Once slave owners assumed their role, it was easy for them to be influenced to perform ruthless and cruel behavior towards their slaves. Their position at the top of the food chain has also led them to become greedy men, which, according to Equiano, “corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall (111). Slaves were given false promises of reward for their servitude, and thus humanity also fell victim to the problem of lies and deception (93). The more slave owners grew, the more corrupt humanity became. Where Equiano lived in Africa, slaves were prisoners of war or criminals who committed acts such as adultery (33). In these cases, there was some sort of "justified" reason for this slavery, however, the European trade involved many innocent men, women, and children, and they had no justification for enslaving these people other than the fact that they looked different or a different culture. it was strange for them. The ignorance of slave owners most likely allowed the slave trade, as Equiano put it, to “deforest the minds of men and harden them to every feeling of humanity” (111). This could be seen as a call to the public to recognize that men were being unconsciously harmed by their growing desire to show off another human race as