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Systemic cruelty strips enslaved human beings of safety and family

Ripped from her family as a young child in Bermuda, Mary Prince experiences the immediate destruction of familial ties inherent to human chattel trading. Sold to successive masters like Captain I—— and Mr. D——, she endures relentless physical violence, hazardous labor in salt ponds, and severe deprivation. Her account illustrates how legal ownership turns routine domestic life and grueling economic tasks into constant physical terror, proving that slaveholding systematically destroys human decency.

PREFACE.

Legal loopholes allow slaveholders to enforce exile across free borders

Reaching London with her owner John Wood, Mary Prince gains physical escape from daily abuse but remains trapped in legal limbo. English soil prevents her master from whipping her, yet returning to Antigua to rejoin her husband would instantly restore her slave status. Thomas Pringle and abolitionist allies document Wood's persistent refusal to grant her manumission, exposing how colonial slave laws manipulate domestic emancipation to force vulnerable survivors into permanent banishment.

SUPPLEMENT → HISTORY OF MARY PRINCE.

The transatlantic trade relies on violent abduction and human commodification

Kidnapped during a violent village raid in Africa, young Louis Asa-Asa is sold repeatedly for gunpowder and cloth before being forced onto a French slave ship. His story highlights the global reach of human trafficking and the brutality endured by captive children before rescue in England. Editorials accompanying his testimony argue that exposure to British legal protections must grant irrevocable freedom, urging Parliament to abolish slavery entirely across all British territories.

NARRATIVE OF LOUIS ASA-ASA, → The Negro Boy's Narrative.

Book

The History of Mary Prince

A firsthand account exposing the institutional brutality of West Indian slavery and the struggle for personal emancipation.

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