chance to learn to read and write while enslaved in the United States, Roper took the opportunity to learn how to do so in Hackney, Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and then entered the University of London: At Hackney I remained half a year, going through the rudiments of an English education. At this time I attended the ministry of Dr Cox, which I enjoyed very much ... never, I trust, will be efaced from my memory, the parental care of the Rev. Dr Morison, from whom I can say, I received the greatest kindness. His patrons then assisted him in his object of touring the country's chapels to spread knowledge of American slavery; and subscribed to, and helped promote his autobiography. Roper toured the length and breadth of England, as well as several places in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, making the case for the abolition of slavery in the U.S. In London, two of his first speeches were in May 1836. The first at the Rev. Thomas Price's Baptist Chapel, Devonshire Square, and the second at the independent Finsbury Chapel of Rev. Alexander Fletcher. Each attracted large crowds and were extensively reported, influencing British views on American slavery. One newspaper correspondent described Roper's speech after a meeting in Bradford in 1840: “He exhibited and described some implements of corporal punishment, used by the planters of the United States and their merciless overseers, and gave a melancholy detail of the sufferings to which the slaves are exposed, and the degraded condition to which the system of slavery has reduced the white population of the Southern States of America…Mr. Roper, in the course of his description of the eventful fortunes of his attempts to escape, roused the liveliest sympathy in the breasts of his hearers, and recited several soul-stirring strains of Montgomery’s (of Sheffield) poetry. He lamented in a feeling manner the fate of his mother, whom he had wished to redeem from slavery, but who is now dead. He enlarged on the desolate condition of his brothers and sisters who have been sold to remote states, and from whom he has had no intelligence of late. He stated that he still loved America, that he suffered much from the English climate, yet to be reckoned a British citizen had been his ardent desire, but that legal naturalization was above his pecuniary means.” Throughout his tour, Roper challenged conventional perspectives on American slavery.