I'm Angela O'Dell and you are listening to real cool history for kids, a podcast show featuring history stories told from a biblical worldview. Welcome to episode 12 of real cool history for kids. I hope you had a wonderful

Thanksgiving last week.

We're entering the Advent season, the Holy season where we prepare to celebrate the coming of our Savior and

King Jesus Christ.

I have chosen this month's podcast stories because, well, mostly because they celebrate the joy of our salvation and of our

Savior. In today's episode, we're going to discover the story of a man named John Newton. For much of his life Mr Newton wasn't someone that any of us

would call a very nice man. In fact he was involved with one of the most hideous and awful events in history, the African

slave trade.

Now, some of you may know what I'm talking about when I say the African slave trade. But for those of you who do not, I will

give a brief summary of what it was so that you will understand the backdrop of Mr Newton's story, okay?

The time period that I'm telling you about in this story is after Christopher Columbus and the other European explorers had come to claim large portions of North and South America for their countries and kings.

As these European nations established new colonies in North and South America,

they wanted a source of cheap labor.

Their horrible solution to this was buying and selling

African people who had been stolen from their homes. As new lands were opened up and industries which required manpower were established,

the trade routes which had been established to carry goods to and from the old countries

and the colonies became instead a superhighway for these

slave traders taking kidnapped Africans to be sold in the Americas for a huge profit.

What a detestable thing to do.

It makes me sick.

The conditions in which these stolen Africans were forced to travel were so squalid that it, well, it's just,

it's hard for me to even find the words to describe it. It. Most slave ships were designed to keep slaves in extremely tight and confined positions for the voyage across the Atlantic.

...