Conversion as an Act of Reclamation: John and Charles Wesley’s Interaction with Two West African Enslaved Men

This article considers seventeen manuscript letters written by Ancona Robin Robin John, Ephraim Robin John, and Elizabeth Johnson to Charles Wesley in the 1770s regarding these two enslaved men. Once slave traders themselves, they were held captive by a Bristol slave ship captain, but eventually returned to their home in West Africa through the assistance of the Wesleys. The article then considers their conversion to Christianity and whether they returned to the practice of enslavement, as previous scholarship has suggested. We argue that the evidence is unclear and that influence of the Wesleys might have turned them to oppose the practice of enslavement.