 Along with Frederick Douglass, the most famous slave in history was probably allowed to Equiano. Equiano was an Ebo, though there was no way for him to know that until his own middle passage. As an African ethnonym, the word Ebo is of recent provenance. During the 1967-70 Nigerian Civil War, Ebolanders adopted it as a self-identifier, but before that it simply meant outsider. On Equiano's middle passage, he shared space below decks with other Africans from possibly dozens of ethnic groups speaking different languages. Once loaded into the ship's hold, they were all outsiders. Welcome to Liberty Chronicles, a project of libertarianism.org. I'm Anthony Comegna. Equiano believed himself born in 1745 in a village called Asaka. His family was healthy and loving, his homeland fruitful and productive. But like most of interior Africa by the 18th century, Eboland also felt the slave trade's effects. Before depopulation, Eboland bustled with trade between regions. Small craftsmen built tools for personal use in commerce, and villages ruled themselves through patriarchal councils of elders. Ebolanders boasted over their localist anarchism, and any subjection to nearby kings was nominal. The proverb, Ebo enweg eze, or the Ebo have no king, was really meaningful to them. Some Ebos did rule over others, but none of them thought of themselves as Ebo. They were members of particular villages and clans. Equiano's father owned slaves, but this was no Atlantic chattel slavery. African slaves were usually incorporated into the family, and masters treated them more as pawns than as property. As Atlantic chattel slavery spread though, coastal slave raiders invaded Eboland more and more, capturing prizes like Equiano and his sister. Equiano's story is especially important only because it is especially detailed, but his was one of nearly a million horrifying passages from freedom to slavery out of Eboland. From 1700 to 1807, primarily British slave traders killed nearly a quarter million of these people, while transporting the other three quarters to America. The raiders bound Equiano and his sister, marching them quickly to the coast. Traumatized in Hungary, the children did their best to comfort one another. After a few days, the slavers forced the children apart, splitting them into new companies, and the two never saw one another again. Equiano refused to eat, but the slavers forced him to. As the human train approached the coast, a terrifying and amazing machine floated on the horizon, a snow named Ogden. But even this merchant's craft was a weapon of class war. From his canoe, Equiano heard his first European words. He saw the giant metal pots he thought the white men would cook him in, and to calm him down, the black slavers gave him his first liquor shot. It was not pleasant. The boy watched in terror as his fellow black skins were loaded below decks. Hundreds of slaves at a time were crammed into the holds, and captains cut every corner possible to fit more into the ship. Slave quarters were open, constantly sloshing sewers, where the dead lay shackled to the living. Seeking compatriots from his old country, Equiano found his fellow outsiders. Ebo identity grew from moments like these. Death traveled with every slave ship. The captain ruled his vessel as a petty monarch, first forcing the crew into submission from Europe to Africa, then forcing aboard the slaves who shifted the entire social dynamic. Once the slaves were aboard, poor and oppressed European sailors transformed into whites, united in a class war against potential servile insurrection. The ships were floating factories, where human raw material was beaten and shaped into slaves. But still rebellion abounded. Perhaps the youngest slave rebel in history boarded the black joke in 1765. Plainly depressed and traumatized, this nine-month-old baby repeatedly refused to eat. Captain Thomas Marshall beat the child to death within view of its fellow Africans and commanded the mother to throw her lifeless child overboard. After the mother's refusal and another beating, Marshall's will was finally done. Over the centuries, thousands of slaves leapt to their death overboard, convinced that dying close to home allowed their souls to return there. Captains adjusted by outfitting vessels with anti-suicide nets. One man aboard the infamous ship Brooks in the mid-1780s managed to cut his own throat. The ship's doctor patched it up, but the slave tore the stitches out overnight with his fingernails. On the operating table, the slave told his doctor that he refused to submit. Staring at the sky, fever brained. He died willing to be free. Sharks surrounded the slave ships, sailors regularly through corpses overboard. They made spectacles of execution by shark, and when the bodies ran low, captains were known to feed them from the ship's food stores. When one sailor took it upon himself to kill a shark, his commanding officer flogged him for it. Worse than any James Bond villains, one captain reportedly bound a woman with ropes, dipped her into the sea, and raised her up again after the sharks had bitten her in half. Slavers towed corpses like hers on a line as they sailed, keeping their sharks fat and happy. Above decks, slaves' behavior was strictly regulated. Below decks, slaves did all they could with what agency remained to them. They organized resistance from the very beginning, finding one another who shared language, creating new pigeon and creel tongues, locating their countrymen. Equiano found comfort in the maternal care of a few apparently Ebo women. As a child, he was given greater freedom aboard