Ottobah Cugoano was a friend of Olaudah Equiano, and the two men shared many of the same experiences. Both were born in West Africa, captured and enslaved as young men, and first shipped from their homeland to the West Indies. Both survived the experience of slavery, gained their freedom, and played active roles in the emerging antislavery movement. Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments is much less autobiographical than Equiano’s Life, but his assault on the intellectual and moral foundations of slavery is, nonetheless, buttressed by descriptions of his own experience of slavery. In the passage below, Cugoano linked his suffering to his personal religious salvation. As you read it, think about its potential impact on Cugoano’s readers. Why might it have made them more receptive to his more abstract arguments?
Thanks be to God, I was delivered from Grenada, and that horrid brutal slavery. A gentleman coming to England took me for his servant, and brought me away, where I soon found my situation become more agreeable. After coming to England, and seeing others write and read, I had a strong desire to learn, and getting what assistance I could, I applied myself to learn reading and writing, which soon became my recreation, pleasure, and delight; and when my master perceived that I could write some, he sent me to a proper school for that purpose to learn. Since, I have endeavoured to improve my mind in reading, and have sought to get all the intelligence I could, in my situation of life, towards the state of my brethren and countrymen in complexion, and of the miserable situation of those who are barbarously sold into captivity, and unlawfully held in slavery.
But, among other observations, one great duty I owe to Almighty God, (the thankful acknowledgement I would not omit for any consideration) that, although I have been brought away from my native country, in that torrent of robbery and wickedness, thanks be to God for his good providence towards me; I have both obtained liberty, and acquired the great advantages of some little learning, in being able to read and write, and, what is still infinitely of greater advantage, I trust, to know something of HIM who is that God whose providence rules over all, and who is the only Potent One that rules in the nations over the children of men. It is unto Him, who is the Prince of the Kings of the earth, that I would give all thanks. And, in some manner, I may say with Joseph, as he did with respect to the evil intention of his brethren, when they sold him into Egypt, that whatever evil intentions and bad motives those insidious robbers had in carrying me away from my native country and friends, I trust, was what the Lord intended for my good. In this respect, I am highly indebted to many of the good people of England for learning and principles unknown to the people of my native country. But, above all, what have I obtained from the Lord God of Hosts, the God of the Christians! in that divine revelation of the only true God, and the Saviour of men, what a treasure of wisdom and blessings are involved? How wonderful is the divine goodness displayed in those invaluable books the Old and New Testaments, that inestimable compilation of books, the Bible? And, O what a treasure to have, and one of the greatest advantages to be able to read therein, and a divine blessing to understand!
Source: Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (London: Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1969), pp. 12–
Questions to Consider