Argument Group 2

Against
Slavery
Pamela Rios
Kou Lee
Katherine Yang
Elisa Cervantes
Izaak Goodman
Hannah Perez
Izaak
● Olaudah Equiano had bought his own freedom in 1975

● In 1978 he presented a petition to

the Queen to end slavery

● He then wrote a book called “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of

Olaudah Equiano”
Izaak
● Another slave, Ottubah Cugoano, had tried to write a book but had

failed

● Equiano learned from his mistakes

and wrote his book with what Cugoano
was missing
Izaak
● In the book he told of a life from the beginning as an

African boy

● Scholars have found out that he was most likely born in

South Carolina
Pamela
● Millions of Africans made the journey to Europe
● Through the lore of slave culture Equiano

Heard many similar tales

● At the time abolitionist were

Able to publish a drawing of a slave ship

As part of their literature

● Equiano's description to the white world as
as cargo on a slave ship ………..
- He was kept under the decks of a ship
- Received a solution in his nostrils
- He became sick
- Captains ordered slaves to be thrown

of the ship
Pamela

● Equiano's most potent tool was the resort to scripture

● He had gained his own freedom
● Equiano lived in a world of deep religious conviction
Hannah
● King or any white man could kill Equiano and only been fined 15
pounds

● Equiano was always prepared to stand up for his moral

convictions even when there was a risk

● He also thought it was important to shpw depth of his religious

conviction
Hannah

● He knew the best hope for equitable relations between 2 cultures lay
in common devotion to the kind of spiritually he observed among
Philadelphia Quakers
Elisa
● Equiano desired to resemble the
whites because he thought of them as
superior.
● He was baptised in 1759 as part of
this.
● He struggled with living as a true
christian, which he thought was one
of the best qualities of white
europeans.
Elisa
● Equiano thought if the British
could treat Africa as a business
partner, they would receive
enormous economic benefits.
● The resource wealth of Africa
offered big opportunities to other
economies that are more
advanced.
Katherine
● Wants readers to understand economic potential of uncounted Africans
● Wanted people to see Africans as well-mannered but wanted to also show that
Africans would be traded for metalwares and textiles from American and British
factories
● Reorganized scale of economic benefit
● Through his writing he wanted readers to visualize clothing of a continent that
was far away and had rich productions
Katherine
● He didn’t understand genetics but was
aware of the human species
● Also noted that spaniards become
darker in the “Torrid Zone”
● Wanted to remove prejudice away from
natives from Africa because of the color
of their skin
Kou

● Equiano appealed to slave owners

themselves by hoping to weaken
what he knew was a flimsy
rationale for simple human wealth
and cruel
● Rather than attacking his slave
owners as inhuman brutes, he
offered his understanding to them
Kou
● Equiano made a the compelling
argument for benefit of simple human
kindness
● He remind slaves that they lived under
a constant threat of their own devising
● To ease the threat, the slave owners
must change their conduct and treat
every of the slaves as men so every
cause of fear would be abolish.