Captain Kimber Slavery Summary

Gathering information around the trial of John Kimber, Hartman re-imagines the events that transpired by the characters involved a narrative that aligns us with their perspective. In the case of Captain Kimber, he believes that the beating of slaves, including the brutal torture he committed against the female slaves on his ship, was a necessary evil. His argument being that it produced the “desired results,” that being the “prosperity and commerce of Great Britain.” He argues that without slavery, and the way they’ve managed them, the country would not be at the powerful position that they were in. He thinks, “death was the cost of the Africa trade.” In other words, slavery goes hand in hand with death. This sentence is loaded with the history …show more content…
This flip in narrative shows that the people who were pro-slavery had their own justifications for the actions; they, in their own ways, believed that they were doing the right thing. The difference lies in the cause they supported. The abolitionists were, in most cases, fighting for the slave’s basic human rights; to be treated like a living and breathing being rather than an object. The opposing side, however, were looking at a much bigger picture; the success of their whole country. Moreover, it seems that Kimber is arguing, to a certain extent, that he shouldn’t be the one punished as he wasn’t the one who created slavery. Rather, he was simply tasked with the duty of continuing to maintain the prosperity of the country. The narrative, while it doesn’t justify his actions, humanizes him as well as the people who supported slavery. It reminds readers that they are human as well and furthermore conveys the reason slavery was so hard to abolish: many would not have been quite as willing to give up something that they believed brought them