David Livingston Quotes
The slave trade must be suppressed.
David Livingston, 1813-1873, English Missionary and Explorer, Reaction to seeing the African Slave Trade
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The British Empire had outlawed the slave trade and the United States had also done so. However, there was still a brisk slave trade where Black Africans were captured by Arab slavers and sold into slavery in Arabia. It was the open sore that had to be healed. See {609754}. He also used the phrase in his last letter, and it was engraved on his tomb in Westminster Abby. The Arab states were the last countries to legally abolish slavery in 1963—a century after this quotation. Still the anti slavery laws are weakly enforced so there is some slavery ongoing in the Middle East, Africa an parts of Asia still.
The British Consul was attempting to implement the British government’s new anti-slavery policy.
Modern slavery involved forced prostitution, child labor and various forms of indentured servitude together with importing illegal workers and threatening to have them deported if they complain or go public about their slave labor conditions.
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.
He was not correct that all sects and nations have agreed that slavery is desirable. The Jews escaping from Egypt, the early American and British religious sects that were strong abolitionists were examples. However, there were relatively few exceptions and generally, the Sultan had it right.
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
David Livingston is an American television producer and director. He is mostly known for his involvement in the writing and production of the various modern Star Trek franchises.
