“It is desirable that accurate information on the enormities of the slave trade should be spread at home and abroad, and that to slave-holding states all evidence proving the superior advantages of free labor should be freely supplied,” was a sentiment uttered by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at the jubilee meeting of the Antislavery Society. His vast and influential audience cordially responded to it.
It seems to me that the same sentiment should also be published for the benefit of all those in America or England who are or may become interested in the welfare and progress of the negro races, and of their advancement towards civilization. With that view, I shall endeavor in this article to lay before you the present actual condition of Africa in respect to slavery, the slave trade, and slave-raiding, and the efforts which are being made to remedy their destructive effects, and to extirpate the causes, by opening the continent to the influences of legitimate trade.
The maritime exploration of the African coasts by the Portuguese navigators in the fifteenth century was the direct cause of the first inception of the traffic in negroes, and first started the no less inhuman system of slave-holding which this century has seen expiated by one of the most sanguinary wars of which we have any full record.
The exploration of the interior of the continent, accompanied as it has been by revelations respecting the appalling sufferings of innocent peoples, of the wholesale destruction of tribal communities, and the annihilation of their humble industries, has so cleared the way to the right comprehension of the worst features of the slave trade that we begin now to see pretty clearly the measures that must be adopted not only for its thorough suppression in the continent, but to obliterate all traces of its past horrors.
The excesses which were committed by the cupidity and hard thoughtlessness of our forefathers have been atoned for to some extent by their children by the immense sacrifices which they have made. They have freely risked their lives on the battle-field, on board of the cruisers along the unhealthy coasts of Africa during their long and faithful service as the world’s maritime police, along the various lines of exploration, in the many mission fields; they have also given treasures of money towards freeing themselves from the shame of any connection with the slave trade by moral or actual connivance, or by countenancing its existence.
In regard to the suppression of the slave trade in little-known Africa we have been, however, too apt to adopt pessimistic views; and as in North and South America we were slow to perceive our duties, or to appreciate the advantages that would result from relieving ourselves from the odium attached to slavery, so after the event we are too apt to remind ourselves of the immense trouble and treasure it cost us to cast it off. Our impatience is excited at the portentously large figures of expense, compared to which the figures of profit seem so infinitesimal, and the rate of progress so insignificant. My endeavor shall be to lessen this feeling of disappointment, and to show how we have been steadily advancing, even in mid-Africa, to extinguish the traffic, and what prospects we have of eventually seeing it abolished altogether from the face of the earth.
