Saturday Snack Shack w/ Blackbird9, September 21, 2024

There was a discussion of slavery in the South.

John Duncan (Travels in Western Africa, in 1845 & 1846; Vol. I, p. 79):

“Not even the appearance of affection exists between husband and wife, or between parents and children. So little do they care for their offspring, that many offered to sell me any of their sons or daughters as slaves. They are, to speak the truth, in point of parental affection inferior to brutes.”

Henry Barth; Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (1857); Vol. II; p. 502:

“The only articles of export at present are slaves and ivory.… Slavery exists on an immense scale in this country [Adamawa]; and there are many private individuals who have more than a thousand slaves.”

Mungo Park; Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799, London); p. 24:

“[M]y observations apply chiefly to persons of free condition, who constitute, I suppose, not more than one-fourth part of the inhabitants at large; the other three-fourths are in a state of hopeless and hereditary slavery.…”

Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney; Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in 1822, 1823, and 1824; Vol. IV; p. 38:

“Slavery is here so common, or the mind of slaves is so constituted, that they always appeared much happier than their masters; the women, especially, singing with the greatest glee all the time they are at work.”

Rev. J. Leighton Wilson; Western Africa (1856); p. 156:

“The liability to fall into a condition of servitude is not so frightful here, however, as it is where there is a higher appreciation of personal liberty…. The African sees very little difference between the authority exercised over him by one whom he acknowledges as his master and the petty tyranny which is exercised by most African chiefs over their subjects; and so long as he is worked moderately, and treated kindly, he has but little cause for dissatisfaction, and not infrequently by his own choice places himself in this condition.”

Richard F. Burton; The Lake Regions of Central Africa; Vol. II:

“In times of necessity, however, a man will part with his parents, wives, and children, and when they fail, he will sell himself without shame. As has been observed, amongst many tribes the uncle has a right to dispose of his nephews and nieces.”

The Old Guard; Oct. 1867, p. 726:

“Mr. Baker, the latest traveler in Africa, … [writes] that the most interior tribes … are all cannibals, and are the only animals in Africa that eat their own kind.”

Samuel White Baker; The Albert N’Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, and Explorations of the Nile Sources; p. 201:

“One of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket, and she fell wounded…. The girl was remarkably fat, and from the wound a large lump of yellow fat exuded…. [T]he Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, and, seizing the fat, they tore it from the wound in handfuls…. Others killed her with a lance, and at once divided her by cutting off the head, and splitting the body with their lances, used as knives….”

Revilo P. Oliver; “What We Owe Our Parasites”:

“The savages of Africa, who are now your masters in the sense that you have to work for them every day, find the spectacle of a human being under torture simply hilarious. And when they see a blinded captive with broken limbs squirm as they prod him with red-hot irons, they laugh with glee—with a merriment, a real merriment, that is greater than the funniest farce on the stage has ever excited in you.”

“They were far below the brutes, as the latter show signs of affection to those who are kind to them; while the natives, on the contrary, are utterly obtuse to all feelings of gratitude.” — nationalvanguard.org/2014/12/savage-africa-part-1: