Sunday, June 9, 2019

The Greatest Slave Carriers of America

 Image result for new england slave ships

New England rum and Yankee notions were exchanged for African slaves as Boston and Newport rivaled each other for slave trade prominence in the early 1700s. Annually, about 1800 hogsheads of rum were traded to African tribes for their slaves, and this left little for consumption in the colony.

From this profitable trade in human merchandise, “an opulent and aristocratic society” developed in Newport; Col. Thomas Hazard of Narragansett and Mr. Downs of Bristol “were names that loomed large in the commercial and social registers of that day. Their fortunes were accumulated from the slave trade.”

It is worth noting that had there been no transatlantic slave trade carried on by the British and New Englanders, the American South would have had no peculiar institution.
www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide

The Greatest Slave Carriers of America

“The growth of Negro slavery in New England was slow during the seventeenth century. In 1680, there were only 20 slaves in Connecticut, two of whom had been christened. In 1676, Massachusetts had 200 slaves . . . in 1700 Governor Dudley placed the number at 550, four hundred of whom were in Boston.

In 1730, New Hampshire boasted of but thirty slaves. The Eighteenth Century, however, saw the rise of the New England colonies as the greatest slave-carriers of America. Quick to see the unprofitableness of the Negro slaves as a laborer in such an environment, when the price of a slave was greater than the labor returned, the ingenious Yankee soon found a market in the West Indies for slaves, exchanged for rum, sugar and molasses on the Guinea Coast.

Massachusetts early assumed a commanding position in this trade. The ports of Boston and Salem prospered especially. Their merchants carried on a “brisk trade to Guinea” for many years, marketing most of their slaves in the West Indies.

Peter Faneuil, whose “whole lineage in held in peculiar honor” in Boston, was typical of the many comfortable fortunes amassed from the profits of this traffic. The name Jolley Bachelor, which was carried by one of his ships engaged in the slave trade, typifies the spirit of the time in regard to this profitable business.

As opulence increased, the number of slaves grew proportionately. In 1735, there were 2,600 Negroes in Massachusetts; in 1764 the number had increased to 5,779. In 1742, Boston alone had 1,514 slaves and free Negroes, the number having almost quadrupled in about forty years.

[In 1696] the brigantine Sunflower arrived at Newport with forty-five slaves. Most of them were sold there at thirty to thirty-five pounds a head; the rest were taken to Boston for disposal.

Subsequently, however, the slave trade of Rhode Island outstripped that of Massachusetts. Governor Wood, early in the Eighteenth Century, reported that the colony had one hundred and twenty vessels employed in the trade. Newport rivaled Boston as New England’s premier seaport. It had twenty or thirty stills going full blast to supply rum for the African trade.”

(Slave-Holding in New England and Its Awakening, Lorenzo J. Greene; Journal of Negro History, Vol. XIII, Number 4, October 1928, Carter G. Woodson, editor, excerpts pp. 495-497)

7 comments:

  1. I read that this was mostly on account of the weather being much harsher and colder in the North regions and slaves being as expensive as they were weren't exactly going to make them a lot of money working the fields during their short planting seasons opposed to the longer planting season Dixie way.
    However, the slave running trading was ideal for our Yankee counterparts due to their having a monopoly on the shipping.
    Slaves up North were used mostly for house maids stock hands
    and or building.
    And you mention their owning or running slaves and it hits a sore spot, they will never accept their roles in the slave tr4ade, heard every excuse a person can make and all of them lies.

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    1. And you mention their owning or running slaves and it hits a sore spot, they will never accept their roles in the slave tr4ade, heard every excuse a person can make and all of them lies.

      For sure and the New England traders would have kept them there if they could make more money. Had nothing to do with conscience.

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    2. The reparations demands, well, that's near bout as empty as a barrel filled with slave descendants which there are very few of.
      There were many free Africans in the Dutch, British, Spanish and French colonies as well as going into the newly formed United States. Most Blacks today are either descendants of free Africans, slave runners traders or owners and those coming here after 1865 were definately free.
      It would be impossible to fairly distribute any settlement and that too presents a huge problem of itself, how much, when especially the newly freed slaves were already given reparations by the Union in way of land and stock.
      They pretty much accepted any monetary grievances they might had had some 150 year ago.

      Then there is the gnawing historical facts that the North love to skirt and twist around, why didn't Lincoln free the 500,000 slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation of those states who stayed in the Union?
      And President Lincoln himself never stated that slavery was a cause to invade the Southern states.
      The root cause for the Norths invasion was economic policies and practices, cultural values, the extent and reach of the Federal government.
      The debate and role of slavery within American society was about on the last line of the last pages of history as far as Lincoln was concerned. Against the backdrop of these larger issues, individual soldiers had their own reasons for fighting. Their motivations often included a complex mix of personal, social, economic and political values that didn't necessarily match the aims expressed by their respective states.
      Old Abe declared himself that the sole cause to go to War was secession. Lincoln chose war to suppress what he saw as a rebellion in the Southern states.
      Slavery then as it is now is nothing more than a means to further divide a people that until Barry Soetoro was seated unconstitutionally in the White house was never a problem, we were healing and reeling back years of injustices and attempting to right the wrongs of our ancestors, and now all this insanity.
      The left ain't wanting to heal, they want to steal..

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  2. Yes, well said, Jeffrey. And the Southern States did not rebel. Secession from the union was a right and legitimate power of "free and indpendendent States" as Jefferson called them in the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln was the rebel in that the United States was delegated NO power to constrain a State or States to stay in the union. And according yo the plain wording of the 10th Amendment, the U.S. Government may lawfully do NOTHING without delegated power. --Ron W

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    1. Absolutely....I'm tired of it all.
      I grew up on the military bases in the Marine Corps and we kids just never thought about what anyone looked like, it was character or better yet, compatibility and friendships.
      In Beaufort SC my baby brother and I were taught how to make cast nets, crab and fish pots by actual slave descendants living just outside Laurel Bay housing. We went there daily after school and were treated as one of their own.
      Segregation did help the south to heal and why we're not having the problems the Northern states are experiencing. I hate seeing all these divisions and in my opinion, believe we need to cleanse this Constitutional Republic right now of this nonsense in whatever manner it take to put it down.

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    2. In Beaufort SC my baby brother and I were taught how to make cast nets, crab and fish pots by actual slave descendants living just outside Laurel Bay housing.

      That must have been fun.
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      we need to cleanse this Constitutional Republic right now of this nonsense in whatever manner it take to put it down.

      It will get progressively worst if not.

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