August 4, 1725 - John Newton
Newton's place on this site rests not on his later life as a hymn-writer and abolitionist, but on the years he spent actively sustaining the Atlantic slave trade — first as a crew member, then as a captain, and finally as an investor. The arc of his biography is unusual: a man who experienced enslavement himself, was freed, and then returned to commanding the same trade rather than abandoning it. His eventual public repudiation of the trade came decades after his most direct participation in it, and the gap between those two phases of his life is what makes him a complicated figure in the historical record.
From Wikipedia
John Newton (; 4 August [O.S. 24 July] 1725 – 21 December 1807) was an English evangelical Anglican cleric and slavery abolitionist. He had previously been a captain of slave ships and an investor in the slave trade. Newton served as a sailor in the Royal Navy (after forced recruitment) and was himself enslaved for a time in West Africa. Newton is noted for being author of the hymns "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken".
Newton went to sea at a young age and worked on slave ships in the Atlantic slave trade for several years. In 1745, he became a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro people in what is now Sierra Leone. Newton was rescued, returned to sea and the trade, and captained several slave ships. After retiring from active sea-faring, he continued to invest in the slave trade.
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