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“The United States of America had human slavery for almost one hundred years before that custom was recognized as a social disease and people began to fight it. Imagine that. Wasn’t that a match for Auschwitz? What a beacon of liberty we were to the rest of the world when it was perfectly acceptable here to own other human beings and treat them as we treated cattle. Who told you we were a beacon of liberty from the very beginning? Why would they lie like that? Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd. It was as though he had an infected growth on the end of his nose the size of a walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK.” – Kurt Vonnegut, FATES WORSE THAN DEATH, page 84

THOMAS JEFFERSON

NOTE: In this series of files, you may be startled to discover, an attempt is being made to untangle the issues of slavery and race in such manner as to allow for a factoid which the US Supreme Court has not once recognized: that not all enslaved Americans were non-white. For instance seamen who were “crimped” or “shanghaied” might or might not have been black but nevertheless had been reduced by force or trickery to a longterm and dangerous condition of involuntary servitude (this term “to crimp” had originated in the 18th Century in England and characterized the occupation of luring or forcing men into sea duty either for the navy or for the merchant marine).

NOTE ALSO: Binary opposites, such as “war vs. peace,” “slavery vs. antislavery,” etc. are mirrors to each other. The problem is never which of the two is the proper alternative but rather, the problem is always how to shatter such a conceptual mirror — so that both images can simultaneously safely be dispensed with. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Karl Marx would express, in his THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE, 1848-1850, the sentiment that “The origin of states gets lost in a myth, in which one may believe, but which one may not discuss.” On the 1st page of Theodore W. Allen’s introduction to his 1st volume,1 this independent scholar asks our “indulgence for only one assumption, namely, that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves.” I find that remark remarkable indeed! When in our Declaration of Independence we said to ourselves “All men are created equal,” we were of course writing as lawyers and in a lawyerly manner.

We were purposing to level others, such as those overweening overbred British aristocrats, down to our own lay level, but meanwhile it was no part of our purpose to level others, such as our wives and slaves, up to our own exalted situation —we were doing this to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and not doing this for the benefit of others. What we meant back there in Philadelphia several centuries ago, by such a trope as “All men are created equal,” was “We want, 1st, to sound almost as if we were saying that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves, and we want, 2dly, to sound as if we were struggling to express something like that without actually declaring anything like that — because it is essential that in this new nation of ours (based as it is upon human enslavement) we avoid any such issue. Our equality here is to be founded upon the inequality of others, and this grand-sounding trope ‘All men are created equal’ is being provided so that it can function as our cover story, enabling such viciousness to proceed unhindered.” As Edmund Burke expressed on February 16, 1788 during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for maladministration of the British rule in India, “There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the

1. Allen, Theodore W. THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE, VOLUME ONE: RACIAL OPPRESSION AND SOCIAL CONTROL. London: Verso, 1994

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beginnings of all government.”

The African Association was founded in England to explore the interior of Africa.

In the usage of the trope “peculiar institution” that is today ordinary or usual, this trope is deployed of course in oblique reference to the unmentionable crime of human chattel bondage. It is nowadays used in implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not to attack it but proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. What Allen, however, refers to by use of this trope “peculiar institution” is, instead, the invention of the so-called “white race” which has here been used to legitimate our local version of thus unmentionable crime, our local version of a solution to the problem of social control. It is for him this biologistic cover story, itself, which constitutes the quintessential “Peculiar Institution” we have been forced to construct. “Only by understanding what was peculiar about the Peculiar Institution can one know what is exceptionable about American Exceptionalism” (Volume I, page 1). In this he acknowledges that he is following a seed that had been planted by W.E.B. Du Bois in his BLACK RECONSTRUCTION. Allen’s 1st volume is made up of an elaborate parallelization of the Irish and Scottish experience under English colonialism, and the American antebellum experience: Every aspect of the Ulster Plantation policy aimed at destroying the tribal leadership and dispersing the tribe is matched by typical examples from Anglo-American colonial and United States policy toward the indigenous population, the “American Indians” — a policy we clearly recognize as racial oppression of “the red man.” I have been looking into an Irish mirror for insights into the nature of racial oppression and its implication for ruling-class social control in the United States. IRELAND SCOTLAND

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325 BCE

In the first presently known preserved reference to sugar cane (so important to the history of human slavery), Admiral Nearchus of Alexander the Great’s navy wrote of certain Indian reeds “that produce honey, although there are no bees.” SWEETS WITHOUT SLAVERY

