Transcript

Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

From Behind the Bastards · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 51 min · 10,305 words · 121 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade | BEHIND THE BASTARDS", an episode of Behind the Bastards published December 26, 2025 (51 min, about 10,305 words). It mentions 13 people, works and ideas, including Granville Sharp, Zorg, Jayne Mansfield, William Griggsson, AK Press.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: James Stout, London Advertiser, Ola Ecuano, Sophie
  2. – 20:00: Granville Sharp
  3. – 25:00: Granville Sharp
  4. – 30:00: Granville Sharp
  5. – 35:00: Granville Sharp, Jayne Mansfield
  6. – 40:00: Granville Sharp, Jayne Mansfield
  7. – 45:00: William Griggsson
  8. – 50:00: Against the State, AK Press, Robert Stubs, William Griggsson
  9. – 51:07: AK Press

Notable quotes from "Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"

  • Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every year I buy Sophie a weapon. it's also about bad people.
    about Sophie · at
  • Case issued his ruling, this person published an anonymous letter in two major newspapers, The Morning Chronicle and the London Advertiser. The letter noted that the Zorg still…
    about The Morning Chronicle · at
  • In reaching the one person who, it turns out, most needed to hear it. A freed man named Ola Ecuano.
    about Ola Ecuano · at
  • Friends is a writer and a lawyer who's also like an early abolitionist named Granville Sharp. And Sharp is going to be the second of our heroes for this episode. One of the…
    about Granville Sharp · at
  • Ruling celebrated it as a sign of the fundamental justice and equality of English law. Judge Mansfield had to issue a note that the case was only really relevant to a specific…
    about Jayne Mansfield · at
  • There's not a second trial because William Griggsson, head of the slaving syndicate, dis decides that a second trial is not going to go well, right?
    about William Griggsson · at
  • Conclude today by saying a little about our main villains for these episodes, William Griggsson and Robert Stubs.
    about Robert Stubs · at
  • Yeah. I wrote this about anarchists at war. It's called Against the State. You can pre-order it from AK Press. you can hear about some people trying to build a better world.…
    about AK Press · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Books & papers

  • The Morning Chronicle — Book · 1 mention · first at
  • London Advertiser — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Published an anonymous letter in two major newspapers, The Morning Chronicle and the London Advertiser. The letter noted that the Zorg still had 420 gallons of water left when…
  • Against the State — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Done some really remarkable things. yeah. I wrote this about anarchists at war. It's called Against the State. You can pre-order it from AK Press. you can hear about some…

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

  • Zorg — Concept · 3 mentions

Places & events

  • Zong — Place · 2 mentions

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every year I buy Sophie a weapon. Um, it's also about bad people. Uh, except for this episode, well, this week we're doing a reverse episode about some heroes, the people who ended the British slave trade. Uh, and eventually the whole Atlantic slave trade. And you know, they're good people. We haven't talked about them yet. We've only talked about bad people so far. Episode one was really a lot of bad stuff in in one. And I do apologize for that on the Christmas week. Um,

our our guest today is uh is big ship guy James Stout. Big big boat man James Stout.

Captain James Stout seaf farer. Captain James Stout. Sir Captain James Stout. No, not one of those things. Again,

never been near a king. Uh, but yeah, I do like to go on a boat. I get very unwell, but I don't let that stop me.

I'm afflicted with seasickness. If I've learned one thing about the history of sailing, no one has ever let being sick stop them from getting on a boat.

You can't you can't you gota you got to power through it. Speaking of powering through it, you know, we we just got the horrible case of the Zorg and the mass murder that happened on board it and then a lawsuit by the Gregson syndicate saying we should get money for those people we murdered. Uh which a British court ruled, yeah, you should. Um so that's where things ended in part one. In part two, some people are going to get mad about this. Now, there was no coverage of Gregs and v. Gilbert at the time of the court case. It was legally a minor civil trial over an insurance dispute, and there was really no reason to believe that anyone aside from the parties involved were paying attention to what happened in court or cared about what had happened aboard the Zorg. But one anonymous person watched the proceedings that day, March 6th, of 1783, and they were horrified by what they saw. Right? There's some theorizing

in the book. the Zorg about who this person might have been, but we don't really know. It was just someone was there that day who had a conscience and who viewed Africans as human beings, right? Um and a lot of stuff that happened, a lot of very important stuff is going to result from the fact that one person with a conscience was there that day, right? Um now, a little less than two weeks after the judge in this case issued his ruling, this person published an anonymous letter in two major newspapers, The Morning Chronicle and the London Advertiser. The letter noted that the Zorg still had 420 gallons of water left when it put into port in Jamaica. And thus, as the underwriters argued, there was quote, "no necessity for a conduct so shocking to humanity." This is our only first-person account of the court proceedings. And the author of this anonymous letter claims that quote, "The narrative seemed to make every person

present shudder." He lamented that in spite of this, the jury voted in favor of the Gregson syndicate. The letter then takes a more philosophical turn with the author wishing some man of feeling and genius would give poetical language to the last thoughts of one of the 10 enslaved men who chose to kill themselves after seeing their little brothers and sisters hurled into the ocean. Quote, whose indignation made him voluntarily share death with his countrymen rather than life with such unheard of English barbarians. The letter then concludes with this paragraph. It is certainly worthy of observation that our legislature can every session find time to inquire into and regulate the manner of killing a partridge, that no abuse should be committed, and that he should be fairly shot. And yet, it has never been thought proper to inquire into the matter of annually kidnapping above 50,000 poor wretches who never injured us by a set

of the most cruel monsters that this country can send out. Pretty unsparing. Yeah, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Is she making a good point? Have you ever found out who wrote this or does it stay anonymous?

