White Slavery in the Barbary States

In Short

This historical study examines the centuries-long practice of "white slavery"—the capture and forced labor of European and American Christians by Barbary corsairs in North Africa. Originally delivered as a lecture in 1847, the book traces the rise of the Barbary States, the plight of captives, and the eventual efforts by major powers to eradicate the practice. It is a polemical work, using the historical reality of North African piracy to hold up a mirror to the institution of chattel slavery then flourishing within the United States.

The Story

The narrative begins by framing history as a "great charnel house" of discarded, inhumane customs, placing the piracy and slave-taking of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli alongside other historical atrocities. It recounts how these North African states, particularly Algiers, rose to power through the rise of the Barbarossa brothers, corsairs who leveraged sea power to prey upon Christian trade routes. For centuries, this piracy thrived, as European nations oscillated between paying tribute to ensure safety and launching naval expeditions to crush the corsairs.

The heart of the narrative rests on the suffering of the captives. Through the experiences of notable figures like Miguel de Cervantes and common sailors like Abraham Brown, the text details the terror of the slave markets, the brutal physical examinations of captives, and the wretchedness of their labor. It portrays a world where men were traded like livestock and where freedom was an expensive commodity, often requiring diplomatic intervention, ransom missions, or the use of heavy naval force.

As the account moves toward the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it shifts focus to the United States. Following the American Revolution, the young nation’s merchant fleet became a primary target for Barbary corsairs. The narrative highlights the national outcry that followed, noting how American citizens, suddenly stripped of their protection, pleaded for their government to act. This crisis prompted both political and spiritual mobilization, with captured sailors writing to clergy to petition for relief.

The arc concludes with the eventual suppression of the Barbary slave trade by major Western powers. The author describes the naval bombardments—most notably the 1816 expedition led by Lord Exmouth—that forced the North African rulers to abandon their piratical practices. However, the story does not end with a celebration of Western virtue. Instead, the author utilizes the accounts of American consuls, such as General William Eaton, to deliver a sharp, final irony: that the "white slaves" of Africa were often treated with more humanity than the enslaved Africans then held in the Southern United States. By the final pages, the book transforms from a history of Mediterranean piracy into a stinging indictment of American slavery, arguing that if one truly believes in the right to freedom, they must apply that principle to all of humanity, regardless of skin color or national origin.

How It Unfolds

The gallery of history The work opens by sorting the past into a "gallery" of virtues and a "charnel house" of sins, positioning slavery as a monstrous custom that humanity has gradually outgrown. It establishes the premise that studying the suffering of past captives should foster a universal aversion to all forms of bondage.

The corsairs of Barbary The narrative shifts to the rise of the Barbarossa brothers, who transitioned from sea-roving pirates to the masters of North African city-states. This era defined the Mediterranean as a theater of war, where the ships of European empires were routinely plundered and their crews sold into servitude.

The experience of the captive The text details the grim reality of the market, where human beings were auctioned on the Sabbath, inspected like cattle, and held in conditions that varied from mere labor to "wretched and revolting" confinement. It emphasizes the desperation of those left in chains, who often spent years hoping for diplomatic ransom or a miraculous escape.

The American awakening Following independence, the United States finds its commerce strangled and its citizens enslaved, leading to a surge of national indignation. The narrative follows the transition from diplomatic frustration to the realization that only military force—eventually exerted by the U.S. Navy and British squadrons—could permanently check the piracy.

The final moral reflection The conclusion pivots to the hypocrisy of the American position, utilizing firsthand accounts to compare the treatment of Christian slaves in Africa with the treatment of African slaves in America. The author argues that true progress requires the total abolition of the "peculiar institution" at home, mirroring the success achieved in the Mediterranean.

The People

The book focuses on several figures who illuminate the condition of the slave. Miguel de Cervantes emerges as a primary champion of the cause; having experienced bondage himself, he used his literary talents to humanize the captive’s struggle and advocate for abolition. Abraham Brown, a merchant whose personal memoirs are cited, provides a harrowing, granular account of being sold at auction, serving as the voice of the common man caught in the machinery of the slave market. General William Eaton, a U.S. consul at Tunis, serves as the conscience of the text. His reports from the field are crucial, as he provides the unflinching, uncomfortable comparison between the treatment of white captives in Africa and black captives in America. Finally, the Barbarossa brothers function as the antagonists of the historical arc, representing the brutal effectiveness of the system that turned piracy and human trafficking into a state-sponsored enterprise.

In Its Own Voice

"History has been sometimes called a gallery, where, in living forms, are preserved the scenes, the incidents, and the characters of the past."

The author introduces the concept of history as a didactic tool to teach humanity about its own moral evolution.

"Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among the professing Christians of civilized America."

General William Eaton offers this observation from his post in Tunis, providing the book’s central, critical argument.

"If they are deaf to the pleadings of nature, I will conjure them, for the sake of consistency, to cease to deprive their fellow-creatures of freedom, which their writers, their orators, representatives, senators, and even their constitutions of government, have declared to be the unalienable birthright of man."

The author quotes from a fictionalized account of a captive to challenge the hypocrisy of American slaveholders.

What It's Really About

The central theme is the incompatibility of slavery with the principles of liberty and Christian ethics. The book is an argument for consistency: it posits that one cannot reasonably condemn the enslavement of white Christians in Africa while upholding the enslavement of black Africans in America. The work functions as a moral mirror, stripping away the excuses of cultural tradition or economic "necessity" used by slave-owning societies. It asks whether freedom is an inherent human right or merely a privilege granted to certain races or nations. Ultimately, the book asserts that human rights are indivisible and that a nation which claims to be an "asylum for the unfortunate" cannot morally sustain a system of human chattel within its own borders.

Why Read It Today

Readers interested in the intellectual history of American abolitionism will find this volume particularly compelling. It represents a specific, mid-19th-century rhetorical style—warm, earnest, and deeply moralistic—that seeks to persuade by appealing to the reader's sense of shame and consistency. The book offers a fascinating look at how historical narratives were used as political weapons in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.

However, readers should be prepared for the dense, Victorian prose and the frequent use of footnotes, which lean heavily on period-specific sources. Some may find the author’s tendency to treat the historical North African context primarily as a vehicle for his American argument to be limiting. The excerpts reveal an author who writes with the confidence of an orator; he does not shy away from moral condemnation, and he expects his reader to feel the weight of his conclusions. What stays with the reader is the jarring shift in perspective: the realization that the very rhetoric of "human rights" and "inalienable birthright" used to rally against Barbary pirates was being ignored by the same leaders regarding their own slave population. It is a sobering read that illuminates the radical contradictions of 19th-century political thought.