I decided before my death to put my life's story in verse. My tombstone above my head reads:Ī clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he once long labored to destroy. In every place that I served, rooms had to be added to the building to handle the crowds that came to hear the Gospel that was presented and the story of God's grace in my life. Thirty-one years passed, I married a childhood sweetheart.
#Amazing grace writer slave trader crack#
The only glimmer of light I would find was in a crack in the ship in the floor above me, and I looked up to it and screamed for help. I cried out to God, the only way I knew, calling upon His grace and mercy to deliver me, and upon His Son to save me. There, bruised and confused, bleeding, diseased, I was the epitome of the degenerate man. To keep the ship afloat, I worked alone as a servant of the slaves. A storm broke out, and I wound up again in the hold of the ship, down among the pumps. And I lived with the scar in my side, big enough for me to put my fist into, until the day of my death. Because I couldn't swim, he harpooned me to get me back on the ship. He brought me above to beat me again, and I fell overboard. The skipper, incensed with my actions, beat me, threw me down below, and I lived on stale bread and sour vegetables for an unendurable amount of time. One time I opened some crates of rum and got everybody on the crew drunk. I went through all sorts of narrow escapes with death only a hair breath away on a number of occasions. It was a slave ship it was not uncommon for as many as six hundred blacks from Africa to be in the hold of the ship, down below, being taken to America. And it was there that I virtually lived for a long period of time. The skipper thought that I had gold or slaves or ivory to sell and was surprised because I was a skilled navigator. I fled penniless, owning only the clothes on my back, to the shoreline of Africa where I built a fire, hoping to attract a ship that was passing by. If I refused to do that, she would whip me with a lash. She beat me, and I ate like a dog on the floor of the home. His wife, who was brimming with hostility, took a lot of it out on me. Somehow, through a process of events, I got in touch with a Portuguese slave trader, and I lived in his home. And again I made pact with the devil to live for him. I entertained thoughts of suicide on my way to Africa, deciding that would be the place I could get farthest from anyone that knew me. After enduring the punishment, I again fled. My spirit would not break, and I became increasingly more and a rebel.īecause of a number of things that I disagreed with in the military, I finally deserted, only to be captured like a common criminal and beaten publicly several times. Military service, where again discipline worked hard against me, but I further rebelled. And I determined that I would sin to my fill without restraint, now that the righteous lamp of my life had gone out. By and by, through a process of time, I slowly gave myself over to the devil.
One year later, deciding that I would never enter formal education again, I became a seaman apprentice, hoping somehow to step into my father's trade and learn at least the ability to skillfully navigate a ship. I couldn't stand it any longer, and I left in rebellion at age of ten. My father remarried, sent me to a strict military school, where the severity of discipline almost broke my back. When she left my life through death, I was virtually an orphan. The only godly influence in my life, as far back as I can remember, was my mother, whom I had for only seven years. He then wrote the words to "Amazing Grace" to explain the epiphany which caused him to abandon his trade. He was bringing a large supply of slaves, to the US, when he suddenly became inexplicably wracked with guilt over this chosen profession, and ordered that the ship be turned back to Africa, and all the slaves freed. Someone told me that that the words to "Amazing Grace" were written by the captain of a slave ship in the 1880s.
It is not true that he wrote the hymn immediately after surviving a horrific storm at sea that prompted him to foreswear his former evil ways and accept God into his life.Ī number of legends circulate about why John Newton, a slave-trader-turned-minister, penned the hymn 'Amazing Grace.' Most attempt to explain the seemingly inexplicable: How could one who made his living trading in the misery of others have put into words such a powerful message of personal salvation?
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