THE SLAVE CONSULTANT'S NARRATIVE

This speech was delivered by a White slave owner, William Lynch, on the bank of the James River in 1712.

  Gentlemen, I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First, I shall thank you, the gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies where I have experimented with some of the newest and still the oldest methods for control of slaves. Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented.

As our boat sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish, I saw enough to know that your problem is not unique. While Rome used cords of wood as crosses for standing human bodies along its old highways in great numbers you are here using the tree and the rope on occasion. I caught a whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree a couple of miles back. You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left  the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed. Gentlemen, you know what your problems are;

I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems, I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I have a fool proof method for controlling your Black slaves. I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 years. My method is simple. Any member of your family or your overseer can use it. I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves; and I take these differences and make them bigger.   I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences, and think about them.

On top of my list is "Age", the second is "Color" or shade.  There is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, status on plantation, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill,East, West, North, South, have fine hair or coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action -- but before that I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than adulation; respect or admiration.

The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don't forget you must pitch the old Black vs. the young Black male, and the young Black male against the old Black male. You must use the dark skin slave vs. the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You must also have your White servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect, and trust only us. Gentlemen, these Kits are your Keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful. Thank you, gentlemen.

In Pictorial Order -- Here are their captions

Africans From Their Home

An Enslaved man grimly awaits his fate on the bank of a river in what is now Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo).  Between 1800 and 1850, more than 7 million slaves were exported from the Congo River Basin area alone.

Slavers toss captives overboard to certain death.  Slave traders routinely jettisoned sick or dead captives; as a result, packs of hungry sharks often followed slave ships along the entire route from Africa to the Americas.

This elaborately engraved and cruelly spiked neck collar is only one of the many devices that were used by slave traders (and owners) to restrain and punish their captives.

A black and a white slave driver lash two defenseless slaves.   Whippings, beatings, rape, and other abuses were appallingly common on board slave ships.

Dutch traders unload slaves at the port of Jamestown, Virginia.  African slaves first arrived at the North American colony in 1619, one year before the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.

A large, heavy metal collar thwarts a would-be runaway.  Such devices were used during the process known as seasoning and were designed to break the spirit of new slaves.

A mob cheers after lynching a black man during the draft riots that swept New York City in July 1863.  In a four-day orgy of violence, murder, arson, and looting, shrieking rioters hunted down and slaughtered at least 12 African Americans.


From the very beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, conversion of the slaves to Christianity was viewed by the emerging nations of Western Christendom as a justification for enslavement of Africans. When Portuguese caravels returned from the coast of West Africa with human booty in the fifteenth century, Gomes Eannes De Azurara, a chronicler of their achievements, observed that "the greater benefit" belonged not to the Portuguese adventurers but to the captive Africans, "for though their bodies were now brought into some subjection, that was a small matter in comparison of their souls, which would now possess freedom for evermore."

Pangs of guilt over the cruelty inherent in enslaving fellow human beings were assuaged by emphasizing the grace of faith made available to Africans, who otherwise would die as pagans. Azurara’s pity was aroused by the tragic scene of a ship load of captives being divided and parceled out to their owners.

But what heart could be so hard as not to be pierced with piteous feeling to see that company? For some kept their heads low and their faces bathed tears, looking one upon another; others stood groaning very dolorously, looking up to the height of heaven…crying out loudly, as if asking help of the Father of Nature; others struck their faces with the palms of their hands, throwing themselves at full length upon the ground; others made their lamentations in the manner of a dirge, after the custom of their country. And though we could not understand the words of their language, the sound of it right well accorded with the measure of their sadness. But to increase their sufferings…those who had charge of the division of the captives…began to separate one from another…to part fathers from sons, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers. No respect was shown either to friends or relations, but each fell where his lot took him…And you who are so busy in making that division of the captives, look with pity upon such misery; and see how they cling one to the other, so that you can hardly separate them

Azurara took solace in the fact that these slaves benefited not only spiritually but also materially from contact with Western civilization.

And so their lot was now quite the contrary of what it had been; since before they had lived in perdition of soul and body; of their souls, in that they were yet pagans, without the clearness and the light of the holy faith; and of their bodies, in that they lived like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings—for they had no knowledge of bread or wine, and they were without the covering of clothes, or the lodgement of houses; and worse than all, they had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in bestial sloth.

Azurara’s rationalization, stated in mid-fifteenth century, was to be repeated for over four centuries by successive generations of Christian apologists for slavery.

Taken from the book Slave Religion, The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (pages 96-97)
by Albert J. Raboteau
Oxford University Press (1978) ISBN 0-19-502705-1

Related Slave Links!!!

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USA Slavery

Slave Narratives

N.A. Slave Narratives

The Middle Passage