Son of a Saintly Slave Owner
Son of a Saintly Slave Owner
This chapter examines Gilbert’s views about Africa and Africans in the context of his background as the son of an Antiguan slave plantation owner. Gilbert expressed publicly his opposition to the slave trade in 1790, but in The Hurricane this opposition is less evident: the evils of the slave trade are just one symptom of a universal cosmic imbalance. Gilbert’s Methodist father, Nathaniel Gilbert, had avowed the evils of slavery and praised the Africans’ higher spiritual capacity, but he nevertheless retained ownership. As John Wesley’s abolitionist views only became public around the time of Nathaniel’s death in 1774, it was possible for Nathaniel, as a benevolent slave-owner, to be considered a good Methodist. Gilbert came of age at a time when these moral values shifted.
Keywords: Slavery, Methodism, Abolitionism, John Wesley, Nathaniel Gilbert
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
