David Vazquez Shades of Grey History of Western & World Civ.

1 Section 1 Heather Shwartz

When people think of some historical event or concept, they usually imagine two opposing side duking it out, almost like two sides of a coin. Even with slavery. Its always proslavery vs. anti-slavery. But is the issue really only that simple. This paper will discuss different opinions people in the past had about slavery, and then present some first-hand examples of one particular slave.

The first source comes from John Wesley, a Methodist leader from America. He talks about how the indigenous people of Guinea and how they arent the inferior heathens that most people make them look to be. On the contrary, they were in the most parts a sensible and ingenious people. (Human 170) Wesley remarks at the apathy towards the slaves, and wonders how people could act in such a way.

Of course, just like there are people against the slave trade, there are also people for it. You may think that the people who support the slave trade must be horrible people and they must be dealt with. Thats not always the case. Take Osei Bonsu, who is the king of Asante. His

people take slaves as a result of war, not to make money. Since the stop of the slave trade, he has had to support tremendous amount of people; a population his land cannot sustain.

The Enlightenment played a big part in how the opinions of slavery changed. Before then, people paid no mind to slaves, and didnt care how they were treated. Yes they looked similar, but they were darker. African slaves were inferior, just because of the color of their skin, just like that. And that reasoning was all people needed to justify their actions. The Enlightening brought about a whole different way of thinking.

You see, an idea was catching on rapidly across the world. That concept was called Universalism, and it was the belief that all men are equal. As time passed, peoples views started changing. People would start to see slaves being abused and feel morally wrong about it. They would start to see the evils in slavery, and want things to change.

A good example of what people were trying to get away from was the life of Olaudah Equinao. He was an African slave that was taught how to read and write. That alone should be reason enough. If he was truly inferior, he would not be able to be educated. Unfortunately, that did little to convince the masses. It was because of slavery that he lived such a hard life, I had not eaten or drank anything all the dayand laid myself down in the ashes with an anxious wish

for death to relieve me from all my pains. (Equiano 60) This man hated his life as a slave that he took his chances and escaped. He would have rather died then go back.

Unfortunately he was caught and sold, and eventually ended up on a slave transport ship. Again, Olaudah was faced with a bad situation and wished death upon himself. Unfortunately, he was not allowed an escape, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. (Equiano 65)

For someone to say that because of the Enlightenment, that everyone started to dislike slavery would be incorrect. When the narrative was first published, Im sure there were a lot of people that were disgusted with what they read, and their views on slavery changed. At the same time, there were people whose views were left unchanged, that still saw the slaves, not as people who deserved to be treated as people, but instead as pieces of property.

Most people would either fall into one of two categories: pro-slavery or anti-slavery, but there were a select few who couldnt just pick one side. That was the thought process behind W.S van Rynevelds Response to Governor MaCartneys Questionare. He was against slavery, not because of what it did to the slaves per say, but because of what it did to the rest of the people. Think about it, you have brought in and bought a whole population of peoples, for the

sole reason of doing your work. Once you have you personal army of workers doing whats needed, what will you do? Ryneveld argued that the whole slave system made the colonists very docile and unproductive, that if there werent slaves, then the colonists would be more productive in their endeavors, instead of relying on someone else to do their work. (Human 175) On the other hand, Ryneveld was opposed to the idea of setting the slaves free, at least immediately. He thought about it in a sensible way. You have this population of workers. If you suddenly let them walk free, all of the crops you had them working on will most likely die, because realistically, how many former-slaves would want to continue doing what they were previously forced to do. And since the colonists would have been growing increasingly lazy and unproductive, who would now tend to the huge plantations they had to run.

So is it really fair enough to say that an issue like slavery is just black and white? Not really. While there are people who are anti-slavery and those that are in favor it, there is a large group of people that fall somewhere in the middle; people that recognize that an issue of that magnitude was not so simple to fix.

Works Cited
Andrea, Alfred J and James H Overfield. The Human Record, Sources of Global History. Vol. II. Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2009. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Ed. Robert J Allison. Boston: Beford / St. Martin's, 2007.