Saturday, August 01, 2020

"... to preach deliverance to the captives ..." – Belfast's offer of freedom to 12 slaves, 1828 (with thanks to Sam Hanna Bell)

My first encounter with the work of Sam Hanna Bell wasn't his own famous writings, but his 1972 miscellany Within Our Province. Published the year I was born, it's a collection of I'd guess 100 or so extracts from various writers which had caught his eye over the years.

It was in its pages that I first read of Frank Roney's fantastical account of a Confederate & Belfast Orange civic alliance, which he had completely made up to impress his new American friends after emigrating (see previous post here).

The term 'Ulster Scot' appears in another of the extracts. In re-reading the collection recently, this wonderful story jumped out at me. He published it as a self-penned paraphrased summary, almost as a kind of signpost to a future generation.

Thanks to the online BNA, here is the original Belfast News Letter article –




Particularly for the moment we presently live in, the editorial closing paragraph is powerful stuff. 

It is such a pity that the name of the "man of colour who resides in this town" who intervened to secure the offer of liberty is unpublished. I imagine that he would have been fairly well known in the city. Perhaps his name lives on in the 'Society of Friends' Quaker archives somewhere, or perhaps the Moyallen Branch of the London African Anti-Slavery Association, or in family archives of its members Wakefield, Christy, Dawson and Sinton. I also wonder what happened to those who choose freedom – Joshua Edwards, Robert Edwards and Joseph Rollin. 

Sam's summary version is below –







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