The Trader, The Owner, The Slave: Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery

In this new and original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of its historic end in April 1807, the parallel lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement—a trader, an owner, and a slave—are examined. John Newton (1725–1807), best known as the author of Amazing Grace, was a slave captain who marshaled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition. Thomas Thistlewood (1721–86) lived his life in a remote corne...