The Africans were sold in many ways. They were sold to traders by other Africans, and eventually forced into slavery by men with guns. By the eighteenth century, Ottobah Cugaono, who had been captured and sold during that century wrote, “I must own to the shame of my countrymen that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by [those of] my own complexion.” (Hine, Darlene Clark, et al. 28) From here, slaves were placed aboard ships to be taken across the Atlantic on a voyage that was eventually coined "The Middle Passage.” The middle passage of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade consisted of immeasurable brutality. Africans were chained and packed into quarters unfit for movement or proper breathing. Usually slavers provided only three or four toilet
