The two decades preceding 1800 were filled with increasing public support for the reduction (or destruction) of the slave trade and slavery. Writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Robinson wrote compelling, logical essays attacking the institutions and emotional poems showcasing the horrors of Africans being taken from their homeland such as in The Negro Girl. After many years of campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade finally made considerable headway with the Slave Trade Act of 1807 which abolished the slave trade and made it illegal to carry slaves on ships. This victory was a first step towards the eventual entire abolishment of the institution of slavery, but that would take another three decades to come into fruition.

Bibliography:

"The 1807 Act and its effects." The Abolition Project, 2009, http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_113.html.