Letters of Thomas Clarkson

Letters written to Thomas Fowell Buxton concerning proposed parliamentary measures for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, 1825-1828.

Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), anti-slavery agitator, was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and married Catherine, daughter of William Buck. He died at Playford Hall, near Ipswich, Suffolk. Throughout his life, Clarkson was a tireless campaigner against slavery. He was one of the founder members of a parliamentary committee established in 1787 for the suppression of the slave trade, and became vice president, with William Wilberforce, of the Anti-Slavery Society after its formation in 1823. He published a large number of works, largely on the subject of slavery, and made several campaigning journeys not only in England but also abroad, meeting members of the French government in Paris in 1789 and the Emperor of Russia at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. He was awarded the freedom of the City of London in 1839.

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Collection level description created by Paul Davidson, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Listed as no. 573 in Manuscript Collections in Rhodes House Library Oxford, Accessions 1978-1994 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1996).

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The papers of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Bart., 1804-1847 (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 444); letters from the Marquis de Lafayette to T. Clarkson relating to the slave trade, 1798-1829 (facsimiles) (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. r. 1); letters from the Comte de Mirabeau to T. Clarkson, 1789 and James Munroe, 1817 on slavery and the slave trade (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. r. 1*); transcript of Clarkson's diary describing his tour through Wales on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Society, 1824 (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. r. 16); records of the Anti-Slavery Society, 1820-1951 (refs. MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 16-24; Micr. U.S.A. 187-188; MSS. Amer. r. 1).