9 An Augsburg Pastor’s Views on Africans, the Slave Trade, and Slavery: Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm’s Conversations about Man (1804)

Abstract

growth of hair, cranium, or something else – , the doubtfulness whether some feature is inher-ited or not; these and various other considerations make it exceedingly difficult to achieve certain progress in this question, which is so important for the history of man. 41 four and bind them by night. The closer the unfortunate [men and women] from the country ’ s interior approach the sea (which they fear very much), the more they fall into a melancholy state, and the sight of white people makes a horrible impression on them since they believe the devil to be white and are under the delusion that the whites eat negroes. Now the slave ship takes on its cargo. Alas, who can bear the sight without a bleeding heart! Thus more than 600 slaves lie tightly packed together in this abominable, stinking abyss of the Liverpool ship, and a diabolical economy knows how to fill the space with as many humans as possible. [. . .] Oh, it is a veritable cave of death, full of pestilential vapors! Imagine the sighs of the unfortunate, the anger of the desperate, the rattle of the dying, the decay of the (thank God!) expired, to whom the survivors often remain shackled for an extensive period – will anyone be surprised to find that some slave ships lose more than half of their cargo? 66 Usually the blacks refuse to take food during the first few days. Yet their tormentors have no difficulty finding a remedy. They bring up the women and children, and whip them with a terrible knotted whiplash, of which every white man on the slave ship has one. It is touching how the wives and children beg the husband and father amidst these lashes to hold firm in his commitment to starving, and prefer death over slavery. Yet it is even more touching that the suffer-ings of his beloved ones are the only thing that moves him [the slave] to finally accept food. But when a storm eventually makes it necessary to close all vents, and when a calm causes rations to become scarce, and the poor negroes are thrown overboard alive, or killed by poi-son – but let us hurry away from this most disgusting part of human history, and follow the poor negro to the destination of his fate. 69