The Slave Trade

In a 1791 engraving titled The Slave Trade, a well-dressed white man raises his cane against a black man being torn away from his wife and child. A caption at bottom left reads: Lo the poor Captive with distraction wild / Views his dear Partner torn from his embrace!; and a caption at bottom right reads: A diffient [sic] Captain buys his Wife and Child / What time can from his Soul such ills erase? Additional captives have been chained and placed in small boats to be brought to large oceangoing vessels, and two other bound men are being led away from the scene. This abolitionist print depicts the human suffering and loss central to the transatlantic slave trade.