Alexander McDonnell, Slavery Apologist

     In the days before Steinitz became the first official world champion there were a number of unofficial world champions and the Irish player Alexander McDonnell (1798–1835) was one of the briefest. 
     The son of a surgeon, McDonnell was born in Belfast, trained as a merchant and worked for some time in the West Indies. In 1820 he settled in London, where he became the secretary of the Committee of West Indian Merchants, a lucrative post that made him a wealthy man and left him with plenty of time to indulge his passion for chess. 
     Politically McDonnell was a committed Whig. The Whigs were a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, they contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs opposed an absolute monarchy. They supported the Exclusion Bill which set out to disinherit James, Duke of York, who eventually became James II of England and VII of Scotland. 
     The Tories emerged in 1678 and between 1783 and 1830 and they established a hold on the government. They were conservative supporters of Charles II, who endorsed a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the power of Parliament. 
     McDonnell’s father, also named Alexander, was a noted surgeon in Belfast. It was said that he attended the execution of Henry J. McCracken (August 1767 – July 1798) who was an Irish Republican and industrialist from Belfast and a founding member of the Society of the United Irishmen which made him a target of the authorities. The SUI was a radical or liberal political organization that evolved into a revolutionary organization that launched the Irish Rebellion of 1798 with the objective of ending British rule over Ireland and founding a sovereign, independent Irish republic. McCracken was hanged in Belfast at the age of 30 on July 17, 1798. 
     McDonnell’s uncle, Dr. James McDonnell, was the founder of the Belfast Fever Hospital, which exists today as the Royal Victoria Hospital. 
     McDonnell trained and worked as a merchant in the West Indies in the early part of the 19th Century. He supposedly arrived in the West Indies at the age of 17 and ended up in the colony of Demerara-Essequibo, now part of modern day Guyana where he dealt mainly with the export of sugar and coffee. 
     The year 1820 saw him returning to London to act on the behalf of the coffee and sugar merchants as secretary of the Committee of West Indian Merchants. In this role he represented the interests of the British colonists in the West Indies and liaised with persons of importance and members of Parliament.
     For those with a financial interest in the West Indies it was a crucial time because there was a growing abolitionist movement in Britain and the West Indies plantations were almost totally operated by slave labor. 
     In 1807 the British had outlawed slave trading and although the capture of slaves in West Africa had ceased, slavery itself remained legal. Those slaves and children born into slavery that were already in the possession of plantation owners remained their chattels. 
     In 1823 the Anti-slavery Society, which sought to abolish slavery completely, was founded in Britain and it was also the year Demerara became the focus of international attention after a slave revolt was ruthlessly put down by the local colonists. 
     Initially public sentiment favored the plantation owners, but when details of the conditions of the slaves was discovered, mostly due to an abolitionist preacher named John Smith, public sentiment began to shift. Charged with promoting discontent and dissatisfaction among the plantation slaves, Smith was convicted and sentenced to death but died of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) before they could hang him. 
     Smith’s death caused uproar in Britain that lead to over 200 petitions being delivered to Parliament. As a result of the furor, in Demerara over 20 slaves who had been part of the mostly peaceful uprising were executed and their bodies strung up a warning to the other slaves. 
     What did all this have to do with Alexander McDonnell? He strongly advocated the continuation of slavery and wrote a book entitled “Considerations on Negro Slavery with authentic reports illustrative of the actual conditions of the Negroes in Demerara.” 

     In the book he defend the conditions and practices of the planters. His book was mainly based on reports he received from plantation managers when they replied to a series of letters he had sent. 
     While he criticized the slave trade and the cruelty of kidnapping slaves from Africa, he defended the present conditions of slavery that existed in Demerara.
     He argued that the West Indian colonies were financially extremely important to the British Empire and this worth was based on slave labor. Therefore, if slavery was abolished it would drain the Empire financially. 
     He also argued that plantation owners had a right to their property and should not be denied a living and the end of slavery would lead to their loss of income. 
     It was also his contention that the slaves in Demerara could not be freed because they weren’t civilized and would slip into complete idleness. To help prove this point he compared the motivation that lead the diligent, hard working English farmers and merchants who were always striving for greater security and wealth to the irresponsible farmers of West Ireland who he claimed were lacking in initiative and strength of character. 
     McDonnell suffered from Bright's disease which is now known as acute or chronic nephritis. Symptoms included inflammation of serous membranes, hemorrhages, apoplexy, convulsions, blindness and coma. Bright's disease was treated with warm baths, blood-letting, squill (a coastal Mediterranean plant of the lily family), digitalis, mercury compounds, opium, diuretics, laxatives and dietary therapy, including abstinence from alcoholic drinks, cheese and red meat. 
     Some other famous people who reportedly died of Bright’s disease include legendary Old West lawman Bass Reeves, famed gunfighter Luke Short. Rowland H. Macy Sr. founder of the Macy department store chain, Richard W. Sears founder of Sears, Roebuck and Company, Alice Roosevelt first wife of Theodore Roosevelt, poet Emily Dickinson, Chester A. Arthur 21st President of the United States, Union Civil War General Francis Barlow, James S. Sherman Vice President of the United States, Booker T. Washington founder of Tuskegee University and Charles H. Spurgeon, legendary English preacher. 

Edward Winter has published a featured article on McDonnell HERE