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• 1 media/ship.jpg 2017-02-28T13:23:11-08:00 Effects on the Slaves 12 plain 2017-03-25T09:00:22-07:00 Newton devotes the majority of his pamphlet to the treatment of the Africans, those that are slaves and those that the English deal with. For the Africans that conduct business transactions with the white men, Newton reports that, "The Natives are cheated, in the number, weight, measure, or quality, of what they purchase in every possible way" (22-23). Newton describes how the sailors cheat them as well: they would cut middle swathes of cloth from the folded parcels they sold them, put false tops into casks to make it seem as if they carried their full amount, and if the Natives tried for reparations, the sailors would steal one of their members as revenge (23)
  
  As for the slaves they procured, Newton breaks down their subjugation into three parts:
  1) How they are acquired.
      From his own experience, Newton admits that most of the slaves attained at his station in Sherbo on the Windward Coast were convicts that forfeited their freedom as payment for an offense (28), but, also goes on to say that others were given by tribes that took them as prisoners of war fueled by the English and, that of those convicts, a larger population was produced due to influence by the English to more heavily enforce the Natives' laws.
  
  2) The mortality they are subjected too.
      Of their treatment onboard, the males were chained two-by-two and left to lie or stand in one position in heavily cramped rooms for sometimes weeks at a time. There were many reports of both slaves and slavers perishing from the unhealthy living conditions (35).
  
  3) How those who survive are disposed of.
     Newton goes beyond the ships to the docking and selling of the slaves. Joyous to no longer be at sea, the slaves' elation was soon dashed when once able to come out of their cramped holes, they realized that friends and loved ones were also captured and were to be sold across the land (39). From there, Newton retells a conversation that he had with a plantation calculator that reported that it was cheaper to work the slaves to death and replace them than it was to work them moderately and care for them (39). The slaves rarely, if ever, lived longer than nine years at these plantations.
  
  Newton is almost hitting his readers in the face with this section of his pamphlet. He uses a blunt and detailed rhetoric in a list-like fashion to describe the injustices done to the Africans in a way previously never seen. With this kind of style there is no room for ambiguity, readers can't use the defence of not knowing or not understanding the full extent of what was happening.