The Expansion Of Freedom By Olaudah Equiano

The most popular account, during the era, of the slave experience was captured by the son of a West African village Chief, who was captured and made his way through the passage of the New world. Olaudah Equiano’s life was underscored as “[…] the greatest contradiction in the history of the eighteenth century-the simultaneous expansion of freedom and slavery.” (“Voices of Freedom” 63) Before being captured, the boy talks about daily life in the West African village and how the children lived in constant fear. “Generally, when the grown people in the neighborhood were gone far in the fields to labor, the children assembled together in some of the neighbours’ premises to play; and commonly some of us used to get up a tree to look out for any assailant,

“Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery. “ (“Voices of Freedom” 67) However, many believed that there was no experience more wrenching “for African slaves in the colonies than the transition from traditional religions to Christianity.” (“Give Me Liberty” 136) Equaiano wrote that his beliefs focused on a single “creator of all things,” who “governs events” on earth. Although “the slaves who ended up in British North America, however, came from the forest regions of West Africa, where traditional religions continued to be practiced” (“Give Me Liberty” 136) many beliefs seemed more similar to those of Native Americans than to

The Petition of Slaves to the Massachusetts Legislature states, “your petitioners apprehend that they have in common with all other men a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the Great Parent of the Universe has bestowed equally on all mankind and which they have never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever, but…were unjustly dragged by the hand of cruel power from their dearest friends and some of them even torn from the embraces of their tender parents, from a populous, pleasant, and plentiful country and in violation of laws of nature and of nations and in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity brought here either to be sold like beasts of burden and like them condemned to slavery for life, among a people professing the mild religion of Jesus, a people not insensible of the secrets of rational being nor without spirit to resent the unjust endeavors of others to reduce them to a state of bondage and subjection.” (“Voices of Freedom” 115) The petitioners continue to state that they are urgently awaiting the consideration of their petition “whereby they may be restored to the enjoyments of that which is the natural right of all men-and their children who were born in this land of liberty may not be held as slaves after they arrive at the age of twenty-one years. “ (“Voices of Freedom” 116) Besides economies and politics benefiting off the unjust servitude of Africans, they also gained power by taking advantage of colonists, who like the