A prominent British anti-slavery campaigner, Zachary Macaulay devoted forty years of exhaustive research to combating what he called a “foul stain on the nation,” and his work was instrumental in laying the foundation for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire. With a focus on his unswerving commitment to the cause, this biography—the first of its kind—examines Macaulay's life and the people and events that influenced it. Zachary Macaulay 1768–1838 illustrates the man behind the writings—his passions and his prejudices, his shyness and steely resolve, and, above all, his willingness to work unremittingly in the background, generating the power to drive the engine of anti-slavery to victory.

The first biography of Zachary Macaulay - the ‘engineer’ of the anti-slavery movement in Britain. He was never an orator or organiser of meetings but through careful research and publication of the facts, providing the vital resources for the parliamentary and public campaign.

" ... Explores the emothional, intellectual, and political roots of Zachary Macaulay, the leading abolitionalist, and his son Thomas's visions of race, nation and empire. The story moves from late eighteenth-century Scotland to the plantations of Jamaica, from the new colony of Sierra Leone to India, from Leeds and Edinburgh to London. The Macaulay family with its intense dynamics and complex relationships provides one thread while the politics of abolition, of reform, of empire and of history writing is another. The contrasting moments of evangelical humanitarianism and liberal imperialism are seen through the writings and careers of father and son."--P [2] of cover.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Antislavery on a Slave Coast -- 2. Let That Heart Be English -- 3. The Vice- Admiralty Court -- 4. The Absolute Disposal of the Crown -- 5. The Liberated African Department -- Epilogue: MacCarthy's Skull -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y

In his introduction, Carretta reconstructs the historical and cultural context of the works, emphasizing the constraints of the eighteenth-century genres under which these authors wrote. The texts and annotations are based on extensive research in both published and manuscript holdings of archives in the United States and the United Kingdom. Appropriate for undergraduates as well as for scholars, Unchained Voices gives a clear sense of the major literary and cultural issues at the heart of writings in English by people of African descent.