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Read
the words of Quobna Ottobah Cugoano
"…I
must own, to the shame of my countrymen, that I was first
kidnapped and betrayed by some of my own complexion…
but if there were no buyers there would be no sellers. So
far as I can remember, some of the Africans in my country
keep slaves, which they take in war, or for debt; but those
which they keep are well fed, and good care taken of them,
and treated well... But I may safely say, that all the poverty
and misery that any of the inhabitants of Africa meet with
among themselves, is far inferior to those inhospitable
regions of misery which they meet with in the West Indies,
where their hard hearted overseers have neither regard to
the laws of God, nor the life of their fellow men…
Some pretend that the Africans, in general, are a set of
poor, ignorant, dispersed, unsociable people; and that they
think it no crime to sell one another, and even their own
wives and children; therefore they bring them away to a
situation where many of them may arrive to a better state
than ever they could obtain in their own native country.
This specious pretence is without any shadow of justice
or truth and if the argument was even true, it could afford
no just and warrantable matter for any society of men to
hold slaves. But the argument is false; there can be no
ignorance, dispersion, or unsociableness found among them,
which can be made better by bringing them away to a state
of a degree equal to that of a cow or a horse…"
Taken from Thoughts
and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery
and Commerce of the Human Species, by Ottobah Cugoano, A
native of Africa
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