30,000 slaves freed in one day in Antigua

This article was found in the October 17th 1835 edition of THE FRIEND from Philadelphia. The front cover of that newspaper is at the bottom of this posting. During the reign of King William IV, Britain abolished slavery in the Empire, far ahead of the United States. Alone among the British Caribbean colonies, Antigua instituted immediate full emancipation rather than the usual four-year 'apprenticeship,' or waiting period. Antigua's Carnival festivities commemorate the earliest abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean.

An Experiment of Immediate Emancipation Antigua 50,000 slaves were made unconditionally free on the first of August, '1834. On the, fourth of August, 1835, the Weekly Register of that island gives the following account of the result of the experiment. The Register, it is said, was not predisposed to approve the change. We commend its testimony, therefore, to the serious consideration of Muse who regard immediate emancipation as, under all circumstances, of course, a wild and fanatical measure. It is true that much labor had been bestowed upon the religious instruction of the slaves in Antigua for many years prior to their emancipation but are there not extensive districts in our own country where slaves are nearly if not quite as well prepared for freedom of those of Antigua!

In the course of the lapsed year of freedom, there has been an unquestionable improvement in the habits of the people. The wandering spirit has evaporated ; they have discovered that there has been much less leisure or spare time in domestic service than in agriculture-less, certainty in desultory employments, such as fishing, portering, and boating, &c., and the comforts of home,' begin to be duly appreciated. The employing and superintending class, too, have gradually acquired the art of governing those as freemen, whom they once commanded as bondsmen, and the practice of task-work, which is becoming almost universal, has given the threefold advantage of stimulus to exertion, dispatch of important work, and leisure to the laborer for domestic and other employment, now extends, we understand even to weeding and with the increasing use of the plough and other machinery, which save a great deal of the severer tillage so distasteful in the culture of the sugar cane, we may hope for a prospering colony.