Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Riley, James. An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815. Hartford: Published by the author, 1817.

James Riley. An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815. Hartford: Published by the author, 1817. Title page.

Riley’s world of trade was the Atlantic world, and it was one fraught with tremendous peril, including the risk of being shipwrecked and then held in captivity.

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I have spent my days, thus far, amidst the bustle and anxieties incident to the life of a seaman and a merchant, and being now fully persuaded that the real wants of human nature are very few, and easily satisfied, I shall henceforth remain, if it is God’s will, in my native country. I have been taught in the school of adversity to be contented with my lot, whatever future adversities I may have to encounter, and shall endeavour to cultivate the virtues of charity and universal benevolence. I have drank deep of the bitter cup of sufferings and wo; have been dragged down to the lowest depths of human degradation and wretchedness; my naked frame exposed without shelter to the scorching skies and chilling night winds of the desart, enduring the most excruciating torments, and groaning, a wretched slave, under the stripes inflicted by the hands of barbarous monsters, hearing indeed the human form, but unfeeling, merciless, and malignant as demons; yet when near expiring with my various and inexpressible sufferings; when black despair had seized on my departing soul, amid the agonies of the most cruel of all deaths, I cried to the Omnipotent for mercy, and the outstretched hand of Providence snatched me from the jaws of destruction. Unerring wisdom and goodness has since restored me to the comforts of civilized life, to the bosom of my family, and to the blessings of my native land, whose political and moral institutions are in themselves the very best of any that prevail in the civilized portions of the globe, and ensure to her citizens the greatest share of personal liberty, protection, and happiness; and yet, strange as it must appear to the philanthropist, my proud-spirited and free countrymen still hold a million of the human species in the most cruel bonds of slavery, who are kept at hard labour and smarting under the savage lash of inhuman mercenary drivers, and in many instances enduring besides the miseries of hunger, thirst, imprisonment, cold, nakedness, and even tortures. This is no picture of the imagination: for the honour of human nature I wish its likeness were indeed no where to be found; but I myself have witnessed such scenes in different parts of my own country, and the bare recollection now chills my blood with horror. Adversity has taught me some noble lessons: I have now learned to look with compassion on my enslaved and oppressed fellow creatures, and my future life shall be devoted to their cause: — I will exert all my remaining faculties to redeem the enslaved, and to shiver in pieces the rod of oppression; and I trust I shall be aided in that holy work by every good and every pious, free, and high-minded citizen in the community, and by the friends of mankind throughout the civilized world.

The present situation of the slaves in our country ought to attract an uncommon degree of commiseration, and might be essentially ameliorated without endangering the public safety, or even causing the least injury to individual interest. I am far from being of opinion that they should all be emancipated immediately, and at once. I am aware that such a measure would not only prove ruinous to great numbers of my fellow citizens, who are at present slave holders, and to whom this species of property descended as an inheritance; but that it would also turn loose upon the face of a free and happy country, a race of men incapable of exercising the necessary occupations of civilized life, in such a manner as to ensure to themselves an honest and comfortable subsistence; yet it is my earnest desire that such a plan should be devised, founded on the firm basis and the eternal principles of justice and humanity, and developed and enforced by the general government, as will gradually, but not less effectually, wither and extirpate the accursed tree of slavery, that has been suffered to take such deep root in our otherwise highly-favoured soil; while, at the same time, it shall put it out of the power of either the bond or the released slaves, or their posterity, ever to endanger our present future domestic peace or political tranquillity.