John Thornton's account of the African slave trade's inhumanity

¶ … Slavery

John Thornton's description of how inhumane and cruel slavery was is rudimentary at best since the emphasis seems to be on constructing a cohesive historical narrative. This in turn however is devoid of the particularly human question as to how and why the slaves suffered as they did. From the article, we can ascertain several posts along the journey of an African slave, each filled with its horrors. For an African who was to be enslaved to even reach the coast was a miracle. Most were enslaved after large scale wars the Portuguese waged on the African groups that dissented. Africans would be chained together like cattle, each sometimes forced to carry items of trade. After marching for weeks, they would reach the coast where they would either be taken to forts or to water for sale.

John Thornton describes the forts in some detail. At these forts, the enslaved Africans were placed in cells, where they would be imprisoned until they were sold. These humans were subject to being traded for goods from the Captains of these slave ships. It is not hard to infer that the conditions in the forts were worse than what animals experience in farms. It also is not difficult to imagine that after these enslaved Africans having arrived from forced marches or crowded rafts, that people physiologically and emotionally completely drained.

Those who were injured by war would have had little recourse but to try to stave off the infections with nothing more than their will. The cells' tight quarters created ripe opportunity for infection to spread. It is a grim but reasonable assessment that from what Horton's description of these cells entails, many died in the cells. The article talks about the illegal sale and trade of slaves, which in and of itself fires off the warning lights in any reader's mind. If the legal trade was as harsh as it was, what then was the state of the illegal trade? The cells then became not only holding quarters but quarters where the debasing acts of murder, rape, and beatings took place often.

The slave ships could have been no different. Thornton describes the sale of humans as something of a business, and any type of business normally needs organization. Organization does not necessarily mean acting humane against the face of efficiency. It is common knowledge that the slave ships were incredibly cramped, because the areas below the decks were usually packed with the bodies of the enslaved. With no ventilation or minimal amounts of it, the mortality rate must have increased beyond what was "business savvy."