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300 BCE

During the 3d Century BCE, in India, rishi Krishna Dvaipayana (known by that name on account of his dark complexion and his origin on an island in the Yamuna River) decided upon a division of scholarly labor. He divided the primordial single Veda into four sub-Vedas and assigned each of these four portions to a particular other rishi scholar. The four portions into which he divided the primordial single Veda were the Rigveda, a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses organized into ten books, the Yajurveda, containing the formulas to be recited by an officiating priest, the Samaveda, containing in 1,549 stanzas the formulas to be sung, and the Atharvaveda, a collection of spells and incantations, apotropaic charms, and 760 speculative hymns. The Rigveda he assigned to rishi Paila, the Yajurveda he assigned to rishi Vaisampayana, the Samaveda he assigned to rishi Jaimini, and the Atharvaveda he assigned to rishi Sumantu. Because of this decision he would come to be known as the Veda Vyasa, or “Splitter of the Vedas.”

At about this point a Korean people ancestral to the Japanese were introducing southern Chinese wet-rice agriculture into the Japanese home islands. Meanwhile the Iranians were introducing wet-rice agriculture into Egypt and Syria.

People living near Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya placed basalt pillars so that they were aligned with the constellations.

The Carthaginian navy’s quinquireme warships, with five banks of oars, relied upon galley slaves owned by the government. There were privately owned plantations in Libya that held agricultural work forces of up to 20,000 enslaved laborers.

At this point pipes were being made out of lead sheeting in lengths of 10 feet or more. This was done by bending the sheet around a wood mandrel and then joining the edges of the resultant tube by soldering with an alloy of lead and tin. Such pipes could be used to distribute water, and we note that the pipe sizes took their names, not from the internal diameter of the resulting channel, but from the width of that flat sheet of lead before it was shaped (we can rest assured that, although our histories inform us that it was the classical Greeks who were doing this, this was too much like work and actually it was the slaves of the classical Greeks who were doing this for them). During the 3rd Century BCE, the Hebrew scriptures would be being rendered into Greek by 72 “clean room” translators working simultaneously but independently in Alexandria, Egypt, creating what became known as the LXX (SEPTUAGINT). The ancient Hebrew tappauch used in the GENESIS story of Eden for the fruit of the

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Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was an indiscriminate term for the various familiar fruits such as orange,

peach, quince, and apricot. When tappauch was rendered as malus, that Latin term was also a generic category, designating merely that the raw edible in question was a fruit which grew on a tree. It wouldn’t be until after the first English translations of the BIBLE that the term would begin to get more specific, let alone to specify a Northern fruit then unknown in the Levant, and in the time of King James I when Eve was made to take a bite out of an apple, the term “apple” still included among other things pears. During Thoreau’s florut, apples and pears were still being lumped together, in the genus Pyrus, the apple being Pyrus malus, although, because the stems of the pistils of the pear are free and separate at the base, the apple is now assigned its own genus, Malus. In effect, although the distinction between a species and a genus is hardly more precisely defined now than it was then, since Thoreau botanists have raised the term Malus from species rank to genus rank. This splitting tendency is recent, against a lumping tendency of very long standing. This trajectory of the Old-World apples spreading through the Levant had little to do with the trajectory of New-World apples. Each of the seven native American species of apple is a smallish tree with smallish fruit, green and sour and commonly termed a crabapple, and, since only one of our seven species is a West Coast species, it seems plausible that these little green dudes were survivors of an earlier configuration in which some

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northern landmass was adjacent to what is now the eastern seaboard of the North American continent.

If you have driven through western Pennsylvania in late May, you have seen the beautiful masses of pink flowers of Malus coronaria dotting the hills, or farther west, from Minnesota down the Mississippi Valley, those of M. ioensis. These are our natives, which must have come many centuries ago from Siberia to Alaska and down, or perhaps even more remotely down from some more eastern north land mass, when the Greenland area was semi- tropical. There are several species in the eastern United States, only one in the West, and this might indicate the more eastern origin. They are beautiful small trees, more or less round headed in shape, like hawthorns, and their flowers are large, but they are all pink. There is none of the color range of the European-Asiatic crabapples. The fruit is green, rather large for a crabapple, and not attractive on the tree. The early settlers used it for jelly. The American crabapples all blossom about two weeks later than their Oriental relatives.... so far as I can find out they have never hybridized with any of the Oriental species.

