Peter Williams, Jr.: “Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade”

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Explain the difference between the abolition of slavery and the abolition of the slave trade.
• 2.: How did the constitutional provisions for legally ending the slave trade represent a compromise between northern and southern interests? Why did the free states of the North acquiesce in part to southern demands to continue the slave trade?
• 3.: Compare and contrast Williams’s oration with David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829). Do the two documents have different emphases? Different tones? Explain.
• 4.: According to Williams, what was the effect of the slave trade on Africa? How, for example, did it lead to the corruption of the people and their rulers?
• 5.: The international slave trade was abolished, but that did not entirely eliminate the movement of people for the purposes of slavery. How did Americans respond to the abolition of the slave trade? How did an incident such as that discussed in the entry United States, Appellants, v. the Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad (1841) indicate that the horrors of the slave trade had not entirely ended?