Later Career
After 1823, when the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery (later the Anti-Slavery Society) was formed, Clarkson again travelled around the country. He covered 10,000 miles, and activated the network of sympathetic anti-slavery societies which had been formed. This resulted in 777 petitions being delivered to parliament demanding the total emancipation of slaves. When the society adopted a policy of immediate emancipation, Clarkson and Wilberforce appeared together for the last time to lend their support. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed.
Clarkson lives for a further 13 years. Although his eyesight was failing, he continued to campaign for abolition, focusing on the United States. He was the principal speaker at the opening of the Anti-Slavery Society Convention in Freemasons' Hall, London in 1840, chaired by Thomas Binney. The conference was designed to build support for abolishing slavery worldwide and included delegates from France, the USA, Haiti and Jamaica.
The scene at Clarkson's opening address was painted in a commemorative work, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The emancipated slave, Henry Beckford (a Baptist deacon in Jamaica), appeared in the right foreground. Clarkson and the prominent abolitionist Quaker William Allen were to the left, the main axis of interest. In 1846 Clarkson received the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had escaped to freedom, on his first visit to England.
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