ship, and he learned a great deal from the sailors. After being sold and shipped several more times, Equiano's Quaker master, Robert King, allowed the slave to purchase his freedom. Equiano became a major figure in abolishing the slave trade. Long before British and American Quakers and reformers began founding abolitionist societies, slaves gave their lives in resistance. They were the first abolitionists. Together, they plotted rebellion and revolution. Slaver crews were outnumbered ten to one, so merchants built the ships to prevent and crush rebellions. The most visible sign of this class warfare was the barricado, separating the main deck and the fortified quarter deck. The barricado was a literal class divide, specially built with a door so small that only one individual may pass at a time. It was the key distinguishing feature of a slave ship, the ultimate shield for captain and crew during an insurrection. At the first signs of trouble, those with white skins retreated behind the barricado, protected by the built-in cannons and sharpshooter towers. Slave trader Captain William Snellgrave described his first slave rebellion in vivid detail. He was a child at the time, and the ordeal no doubt impressed itself upon him in many ways. A new account of Guinea and the slave trade, Book Two, 1734 by William Snellgrave. The first mutiny I saw among the Negroes happened during my first voyage in the year 1704 It was on board the Eagle Galley of London commanded by my father. We had bought our Negroes in the river of Old Calabar in the Bay of Guinea. At the time of their mutiny we were in that river having 400 of them on board and not above 10 white men who were able to do service. For several of our ship's company were dead and many more sick. Besides, two of our boats were just then gone with 12 people on shore to fetch wood which lay in sight of the ship. All these circumstances put the Negroes on consulting how to mutiny which they did at four o'clock in the afternoon just as they went to supper. But as we had always carefully examined the men's irons both morning and evening none had got them off which in a great measure contributed to our preservation. Three white men stood on the watch with cutlasses in their hands one of them who was on the forecastle a stout fellow seeing some of the men Negroes take hold of the chief mate in order to throw him overboard he laid on them so heartily with the flat side of his cutlass that they soon quitted the mate who escaped from them and run on the quarter deck to get arms. I know sooner heard the outcry that the slaves were mutining but I took two pistols and run on the deck with them were meeting with my father and the chief mate I delivered a pistol to each of them where upon they went forward on the booms calling to the Negro men that were on the forecastle but they did not regard their threats being busy with the sentry who had disengaged the chief mate and they would have certainly killed him with his own cutlass could they have got it from him but they could not break the line wherewith the handle was fastened to his wrist and so though they had seized him yet they could not make use of his cutlass being thus disappointed they endeavored to throw him overboard but he held so fast by one of them that they could not do it my father seeing this stout man in so much danger ventured amongst the Negroes to save him and fired his pistol over their heads thinking to frighten them but a lusty slave struck him with a billet so hard that he was almost stunned the slave was going to repeat the blow when a young lad about 17 years old whom we had been kind to interposed his arm and received the blow by which his arm bone was fractured at the same instant fired his pistol and shot the Negro that had struck my father at the sight of this the mutiny ceased and all the men Negroes on the forecast threw themselves flat on their faces crying out for mercy there were not above 20 men slaves concerned in this mutiny and the two ringleaders were missing having it seems jumped overboard as soon as they found their project defeated and were drowned this was all the loss we suffered on this occasion Decades later, Snellgrave enjoyed a reputation as a good and kind captain attentive to the needs of his crew and humane to his African cargo he spent his whole life trading slaves learning the industry so well that he is among the first western Africanists his childhood experience of insurrection built him into a captain who knew when to be loved and when to be feared Snellgrave highlights his own leniency to reason with the human property this mutiny began at midnight the moon then shining very bright in this manner two men that stood sentry at the four hatch way where the men slaves came up to go to the house of office permitted four to go to that place but neglected to lay the gratings again as they should have done where upon four more Negroes came on deck who had got their irons off and the four in the house of office having done the same all the eight fell on the two sentries who immediately called off for help the Negroes endeavored to get their cutlasses from them but could not and perceivingly several white men coming towards them with arms in their hands quitted the sentries and jumped over the ship side into the sea my first care was to secure the gratings to prevent any more Negroes from coming up and then I ordered people to get into the boat and save those that had jumped overboard which they luckily did for they found them all clinging to the cables the ship was moored by after we had secured these people I