‘He had experience of plantation life, and a mind that could remember statistics.’ Photo: Image: Contemporary portraits of Macauley, courtesy Clapham Antiquarian Society
Change of heart: The transformation of Zachary Macaulay, by Barbara Henderson
‘Macaulay was constantly vilified and misrepresented.’
As a society, we are finally beginning to address our collective guilt about the British treatment of black African people. But some individuals involved in enslavement had to confront their guilt while the trade was ongoing. One of these men, Zachary Macaulay, had been an assistant manager on a sugar plantation in his teens and early twenties. It is said that his shame never left him, even as he went on to devote the rest of his forty years to the abolition of the slave trade. Thomas Fowell Buxton, who took over William Wilberforce’s role as leader of the abolitionists in parliament, said that, should Africa’s enslaved people be emancipated, they would be ‘more indebted to Mr Macaulay than any man living’. Statements like these are now rightly understood as inappropriate and inaccurate, giving credit to white saviours over black resistance, but this does perhaps speak to the level of Macaulay’s transformation.
Zachary Macaulay was an exceptionally intelligent man. His father was a Presbyterian minister from Inverary, and, with a large family, money was short. He had no formal education but he taught himself Greek and Latin and read the classics. At fourteen, he was sent to work as a clerk in Glasgow. His sharp wit meant he was welcomed into the company of his older work colleagues, for whom debauchery and excessive drinking were the norm. ‘I associated fully with those who were as profligate in their practice, as in their principles’, he said later. Because of his sophisticated intelligence, Macaulay’s company was also sought by university students, many years his senior, and he was influenced by their Enlightenment attitudes and their rejection of the Scriptures. He soon found ‘every trace of religious belief’ eradicated from his mind. By sixteen, this potent mix of drink and radicalism had gotten him into some trouble, necessitating him leaving Scotland. He travelled to Jamaica to start a new life.
When Macaulay arrived in this new world, the population of enslaved people had reached more than 200,000. With no resources, he acquired a job as a book keeper on a plantation. He found himself revolted by the suffering of the enslaved but, having no money to return home, he decided that he had to steel himself against pity for the miseries he witnessed. ‘I resolved to get rid of my squeamishness, as soon as I could’, he said, persuading himself that his loyalty belonged to his employer. Over time he became callous and indifferent to enslaved people and ‘could allude to them with a levity which sufficiently marked my depravity’.
Macaulay was viewed as a prodigy among the plantation community, being so young and so highly intelligent. This gave him an abiding sense of his own superiority and vanity – he had become an unpleasant, arrogant young man.
Returning to England, he travelled to Rothley Temple to be with his sister, who had married Thomas Babington, a Christian philanthropist from the Clapham Sect. These were people with a deep Christian faith, and an abhorrence of the slave trade. William Wilberforce was among those who challenged Zachary’s attitudes. Gradually, guided by Babington and others, Macaulay regained his sense of decency and honour (and, via a conversion experience, his Christian faith). His personality was completely transformed.
Thereafter Macaulay became devoted to the fight for justice for enslaved Africans. He became a key member of the abolitionist movement, which recognised his value in the battle against slavery. He had experience of plantation life, and a mind that could remember hundreds of facts and statistics. He worked closely with Wilberforce, who was known to say, if asked about a particular fact: ‘Look it up in Macaulay.’ He was asked to go to Sierra Leone, a colony set up to provide a home to black Africans escaping from the United States. He went first as deputy governor and the second time as governor. The role did not suit him, but he did it fairly well until he became weak with malaria and was recalled. Instead of taking the direct route, he travelled to Barbados on a slave ship, sleeping in a hammock slung over chained people below. He stayed in Barbados to investigate the lives of enslaved people, recording and collating all he saw. These records were immensely useful to the abolitionists, providing innumerable facts that helped secure the abolition of the trade in 1807.
After this first success, abolitionists like Wilberforce were getting older, and lost faith that it would ever be possible to pass an act for emancipation. But Macaulay never deviated from his determination. He continued to edit the Christian Observer (the monthly periodical set up by the evangelical abolitionists) and ran his own business to provide for his family of nine children. This was hard work – Macaulay often rose as early as four o’clock – and Wilberforce commented that his friend was shouldering the work of four men.
This was a period of social unrest and political struggle. Rotten boroughs were bought by wealthy people to gain a parliamentary vote, and a powerful opposition to abolition developed: the West Indian Interest. The abolitionists’ objectives seemed insurmountable. But by 1823 a new group of young emancipationists was active. They promoted direct action and aimed to gain the support of the population. Thomas Clarkson and others travelled the country, holding meetings and putting up posters written by Macaulay. Clarkson also took over the editorship of the Anti-Slavery Reporter.
he response from the West Indian Interest was vituperative. Macaulay was constantly vilified and misrepresented in the John Bull magazine. As time went by he became weak and frail but published a booklet entitled The Death Warrant of Negro Slavery throughout the British Dominions, which listed all the evidence for the forthcoming victory. The tide was turning: the Tories were in disarray, with three different prime ministers in three years. The Whigs, mostly in favour abolishing slavery, gained power. The Bill to Abolish Slavery, albeit with outrageous concessions, was passed in 1833, a year after the Reform Bill.
Macaulay was ageing. In his will he wrote that he wanted ‘no accolade or praise or compliments’ at his death. By popular demand, however, a statue of him was erected in Westminster Abbey. The plaque underneath said: ‘he devoted his time, talents, fortunes and all the energies of his mind and body to the service of the most injured and helpless of mankind’.
Today Macaulay’s contribution is less well known, and perhaps understood more appropriately. Britain’s trade in people it enslaved had continued for 167 years. More than three million black Africans were transported before the Bill to Abolish Slavery was passed in 1833. The fact that Britain was one of the first nations to end slavery should not assuage anyone’s guilt: Britain was the main perpetrator of the horrendous practice, and its shadow is seen in the racism experienced by black people today. We can no longer hide from our own guilt. We too must be transformed.