Again, it's we don't really know. The the author Sedharth car has a theory as to who it is, but it's not like it's it's we we don't know. We simply don't know and we never really will to a point.

I think it's I think it's cool that uh two newspapers printed it. Yeah. Yeah. It's good that they printed. Again, there's sentiment. There's abolitionist sentiment. people of like conscience and care who are informed and know how bad it is. They're just not really unified yet, right? There's a there's, you know, a small organization of like Quakers, but for the most part, most of the people who are like upset about slavery don't aren't together yet, right? And this it's it's over this case that they're going to get stitched together, right? Um, the letter finds an audience, at first mostly with England's small Quaker anti-slavery movement, but it doesn't cause an immediate broader uproar on its own. However, it succeeds in reaching the one person who, it turns out, most needed to hear it. A freed man named Ola Ecuano.

And this guy is one of the coolest dudes I have ever heard of. This is a [ __ ] Ecuano is a fascinating man. Have you heard about this person, James? Yeah, I love to assign Aguano to my undergraduate courses.

Yeah, his book is fantastic book. Yeah, and you can find it online. It's free, right? We'll be quoting from it some here. A fascinating person. Um, so Ecuano had been born around 1745 in Ebo, part of modern-day Nigeria, which was then part of the Kingdom of Benin. And although he claimed his village was only nominally controlled by the king, right, that like, yeah, we have a king, but he's not really a factor in daily life, which is probably accurate. As a young boy, he'd never heard of white men or Europeans or even the ocean. His father was a village elder and held a high position in local government. As a child, Ola seems to have had a keen eye for injustice. Because of his father's position, he spent a good deal of time watching court proceedings and later wrote that adultery for women was often punished by slavery or death. Quote, "The men, however, do not preserve the same constancy to their wives which they

expect from them." So, one thing you see about Alta is that he is he is a thinker. This is not a man who just accepts like, oh yeah, adultery, you got to kill a woman if she does that. He's a man who's like, but the guys are all cheating and nobody cares about that. It seems unfair, right?

That seems wrong. Um, yeah, he's a he's a an empathetic and intelligent man. Um, he was aware of slavery from a very young age. You had to be in the part of Africa he lived because there are slave slavers running rampant. He later wrote about stout mahogany coloroled men from the southwest who traveled through town to trade firearms, gunpowder, and other goods. Quote, "They always carry slaves through our land, but the strictest account is exacted of their manner of procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery or some other crimes which we esteemed heinous." Now, these are his recollections of how he thought that how he justified things as a small child.

Right? This is not how he feels about the matter as an adult. And in fact, he cut it make he makes it clear in his autobiography that his belief that like, well, these guys,

you know, they're not allowed to just take slaves willy-nilly, right? You know, we make sure that they that they're not that's not accurate, right? That's a thing he learns unfortunately not far long later in his childhood, right? Um, and he does note at the time that like, well, you know, my dad told me that, yeah, it's okay. We always make sure that, you know, they're not just grabbing people off the street at random, you know, when they come through. But he knows like they always carry these big empty sacks with them. I wonder what those are for.

Jeez. Right. For for Christmas stuff, I assume. Yeah. He's a child, so he doesn't really see that as a warning sign until it was too late. Um now there is like the there is some basic knowledge that they are in danger because he he writes that during the day when the grown people leave town to work the fields the kids would assemble to play and at least one kid in any given time would have to stand watch would like climb up a tree to watch for kidnappers who quote sometimes took those opportunities of our parents' absence to attack and carry off as many as they could seize. So, first off, you get a really good glimpse in's book as to like what what the slave trade has done to daily life in like these small villages in this part of Africa where it's like, yeah, the kids just know that you always have to be aware that like kidnappers might come and steal all of you.

Yeah, that's a real danger. Um, yeah, they're not making it up this time. No. He writes, quote, "One day, as I was watching at the top of a tree in our yard, I saw one of those people come into the yard of our next neighbor, but one to kidnap, there being so many stout young people in it. Immediately on this, I gave the alarm of the rogue, and he was surrounded by the stoutest of them, who entangled him with cords that he could not escape till some of the grown people came and secured him." So, this is, you know, a positive end, and this is his first direct encounter with slavers, but it's not going to be his last. Not long after this, he and his sister are minding the house while their parents are away. Two men and a woman jump over the walls, steal them both, cover their mouths, and sprint off with them into the woods. For the next few days, they're taken through the woods, bound and gagged during the day. He

wrote that the only comfort we had was in being in each other's arms all that night and bathing each other with our tears. And this single comfort was not to last long. Quote, "The next day proved of a greater sorrow than I had yet experienced, for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other's arms. It was in vain that we besought them not to part us. She was torn from me and immediately carried away while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described. I cried and grieved continually, and for several days, I did not eat anything but what they forced into my mouth."

So horrific. It's pretty bad. Yeah. He's taken first to a village several days away while he is purchased by a local chieftain. And that's the thing. He's not this is not like a often you're taken straight to the coast where you're sold. You're now a slave and you will be sold around. Like a lot of these people do just stay in Africa, right? And maybe get free or maybe don't. But he is a slave to local Africans for a while, right? His first owner is a local chieftain who treats him really well and he thinks has adopted him into the family, right? He works as a blacksmith assistant. He spends the next month gain gaining their trust. And his plan is I want to escape, right? It's like, I'm going to get their trust so I can make an escape attempt.

This doesn't pan out though. And he's ultimately bought and sold several times. He learns three languages as he journeys across Africa. Uh, and he ends up in a coastal village where he is sold onto a slave ship. Now, up to this point, he always emphasizes, and it's kind of a weird part of the book, but he's he's really emphatic. I was always treated well. People were not mean. I mean, what they're doing selling separating from his sister, selling, but they're not cruel. They're not yelling at him. They're not treating him as a subhuman right?