— Lape, Fred. APPLES & MAN. “WILD APPLES” NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979, pages 110-11.

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168 BCE

Yet another battle involving our favorite pushy people: the war between Rome and Macedonia came to completion with the decisive defeat of the Macedonian King Perseus by the Roman General Lucius Aemilius Paulus at Pydna, resulting in the destruction of that monarchy and the creation of the Pax Romana. The legions of Rome would bring home so much plunder that Roman citizens would be relieved of direct taxation. An intriguing factoid about booty, or boody: an enslaved female Macedonian would turn out to be considered by the Roman public to be 50 times more valuable than a male. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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135 BCE

Rome’s first servile insurrection began when slaves on large estates in Sicily revolted under the leadership of a Syrian named Eunus, styling himself “King Antiochus.” THE PAX ROMANA

134 BCE

From this year into 132 BCE, the 1st of the Roman “Servile Wars” — putting down a slave uprising in Sicily. SERVILE INSURRECTION THE PAX ROMANA

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132 BCE

Rome’s 1st slave war ended with the capture of the Syrian Eunus, otherwise known as King Antiochus. He was then, as you might imagine, savagely executed, along with his supporters. SERVILE INSURRECTION THE PAX ROMANA

103 BCE

Rome’s 2d slave war began when slaves in Sicily revolted under the leadership of Tryphon and Athenion. SERVILE INSURRECTION THE PAX ROMANA

102 BCE

The 2d of the Roman “Servile Wars” would go on into 99 BCE — putting down another slave uprising in Sicily. (The 1st such servile insurrection had occurred in 135-132 BCE.)

99 BCE

Rome’s 2d slave war ended after four years when Consul M. Aquillius subdued the slave army. SERVILE INSURRECTION THE PAX ROMANA

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73 BCE

For the 3d and final Roman “Servile War,” during this year and the following two years, Crassus and Pompey

put down a slave uprising led by a popular former gladiator, the Thracian prisoner of war Spartacus who had escaped along with about 70 other slave gladiators in training from the training camp of Lentulus Batiatus at Capua. (The 1st such servile wars had occurred in 134-132 BCE, and the 2d in 102-99 BCE.)

After failing to break through northern Italy to the safety of the barbarian world, the gladiators fighting in this 3d servile war would take refuge on the slopes near Mount Vesuvius with the intent of holding out as long as possible before they were defeated in battle and then crucified.

In the 2004 made-for-TV version of the Howard Fast epic, Goran Visnjic offers the following as what the escaped gladiators were fighting for: “There’ll be no more slaves and no more masters.”

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That would amount, of course, to the sheerest presentism. Spartacus might have been able to conceive of an alternative universe in which he was the master, and somebody else the slave, but it would never have crossed his mind that there might be an alternative universe in which there were neither slaves nor masters.

As Sir Charles Lyell would point out, this volcano actually posed its maximal danger to the Romans in general not when lavas and poisonous gases were erupting from its crater in 79 CE, but when an escaped slave established its more quiescent side crater as his fortress: When Spartacus encamped his army of ten thousand gladiators in the old extinct crater of Vesuvius, the volcano was more justly a subject of terror to Campania than it has ever been since the rekindling of its fires.

“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7 (Some of the buildings that would be excavated in the SERVILE INSURRECTION THE PAX ROMANA ruins of Pompeii had been originally erected during this timeframe of the Servile Wars.)

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72 BCE

Cato the Younger enlisted in the Roman army raised to fight against the slave army of Spartacus. SERVILE INSURRECTION

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71 BCE

Yet another battle involving our favorite pushy people, the Romans: at the Silarus River the legions of M. Licinius Crassus wounded Spartacus in the thigh and then finished him off, and dispersed the slave army he had led. Pompey returned from the Hispanic provinces to mop up the remnants, restoring the Pax Romana.

Some 6,000 survivors of the final battle would be rounded up and crucified alongside the Via Appia between Capua and Rome — which according to a back-of-the-envelope calculation would have resulted in approximately a cross each 120 running feet. Spartacus’s body would not be distinguishable, among the corpses.

