Chapter 6

Chapter 6 in Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains was very informative chapter. Starting off with how John Newton retired of being a slave ship master. It then went into detail about how hypocritical people can be in the world. In this chapter there were two names that came to mind, George Whitefield and Countess Huntington. These two are against slavery but realize that "hot countries cannot be cultivated without Negroes." (p.87). This is very critical because these to ministers both own slaves. Countess Huntington has one and the notorious George Whitefield owns fifty of them in Georgia. This is ironic considering they both don't agree with the idea of slavery.

For the greater part of the chapter it talks about Thomas Clarkson's Essay he wrote. His Essay won the Latin prize. The topic of the peace was "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will". Thomas Clarkson had trouble sleeping during the two months he had to write this essay. He realized how important his essay was going to be. He researched everything he could to learn more about the topic and wanted to know just about everything. When he won it he wanted to publish it to start the abolitionist movement against slavery. He said it was hard for him to sleep because of the information he learned about the topic. He realized how horrible the slave ships were when he finally got on one and had many primary sources talk about the slave ships and how terrible slavery was. At the end of the chapter it talked about with the help of the Quakers, Thomas Clarkson formed the first anti-slavery efforts.

The section of this chapter that really caught my attention was how it took a twenty-five year old to start this revolution. There were obviously many people who opposed slavery but they never did anything about. It just goes to show that someone can really change the world if they want to. This was the beginning of the end of slavery in Britain and later, the United States.