They're just doing this awful thing to him. Um, and as an 11-year-old, it's really weird for him because they're being so nice while they do this awful thing. Like, it's kind of a head [ __ ] right?

Um, and yeah, he generally enjoys good food and is is, you know, kept relatively healthy this whole time, right? And this ends as soon as he's sold onto a slaving vessel, right? uh quote, "I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life, so that with the loathomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me. But soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables, and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across, I think, the windless, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced anything of this kind before. And although not being used to water, I naturally feared that element the first

time I saw it. Yet, nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side. But I could not. And besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who are not chained down on the decks, lest we should leap into the water. And I have seen some of these poor African prison prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so and hourly whipped for not eating. Now he is again 11

as this is happening to him. Um, this is about 1756 when he's transported first to the West Indies where he witnesses the auctioning of slaves to plantation owners, but he's not sold himself because he's really sick. Like, he's just not worth anything in the eyes of these people cuz he's seems like he's dying. So, the Dutch take him back on board the slave ship and take him to America. And he gets better enough during that time that he's sold to a v Virginia plantation owner. um he gets kind of within this horrible situation one of the better jobs you can get where he's working as a house slave so he's able to kind of he's not laboring in the field he's able to recover his strength more effectively right because he's it's less physically nightmarish work um and he gets better enough and he's he's just proves to be very intelligent too so he's he's got a lot of value to him and he's sold again to the captain of a

British merchant vessel named Henry Pascal it's Pascal who gives him his European name Gustavas Vasa and sometimes you'll see him and he he would go by Vasa periodically throughout his life as well as Ecuano, right? But yeah, Pascal gives him this name and takes him to England and for a while things seem to be going really well. He's taught about Christianity. He makes like a friend with a local boy who's about his age, like a white boy. Um, and they're actually very good friends. The kid dies like 2 years later. Um, but they like he's adamant that like no, this kid was like really we were very close. um he helps him learn English and because he's so smart, Ecuano attracts wealthy British patrons. These like two, I think, older ladies pay for him to go to school. And so he's obviously kind of thinking, I've lucked out. I might just kind of get out of the whole slavery thing and be like English, right? Like

maybe that's my future because Pascal seems to be treating him well. He's got these local ladies who are like paying for his, you know, he he seems to have fallen into a good situation. And then out of nowhere, Pascal takes him back to sea, right? And so they they spend some time on voyages together and he's still kind of being treated more like a servant. Um they're engaged in like pirates attack several times like he helps defend the ship in several desperate battles. Um they travel the oceans of the world and allow says that at this time he feels a growing loyalty and affection for Pascal who he believes has been so kind to him because he plans to free him one day. Right? So he he's really like as loyal to this dude as he can because he thinks that like I found a good one, right? Unfortunately, he has not. Uh that is not the case. Um in an article for documenting the American South on Ecuano, Jyn Williamson

summarizes, "He is shocked shocked at an abrupt betrayal during a layover in England when Pascal has him roughly seized and forced into a barge. Pascal sells Ecuano to Captain James Duran, the captain of a ship bound for the West Indies. Dazed by his sudden change in fortunes, Ecuano argues with Captain Duran that Pascal could not sell him to me, nor to anyone else. I have served him many years, and he has taken all my wages and prize money. I have been baptized, and by the laws of the land, no man has a right to sell me." After Duran tells Ecuano he talks too much English and threatens to subdue him, Ecuano begins service under a new master, for he is too well convinced of his power over me to doubt what he said.

Right? She's like, "But like I did all the stuff I'm supposed to do. I feel like I'm English now." And he's like, "If you keep talking English, I'm going to beat the [ __ ] out of you." Right? Like that's what happens here.

Um, so he's taken back to the West Indies. Uh, he endures the nightmare trip down the middle passage a second time. uh which is just an unthinkable hell to have to do twice. Um he writes of seeing white members of the crew gratify their brutal passion with females not 10 years old on the journey,

right? In other words, they're just raping any female that is on the boat, right? They don't care about age, you know, like that's the kind of men who are doing this, right? Uh once he arrives in the Caribbean, he is horrified that he will be sold to a plantation and into a life of quote bondage, misery, stripes, and chains. But here again, he meets with this crazy good luck with it's this weird situation where he's in like the like this horri the worst least lucky situation he could be in. But within that situation, he has crazy luck. Like I don't know how else to describe it because it's like one in 10 million, right? Like like this happened to millions and millions of people. One of them had this unique set of circumstances and was uniquely intelligent to be able to

to take advantage of it in the way that he was right faculty for languages. But well, yeah, but like

like even people who would have been as smart but maybe aren't good with languages probably wouldn't have had the success he has, right? That's a separate kind of like he's just a bunch of good happens.

He is a really good writer. Yeah. Maybe not. I don't know about this point, but Yeah.

Yeah. No, but there's not much [ __ ] from that period that I can assign in whole to undergraduates in 2025 and have them be like, "Wow, that's [ __ ] up." Like, it makes people feel things still centuries later. Yeah,

it's really powerful. Yeah, I do really recommend reading it cuz among other things. It's just there's a lot I mean, the early portions of the book are just a lot about life in that part of Africa at the time that you're not going to run into a lot of firsthand accounts of.

