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Ottobah
Cuggano
Was born around 1757 in Ghana,
he was kidnapped as a slave at around thirteen. He came to England from
Grenada in 1752 and was set free. He was advised to be baptised to avoid
being resold into Slavery he took the name John Steuart. He had close
association with Oloudah Equiano and Granville Sharp. In 1786 when a black
man called Henry Demane was kidnapped it was Cuggano who alerted Sharp
who then rescued Demane.
The following year he published 'Thoughts
and Sentiments On The Evil and Wicked Traffic Of Slavery" and "The
Commerce of The Human Species". The book sets about
demolishing the arguments against slavery. It was ground breaking
in its content because Cuggano declared that the enslaved Blacks had both
the moral right and the moral duty to resist their masters.
If any man should buy another
man...and compel him to his service and slavery without any agreement of
that man to serve him, the enslaver is a robber and a defrauder
of that man every day. Wherefore it is as much the duty of a man
who is robbed in that manner to get out of the hands of his enslaver, as
it the duty of any honest community of men to get out of the hands of thieves
and villains.
Cuggano dared to take a stand, and publicly demand the
abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves- it was
ideas such as Cuganno's which paved the way for the beginning of Pan Africanism.
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