The case of Fuseng-be has a wider significance; the sale and use of Africans as slave labour in the abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone was a recurrent problem for the authorities in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1791, the directors of the Sierra Leone Company explained in their first published report that they would not 'deal in slaves themselves, nor allow of any slave trade on their ground'. Abolitionist promoters considered that they had the right to prohibit the sale of Africans within this area of territory, as they claimed that the land occupied by the settlement had been sold, rather than leased, to them by neighbouring Temne leaders. Their intention was not only to halt the export of Africans on slave ships, but also to ensure that Africans were not held as slaves within territory claimed by the settlement. In orders sent out to their employees in West Africa, the directors stated that 'we wish you not to permit any one to continue to be a Slave in our district'. This intended slave-free zone was impossible to maintain in practice. The purchase of Temne and Sherbro people brought into Freetown from neighbouring areas can be traced during the period of administration by the Sierra Leone Company, between 1791 and 1807, as well as during the period of British Crown control from 1808 onwards. Freetown was established in the midst of an area on the Upper Guinea coast supplying Africans for export in the transatlantic slave trade, and was located in close proximity to the slave fort at Bunce Island. Ships carrying Africans for sale into the transatlantic slave trade regularly sailed past Freetown in the period up to 1807. The town was visited by local slave merchants, including the Eurafrican traders William Cleveland and Betsy Heard, who sometimes brought their own slaves into the colony. Regulations introduced in the colony concerning slavery were at odds with local African practice on the sale and usage of labour. These differences were a source of ongoing tension