James McCune Smith
I rise to offer a resolution expressive of our high satisfaction in the noble efforts of the abolitionists of Great Britain and France, who, although they are separated from us by the width of an ocean, and by distinct political institutions, are nevertheless united with us in sentiment and exertion in the sacred cause of immediate and universal emancipation.
This was a manifestation of principle at which we may blush as Americans, but rejoice as men: and unwilling as I am to utter any remark, or draw any comparison reflecting even the slightest discredit on "My own, my native land," Yet there is something in the facts which, however humbling, may yet prove instructive. The very year that witnessed in our Hall of Representatives the appalling spectacle of a venerable man hooted and howled at when he sought even the right to petition in behalf of the slave.
The position in which the British abolitionists are now placed must convince slaveholders that they must grant, and abolitionists that they must obtain immediate emancipation The flame of abolitionism is no longer confined to the dissenters of Great Britain; it has even penetrated within the walls of the church established by law; and bishops of the Church of England have at length discovered that the advocacy of the cause of God's suffering poor is not inconsistent with apostolic order. Men of every rank and of every sect are gathering around the standard of abolition.
Great Britain will call upon those of these states, in one long and loud and incessant series of
remonstrances
, entreating them to follow the British example.
In our own time one government has freely remonstrated with another on the destruction of the African slave trade: why, then, may not one people—who are the source of all governmental power—remonstrate with another for the abolition of slavery !