In an encampment outside of Rome, according to director Stanley Kubrick, general Lawrence Olivier

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confronted captured slave/gladiator Kirk Douglas. “I am Marcus Licinius Crassus,” Olivier declared, “You must answer when I speak to you.” When Douglas wouldn’t say his lines, Olivier slapped him, so then of course Douglas spat in his face. (When you go to the movies, you really go — which means of course that movies are a part of reality.) SERVILE INSURRECTION

9 CE

From this year into 23 CE, Wang Mang, a Confucian chief minister, would be emperor of China. The new emperor set free China’s slaves.

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12 CE

Germanicus Caesar became consul to the Emperor Augustus Caesar.

From about this point until 15 CE, Annius Rufus would be the Roman Prefect of Iudaea (that is, of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea).

The Chinese Emperor Wang Mang repealed his reforms, which had created widespread protest. Maybe freeing all slaves had not been such a hot idea, after all.

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17 CE

In China, there being more than one way to skin a cat, a tax was imposed upon the ownership of slaves.

Hippalus, a Greek sea captain, discovered a method of employing monsoon winds in sailing, a finding that would open direct sea trade between the Eastern Mediterranean and India. SPICE

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50 CE

2 Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, a Roman agricultural author, wrote a 2d treatise on agriculture, DE RE RUSTICA (ON THINGS RURAL), covering many subjects, including the various benefits and difficulties of managing slaves versus tenants on large properties:

Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry, and intended as a supplement to the GEORGICS of Virgil): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening.

2. Columella was a Spaniard of Gades (Cadiz). After serving with the Roman legion in Syria and Cilicia he had settled as an agriculturalist near Rome. He would live to about 70 CE and would probably die in Tarentum. His 1st work product has been lost except for a section entitled DE ARBORIBUS (ON TREES) on vines and olives and various trees, but all twelve scrolls of this 2d work, DE RE RUSTICA (ON THINGS RURAL), have survived. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 19 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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XII: Duties of the overseer’s wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving.

(Henry Thoreau would chance belatedly upon this treatise in Fall 1851 while looking through Bronson Alcott’s library.)

200 CE

Rome has 400,000 slaves for 1,500,000 citizens — a middle-class family owning, on average, eight. According to the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, the Roman custom of placing an iron betrothal ring on the finger of the young woman being pledged by her family (slaves wore such rings, iron being the symbol of their obligation) had in the course of the 2d Century been superseded by the gifting of a gold band (the marking properties of gold being those of value and adornment). Secular use of the ring as a symbol of bonding eventually would receive an ecclesiastical sanction, and formulae of benediction of this adornment exist from the 11th Century.

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413 CE

Augustine’s de fide et operibus.

From this year until 426 CE, Bishop Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo would be writing away at both DE CIVITATE 3 DEI (THE CITY OF GOD) and his CONFESSIONS. “St. Augustine” disposed of the problem of human slavery once and for all by pointing out that it wasn’t of primary importance whether somebody else had control over one’s body — what happened to the body was not so important as what happened to the soul — therefore what was of primary importance was whether one had mastery over oneself: “Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” So, never mind, slaves, your problems are the same as the problems of the free man.

“This, indeed, is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man; the body not the whole, but the inferior part of man.”

— Augustine, THE CITY OF GOD

3. It has been commented that Christians have no idea what the word “eternity” means, tending to think of it as if it were merely a very long time without change at the end of world time, or at the end of one’s life time. Of course they have excellent warrant to suppose this ridiculous supposition, because for their “St. Augustine” in this classic text eternity was “nothing else than endless duration” (XII, 12). Christianity does not seem to attract good philosophers: “Time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change” (XI, 6). For Augustine “that is really real which remains immutable” (CONFESSIONS 7.11.17) and therefore eternity is real because unchanging, time unreal because changing. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 21 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(This may have been of cold comfort to the slave, but what is interesting is the manner in which this argument would be brought forward over the centuries, as a racial component would come to be added to the institution of slavery. As it would become predominantly the black human being who was the slave and the white human being who was the master, the argument would develop that the person of color needed to be enslaved by the white human being because the person of color was lacking in the self-control department, whereas the white human being had self-control in abundance. The white man represented soul, the black man body, precisely as men represented soul and women represented body. The end position for this argument of Augustine’s, in the American South, would be “The niggers are spontaneous and sexy, like animals, and need to be kept in their place.” — And I bet you didn’t know that this sort of thinking originated with Saint Augustine!)

