Olaudah Equiano Slavery

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In America, it is obvious that slavery is a horrendous blemish on the face of American history. The practice of slave trading was decidedly accepted in the America’s early days. The slave trade was a rather barbaric practice. Those being brought from Africa were often highly mistreated, and many died before arriving in America. These people were stripped of their lives and their rights and were treated as property rather than as humans. Overall, in Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the slave trade was detrimental to those involved in the way of living conditions, brutal mistreatment, and the ways in which it would forever harm those involved. The conditions of living quarters and the ships for slaves according…show more content…
The slaves were treated poorly from the beginning. “...evidence seems clear that from the beginning many Negroes were slaves and were treated far more harshly than were white indentured servants.” (Murray N. Rothbard) These humans were not treated as such, but rather as the property of those who purchased them and those who transported them. Equiano further confirms these practices, “...but they got the other and afterwards flogged him unmercifully, for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery.” (Equiano, 173) These slaves were treated as even less than property at times, beaten within inches of their lives. This treatment was consistent from the time they were captured. “Nor do these unhappy beings, after they become the property of the Europeans (from whom, as a more civilized people, more humanity might naturally be expected), find their situation in the least amended. Their treatment is no less rigorous. The men Negroes, on being brought aboard the ship, are immediately fastened together, two and two, by handcuffs on their wrists and by irons rivetted on their legs.” (Alexander Falconbridge) Mistreatment was clearly a very common occurrence everywhere which slave trade was a

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