The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

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Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1841-1850

Theme(s):

slavery

social issues

To JOSEPH DENMAN,1 16 DECEMBER 1850

MS Denman family papers

1 Devonshire Terrace

York Gate Regents Park

Monday Sixteenth December 1850.

My Dear Sir

Allow me to thank you for your most gratifying and welcome letter, and for its accompanying papers2 -- which I will read immediately, with the utmost care and attention. You cannot too strongly represent to yourself the horror with which I contemplate that atrocity the Slave Trade,3 –- although I have (I must confess to you) had my doubts of the efficiency of the African Blockade.4 Of the truth and devotion of those engaged in it, I have never had a grain of distrust.

I will do my best to arrive at a right conclusion on the subject; and even if I should differ from you on any detail, I am sure we shall agree in denouncing the inhuman traffic with our utmost might.

Believe me My Dear Sir

Very faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

The Hon: Captain Denman.

1. Joseph Denman (1810-74), second son of Thomas, 1st Baron Denman (Lord Chief Justice 1832-50); entered the Navy 1823; Capt. 1841, Rear-Admiral 1862, Vice-Admiral 1866. He served in anti-slavery patrols on the west coast of Africa, 1834-6, 1839-41. In Nov 1840, when he was in command of one of the cruisers of the African squadron, he distinguished himself by taking military possession of a baracoon (fortified warehouse) in Gallinas, and freeing the chained slaves, whom he sent under British protection to Liberia. His exploit was held justifiable (he had the agreement of local chiefs) and commended by the Prime Minister Lord John Russell, and the Foreign Secretary, Palmerston; their support saved him from paying damages to the Spanish slave-traders, who brought suit against him in Feb 48. Denman was shocked that the judges who heard the case refused to hold that slave-trading was piracy by the law of nations. see Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell (eds.) Landmark Cases in the Law of Tort (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), ch. 2, Burón v. Denman, 1848.
2. Probably returns of vessels captured, and other papers supporting the thesis presented in Denman's The African Squadron and Mr. Hutt's Committee by the Hon. Captain Denman (2nd enlarged edn; London, 1850): that the squadron was effective when it used inshore cruising, because it was possible to capture empty vessels and to prevent slavers from leaving (the alternative was offshore cruising and pursuit of loaded ships). William Hutt MP (1801-82), a leading opponent of the Blockade (and later instrumental in the UK's annexation of New Zealand), had chaired a Select Committee which produced two reports (one of evidence, the other of analysis and resolutions) in 1849; the resolutions against the Blockade were passed only by Hutt's casting vote. On 19 Mar 1850 Hutt's motion for negotiations to release Britain from treaty obligations to maintain the squadron was defeated; see Hansard, HC Deb 19 March 1850 vol 109 cc1093-184.
3. On the same day on which he wrote to Denman, CD penned a letter to Denman's father, the Lord Chief Justice, also in connection with slavery: "I need not say to you that I have an inexpressible horror of slavery and all its atrocities; but I have avoided (as yet) any more distinct expression of opinion on the subject than is suggested by the article to which you refer, because I am not satisfied that the African Blockade advances the great end it is designed to promote. I cannot reconcile its efficacy with such accounts of its effects as I have been able to find in the Parliamentary Reports. But, being sincerely anxious to arrive at a right conclusion, I will carefully read the papers I have received from Captain Denman, and, in particular, the document to which you call my attention" (Pilgrim Letters 6, pp. 236-7).
4. The naval blockade of the west coast of Africa, begun in 1819, to prevent the shipping of slaves to the sugar-plantations of Brazil and Cuba. In two articles in Household Words the Blockade was represented as ineffective, and as leading to suffering or even death for slaves, who were sometimes thrown overboard when a slave-ship was being pursued; see [Alfred Whaley Cole], "'Good Intentions.' A Story of the African Blockade" (Household Words 2 [5 Oct 1850]: 45-7) and [Franklin Fox and W.H. Wills], "A Cape Coast Cargo" (Household Words 2 [7 Dec 1850]: 252-7).