Although Henry Thoreau would incorporate this nasty Augustinian phrase “the better part of man” into WALDEN — our guy would accomplish this with supreme irony, appropriating the phrase only to explain that it is a mistake and to deliberately purge it of all viciousness:

WALDEN: But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man PEOPLE OF is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, WALDEN commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

AUGUSTINE

800 CE

Vikings were selling slaves from all over Europe, to the Moslems of the eastern Mediterranean. Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic.4 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic, in the Ninth Century.5 Some of the Norwegian chieftains, who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated and laid waste, by their long-continued and destructive ravages. Among these was one Ohthere, who had made himself famous by his voyages to unknown parts of the north, and who was invited to court by Alfred, to give an account of the discoveries and observations he had made during his unusual expeditions. This person had been a chief of some note in his own country, and dwelt at a place 4. A GENERAL HISTORY AND COLLECTION OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, ARRANGED IN SYSTEMATIC ORDER: FORMING A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION, DISCOVERY, AND COMMERCE, BY SEA AND LAND, FROM THE EARLIEST AGES TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY ROBERT KERR, F.R.S. & F.A.S. EDIN. ILLUSTRATED BY MAPS AND CHARTS. William Blackwood, Edinburgh: And T. Cadell, London. 1824. Volume I, Section II. 5. Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, by Alfred the Great, translated by Daines Barrington, p. 9.—Langebeck, Script. Dan. II. 106- 118.— Forster, Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 53. 22 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which he called Halgoland, supposed by some to have been in Numadalen, while others say in Nordland, the most northerly p province of Norway proper. In the succeeding paragraph, he is said to have dwelt opposite to the West Sea, and as Alfred only uses the word sea to denote a confined expanse or narrow channel, while he calls the ocean Garsecg, it seems highly probable, that, by the West Sea, the west ford was intended,—a channel or strait which divides the Luffoden islands from the coast of Nordland, which would clearly place the residence of Ohthere in this northern province. The account which he gave of his voyages to his royal patron, is as follows. Ohthere told his lord King Alfred, that lie lived to the north of all the Nordmen or Norwegians; and that he dwelt in that land to the northward, opposite to the west sea; and that all the land to the north of that sea is waste and uninhabited except in a few places, to which the Finans6 or Fins repair in winter for hunting and fowling, and for fishing in the summer. Being desirous to ascertain how far this country extended towards the north, and whether there were any inhabitants beyond these wastes, he proceeded by sea due north from his own habitation, leaving the desert land all the way on the starboard or right- hand, and the wide sea on the larboard or left-hand of his course. After three days sail, he was as far north as the whale- hunters ever go7; and then proceeded in his course due north for other three days, when he found the land, instead of stretching due north, as hitherto8, to trend from thence towards the east. Whether the sea there lies within the land, he knew not9, as he only waited for a west wind, and then sailed near that land eastwards, as far as he could, in four days; as he found the direction of the coast then to change to due south, he waited for a north wind, and then sailed due south as far as be could in five days. In this land he found a large river, at the mouth of which he lay to, as he could not proceed much farther, on account of the inhabitants being hostile. All the land on one side of this river was inhabited, and tolerably well cultivated, but he had not met with any inhabitants till now, since he left his own country; the whole land on his right being a desert, and without inhabitants, except the fishers, fowlers, and hunters, before- mentioned, who were all Fins; and the open sea lay on his left hand during his whole voyage. The Beormas10, indeed, had well peopled their country, for which reason he did not venture to enter upon it; and the land of the Terfenna11, which he had passed hitherto, was all a desert, with the exception of the 6. Ohthere here calls the inhabitants of the desert Fins, and it would appear that the Laplanders are actually Fins, or Finlanders; the name of Laps or Laplanders being of modern origin, and the Danes and Norwegians still call this country Finmark.—Forst 7. In former translations of Alfred, this passage is rendered as follows: “He was within three days sail of being as far north as the whale-hunters ever go.” This expression is vague and ambiguous, and rather means that the residence from whence he set out was within three days sail, &c.; whereas the next member of the same sentence distinctly indicates a preceding three days sail, as in the adopted translation.—E. 8. This is not quite accurate, as the coast of Norway, in the course of Ohthere, stretches N.N.E. He was now arrived at the North Cape, whence the coast towards the White Sea trends E. and by N.—E. 9. This doubt, of whether the sea lies within the land or not, probably refers to the numerous inlets or fiords along the whole coast of Norway and Finmark, and may mean, that he did not examine whether the land might not be parcelled out into innumerable islands.—E. 10. The Beormas are the Biarmians or Permians of the northern writers; and Perm or Permia is still mentioned among the numerous titles of the emperors of Russia.—Forat. