Not really a sect, but a close knit family. It was started in a town near London called Clapham and consisted of a number of wealthy and ardent Evangelicals who knew what it was to practice "saintliness in daily life" and to live with eternity in view. John Venn became their spiritual guide and found leadership in William Wilberforce, the parliamentary statesman. Under Wilberforce's leadership the Clapham friends were knit together in solidarity. At the Clapham mansions they held what they chose to call their "Cabinet Councils". They discussed the wrongs and injustices of their country, and the battles they would need to fight to establish righteousness. They moved as one body, delegating to each man the work he could do best to accomplish their common purposes. As a result a host of evangelical causes sallied forth from quiet little Clapham: The Church Missionary Society (1799), the British and Foreign

The American practice of slavery had begun on 20 August 1619, when 20 Negro slaves were unloaded from a Dutch frigate at Jamestown, Virginia. By 1830 their number had increased to about two million.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Slavery[/tags]

The daughter of Lyman Beecher. She was deeply impressed with Theodore Weld's Slavery As It Is, and as a result wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. In it she struck at the national conscience in the hope that a cleansing of the nation's soul would avert a divine scourging of the body politic.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Harriet-Beecher-Stowe, history, Lyman-Beecher, Slavery[/tags]