Stopping slavery at source

It can be unmercifully hot near the coast in West Africa, and especially when humidity levels are high.

It was like this when Thomas walked down the gangplank from the deck of the sailing ship which had brought him from Gravesend, and stepped carefully into one of the rowing boats which took the passengers to the shore. He sat down next to his wife, and gazed at the exotic landscape before him.

Ever since dawn, Thomas had been watching the brightening horizon, trying to take in every detail. He knew that his father had been rowed out to a very different kind of ship, after walking the opposite way down this very beach which he would soon walk up.

This world was all so different from what he had been used to! Thomas Birch Freeman had spent all of his life in England, and so — by travelling straight to the African Gold Coast — he had made a transition which was similar to arriving on the moon. The son of a genuine ‘freeman’ slave from Africa, and born on the December 6 1809, at Twyford near Winchester, six years before the Battle of Waterloo, Thomas had known the stress of difficult early years. His father died when he was six years old, and he was forced to start work as an apprentice gardener at the age of ten, in order to earn money for his mother.

To my father’s people

From an early age, Thomas attended Sunday School, and it was there that he was soundly converted when a young teenager. As a youthful and respected lay preacher, as well as an appointed ‘sick visitor’, Thomas travelled widely, speaking about his Saviour. By the age of 21, Thomas had become the head gardener at Orwell Park, near Ipswich, and was well acquainted with most of the Suffolk chapels. Within the next seven years, Thomas not only applied to become a missionary, but was also accepted, trained, ordained, and married to Elizabeth, the housekeeper at Orwell Park.

Late in 1837, the couple were en route to (he said) ‘his father’s people’, and to the Africa which he described as ‘my native country’. This was four years before David Livingstone’s expedition, but nearly five years after the (so-called) ‘abolition of slavery’.

Eagerly expected

Before he arrived, commercial steam-ships began to ply the Atlantic. However, the West Coast of Africa, although fascinating to Europeans in many ways, was very grim for missionaries. After all, Dr. Ronald Ross did not prove the link between mosquitoes and malaria for another 60 years, and Karl Marx would not see his Manifesto published for another ten. In preparation for this mission, Thomas and Elizabeth had brought with them countless boxes, which contained food they knew, and many changes of clothes. Yet (like others before them) they were still unprepared for the high humidity, the limited social life, and the very different cuisine.

After receiving a formal greeting from George MacLean, the Governor, inside the forbidding Cape Coast castle (in which thousands of slaves had once been ‘contained’ before shipment), the shy couple walked out into the sunshine, and into the welcoming arms of the local Christian leaders, who were eagerly expecting them.

Ashanti profits from slaves

Thomas knew that his main mission was to attempt what appeared to be impossible — stopping slavery at source. As soon as convenient, he would seek the conversion of the feared Ashanti tribe. For centuries, the prosperity of the Ashanti had been based on the production and sale of gold from their own mines (in which they used slave labour), and on the capture and sale of slaves from neighbouring tribes. Under the leadership of Chief Kwaka Duah, the message of the Ashanti tribe to the British Parliament, and men like William Wilberforce, had been: ‘We intend to continue to do what our fathers before us have done for centuries, without hindrance’.

The Ashanti capital, Kumasi (the city of blood), is 180 km from Elmina, Accra, and Cape Coast. Since the terrain and the quick-growing forest still make walking extremely difficult, the British forces had found it easy to make excuses for not insisting that the letter of the 1833 Act be kept in (what we now call) Central Ghana. After all, the gold trade was profitable to more than just the militant Ashanti tribe!

Adjusting ministry

But, before such an ethical mission could be undertaken, Thomas needed to adjust his ministry to suit a different ethnic audience. This took time and included some mistakes. He quickly discovered that a typical 40-minute ‘English Chapel’ sermon was not the appropriate means of communication! Noticing the local love for exciting tales, Thomas realised that he must mix doctrine with many illustrations. Also, recognising that drama and interesting conversation could entrance people, he developed a ‘mutual communicative’ style of preaching, which is now common all over Africa, and can be seen on satellite television. In between positive doctrinal statements, and illustrations, he would ask questions of his congregations, expecting answers, following which he could make telling points. God’s instrument for the conversion of the Ashanti tribe, and the closure of the African inland slave trade, was preparing himself for what the British Army had described as ‘an impossible task’.

