Slavery

Question 1

Barbauld, 1791

Answer 1

• Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade
• “Where seasoned tools of Avarice prevail, / A Nation’s eloquence, combined, must fail”
• “shrieks and yells disturb the balmy air”
• “vengeance yet to come”

Question 2

Boswell, 1791

Answer 2

• No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love
• Inscribed “to the respectable body of West-India planters and merchants”
• “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”
• “He who to thwart GOD’s system tries, / Bids mountains sink, and vallies rise; / Slavery, subjection, what you will, / Has ever been, and will be still”
• “Sir William Young has a series of pictures, in which the negroes in our plantations are justly and pleasingly exhibited in various scenes.”
• “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.”
• “For, Slavery there must ever be, / While we have Mistresses like thee!”

Question 3

Rushton, 1787

Answer 3

-West-Indian Eclogues
- 1st Eclogue: Rushton calls “Britain’s foulest stain”. Adoma details a mother being punished for nursing her child. Jumba declares that “vengeance soon shall 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”

Question 4

Equiano, 1789

Answer 4

• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself.
• “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”
• “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.”
• “Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment?”
• “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?”
• “Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice?”
• “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.”
• “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”
• “I went with the Doctor on board a Guinea-man, to purchase some slaves to carry with us, and cultivate a plantation; and I chose them all my own countrymen.”
• “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.”

Question 5

Bugg, 2013

Answer 5

• Narrative is “first-person-muzzled”
• “Equiano learns that it is only through exchange, and not reliance on the kindness of silversmiths, that he will win his freedom.”
• “Equiano was mortified at the “usage” he received from the captain, and it is fast upon this sentiment that a bull stabs the captain in the chest.”

Question 6

Kopec, 2013

Answer 6

• “Equiano’s participation in commerce as the subject of rather than as the object of exchange represents the crucial element of this change.”

Question 7

Main points

Answer 7

• Equiano focuses on the economic arguments against slavery
• Equiano always keeps his audience in mind, careful not to offend them and appealing to Christian values
• He is mostly outraged at injustice rather than cruelty
• Rushton and Barbauld try to depict the suffering caused by slavery as an argument for abolition, as well as creating fear of divine, or other, retribution, while Equiano and Boswell follow mostly economic arguments
• Equiano believes the future is in trade with Africa; financial independence is important for him, as he eventually uses it to buy his own freedom - he remains a commodity. He then becomes involved in buying slaves himself, selecting his own countrymen - possibly because he knows they will go to a good master - but the state of slavery is uncertain.
• Avarice is the biggest obstacle to abolishing slavery: while it remains financially desirable, other pro-slavery arguments are fabricated.