Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery av Quobna Ottobah Cugoano

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<b>A freed slave''s daring assertion of the evils of slavery</b><br><br>Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770; he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England. His <i>Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery</i> is the most direct criticism of slavery by a writer of African descent. Cugoano refutes pro-slavery arguments of the day, including slavery''s supposed divine sanction; the belief that Africans gladly sold their own families into slavery; that Africans were especially suited to its rigors; and that West Indian slaves led better lives than European serfs. Exploiting his dual identity as both an African and a British citizen, Cugoano daringly asserted that all those under slavery''s yoke had a moral obligation to rebel, while at the same time he appealed to white England''s better self.<br><br>For more than seventy years,