Death and depression

Elizabeth (darling ‘Betsy’) died within two months of their arrival, like so many Europeans before her, leaving Thomas completely devastated, and quite depressed for several weeks. He was only rescued from utter despair by throwing himself into the construction of a permanent chapel at Cape Coast. This proved to be the first of many which still bear his name. Thomas did not just design the building, he was one of the workers, taking on the most onerous tasks, which included carrying stone blocks. We can still be astonished when we read the inscription inside the porch, that this church was opened for public worship exactly five months after he had arrived.

Then, within days of that event, Thomas set off for what is now the capital of the country, Accra, to found a new school and church, as well as learn about the challenges of his ‘mission’. So, as the depression receded, and as he recovered the vision which had brought him to this place, Thomas realised that he did have the stamina to reach the Ashanti people, and also now had a style of speaking which (with the help of the Holy Spirit) could penetrate the hearts of minds of those who lived there. He made plans for the trip!

Dangerous journey

In writing to his committee back home about this, under his heading ‘Proceeding to Ashanti’, he said that there was no obstacle in the way of their conversion ‘except their blood-thirsty, fierce, and war-like disposition’! With a few Christian companions, Thomas began the difficult journey north, ‘into the interior’, remembering that the Ashanti tribesmen had recently killed the Governor Sir Charles McCarthy, and routed a small British army!

Those of us who have traced Thomas’s steps, along the same route, are aware that every hacked metre of the way, must be hacked clear again on the return journey, because of the rapid rate of growth. The path you create disappears behind you within a few days. Above, the huge silk-cotton trees tower 200 feet over your head, like great umbrellas. 180 km of this kind of travel is very daunting, and utterly tiring. One cannot imagine how, earlier, slaves had felt when they made this same long distressing journey from Kumasi towards the sea, the ships, and the appalling voyage which they had been told would follow. For Thomas, the bonus was to see so many trees and plants, which as a gardener he had only heard about, and to taste bananas!

Great change begins

The patience and wisdom of Thomas, when he was finally allowed to talk to the Chief, in the middle of a fantastic display of golden objects, surrounded by a crowd of 40,000, amazed all who witnessed their discussions. At sundown, Thomas retired to the same kind of enclosed quadrangle of humid huts in which I have stayed, and ‘the arduous duties of the day being over’, he immediately laid upon the dank floor, ‘sinking into the arms of sleep’.

The next day, Thomas wrote in his report: ‘I would go so far as to say that a serious responsibility rests upon Christian England, if so rich a harvest be neglected’. Two years later, the scene was so much improved that his ‘own expectations were more than realised’, with weekly Sunday services, regular baptisms (of up to 250), and daily teaching sessions. His ‘mission’ was succeeding, and (thanks be to God) ‘the Holy Spirit attended’ his new style preaching with astonishing results.

What a difference!

Today, Kumasi is a city with tarmac roads, a railway station, an airport, shopping centres, schools, factories, colleges, radio and TV stations, theological seminaries, and many churches! Churches and chapels clutter the streets, and their congregations create heavenly sounds across the city during worship times. And, of course, people from other tribes are no longer taken by force and sold into slavery here, no longer forced to work in the local gold mines, and no longer beheaded by the Chief. What a difference 168 years have made!

For further reading:

Thomas Birch Freeman’s reports to his missionary committee.
Birtwhistle, Allen. Thomas Birch Freeman, The Cargate Press, London.
Groves, C.P. Planting Christianity in Africa, Lutterworth Press, London.
Rattray, R.S. The Ashanti, Clarendon Press, London.
Southon, A.E. Gold Coast Methodism, Epworth Press, London.
Walker, S. Deaville. Thomas Birch Freeman, The Edinburgh House Press, Scotland.

As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, David Rushworth-Smith tells of the mission of Thomas Birch Freeman - a sequel to the work of Wilberforce