A History of the Slave Trade
A History of the Slave Trade
"I am the son of a white man and a black slave, born in Tukahoe, Maryland, on February 7th, 1711. I never knew his father and was separated from my mother at the age of 8. I can still remember the nights of unrest; she would put me to sleep with grim stories of her father and the journey they took across the Atlantic. On other nights she would raise my spirits with tales of hope and how life wouldn't always be like this. I could tell there was a burning desire in her that was screaming, "Why does my family suffer like this. Why must my people endure this torture."
I lived with his grandmother on a plantation until the age of eleven, when I was sent to a rich white man in Baltimore.
It was to my fortune that the wife of my owner defied state law by teaching me to read. My possessor was also considerate enough to teach me many other skills that would be very useful later in my life like agricultural techniques and work with carving and repairing various wooden items.
When my master died in 1737 I was sent to his Newport, Rhode Island to process wood. My new master was very generous to me and kept me in good health and took time each day to preach the important values of the Bible to me.
After some years, I gained enough expertise and Master promoted me to be his assistant. It was an exciting job, I would carve out and assemble several parts of a ship not only for the food that I would not get with out my work, but I engaged I even engaged in conversations with my master about our opinions of the world.
He explained to me the current situation the colonies were in and how we were helping the grand scheme of things. He called it our place in the slave trade.
As the years went by, our relationship slowly but surely became more and more informal. One night he decided to share an underground history book explaining the history of the colonies and the slave trade. It read:
"Ever sine the early seventeenth century when the English began to colonize the Americas there was a demand for cheap labor to fuel the soon-to-be booming economy and trade of the New World. When the...