Children Of The Slave Trade Essay

Children of the slave trade. How did these children find the strength, the hope to survive that of which most adults could not? The terror of invasion and capture, the misery of transport by ship. Lastly the struggle of being a slave, degraded to nothing more than an object. As tragic as their hardships were, the children of the slave trade are truly admirable and are symbols of endurance and persistence. Could they have endured all that they did and more purely on their will? “… Some of us attempted, in vain, to run away, but pistols and cut-lasses were soon introduced, threatening, that if we offered to stir we should lie dead on the spot” (Cugoano, Ottobah. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery). Terror, the one word that comes

Data recorded on the CD-ROM database The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade shows slaves that were taken between the 17th century to about halfway through the 19th century. Between 1601 and 1700, an average of 10,511 were captured; between 1702 and 1800, an average of 59,340; and between 1801 and 1867 an average of 27,599 were captured. Due to the supply and demand, the surplus of slaves was stuffed beneath the hull as if they were common cargo. However, there was a catch, due to the Slave Trade Act of 1788, limits were put on the number of slaves that could be transported. From that point on, traders could only transport roughly 1.67 slave(s) for every ton of cargo they had up to 207 tons. Due to traders trying to fit as many slaves as possible in their ships, some slaves were literally pinned to the floorboards because of space restrictions (however some children were permitted to be above deck). The lack of space and all slaves being chained together causes some major health issues. Slaves defecated and urinated on themselves due to their inability to access any form of restroom. This caused the slaves to catch illnesses such as fevers, dysentery (the “flux), and smallpox; however, those are only the more frequent of the