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 23 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hunters and fishers already mentioned. The Beormas told him many particulars about their land, and of the neighbouring countries; but he could not rely on their accounts, as he had no opportunity of seeing with his own eyes, but it seemed to him that the Beormas and Fins spoke the same language12. Ohthere stated, that his motive for this expedition, besides some little curiosity to explore these countries, which were unknown to his countrymen, was principally in pursuit of horse-whales13, which are valuable, because their tusks are excellent ivory, some of which he brought to the king, and because their hides serve for making into ropes for ships. This species of the whale is much smaller than the other kind, being seldom more than seven ells in length; while the other species is often forty-eight ells long, and sometimes even fifty. In this country was the best whale-fishing that Ohthere had ever seen, the whales being so numerous, that he was one of six who killed threescore in three days14. Ohthere was a very rich man in those things which are considered as valuable in his country, and possessed, at the time when he came to the king, six hundred tame deer, none of which he had bought; besides which, he had six decoy deer, which are much in request among the Fins, as by means of them, they are enabled to catch wild deer. Yet, though one of the richest men in these parts, he had only twenty head of cattle, twenty sheep, and twenty swine; and what little land he had in tillage was ploughed by horses. The principal wealth of the Norman chiefs in that country consisted in tribute exacted from the Fins; being paid in skins of wild beasts, feathers, whalebone, cables and ropes for ships, made from the hides of whales or seals. Every one pays in proportion to his substance: the wealthiest paying the skins of fifteen martins, five rein-deer skins, and one bear- skin, a coat or cloak made of bear-skin or otters skins, and two cables or ship ropes of sixty ells long each, one of which is made of whale hide, and the other from the skins of seals. According to the description given to the king by Ohthere, Northmanna-land, or Norway, is very long and narrow, all the land which is fit for pasture or tillage being on the seacoast, which is very rocky in some places. To the east of this, and parallel to the cultivated land, there are wild and huge mountains and moors, which are inhabited by the Fins. The cultivated land is broadest in the south15, where it is sixty 11. The Terfennas are mentioned as different from the Scrite-fennas. These were distinguished by Guido, the geographer of Ravenna, in the seventh century, into Rerefinni and Scritifinni. The latter lived entirely by hunting, and wore snow-shoes in winter, called Schrit. The former subsisted on their herds of rein-deer, and perhaps ought to have been therefore called Rene-finni. The name in the text ought perhaps to have been Rhane-fenna, as he tells us they had rein-deer, and employed decoy deer to catch the wild. Perhaps Fer-fenna, from their travelling in sledges; from farra, to travel in a carriage.—Forst. 12. It is highly probable, from this remark, in which Ohthere could not be mistaken, as it will appear in the sequel that he must have been perfectly well acquainted with the Fins, that the Biarmians were a branch of the great Finnish stock. The principal difference seems to have been, that the Fins continued to be wandering hunters and herdsmen, while the Beormas or Biarmians had advanced to the state of fixed cultivators of the soil. They had likewise an idol called Jomala, which is still the name of one of the deities of the Finlanders.—Forst. 13. The morse is here named horse-whale by king Alfred, with infinitely greater propriety than the appellation of sea-horse, which long prevailed in our language. The tusks of this animal are still considered as excellent ivory, and are peculiarly valuable for the construction of false teeth; and leather made from the hide is still used in Russia for coach-harness, but stretches more when wet than any other leather.—Forst. 14. It would appear, from the vast number killed, that this successful fishing must refer to the morse or horse-whale, not to the ordinary large whale.—E. 24 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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miles broad, and in some places more; about the middle of the country, it is perhaps thirty miles broad, or somewhat more; and where it is narrowest in the north, it is hardly more than three miles from the sea to the moors. In some places, the moors are so extensive that a man can hardly travel across them in a fortnight, and in other places perhaps in six days. Opposite to the south part of this country is Sueoland16, or Sweden, on the other side of the moors, and opposite to its northern part is Cwenland. The Cwens sometimes pass the moors and mountains to invade and plunder the country of the Normans; who likewise sometimes retaliate, by crossing over to spoil their land. In these moors, there are some very large meres or lakes of fresh water, and the Cwenas17 sometimes carry their small light ships over land into these lakes, and employ them to facilitate their depredations on the Nordmen. Ohthere says, that the shire or district which he inhabited is called Halgoland, and that there were no inhabitants beyond him to the north. There is likewise a port in the southern land, which is called Sciringes-heal18, which no one could reach in a month's sailing, even with a fair wind, at least if he lay to at night. During this voyage, the navigator must sail near the land, or make a coasting voyage along the coast of Norway towards the south, having Iraland19, and the islands which are between that country and Norway, on his right hand; for this country continues all the way on the left hand of the navigator, from Halgoland to Sciringes-heal. As he proceeds again to the northward, a great sea to the south of Sciringes-heal runs up into this land, and that sea is so wide, that a person cannot see across it. Gotland20 is opposite on the other side, or right- hand; and afterwards the sea of Sillende21 lies many miles up in that country. Ohthere farther says, that he sailed in five days from Sciringes-heal to that port which is called Haethum 22, which lies between Winedum, Seaxun, and Anglen, and makes part of Dene. When he sailed to this place from Sciringes-heal, Dene, or Denmark, was on his left, and on his right was a wide sea for three days; as were also on his right, two days before he came to Haethum, Gotland, Sillende, and many other islands, which were inhabited by the Angles before they came to Britain; and during these two days, the islands belonging to Denmark were on his left hand.