No, it's interesting. Yeah. Um, so again within this horrible situation, he gets crazy lucky again because the next person to buy him is a Quaker. And again, most a lot of Quakers are anti-slavery. This guy, Robert King, clearly isn't totally against slavery, but he's also still a Quaker, right? And he's like a merchant or something. I don't know exactly what he's there to do, but he sees he at once recognizes, "Wow, this kid is smart as hell, and he's he already speaks a ton of languages. There's a lot I can have him do." So King starts having Ecuana work a bunch of different jobs and he he starts like basically assigning him out to like subcontract him with other guys and some of these guys are like fairly decent and are like hey what if we hired you to do extra side work and pay you personally for it and King is like yeah you know you I have no problem with you making money on the side right why not um and

so these guys like both teach him how to you know train him up and help him like learn these different trades and and he's able to make side money. And so he takes this side money and he starts buying and selling goods with the money that he makes, right? And basically turning his salary into even more money. And he does well enough at this in 1766 when he's about 21, he's able to buy his freedom. And he does. Robert King allows him to do this, which he didn't have to do. So again, he's he he got into like the luckiest part of a bad situation he could be.

Um, and yeah, he's able to he becomes a free man. He's free after this point. So he spends the next several years taking work on merchant ships cuz that's what he knows how to do. And he travels around the world. In 1773 he becomes one of the first Africans to visit the Arctic. Uh Ecuano wrote and corresponded widely and generally he's like an adventurer. This guy lives an amazing life. Um like he's one of the most incredible people who ever lived. Um now the whole time though as his life is going well right he remains troubled with the inhuman institution of slavery that had robbed him of his childhood and his family you know he he knows this is still going on he's still angry about it um and so he starts meeting during the times when he's back in London he starts meeting with and befriending some of the small number of Englishmen who oppose the institution of slavery and after reading that op-ed he comes across this

article about what's happened on the zorg He's sick with horror and fury at what has happened. I mean, it's just an awful thing. And he has personal experience with being on those boats. So, it's much he knows much better how awful it is than an average person reading it. And he wants to do something. However, he's also a practical guy. He knows that even a freed black man has zero political power and influence in England at the time. So, if he's going to have an impact on the situation, he's going to have to be cunning about it. One of Ecuano's friends is a writer and a lawyer who's also like an early abolitionist named Granville Sharp. And Sharp is going to be the second of our heroes for this episode. One of the coolest dudes to ever live. Really, like just an actual great man. Uh, born in Durham in 1735, Granville was the middle-ish child of 14. Five of his eight older brothers survived early childhood, which means

his parents were better than average. uh his family was workingass and as a youth he was apprentice to the owner of a fabric store. However, he turned out to be one of those kids who's just like irrepressibly smart, right? Like he is not going to work at the fabric store, you know?

Um in Granville, this expresses itself. He has this pesa debate kid. He's the good kind of debate kid, but he has this pathological need to debate with his peers to the extent he is so committed to this that he makes a Jewish friend and they start having like good-natured arguments about religion. And because he wants to argue better with his Jewish friend, he learns Hebrew and becomes a fluid speaker of Hebrew in order to argue about like the Torah with his Jewish friend.

Yeah, that's perfect actually. Yeah. uh when he's m when he makes a friend who's a member of a weird Greek Christian sect, he learns Greek for the same reason. Like again, he like like Ecuad. He's one of these guys who just picks up languages. He's just crazy smart.

Um yeah. In 1757, he gets a job as a clerk in the ordinance office, which is, so far as I can tell, is like a mid-level bureaucratic position. This leaves him with ample free time, which he spends idly studying the law and presumably learning more languages in order to argue with his friends. one of his older brothers is a doctor who hold and you get the feeling this is like a family of good people cuz his older brother the doctor runs a free clinic out of his house for the poor of London, right? Um and Granville periodically will just like show up to hang out with him and his patients and and like talk.

There's not TV at the time. What else you going to do, right? No, no podcast, right? Yeah. So Granville shows up one day in 1765, the year before Auano buys his freedom, and he happens to meet a black enslaved person named Jonathan Strong. Strong had been taken from Barbados to London by his owner, slave trader David Lyall. He was 15 or 16 uh when when Lyall has him baptized. Now, religion is confusing at the best of times. And Strong, like many enslaved people, misunderstood the purpose of baptism and was under the impression that now that this was done, he was a free person

because he had been baptized, right? You can't hold a Christian as a slave, right? That'd be [ __ ] up.

Um, pretty weird. Pretty weird. And so he tells Lyall, well, like I'm free now, right? And Lyall being a slave owner and traitor doesn't have a great control over his anger and just immediately pistol whips this adolescent boy nearly to death. He beats him so badly with the butt of a handgun that Strong goes temporarily blind and can barely walk upright.

So he I I and you get the feeling he just loses his temper and beats this kid nearly to death because he's immediately like, "Oh [ __ ] I killed him." And he just tosses him out onto the street like a piece of trash. He's like, "Well, he's not worth anything anymore. Bye. So, somehow this dying boy manages to like crawl or find help and he gets to Granville's brother's free clinic where his immediate injuries are treated, but it's clear he needs more treatment. And it just happens to be on a day that like Granville Sharp and is is there with his brother. And so, he and his brother Jon he and his brother take Jonathan to a nearby hospital and p pull their money to pay for him to stay there for 4 months and recover. And when he's released, cuz they're just treating him like a freed man at this point, they find him paying work with a Quaker pharmacist they knew. So they they get this guy to the hospital, he heals, he

recovers pretty well, and they find him a job and he starts living a life, right? Like he's an independent free person making money. Uh for a year and change, things are pretty good for Strong. But then in 1767, his former owner, Lyall, sees Jonathan on the street and is like, "He's alive and healthy." And he gets really [ __ ] angry. How dare that boy have the tearity to survive my beating and not hand himself back over to me. He stole himself basically.

He stole himself. Yeah. [ __ ] Yeah. So, yeah, Lyall doesn't want to deal with Strong anymore, but he works. He says like, "Hey, I own this guy and he's really healthy. You just got to go get him if you give me 30 lb. So he like sells this guy and then he hires slave catchers to abduct Strong out of his new life.

