The African slaves had not as advanced technologies as the Europeans, they did not have the advantage of knowledge that they were going to be attacked. They most probably had no experience in combat apart from inter-communal conflicts, and the accumulation of profit is not an adequate reason for such heinous treatment.
Subsequent to the journey, at arrival to the destination, the mistreatment does not terminate. In fact, it is just the beginning. The following is a description from the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, in which he describes his arrival in Barbados at which point he was traded:
"When we arrived in Barbados (in the West Indies) many merchants and planters came on board and examined us. We were then taken to the merchant's yard, where we were all pent up together like sheep in a fold. On a signal the buyers rushed forward and chose those slaves they liked best"
From this we may elicit the process of a slave auction. This is when slaves are presented to an abundance of potential buyers, most often planters who employ these slaves to work on their plantations. They are thoroughly examined and if found desirable, transported to the plantations where their life of laborious work begins.
The conditions that some planters enforce their slaves to live in are nefarious. For example, they are made to work the majority of the day, given meager hours for sleep. They are flogged at random in order to stimulate them to work harder. They are not provided with sufficient shelter, especially in the winter, when their makeshift shacks and thin blankets do not compensate for stinging wintry.
Some slaves may also be employed within the houses of these planters. They are made to serve as maids or cooks, sometimes even bed-warmers or sex-slaves. These conditions expose the slaves to numerous diseases which take their lives.
This process directly rejects the second, third and fourth laws proposed in the introductory paragraph, lives may not be traded, abused or stolen. In slave auctions, the lives of many innocent Africans are traded to planters or other buyers. Throughout the Middle-Passage and at many of the estates or plantations of these buyers or planters their lives are abused. The lives of these Africans are stolen during the Middle Passage, they are murdered, they are exposed to fatal disease. This also occurs after they are auctioned, during their lives on estates and plantations. ‘Approximately 11,863,000 Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, with a death rate during the Middle Passage reducing this number by 10-20 percent’ (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).
Slavery is committed by those who have no regard for the dignity of others, those who infringe upon the laws that regulate human life. It sets human life back to primitive times, at which time humans were incapable of comprehending these principles and abiding by these laws. Slavery is an immediate issue that needs to be addressed, and if it is not, it will lead to the downfall of humanity.