called the linguists and ordered them to bid the men Negroes between decks to be quiet for there was a great noise amongst them on their being silent I asked what had induced them to mutiny they answered I was a great rogue to buy them in order to carry them away from their own country and that they were resolved to regain their liberty if possible I replied that they had forfeited their freedom before I bought them either by crimes or by being taken in war according to the custom of their country and they being now my property I was resolved to let them feel my resentment if they abused my kindness asking at the same time whether they had been ill used by the white men or had wanted for anything the ship afforded to this they replied they had nothing to complain of then I observed to them that if they should gain their point and escape to the shore it would be no advantage to them because their countrymen would catch them and sell them to other ships this served my purpose and they seemed to be convinced of their fault begging I would forgive them and promising for the future to be obedient and never mutiny again if I would not punish them this time this I readily granted and so they went to sleep we called the men negroes up on deck and examining their irons found them all secure so this affair happily ended which I was very glad of for these people are the stoutest and most sensible negroes on the coast neither are they so weak as to imagine as others do that we buy them to eat them being satisfied we carry them to work in our plantations as they do in their own country however a few days after this we discovered they were plotting again preparing to mutiny for some of the ringleaders proposed to one of our linguists if he could procure them an axe they could cut the cables the ship rid by in the night and so on her driving as they imagined ashore they should get out of our hands and then would become his servants as long as they lived this linguist was so honest as to acquaint me with what had been proposed to him and advised me to keep a strict watch over the slaves I knew many of these coromantine negroes despised punishment at Barbados and other islands that on their being any ways hardly dealt with to break them of their stubbornness and refusing to work 20 or more have hanged themselves at a time in a plantation in our final selection Snellgrave shows that he too was an early modern terrorist when the slave rest assured that the captain would not forfeit his profit by capital punishment Snellgrave proves him and all onlookers very wrong Snellgrave ordered his executioners to decapitate the body many Africans believed their spirits could travel freely so long as their bodies remained intact in this way Snellgrave could control them even after death all the better to master the lives of those who survived as the site of this I called for the linguist and bit him ask the negroes between decks who had killed the white man they answered they knew nothing of the matter for there had been no design of mutining amongst them which upon examination we found true for above 100 of the negroes then on board being bought to winward did not understand a word of the Gold Coast language and so had not been in the plot but this mutiny was contrived by a few Cormanty negroes who had been purchased about 2 or 3 days before at last one of the two men negroes we had taken up along the ship side impeached his companion and he readily confessed he had killed the Cooper with no other view but that he and his countrymen might escape undiscovered by swimming on shore accordingly we acquainted the negro that he was to die in an hours time for murdering the white man he answered he must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I should lose all the money I had paid for him but they immediately saw the contrary for as soon as he was hoisted up ten white men who were placed behind the barricado on the quarter deck fired their muskets and instantly killed him this struck a sudden damp upon our negro men who thought that on account of my profit I would not have executed him the body being let down upon the deck the head was cut off and thrown overboard this last part was done let our negroes see that all who offended us should be served in the same manner for many of the blacks believe that if they are put to death and not dismembered they shall return again to their own country after they are thrown overboard when the execution was over I ordered the linguists to acquaint the men negroes that now they might judge no one that killed the white man should be spared the slave ship to British North America were predominantly identified as evos from interior West Africa their stories deserved to be remembered their memories challenge us to be fuller libertarians to welcome all peoples into the common cause against concentrated unjust power they did not sacrifice themselves to build capitalism, industrialism or modernity we should not remember them as 12 million eggs nobly broken so we could enjoy such rich omelets they died trying to live freely independently and nothing more and that is plenty enough to place all those who suffered and died under slavery in the pantheon of libertarian heroes torch bearers for our movement not because they are once again made to serve us but because we have finally joined them Liberty Chronicles is a project of Libertarianism.org it is produced by Test Terrible if you've enjoyed this episode of Liberty Chronicles please rate, review and subscribe to us on iTunes for more information on Liberty Chronicles visit Libertarianism.org