Yeah. So stand up, great dude. Months of conflict. Granville Sharp who has been studying the law is like you can't do this. He's a free man now. You can't make him leave. You can't take him to another foreign country, right? Like you can't do that. Um so there's a conflict follows. There's like this goes on for a while before like the court case actually resolves and at one point during the proceedings Lyall challenges Sharp to a duel and Sharp's like let's settle this in court basically. Um and at another point lawyers at Granville consulted warned him that English law saw slaves as property even once they were taken onto English soil. And Sharp has a law a moment of horror where he's like there's no way the laws of my beloved England are this bad. So he spends the next like two years making himself an expert in the law and fighting this case, fighting Lyall and the man Lyall had sold Strong to James

K. Um and he eventually wins Strong's legal defense wins. This is a significant case in like British like legal history. Um and it's the kind of thing where they win Strong's freedom, but they don't get a ruling that alters English law in respect to the rights of enslaved people. Right. Um, so it it it's it's good because Strong doesn't have to be sold into slavery again. Um, but it it also doesn't like it doesn't go any further, right? And Sharp is disappointed by this and because by this point, after a two years of fighting this case and immersing himself in the law, Granville Sharp has become, in Sidarth Car's words, the first British person to devote his life to the extation of slavery. And his influence actually goes beyond that, though. It's wild how influential this [ __ ] dude is. One of Sharp's overseas friends is an American of some notoriety named Benjamin Franklin. And in his off time,

Sharp had a habit when he wasn't fighting slavery, he would write essays that were often published as pamphlets or tracts. And he sends one of these pamphlets to his buddy Benjamin Franklin, which lays out Sharp's argument that Americans shouldn't be taxed if they don't have parliamentary representation. This dude's like at the center of uh the entire of global history.

It's it's [ __ ] amaz like Yeah. Just writing a lot of letters and absolutely forest history.

Yeah. 18th century. He's like a really smart Forest Gump. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Forest Gump done a whole lot of very more impressive stuff.

Yeah. Um Yeah. It's just a I I I I didn't know much anything at all really about Granville Sharp until I started this and like Yeah, we should probably talk more about this guy.

Yeah, this dude probably should be on money or something. Yeah. Yeah. Put this on the 20 note.

Yeah. Yeah. We got some people who really shouldn't be on money. Uh we could probably switch them out. Yeah, it'll be fine. It's like those people I'm sure you I mean Robert, you and I have experienced this together. When when you are working in conflict zones, sometimes you will the often the people who you work with are the most remarkable people.

Like they they speak several languages and they and like Yeah. You taught yourself Chinese cuz you were bored after learning English.

Exactly. And yeah, like your grasp of our culture and politics and the way we talk is perfect.

Yeah. And you're the same in five other languages and you can argue about domestic issues in the US with me with a great degree of intelligence to many American people.

Yeah. And and and who have like devoted their life in between like the stuff they're doing with you to like rescuing other people and like helping to provide like emergency medical care or get food to different like Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You'll find out that Yeah. On Sundays they rescue puppies from [ __ ] burning buildings and like it just fits perfectly with who that person is.

I'm so tired after my work week. I just sit on the couch in the weekend. Yeah. Yeah.

How do I become more like you? Uh yeah. Um yeah, Granville Sharp is one of those like, well [ __ ] I'm not getting enough done guys, right? And is too honest. They're both like Jesus Christ. Like I would have to leave you if you were in a story.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, Sharp's primary focus in the years after the Strong case was in expanding his studies as a lawyer so he could make an unimpeachable legal case for banning slavery. In 1769, he publishes a tract titled a representation of the injustice and dangerous tendency of tolerating slavery or of admitting the least claim of private property in the persons of men in England. He wasn't good at titling. He was good at a lot of stuff, but not titles. Um, this became one of the first pro popular arguments against the system of slavery in England. Uh, not just arguing that it was immoral, but that it was foreign to the spirit of and intention of British law and cultural values. Right? That's a key part of his argument is that like this isn't really English, right? Like we shouldn't based on the things we say about our shared values. This is not a natural thing for us to be doing, right? Why are we so

committed to this? Is it just venal profit? It is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I wonder if there's a modern analogy for that, Robert. What's interesting here, though, is that Sharp is not just wish casting a legal argument, right? His extensive study of the law had found precedent as far back as 1569 for the assertion that slavery was not legal on British soil. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about centuries old British like court rulings and rulings of like kings and [ __ ] but there are cases from the 1600s to the 1700s that back up this argument. And one thing that was definitely true is that no law was ever passed in England to make it legal to own Africans. That's never there's never like a law that just says you could do this. People just start doing it and they're like, "Well, I guess this is property." Yeah,

it's happening now. Yeah. Kind of the the best pro-slavery advocates could do is point out a 1729 legal opinion in which an attorney general had argued that the legal status of a slave didn't change just because they set foot in England, right? which is something, but it's not the same as like there being a law saying you could do this, right?

Right. You can't point to it as like the slavery act. Yeah. Exactly. Even like Yeah. When we go back in American history like like when we're looking for like when shadow slavery begins, you can see cases where there are like um indentured servants, right? and as a a form of punishment that their terms of service are extended.

But then it it appears that the black people's terms of service are not extended presumably because they are assumed to be in in servitude for their entire life by nature of who they are. Right. But like we we can't point to a this is when they decided it was going to be like that and those were the rules.

Right. Right. Yep. Um, so Granville comes into the 1770s wellarmed to argue that slavery is not really legal. Uh, next, per Mike Kay's piece for anti-slavery.org, in 1772, Sharp defended James Somerset, a slave who had escaped and been recaptured. This proved to be a crucial test case as Sharp argued that slavery itself was unlawful in Britain. Lord Mansfield, the chief justice and preciding judge, was reluctant to reach a conclusion on whether the right to property outweighed the right to freedom and tried to persuade the parties to settle out of court. When this failed, he attempted to word his decision so that he freed Somerset without setting a precedent.

