"I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love - and for its freedom - and for the many blessings I enjoy in it - shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East - West-Indies - and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators - indeed of all Christian navigators - is money - money - money - for which I do not pretend to blame them - Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part--to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love - society - and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace - with the commodities of his respective land - Commerce attended with strict honesty - and with Religion for its companion - would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil- are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness - and powder - and bad fire-arms - to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping." -Ignatius Sancho
Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship in 1729, although his exact birthplace and date is unknown. Though he ended up at New Granada soon after, both parents died before his second year. His father had committed suicide so that he couldn't be enslaved, and his mother died from unknown causes. After their deaths, he was taken to England to slave for three sisters in Greenwich.
Somehow he caught the attention of John Montagu, the 2nd Duke of Montagu who acknowledged Ignatius' superior intellect and gave him books and encouraged his studies. Eventually, Ignatius fled the three sisters in Greenwich in 1749 to live with John Montagu, where he worked as their butler until 1751. It was there that he immersed himself in music, literature, poetry and learning. Upon the death of the Duchess of Montagu, he was given a pension, and a years salary. Sometime in the 1760s, he became the personal valet to the next Duke of Montague until 1773. He was considered by many to be a man of discretion, refinement and superior intellect. In 1774, Montagu helped this learned man open a grocery store. As an independent business owner, he had more time to spend with his growing family (he married in the 1760s to Ann Osborne and had six children) and qualified to vote in the British elections. He is considered to be the first Black person to vote in the elections. He also found the time to write two plays and Theory of Music and create an extensive correspondence with other learned men and women. One of his friends, Frances Crewe, would publish 160 letters in two volumes after his death, which included details of his enslavement and issues of racism that he had faced.
Since the mid-1760s, he called for the abolition of the slave trade, writing to Laurence Sterne to use his own pen to lobby. His letter and Sterne's response to the letter were published and used to ignite the abolition debate. He became one of the icons for the abolitionist movement, referring to him as the "extraordinary Negro"
Ignatius died in 1780 of gout and became the first African to receive an obituary in the British press.
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