EXAM Abolition

Question 1

Angles

Answer 1

• Avarice as a reason for slavery
• Money as a means of freedom
• Voice
• Justice and religion
• Suffering (depictions and denial thereof)

Question 2

Avarice as a reason for slavery

Answer 2

• ‘Where seasoned tools of Avarice prevail, / A Nation’s eloquence, combined, must fail’ (Barbauld, ‘Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq.’)
• ‘If the abettors of the Slave trade Bill should think they are too harshly treated in this Poem, let them consider how they should feel if their estates were threatened by an agrarian law’ (Boswell, ‘No Abolition of Slavery’)
• ‘Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice?’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)

Question 3

Money as a means of freedom

Answer 3

• ‘I thought now of nothing but being freed, and working for myself, and thereby getting money to enable me to get a good education; for I always had a great desire to be able at least to read and write’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘In process of time I became master of a few pounds’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘Equiano’s participation in commerce as the subject of rather than as the object of exchange represents the crucial element of this change.’ (Kopec, ‘Collective Commerce’)
• ‘Equiano learns that it is only through exchange, and not reliance on the kindness of silversmiths, that he will win his freedom.’ (Bugg, ‘Equiano’s Trifles’)
• However, still reliant on others: ‘from my great attention to his orders and his business, I gained him credit, and through his kindness to me I at last procured my liberty.’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘A commercial intercourse with Africa opens an inexhaustible source of wealth to the manufacturing interests of Great Britain, and to all which the slave trade is an objection.’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)

Question 4

Voice

Answer 4

• Boswell dedicates ‘No Abolition of Slavery’ ‘to the respectable body of West-India planters and merchants’
• ‘The narrative mode of The Interesting Narrative is historically sensitive and culturally strategic –– call it first-person-muzzled.’ (Bugg, ‘Equiano’s Trifles’)
• ‘a nation which, by its liberal sentiments, its humanity, the glorious freedom of its government, and its proficiency in arts and sciences, has exalted the dignity of human nature.’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• An unusual facet of the narrative are Equiano’s ‘anger, revenge, suspicions of the value of freedom, and meditations on the prospect of a black community in Britain’ – most ‘anti-slavery writing preferred clear answers and strict binaries’ (Bugg, ‘Equiano’s Trifles’)

Question 5

Justice and religion

Answer 5

• ‘O, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘He who thwarts GOD’s system tries, / Bids mountains sink, and valleys rise; / Slavery, subjection, what you will, / Has ever been, and will be still’ (Boswell, ‘No Abolition of Slavery’)

Question 6

Depiction of suffering

Answer 6

• ‘the following genuine Narrative; the chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment?’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘Hitherto I had thought only slavery dreadful; but the state of a free negro appeared to me now equally so at least, and in some respects even worse, for they live in constant alarm for their liberty’ (Equiano, Interesting Narrative)
• ‘shrieks and yells disturb the balmy air’ (Barbauld, ‘Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq.’)
• ‘vengeance yet to come’ (Barbauld, ‘Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq.’)
• 1st Eclogue: Rushton calls slavery ‘Britain’s foulest stain’. Adoma details a mother being punished for nursing her child. Jumba declares that ‘vengeance shall soon fasten on our foes’.
• 2nd Eclogue: Adoma warns of Pedro’s fate, but Jumba insists on rebellion.
• 3rd Eclogue: Quamina and Congo discuss Jumba’s death after rebellion, and another old slave’s death, having faithfully worked all his life.
• 4th Eclogue: Loango mourns Quamva, who has been taken from him. He then begins to doubt her constancy. Having lost everything, he decides to take revenge: ‘nought but death remains […] Come then, revenge’ (Rushton, ‘West-Indian Eclogues’)

Question 7

Denial of suffering

Answer 7

• ‘Sir William Young has a series of pictures, in which the negroes in our plantations are justly and pleasingly exhibited in various scenes.’ (Boswell, ‘No Abolition of Slavery’)
• ‘Each has his property secure; / Their wives and children are protected, / In sickness they are not neglected; / And when old age brings a release, / Their grateful days they end in peace.’ (Boswell, ‘No Abolition of Slavery’)
• ‘an abolition of the slave trade would in truth be precluding [Africans] from the first step towards progressive civilization, and consequently of happiness, which it is proved by the most respectable evidence they enjoy in a great degree in our West-India islands, though under well-regulated restraint.’ (Boswell, ‘No Abolition of Slavery’)