The English public, now consuming some eighteen pounds of sugar a year, knew little about the lives of the enslaved Africans who
se labor sweetened their meals. Worse yet, every Englishman who hammered the wood, sewed the sails, manufactured the rope for slave ships, or built the barrels to hold slave-harvested sugar made his money from the slave trade. The English were getting richer because Africans were being turned into property. Clarkson and others who believed as he did, who in the coming decades would be called abolitionists, realized that while that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity. If they could reverse the flow—make the horrors of slavery visible to those who benefited from it—they might be able to end the vile practice forever. –Sugar Changed the World,
Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos
Which quotation provides evidence to support the claim that the sugar trade led to the end of slavery?
1. “The English public . . . knew little about the lives of the enslaved Africans whose labor sweetened their meals.”
2. “Every Englishman who . . . built the barrels to hold slave-harvested sugar made his money from the slave trade.”
3. “The English were getting richer because Africans were being turned into property.”
4. “While that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity.”
4. “While that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity.”
In the excerpt from "Sugar Changed the World," the authors make clear that the same sugar trade that had started slavery also gave abolitionists like Clarkson the chance to end it. The antislavery movement considered that making the abhorrence of enslavement evident to those who obtained a financial advantage from it might make such system come to an end.
