Portrait of Robert Wedderburn, from "The Horrors of Slavery", 1824
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The campaign had become part of a radical tradition in the politics of the country, and it opened up some peculiar corners of Caribbean behaviour.
Robert Wedderburn, for instance, was the son of a slave with her owner, James Wedderburn. A prolific writer, speechmaker and pamphleteer, Robert had been born free on the insistence of his mother. In England, he exposed his father’s rape of his mother, his habit of having her whipped naked, and much more besides. Wedderburn was actually part of a radical group which agitated for agrarian reform and on behalf of the urban poor, and narratives such as his had a powerful effect in creating sympathy for the slaves in circles which were beyond the reach of the abolitionist and missionaries.
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