Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Slavery

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery -- often described as America's shame -- can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her...

Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770; he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England. His Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery is the most direct criticism of slavery by a writer of African descent. Cugoano refutes pro-slavery arguments of the day, including slavery's supposed divine sanction; the belief that Africans gladly sold their own families into...

"Of the hundreds of logbooks and journals I have examined, this is the most valuable for the slave trade in western Africa.... Mouser's] exhaustive background research and editing are exemplary." --George Brooks

Captain Samuel Gamble's log contains the record of a slaving venture to Africa and Jamaica that nearly failed. It is one of the best firsthand narratives of the slave trade to survive. Bruce Mouser's faithfully transcribed and carefully annotated edition of Gamble's log provides a haunting perspective on slave trading at the end of the 18th century. Gamble was captain of the...

In 1829 David Walker, a free black born in Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote one of America's most provocative political documents of the nineteenth century, Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Decrying the savage and unchristian treatment blacks suffered in the United States, Walker challenged his "afflicted and slumbering brethren" to rise up and cast off their chains. Walker worked tirelessly to circulate his book via underground networks in the South, and he was so successful that Southern lawmakers responded with new laws cracking down on "incendiary"...

In 1829, David Walker, a free black born in Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote one of America's most provocative political documents of the nineteenth century: An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Decrying the savage and unchristian treatment blacks suffered in the United States, Walker challenged his "afflicted and slumbering brethren" to rise up and cast off their chains. His innovative efforts to circulate this pamphlet in the South outraged slaveholders, who eventually uncovered one of the boldest and most extensive plans to empower slaves ever conceived in...