This paper examines three notable figures from the era of American slavery: Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born slave whose narrative recounts his kidnapping, Middle Passage voyage, and eventual self-purchased freedom; Abdul Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince enslaved for forty years in Mississippi whose freedom was ultimately secured through presidential intervention; and Frederick Douglass, whose 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" provides sharp rhetorical context for both stories. The paper compares the experiences of Equiano and Ibrahima, noting the relative degrees of brutality each endured, and concludes with Douglass's indictment of a nation that celebrated liberty while maintaining slavery.
The story of Olaudah Equiano began in Nigeria in 1745, the year of his birth. By the age of eleven, Equiano was a victim of kidnapping and was sold to slave traders. His fate was not to be nearly as harsh as that of millions of other African natives who were seized and put into bondage, as his own writing reveals — but he was a slave and suffered the indignities that accompany slavery. The remarkable aspect of his story is the way he tells it: written descriptively and in polished narrative prose, it records in vivid detail what happened to him along the way.
This paper examines his tale alongside the life of a Muslim prince who became a slave: Abdul Rahman Ibrahima, referred to throughout as "The Prince." The paper concludes with the writing of Frederick Douglass, which offers broader perspective on slavery and stands in contrast to the lives of both Equiano and The Prince.
Prior to being sent on a voyage to the Americas, Equiano was taken through many African countries. Occasionally he served as a slave to "a chieftain, in a very pleasant country" (Williamson, 2004). He also served a "wealthy widow" living in a town called Tinman, which Equiano described as "the most beautiful country I had yet seen in Africa," as Williamson writes in the journal Documenting the American South. Eventually Equiano was sold back to the slave traders and transported "sometimes by land, sometimes by water, through different countries and various nations" until finally arriving in the Americas. His Middle Passage narrative is an excellent recounting of a journey that too many African people were forced to make in chains and inhumane conditions.
Once in the West Indies, Equiano was not purchased by a plantation owner but was placed on a Dutch ship bound for North America. He was purchased there and worked on a Virginia plantation. He was then acquired by a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy who also captained a merchant ship, and while in England — still eleven years old, according to Williamson — Equiano befriended a Caucasian boy and was introduced to Christianity. He attended church, grew comfortable with English culture, and even desired to "imbibe" and "imitate" the cultural behavior of Europeans (Williamson, p. 1).
Lieutenant Pascal, who had by then become Captain Pascal, remained close to Equiano during this period. Pascal sent Equiano to attend upon two sisters who became his patrons, supporting his education and arranging his baptism into the Christian faith. The relationship with Pascal continued to develop, and Williamson reports that Equiano sailed with him frequently, visiting the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the West Indian Oceans. These voyages were "fraught with danger," and many battles and sieges took place, but Equiano's service to Pascal was faithful and wholehearted.
However, Equiano was "shocked at an abrupt betrayal during a layover in England." Pascal appeared to turn his back on their relationship and had Equiano "roughly seized and forced into a barge," after which Equiano was sold to Captain James Doran, who commanded a ship bound for the West Indies. Equiano protested to Captain Doran that Pascal "could not sell me to him, nor to anyone else… I have served him many years, and he has taken all my wages and prize money" (Williamson, p. 2). In time, however, Equiano was sold again — this time to a Quaker merchant named Robert King, described as "charitable and humane." From that point on, Equiano saved his earnings and eventually purchased his own freedom.
Upon first seeing the slave ship "riding at anchor… waiting for its cargo," Equiano believed he was going to be killed by the "bad spirits" he sensed when they "tossed" him about. Characteristic of his narrative voice, he writes that if he possessed ten thousand worlds he would have surrendered them all to have "exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country" (Equiano, p. 1). The many Africans on board were "chained together," and their "countenances" expressed what he described as "dejection and sorrow." The sight was so overwhelming that he fainted.
The stench he encountered when he descended into the hold of the slave ship was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He wished for death; he could not eat, and when "two of the white men" tried to force him to eat and he still refused, "one of them flogged me severely" (p. 2). The slave owners, of course, had a financial interest in keeping their captives alive, since a dead African would bring them no profit upon arrival in the Americas.
He found some comfort in the presence of some of his "own nation" nearby, who explained to him what his fate would be — he was to be "carried to these white people's country to work for them." Yet he shuddered with fear, for he had never witnessed any Africans behave in so "savage a manner" with such "brutal cruelty" (p. 2).
Equiano uses words such as "pestilential" to describe the powerful and "loathsome" stench in the hold. Beyond the human waste produced by the chained captives, the heat and the closeness of so many bodies "produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration… and brought sickness among the slaves, of which many died" (p. 2). The reader recoils while absorbing Equiano's vivid and literarily accomplished narrative: "The filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell… the shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable" (p. 2).
Equiano notes that his youth afforded him somewhat greater freedom of movement on board. Upon finally arriving at Barbados, he remained uncertain of his fate. When white men came aboard and examined the enslaved passengers "attentively," making them jump and pointing toward the shore, Equiano feared "we should be eaten by these ugly men," and "much dread and trembling" spread among the passengers (p. 3). When the white men brought other enslaved people to speak to the new arrivals, those individuals reassured them that they would not be eaten — they were there to go to work.
The story of The Prince begins in 1788 when he was captured in an ambush and sold to "English slavers for a few muskets and some rum" (PBS, 2008). He was placed aboard one of the slave ships bound for America via the Middle Passage, endured that crossing, and eight months later arrived in Natchez, Mississippi. The Prince — twenty-six-year-old Abdul Rahman Sori — found himself in a desperate situation, for before being put into bondage he had been the "heir to the throne of one of the largest kingdoms in Africa" (PBS, 2008).
He was sold to a Mississippi farmer named Thomas Foster, who genuinely wanted The Prince's help in establishing his farm. The Prince attempted to escape, but after several weeks in the Mississippi swamps he returned to Foster's farm. Once settled, he became a leader and drew on his knowledge of crops such as cotton to "help Foster eventually become one of the wealthiest men in Mississippi" (PBS, p. 2).
Not for a moment did The Prince accept that bondage was his rightful condition. "His rightful destiny was freedom," the PBS article explains, and it seemed "a gift of fate when at a crossroads twenty years into his enslavement" he encountered — in a purely serendipitous moment — an Irish ship's surgeon whose life had been saved by Abdul Rahman's father years earlier when the surgeon had been marooned in Africa. This white man appeared to be the answer to The Prince's freedom, but "the bonds of slavery proved too strong." Despite attempts by this Irishman and others to purchase The Prince's freedom, Foster refused to sell, and The Prince appeared destined to remain enslaved.
"African prince enslaved forty years in Mississippi"
"Contrasting the hardships each enslaved man faced"
"Douglass's rhetoric linking liberty and slavery's injustice"
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