Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was born in Ghana, but sold into slavery at an

early age. Upon his liberation in Europe, he wrote about his time as a
slave and the horrors he saw. His book Thoughts and Sentiments on the
Evil of Slavery (1787) examines the institution of slavery not only through
a humanitarian lens but also through a religious viewpoint. Below are
some passages from the book that highlight his views:
1. In a Christian aera, in a land where Christianity is planted, where every one
might expect to behold the flourishing growth of every virtue, extending their
harmonious branches with universal philanthropy wherever they came; but, on the
contrary, almost nothing is to be seen abroad but the bramble of ruffians,
barbarians and slave-holders, grown up to a powerful luxuriance in wickedness. I
cannot but wish, for the honor of Christianity, that the bramble grown up amongst
them, was known to the heathen nations by a different name, for sure the
depredators, robbers and ensnarers of men can never be Christians, but ought to be
held as the abhorrence of all men, and the abomination of all mankind, whether
Christians or heathens (Cugoano 24-25).
2. And, in consequences thereof, the pretences that some men make use of for
holding slaves, must be evidently the grossest perversion of reason, as well as an
inconsistent and diabolical use of the sacred writings. For it must be a strange
perversion of reason, and a wrong use or disbelief of the sacred writings For God
who made the world, hath made of one blood all the nations of men that dwell on all
the face of the earth (Cugoano 29).
3. But there are some men of that complexion, because they are not black, whose
ignorance and insolence leads them to think, that those who are black, were
marked out in that manner by some signal interdiction or curse, as originally
descending from their progenitors. To those I must say, that the only mark we read
of is that mark or sign which God gave to Cain The denunciation that passed
upon Cain was, that he should be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, bearing
the curse and reproach of his iniquity But allow the mark set upon Cain to have
consisted in a black skin, still no conclusion can be drawn at all, that any of the
black people are of that descent, as the whole posterity of Cain were destroyed in a
universal deluge (Cugoano 31).
4. But why should the total abolition, and an universal emancipation of slaves, and
the enfranchisement of all the Black People employed in the culture of the Colonies,
taking place as it ought to do, and without any hesitation, or delay for a moment,
even though it might have some seeming appearance of loss either to government
or to individuals, be feared at all? Their labour, as freemen, would be as useful in
the sugar colonies as any other class of men that could be found (Cugoano 9192).
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