Here, he experienced his conversion and spent many hours in intense prayer, which resulted in his returning late to the plantation.
[5] The religious experience having increased his longing for freedom, he made a second attempt at escaping in May 1844, succeeding with the help of several Quakers.
Supported by his wife, Watkins sailed to Great Britain, where he began giving abolitionist lectures.
While in Britain, Watkins received a letter from his wife who wrote that: "Your free papers—shame on the country which we ought to claim our own—that men and women must be bought like cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep; but it is so,--your free papers are come, and you can come home without fear of being arrested by tyrants as a runaway slave.
Watkins was a strong supporter of the free produce movement, and regularly called on the British public in his lectures to avoid purchasing or consuming goods from the U.S. which were made with enslaved labor.
[8] In October 1853, he lectured in Wolverhampton where the newspaper reported noted: “He commenced by calling particular attention to America, which, he said, had been untruthfully denominated the land of freedom, while, at the same time, three millions and a half of human beings were kept in a state of degradation.”[9] In Sheffield in July 1854, Watkins delivered another speech that was captured at great length by a newspaper reporter.
A slave was only considered a thing, like a horse, and was bought and sold in the market like cattle…The blacks were not the only sufferers, the whites were partners therein.
But echo returned no response but one of despair, “For life!” He thought it very hard to be thus at the mercy of a man like himself, and not to be able so much as to call even an inch of his skin on his own…If you could hear the groans of the slaves, and witness for a moment their sufferings, you would never again touch Savannah rice – you would feel you were eating the blood and bones of the negroes.
[10] His activist wife, Mary Eliza, followed him to Britain after some time, but became ill and returned to Connecticut on medical advice.