By Ottobah Cugoano

From Amazon

The groundbreaking antislavery manifesto by Ottobah Cugoano—one of the earliest and most outspoken abolitionists of African descent.

Ottobah Cugoano’s tumultuous life put him in a unique position to testify to the horrors of slavery on many important levels. Though some of the details of his biography remain obscure (he disappeared from public record in 1791), he provides vivid testimony here about his own kidnapping on the Gold Coast at the age of thirteen; his repeated sale and transport across Africa, and eventually across the Atlantic Ocean; his experiences as part of a chain gang in the West Indies; and the way in which he managed to purchase his freedom. As a free man in England, Cugoano forcefully repudiated the malevolent arguments that were then being used by prominent proslavery advocates. A direct call for emancipation and for justifiable resistance by the enslaved, Cugoano’s memoir remains a clarion call for justice.

Revised edition: Previously published as Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, this edition of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.