Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African

Synopsis

The extraordinary Negro, whose Life I am about to write, was born A. D. 1729, on board a ship in the Slave trade, a few days after it had quitted the coast of Guinea for the Spanish West-Indies; and, at Carthagena, he received from the hand of the Bishop, Baptism, and the name of Ignatius.

A disease of the new climate put an early period to his mother’s existence; and his father defeated the miseries of slavery by an act of suicide. At little more than two years old, his master brought him to England, and gave him to three maiden sisters, resident at Greenwich; whose prejudices had unhappily taught them, that African ignorance was the only security for his obedience, and that to enlarge the mind of their slave would go near to emancipate his person. The petulance of their disposition surnamed him Sancho, from a fancied resemblance to the ’Squire of Don Quixote.

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