15. In the original, the broad and comparatively fertile part of Norway is said to be in the east: the correction adopted in the text is obvious and necessary.—E. 16. In former translations, this passage is: “opposite to this land, to the south, is Sueoland.” The alteration in the text removes the ambiguity—E. 17. Cwenland and the Cwenas appear to refer to Lapmark, and its inhabitants, the Finlanders.—Forst. 18. See Sect. iii. p. 12, in which this place is supposed by Mr J. R. Forster to have been where Stockholm now is. 19. Iraland obviously here means Scotland, with the Faro, Shetland, and Orkney islands.—E. 20. This is plainly the isle of Gothland.—E. 21. Apparently the Baltic proper is here called the sea of Sillende, and may have been named from the isle of Zeeland. Yet in this passage it seems to refer to the gulf of Bothnia, as running far up into the country.—E. 22. See Sect. iii. p. 14, in which Forster endeavours to fix this place at Aarhuus in Jutland. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 25 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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850 CE

From the middle of the 9th century until 1831 all Muslim kingdoms would be purchasing white male slaves, mainly Turkish prisoners and Circassians from Russia, the Caucasus and central Asia, and forming them into regiments of guards known as Mamelukes. The Mamelukes, from the Arabic term mamluk meaning “owned,” like the Praetorian Guard at Rome, would soon begin to exert considerable influence over affairs of state. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

At approximately this point, Arabs were perfecting the astrolabe. Henceforth, at midday at sea each day on which the sun would be visible, every ship’s captain could be observed taking his ship’s location with this instrument, and then calculating the ship’s latitude with the help of tables:

The captain’s observations would be being checked against major errors by the ship’s mate, using the older and less accurate cross staff:

The ship’s current speed would of course be checked with a log on a knotted cord thrown out behind the ship, paying out the cord for the duration of an upturned sand-glass.

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904 CE

Thessalonica was plundered by the Saracen Corsair Leo of Tripoli, who carried away 20,000 as slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

973 CE

Jewish merchants known as the Radanites were offering white females as slaves in the marketplace at Mainz, as well as at slave markets in the Orient. These women were being exchanged, typically, for spices, aloe, musk, pearls, and precious stones. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Birth of physicist, mathematician, and traveler Al-Biruni. His book HISTORY OF INDIA would be a best-seller and would introduce Hindu numerals to the Arab world.

1200

From this point into the 16th Century, Normans and Venetians would be producing sugar on Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily. They would be using, primarily, white slaves.

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1358

From some time late in the 14th century, exact date as yet undetermined, until 1826, the core of the Ottoman Empire’s standing army would be the Janisaries, organized either by Orkhan or Murad I. These Janisaries (from the Turkish term yenicheri, “recruits” or “new troops”) originally had been prisoners of war, but the main source of such Janisaries would come to be Christian boys who either had been taken prisoner in war or had been forwarded as tribute slaves by subject states. The Janisaries, like the Praetorian Guard at Rome and like the castrated Mamelukes, would soon begin to exert considerable influence over affairs of state. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1381

June 14 : After city people had lowered the drawbridge protecting London Bridge, the revolutionary forces under Wat Tyler captured it and the Tower of London. Books and documents that came into their hands at the Temple and in Lambeth Palace were burned. Wine cellars were broken into at Savoy and other manors.