Despite Mansfield's efforts, most observers, including other judges, thought that the effect of the judgment was to free slaves that were brought to Britain and that this provided a legal avenue for many slaves to obtain their freedom. So, this is the kind of the case where Mansfield is doing everything he can for this not to have any wider effect. But all people hear is that like, well, this guy got freed, right? Uh, let's try it some more.

Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like this makes me free, right? Um, so large numbers of enslaved people in England start fleeing their masters in an errant belief that slavery had ended on the island. Many abolitionists who misunderstood the ruling celebrated it as a sign of the fundamental justice and equality of English law. Judge Mansfield had to issue a note that the case was only really relevant to a specific niche situation, which caused Ben Franklin to joke that English abolitionists were celebrating the majesty of their legal system for its virtue in quote setting free a single negro, right? Where he's like, "Okay guys, like it's good, but like maybe calm down a little bit, you know?"

Yeah. Pipe down. Yeah. This is this is one guy. There's still a lot of guys. Um still a net negative. Now, this this judge, the Earl of Mansfield, uh is a really interesting guy because not only is he the judge in the Somerset case, he's going to be the judge in the Zorg case. Uh now, this isn't weird because he's one of the most significant figures in the whole history of English law. He's the judge for a lot of big cases at the time, right? But he's a particularly interesting guy to rule on cases like this because he has no child of his own.

But he's raising his illegitimate niece Dedo Bell as his daughter and she is a black woman of mixed race. Right? So he is simultaneously repeatedly being like enslaved people are property and my ruling should not be seen to free anyone. And is also clearly capable of understanding that they're human beings cuz he is raising a black woman, right? Um, and there's all there are a couple of moments where cuz he's never talks in a way that's very sympathetic to this, but there's a couple of rulings where it's like, well, maybe this is where his sympathy moved him a little bit. Not to give him much credit cuz I don't think he's a very nice guy, but

um, it's a really he's a really interesting judge to be trying this case, right? Um,

now and again, he is not considered a friendly judge. Sharp considers him a deeply hostile judge, in fact. And in the Zorg case, Mansfield has no trouble ruling that enslaved Africans are property. Anyway, by the time we hit 1783, Sharp is well established as the guy to talk to if you're trying to defend or create rights for enslaved people in England, right? And so, it's not hard to see why our friend Ola Auano would like Granville Sharp, right? Seems like a pretty natural friendship. Um, and so once Ecuano reads that article about the Zorg case, he does the 1700's equivalent of pasting a link to a news article in the group chat and he like sends a copy to his friend Granville Sharp. Granville writes in his diary, "Gustavas Vasa called on me with an account of 130 Negroes being thrown alive into the sea from on board an English slave ship. And this is the start of a process that is going to it like terminate in the

creation of the first mass movement against slavery in British history. Right? Like this this is the inciting instant iso sending this letter to Granville Sharp. So Sharp hits the ground running. He starts meeting with the lawyers who'd represented the insurers in that case and is like, "Hey, I think we can file an action against the Gregson syndicate and request a new trial and I think we can win that new trial because we didn't we didn't really have a full trial last time. If we really make a thing of this, we can make them go through discovery and we can look at the log books and the other documentation kept by the crew of the Zorg, right? And we can see, did they really need to kill those people, you know?" Um, yeah. He also starts barging influential figures in the country with letters demanding the Admiral T court charge the crewman of the Zorg with murder. He's going to do this the rest

of his life. It never works, but he does keep trying, right? Um most of his efforts don't bear fruit, but he succeeds in getting a hearing over a motion to set a new trial. And this hearing is scheduled for May 21st, 1783, less than 2 months after the first trial. Gregs and v. Gilbert, which is the the hearing, is not going to be a tiny, largely ignored case. It's going to be a major court thing with exacting notes taken on court proceedings and a huge amount of media attention covering every twist and turn. Sharp is not technically the lawyer here, but he's basically acting as an adviser to the defense council, which consisted of three lawyers. Um, the most important of these was a fellow named Samuel Haywood.

And Haywood's a really interesting person. He was born in Liverpool in the 1750s. He went to Cambridge. Um, and he comes from like a very rich family, right? I mean, he goes to Cambridge, right? And he's rich because his dad, Benjamin, is a slave merchant in Liverpool. And his younger brother, also Benjamin, Benjamin Arthur, is a slave merchant in Liverpool. And over like the years they'd been doing this, something like 130 different slave voyages had been financed and operated by the Haywood family, right? They had transported uh at least according to Sidarthkara, they had transported something like 42,000 enslaved people like over the course of their time in this industry. Um and in fact, the Haywoods had invested in at least one slave ship with William Griggsen with like the Griggsson syndicate, right?

Oh wow. Um yeah. So this is a kid whose money and whose child like schooling and stuff is paid for by slave money and he's an abolitionist by now. He fundamentally objects to the slave trade, right? Um, and so he just he like when he's representing the underwriters in this case, he's this is probably pissing off his family. So it's just very interesting that like this is a kid from slave money who's like, "Nah, this is bad." No, bro. Just if if anyone ever says people who grew up in that culture couldn't know it was wrong. Like yeah, lot of dude here's a dude. Um, I'm not I don't know that if he was like a committed full-on abolitionist because a lot of these guys were just anti the slave trade and thought that that was the like the middle passage and stuff was the triangle was the worst part of it.

