White Slavery in the Barbary StatesSumner, Charles
History
White Slavery in the Barbary States
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- Africa, North
And here I should do injustice to the truth of history, if I did not
suspend for one moment the narrative of this Anti-Slavery movement, in
order to exhibit the pointed parallels then extensively recognized
between Algerine and American slavery. The conscientious man could not
plead in behalf of the emancipation of his white fellow-citizens,
without confessing in his heart, perhaps to the world, that every
consideration, every argument, every appeal urged for the white man,
told with equal force in behalf of his wretched colored brother in
bonds. Thus the interest awakened for the slave in Algiers embraced also
the slave at home. Sometimes they were said to be alike in condition;
sometimes, indeed, it was openly declared that the horrors of our
American slavery surpassed that of Algiers.
John Wesley, the oracle of Methodism, addressing those engaged in the
negro slave trade, said, as early as 1772, "You have carried the
survivors into the vilest of slavery, never to end but with life--_such
slavery as is not found among the Turks at Algiers_."[95] And another
writer, in 1794, when the sympathy with the American captives was at its
height, presses the parallel in pungent terms: "For this practice of
buying and selling slaves," he says, "we are not entitled to charge the
Algerines with any exclusive degree of barbarity. The Christians of
Europe and America carry on this commerce one hundred times more
extensively than the Algerines. It has received a recent sanction from
the immaculate Divan of Britain. Nobody seems even to be surprised by a
diabolical kind of advertisements, which, for some months past, have
frequently adorned the newspapers of Philadelphia. The French fugitives
from the West Indies have brought with them a crowd of slaves. These
most injured people sometimes run off, and their master advertises a
reward for apprehending them. At the same time, we are commonly informed
that his sacred name is marked in capitals on their breasts; or, in
plainer terms, it is stamped on that part of the body with a red-hot
iron. Before, therefore, we reprobate the ferocity of the Algerines, we
should inquire whether it is not possible to find in some other region
of this globe a systematic brutality still more disgraceful."[96]
[Footnote 95: Wesley's Thoughts on Slavery, (1772,) p. 26.]
[Footnote 96: Short Account of Algiers, (Philadelphia, 1794,) p. 18.]
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