Thomas Paine's African Slavery In America

In Thomas Paine’s African Slavery in America essay, he speaks on slavery in America. Paine discusses that African Americans were peaceful and the Americans came to enslave them. The Americans were “Christians”, and yet were doing inhumane things to the innocent slaves. The Americans had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them. Thomas Paine, born February 9th 1737 was an American journalist and inventor. Paine authored influential writings such as African Slavery in America and Common Sense. Thomas Paine was openly anti-slavery and expressed that in his essay, African Slavery in America. In 1776, he published Common Sense, challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. Thomas Paine was anti-slavery, he felt that the Americans had no business enslaving blacks when they did nothing wrong. In his essay, the Americans who committed these inhumane acts tried to rebuttal with saying “Men, in some cases, are lawfully made slaves, and why may not these?” So some men are stolen from the comfort of their own home, separated from their wives and children, forced to complete heavy labor, beaten and …show more content…
Hold so many hundred thousand in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any presence of authority, or claim upon them? How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce it, with grief and abhorrence? Perhaps some (slaves) could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some; employing them in their labor still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it. The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead those to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued in oppositions of the redeemer's cause, and the happiness of