Pierre Dan Quotes
It was a piteous sight to see them exposed for sale in Algiers, for then they parted the wife from the husband, and the father from the child; then say I, they sell the husband here, and the wife there, tearing from her arms a daughter whom she cannot hope to see again.
Pierre Dan, ?-1649, French Priest and Contemporary Historian, Description of the sale of European slaves in Algiers after being captured by Barbary Cosairs, Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires, 1637
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One of the first anti-slavery formal resolutions in America.
He was also himself a ship owner in the slave trade and he was the brother of the leading Rhode Island abolitionist, Moses Brown. See {585793}. Brown became the first American, prosecuted in federal court for illegal slave trading –-- a prosecution brought, in part, by his own brother. He was, however, acquitted.
Louisiana to this day has a different legal system from the rest of the United States as it was originally based on the French Napoleonic Code. Most people did not realize that Louisiana had strictures against breaking up families—even with slaves.
In the Jim Crow era and well into the 20th century, many school books and historians, wanting to minimize the enmity between North and South, tended to a historical revisionism where the real brutal and immoral edge of slavery was minimized and slave owners were depicted as being in error by modern standards but well-meaning and paternalistic. Foner, with this famous quotation, put the lie to the false image of paternalistic slavery. By the beginning of the 21st century, there were very few serious historians who still tried to characterize slavery in the South as “paternalistic” otherwise humane. See {584014} for another of Foner’s famous quotes regarding slavery
In the brutal history of slavery there were very few instances of any degree of minimal humanity by slave states. This is one.
None was forthcoming. This letter is of great historical interest in that it shows the corrupting influence of slavery on all facets of society.
This treaty shows slaves were a major currency of the times and cultures. The Arab Armies of Egypt and the Nubians with this treaty declared an armistice. The extensive Arab use of Black slaves officially begun at this time, has plagued Africa since. Arab slave traders were the middle men who met the European and American demand for slaves until the 19th century. Even at the millennium the Sudanese civil war between the Arab North and Black South has reflected this resentment and hostility and has involved the Northerner’s enslaving tens of thousands of Black Southerners.
This was one of the first steps to ending of slavery in England. The council passed a number of general reforms from this to the prohibition of the clergy frequenting ale houses.
