ER - 1948?

I rather think that it is a bit earlier than that, and you simply can't impose a modern sensitivity on historical figures.

They aren't us, we might have to live with what they did, but we can't judge their actions by how we live now, not if we want to understand anything of why things are as they today or get the slightest notion of how they really were and why.

It is as useless to get all worked up about the slave trade between Africa and the US as it would be to get upset about the feudal system in England, or the clan system in Scotland. Then is not now.

Remember too that the slavers would simply collect up the results of expeditions into the interior made by others - who would also be buying the results of local wars and disputes. If the captives had no value they might all have been killed at once.

The slave shippers, from what I have read, did not personally make journeys into the interior to collect slaves - there are still the ruins of huge slave holding areas on the shores of West Africa. The ships called in, loaded up and left.

All of which down not really have much bearing on the song or the singing of it.

It has come down to us that the song was written by a particular person who made his living so and we know a few of the things that happened to him, but we don't know much really, and life is all too short to go agonising about things long gone.