John Newton was perhaps the most famous example of a slave trader who came to realise and regret the terrible things he was involved with. Newton - who is most famous today as the creator of the song Amazing Grace - published Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade in 1788, many years after he had retired from involvement in the slave trade, which condemned the trade in no uncertain terms. He became an advocate and supporter of the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade and lived just long enough to see Parliament legislate for its end in 1807. He admitted that when he was engaged in the trade he saw little to no fault with it and encountered no-one else who tried to counsel him against it; it was only later in life that Newton came to see the trade as wicked and cruel, expressing profound regret for his role in it.

Men like Newton who had a complete about-face were certainly few and far between in the grand scheme of things, though - and even Newton's change of heart only came after his involvement was ended. Certainly some men involved would have struggled with their involvement, and some may have found themselves hostile to the trade after their own experiences, but British and American ships nonetheless together account for an estimated 3.6million persons trafficked between 1550 and 1866; certainly the trade was not struggling to find people willing to participate in it. Even after the trade was outlawed altogether in the United States, there were still American slavers willing to defy the law to continue participating in it.