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Poetry was frequently used to capture and express emotional responses to the suffering endured by the enslaved Africans in the Americas.
Some of the poems read here are by women and children who supported abolition in Britain.
In this section
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Parliament and the British Slave Trade: Audio
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- On the Bill Which Was Passed in England for Regulating the Slave-Trade; A Short Time Before Its Abolition, by Helen Maria Williams
- A Poem on the African Slave Trade. Addressed to Her Own Sex, by Mary Birkett
- Is Slavery Contrary to Christian Liberty? by Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein
- Slavery: A poem, by Harriet Falconer, aged 13
- To the Right Hon William Dartmouth, by Phillis Wheatley
- The Slave Trade, by Hannah More
- Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, by Anna Letitia Barbauld
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Explore poetry