Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 5

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(ABOLITION.) Maria Cowper. Letter of a wealthy English woman describing her opposition to the slave trade. Autograph Letter Signed as "M.F.C. Cowper" to her sister Penelope Maitland of Totteridge Green, Hertfordshire, England. 4 pages, 12¼ x 7¾ inches, on one folding sheet, with address panel and postal markings on final page; mailing folds, seal tear causing loss of two words, minor wear. With typed transcript of the first two pages. No place, 20 December 1791
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"Every great matter is brought about, by some one beginning."

This letter reflects the early British movement to abolish the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Outside of a few radicals and Quakers, there was virtually no opposition to slavery among the English public before 1787. The legislative efforts of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, the "Am I Not a Man and a Brother" medallion created by Josiah Wedgwood, and poems by William Cowper quickly turned opposition to the slave trade into a popular movement. A boycott of West Indies sugar was central to their tactics.

The author of this letter, Maria Frances Cecilia Madan Cowper (1727-1797), was born into a distinguished English literary family. Her late mother Judith Cowper Madan (1702-1781) had been a noted poet, and her first cousin William Cowper (1731-1800) was one of the most beloved poets of his era, as well as an active abolitionist. She had a personal connection to American slavery--her late father Colonel Martin Madan was born in the British West Indies island of Nevis; sugar plantations were the source of the family's wealth. In this letter to her more conservative sister, she sets forth the argument against the slave trade and describes her own participation in the sugar boycott. Her abolitionism seems tepid through a modern lens--she did not oppose slavery if practiced "humanely" and was disturbed by the Haitian Revolution. However, we can see opposition to the slave trade expressed by a member of the English upper class in a way which would have been almost unthinkable even five years earlier.

The tone of the letter may seem familiar to anyone in a family divided by political disagreements. It begins with a defense of William Wilberforce: "I will avail myself with begining my scoldation. I can coin words as well as somebody else. I desire you will take a postchaise and see Mr. Wilberforce instantly, and beg his pardon for ev'ry hard thought you have conceiv'd of that good man, however you may allow his designs 'well intended.' My dear, in the first place, he had no more to do as the direct or indirect cause of the masacre at St. Domingo than you or I. They may thank America and France for that. The wild notions those poor savages form'd of Liberty from what they had heard, and understanding nothing of it in its true light, excited them for that dreadful deed, and no one thing else."

She denies that Wilberforce and their cousin William Cowper intended to end plantation slavery: "As to imancipating the slave-trade, so as to render the poor Africans idle and useless, you as totally misunderstand Mr. W. (and I will also suppose our good kinsman W.C.) in this matter. All that is meant, is the imancipation of trading for slaves from Africa, in order to aid the West India Islands & means of procuring them perfectly diabolical and usage of them there as much so, when they so inhumanly work them in order to enhance the price of the markets here. Would the West Indias be satisfied, and those who have estates there, with more moderate profit and only what their own slaves (well us'd as common servants) might procure ‘em, they w'd have no call for the Africans." She blames plantation owners who "use every method however unpleasant to raise their estates by keeping up the markets here. From such fiend-like commands issue all those inhumanities and murders of our unhappy fellow creatures. The Lord in mercy hear their crys! O what a dark mysterious providence is this!"

She advocates for a boycott of West Indies sugar: "By many familys relinquishing rum and sugar, the markets can be render'd reasonable, it will help to put a stop to the brutalitys abroad. . . . Many familys are leaving off sugar. I am glad I was one among the first. Lady C. Murray was a month earlier. I sweeten'd things with honey, but now the E. India sugar is brought over. . . . Conscience is my guide. Many people at first naturally said, 'I won't begin, for I approve the plan, but what signifies one person? What is an individual? Instead of this, it occur'd to me, whether the example is follow'd or not, if I am convinc'd of a mere probability of its use, I will be one to begin. Every great matter is brought about, by some one beginning."

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