LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
The London Missionary Society's Report of the Proceedings against the late Rev. J. Smith of Demerara, Minister of the Gospel, who was tried under Martial Law, and condemned to Death on a Charge of aiding and assisting in a Rebellion of the Negro Slaves:
This copy has the Earl of Ellenborough’s signature on the upper board and has a label on the front pastedown endpaper reading “Earl of Ellenborough’s Heirlooms, Book No. 1430”.
The Demerara slave uprising was prompted by rumours that Parliament was moving to ameliorate conditions for slaves, as a first step toward manumission. By the late summer of 1823, slaves on approximately fifty plantations, believing that their “rights” were being withheld by their masters, rose in revolt. Emancipation was demanded, and violence ensued, with two or three whites dying as a result. The Rev. John Smith was a Methodist minister and missionary to the slaves. He was ordered to join the militia in protecting British property rights, but refused.
Smith was charged with promoting “discontent and dissatisfaction in the minds of the negro slaves” and of not warning of the plot. At his trial several slaves were called to testify on behalf of the prosecution and the defence, and their testimony is printed here. On Nov. 24, 1823, Smith was sentenced “to be hanged by the neck until dead,” but died of “pulmonary consumption” in prison before clemency arrived from London. This book was issued by the London Missionary Society in an effort to prove that Smith had been unfairly accused, and to clear the name of the Society. It includes “documentary evidence omitted in the Parliamentary copy” of the proceedings, letters, and statements of Smith and his wife, and a petition to the House of Commons by Sir James Mackintosh asking that the sentence against Smith be rescinded. An important source of primary information on a major slave revolt in the Americas. Ragatz, p.342; Sabin, 82905.