But that's still a better than not being against that, right? It's a step. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's an unusual position still and a brave one to assert that time. Right. Right. If you're

when your whole family are slave traders. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so from the jump there are some uncomfortable tensions behind the scenes in this case. The insurers and their council benefited from Granville Sharp's lobbying and legal mind, but they're not on the same side, precisely. The insurers are slavery profiteers. They don't want the trade to end. They don't want abolition. They're making money off of it, right? They just don't want to pay money in this case. Sharp is on board with them because he also doesn't want Gregson to get a bunch of money for killing these people or for his people killing these people. But he also sees this case fundamentally as a way to set further precedents on the road to ending the slave trade. Right? He is thinking about this from the jump that that I am doing this because it's a step to something better. Now, judge Judge Mansfield tries to deny that possibility

from the outset of the trial, insisting that this case is purely regarding the insurance policy on the Zong or the Zorg. Mansfield insists the case of the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. And for the most part, the actual arguments in the case do not rely on enslaved Africans having more rights than a horse. Right? That is kind of what's going on here. The central legal question is not was it bad that they killed these people. It's did these people have to die because disasters that the the Zorgs crew were not in control of had caused a situation where it was impossible to keep them alive. Right? Is this a situation where there was no other option where people were going to die one way or the other and they were trying to save a portion of the of the crew and the cargo, right?

Or was this a case where the people operating the ship had [ __ ] up constantly and unnecessarily murdered a bunch of people and we're now trying to get insurance money to cover up the fact that they [ __ ] up? Right? Which of these is is h what happened here, right? And to be clear, if you approach the case of the Zorg from just that standpoint, ignoring the crime against humanity, the Griggsson Syndicate and its employees are in the wrong, right? because they did [ __ ] up repeatedly and horribly, you know. Um, you do not have to be like morally against slavery to be like, "Well, but like you guys didn't know what the [ __ ] you were doing. You just threw them over." Well, YOU HAD 400 GALLONS OF water on the boat, right? H.

Yep. You know who else has a lot of water? I can make a guess. Yeah. SP we This podcast is sponsored entirely by the pistachio farmers of Central California.

Jesus. you know. Yeah. Pistachios. We've got enough water probably. Yeah. [ __ ] the Colorado River.

Yeah. Actually, it's doing okay right now. Mhm. Happy for it. At an all-time high, which means climate change is solved.

Oh, good. I'm glad I've been worried about that. We did it. And we're back. So, diligent cross-examination, you know, early in the court proceedings here comes across a bunch of examples of the crew of the Zorg [ __ ] up hideously, right? It finds out because they're talking to Stubs and they're talking to that to his first mate and Stubs admits like a bunch of [ __ ] he shouldn't on the stand including that like wait you guys you guys sailed past other islands that had water but didn't cuz you were like worried that they might have been taken by like an enemy who would take your boat but you didn't know and you just went past the islands that were full of water. And then he admits that like, well, we thought we had enough water when we passed those islands, but then we looked inside and realized that the water barrels weren't as full as we thought. And it's like, you didn't check on your water.

You didn't check to see if you had enough water. Seems like a pretty important thing to check. Yeah. Likewise, the lawyers point out that the Greggsson syndicate had a responsibility to hire a competent captain. Not only was Collingswood not that, but when he got sick, he passed on command to a demonstrably incompetent man when a skilled sailor and navigator was locked in his room, forbidden from doing his job. It was not the sea's fault or the underwriter's responsibility if the syndicate hired a captain who couldn't, and this is a line from the court case, tell Hispanola from Jamaica.

Wow. Real burn on the dead guy. Good. In the 18th century. Mhm. Now, much of the case came down to the fact that further interrogation of the ship stores and the actual documentation of their journey showed that when they landed in Jamaica, they had days of water left. And if they'd been close to running out, there were again multiple islands they could have gone to to get their water within a day or so. In addition to that, on the stand, Stubs revealed that it had rained several times near the end of the journey, and he'd failed to have the crew collect rainwater.

Stubs really continues to [ __ ] ruin everything he does. SHOULD WE GET WATER? NO, let's just kill some more guys.

Yeah, it's fine. We just kill some more women and children. Yeah. [ __ ] Um, so this case, which had been rushed through the first time on second viewing seemed much more disturbing, even to skeptics like Mansfield. The dark question that hovered over the whole proceeding was this. If not out of necessity, why would Stubs and the crew have thrown 130 people overboard? And the answer that people kept thinking was probably the obvious one is this. After a two-long journey on a slave ship crammed with twice its maximum maximum ox occupancy, without enough food or enough water and disease and dimmick, many of the enslaved people on board were too sick and visibly ailing to fetch much of a price at auction. So if you just kill them, the insured value is higher than what they would sell for.

Jeez. We don't know that that's what was going on right? But this is what people start talking about and it's not an unreasonable proposition.

Yeah. Pretty ghastly lines up. Yeah. Yeah. But everything else they've done is ghastly,

right? And this changes the thinking of a lot of people like Mansfield who are not abolitionists but who are like, "Oh [ __ ] but if like if we establish this precedent, people might just start murdering ships full of enslaved people to just get the insurance money and that seems like a nightmare." Like that's even bad to me and I kind of suck ass, you know. Um, yeah. So this fact is shaking even to guys like Judge Manfield and he ruled, quote, "To be sure, what Mr. Hwood has observed is a very material circumstance. So many negroes thrown overboard after the reign came without any account of how they came to do it. It is so uncommon a case.

