History of Amazing Grace, part 1
How a slave trader wrote the classic hymn and helped end the British slave trade
On February 23, 1807, the British parliament passed a bill banning the nation’s slave trade. In these two articles, we’ll explore the lives of two men and one song that played a significant role in that effort.
John Newton‘s devoted Christian mother dreamed that her only son would grow up to become a preacher. But he lost his mother when he was six years old, and at eleven, he followed his sea-captain father to the sea. He did not take to the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted the ship, was flogged, and eventually discharged.
In seeking greater liberty, he ended up on the western coast of Africa in Sierra Leone. He worked for a slave trader who mistreated him and made him a virtual slave of the trader’s black wife, who had descended from African royalty. At this time, he was described as
“a wretched-looking man toiling in a plantation of lemon trees in the Island of Plantains… clothes had become rags, no shelter and begging for unhealthy roots to allay his hunger.”
After more than a year of such treatment, he escaped the island by appealing to his father in 1747.
