While visiting the African-American Smithsonian in Washington, DC, I was dumbfounded by the brutality but also the loss of life. One wall in particular documents hundreds of ships, their voyages, and the ‘number of souls’ on board when they left Western Africa and when they arrived in the New World. The casualties were staggering, sometimes above 60%.
Considering the number of traders, the length of time the trade lasted(im referring to the Atlantic slave trade that centered on the America’s), and the countries involved, there has to be some account of traders who struggled with or were horrified by the trade. Many of the artifacts and journals have Christian references and clergy accompanied some trips. Are there any accounts of dissenting opinions? Of a captain watching a woman throw herself overboard and thinking “what is wrong with me and all of this?” Or were potential moral authorities mostly complicit or even encouraging?
Yet I couldn’t find any first person accounts in the museum. I’m fascinated by motivations and morality and would love to read more. I was also told that the justification of racial inferiority was developed as the trade went on, is this true?
You may be familiar with the famous Christian hymn Amazing Grace. This hymn was written in 1779 by the poet, Anglican priest, and slave ship captain John Newton.
Newton was a seaman who prayed for deliverance from a storm in 1748, and found his prayer answered. This marked the beginning of a long and gradual conversion to evangelical Christianity, but was immediately followed by his entry into the slave trade. He continued in the trade until 1754, and continued investing in slaving trips after. He began serving as an Anglican priest in 1764, and became a close friend and confidant of William Wilberforce and Hannah Moore, major abolitionist figures.
In 1788, Newton wrote a pamphlet called "Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade." This quote perhaps best speaks to your question:
Thus I was unexpectedly freed from this disagreeable service. Disagreeable I had long found it; but I think I should have quitted it sooner, had I considered it as I now do, to be unlawful and wrong. But I never had a scruple upon this head at the time ; nor was such a thought once suggested to me by any friend. What I did I did ignorantly • considering it as the line of life which Divine Providence had allotted me, and having no concern, in point of conscience, but to treat the slaves, while under my care, with as much humanity as a regard to my own safety would admit.
It seems he had some misgivings, but they were largely blunted by his desperation for work, and the general acceptance of the practice around him. The whole piece is worth reading, and does an excellent job of viscerely portraying the horrors of the slave trade.
I hope somebody can come along and give you specific accounts but you might find this existing thread interesting about how the bible was used to justify slavery
By /u/dubstripsquads