I think upon the ground of re-examination, it ought to go to a new trial. And he grants a motion for retrial. Now, this is never to be. There's not a second trial because William Griggsson, head of the slaving syndicate, dis decides that a second trial is not going to go well, right? And it's just going to waste money. So let's just cut our losses and return to operating the slave trade at a mass massive massive level. His insurers se celebrate their victory. But you could be forgiven for seeing that at this point the case is like an overall like mixed bag or even a wash for the cause of abolitionism, right? Because you know the people who won are still involved in the slaving industry. No one has attained any additional rights. No one's ruled that enslaved people are human beings. They're still the same as cargo, right? How is this? You you could see someone, especially like a a political

radical at the time, being like, "This is the worst kind of incrementalism. You've achieved nothing, right? You can see how someone might think that." That is not the case. And in fact, part of why I think the story is important is it illustrates how critical small and seemingly pirick victories can be in pursuit of sweeping social change. First off, while there's no second trial, the fact that a retrial was granted means that slave merchants had been given a warning. You can't just kill people and claim their insurance money on them, right? Um, and then as Sidharth car writes in the Zorg, even if just for a moment, the Africans who lay at the bottom of the ocean thousands away were seen as people, not property. And Cara's arguing that this causes kind of a perceptual shift in a lot of people who can't help as they're hearing how horrible what this is, sympathize with these people who are still legally just

property. And that that's an important shift. But the larger victory in the case was that it had started the process of gathering together and galvanizing great legal minds, writers, and agitators towards pursuing an end to the slave trade in an organized fashion. Right? And that's what we're going to talk about in part three. But I should conclude today by saying a little about our main villains for these episodes, William Griggsson and Robert Stubs. During the first case, Stubs had high hopes of getting a job with the syndicate and perhaps even support to regain his lost gold by helping Griggsson make good on the slaves that they'd killed. When this failed, he gets cut loose. Now, Stubs never makes it back to Africa. He scrapes together a meager living for the next few years and he dies a age 60 in 1787. In his will, he gives gave his son George all my wearing apparel which wasn't much wasn't

much use to the boy who never made it back from Africa and died there earlier that same year age 19.

Stubsy one more at the end. One more real piece of shampoo. Yeah. Lift his kid his clothes. His old his old man clothes.

He literally does. He doesn't give his kids any money. I don't think he has much, but he's like, I already paid to raise them. Why would I give him money?

Paid to ship that one kid off to Africa. Mhm. Jesus, what a piece of [ __ ] Yeah. What a what a turd. Yeah. Find his grave and piss on it if you're in the region.

Yeah. If you can find it, pee on it. William Gregson, unfortunately, lives until 1800 when he dies a 79 after having financed more than 150 slave voyages that tore nearly 60,000 Africans from their homes. Roughly 16% of these people died on route. Gregsson died wealthy and respected, having never been called to account for his crimes against humanity, which is a bummer.

Yeah, that sucks. I'm sure his descendants aren't still rich today. I'm not sure that's something you can be so sure of, Robert. I think there's a good chance they might be.

No, the arc of the the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, James. A yeah, but it moves slowly is a problem. It moves real [ __ ] slow. A little bit too slowly sometimes. Be good if someone give it a bit of a giddy up, you know.

And it's less of an arc and more of like one of those one of those needles they have on like a seismograph, so it's just like jumping back and forth pretty often.

Sure doesn't seem to be bending in a in a good direction recently. Yeah. I don't know, man.

Um but yeah, that's the story. Oh, Stubsy man. Stubsy. Yeah. At least he died reasonably young. Like he could have made it to 100 the other dude. I can't imagine what that

I don't know 60 in 1787. Yeah. Yeah. I mean he lived longer than poor little George.

That's right. He lives longer than his son. Yeah. What what a [ __ ] turd. Who he presumably doesn't even know has died because he gives that few shits.

Yeah. Like here have some old shirts, kid. Yeah. My old man death clothes. Wow. that I wore as I [ __ ] up again and again over a series of fuckups that lasted my entire life.

Well, I'm glad that guy is dead. Mhm. We all are, I think. Yeah. James, do you want to plug your book real quick?

Yeah. You won't encounter any any Stubsy type characters, but there's some heroes in here, I think. Some people who have done some really remarkable things. Uh, yeah. I wrote this about anarchists at war. It's called Against the State. You can pre-order it from AK Press. Uh, you can hear about some people trying to build a better world. uh less incrementally than this uh in many cases kind of uh with with a bit more I guess uh kinetic means uh but nonetheless I think like there's some stories and things that we can learn in our much less violent lives uh from these people and the way they organize and and the way that they have gone about things and I hope people read it and enjoy it.

You can buy it from AK Press. Pre-order link will be in the episode description

and should Yeah. Yeah, you should. Yeah. Don't buy it from Jeff Bezos. He's not as bad as some of the people on here, but not a great dude.

Not a great dude. And yeah, you know, until next time, folks. Well, which we we'll be like tomorrow. But just in general, I guess as you look at how [ __ ] up things are, remember that things change pretty quickly. And uh things evils that seem entrenched and impossible to fight generally aren't. And that even victories that seem pirick or meaningless can lead to much greater things just by virtue of the fact that through the act of fighting people are brought together who become capable of fighting more effectively even greater injustices. So keep fighting and again piss on that guy's grave if you find it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

In order: 0:00 James Stout, London Advertiser, Ola Ecuano, Sophie; 15:00 Granville Sharp; 20:00 Granville Sharp; 25:00 Granville Sharp; 30:00 Granville Sharp, Jayne Mansfield; 35:00 Granville Sharp, Jayne Mansfield; 40:00 William Griggsson; 45:00 Against the State, AK Press, Robert Stubs, William Griggsson; 50:00 AK Press.

What is mentioned in this Behind the Bastards episode?

13 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Granville Sharp, Zorg, Jayne Mansfield, William Griggsson, AK Press, Zong. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

The episode runs 51 min; the transcript is about 10,305 words in 121 timestamped sections.

More from Behind the Bastards

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 7, 2026.