Chancellor Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury23, and the King’s Confessor, William Appleton, had sought refuge at the Tower of London during the Peasants’ Revolt. On this day the rebels of Kent dragged them, along with Sir Robert Hales and King’s Sergeant John Legg, out and subjected them to a mock trial before beheading, after which the headless corpses were hacked to pieces by the mob. A 5th individual, Richard Somenour, was likewise treated by this mob, but it is not known whether the rebels had taken him also from the Tower. According to Jean Froissart’s CHRONIQUES, in French on vellum, prepared in Flanders in the late 15th century (Royal MS 18E.I, ff.165v-166, with a polychrome miniature about four by seven inches showing John Ball, labeled, astride a plough horse, preaching to the rebels),

here is how the released minister preached among Wat Tyler’s rebels of Kent (as backtranslated from the French version): Ah ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall do till everything be common, and that there be no villeins nor gentlemen, but that we may be all united together; 23. William Courtenay became the new Archbishop of Canterbury. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 29 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and that the lords be no greater masters than we be.

After the rebellion collapsed there would be testimony, presumably biased and exaggerated, that this minister had urged the slaughter of lords and prelates — and for this he would hang at St. Albans.

King Edward III of England (1327-1377) had put up a new gatehouse at the Tower of London, between the Lanthorn Tower and the Salt Tower, and added the Cradle Tower. He had extended the Tower Wharf to the east as far as St. Thomas’s Tower. King Richard II and many of his family and household were forced to shelter in the Tower for a couple of days while more than 10,000 of his rebellious subjects were plundering and burning his royal capital city of London.

The four conditions upon which the revolutionaries were planning to insist, they averred, were as follows: • the abolition of serfdom • the right of everyone to buy and sell like freemen • pardon for any and all past offenses • in the future rents on land would be fixed at a certain sum of money rather than being required in service

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King Richard II pledged at Smithfield to make concessions in honor of these demands. In fact he kept his scribes up all night, copying out multiple copies of his Charter for the People:

It wasn’t very sympathetic of him, to keep his scribes up all night like that. What was going to happen next was also going to be not so very sympathetic.

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July 15: John Ball was hanged at St. Albans in Hertfordshire. Meanwhile the revolutionaries, 60,000 strong, were meeting with their 16-year-old monarch Richard II at Mile End without having disarmed themselves and without having abandoned their military formations. When before this 16-year-old for the 1st time, Wat Tyler attempted to up the ante by demanding that all church lands be confiscated and that the laws forbidding peasants to hunt and trap and cut wood in the forests be entirely abolished. There was an altercation in which William Walworth, the Lord Mayor of London, drew his short sword and stabbed Tyler in the throat. Tyler was taken to St. Bartholomew’s hospital, but the Lord Mayor sent soldiers to the hospital who dragged him out and beheaded him. After this the King rode alone among the revolutionary ranks, proclaiming boldly that henceforward he would himself be leading them in their revolt. He led them to Islington, where he had a large body of loyal soldiers waiting, and as soon as he had ridden safely away from the peasants he ordered these soldiers to ride on them and disperse them. The king would renege in regard to all pledges which he had made while under duress –reforms such as, allegedly, an end to English serfdom– and over the next few years the government would round up some 1,500 of these peasant soldiers and execute them.

Here is how Jean Froissart would depict that princely interception of the political career of Wat Tyler:

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1430

March 1: Murad II, Ottoman Sultan, attacked Salonika. The city was carried by storm. The inhabitants and the Venetian garrison were massacred. The city’s churches would be converted into mosques. The survivors of the city’s population would be sold into slavery. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1434

Cosimo, son of Giovanni de Medici, who had been expelled by the Albizzi, returned to Florence. Until 1537, the elder branch of the Medici at Florence would be made up of: Cosimo the Elder (1434-1464), Piéro de Medici (1464-1469), and Lorenzo the Magnificent (1469-1492).

Black slaves24 were brought to Portugal by a caravel returning from Africa. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

24. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004, these people would be referred to by the Republican candidate to the US Senate from Indiana as “involuntary immigrants.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 33 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1440

Sugar production began in the Iberian peninsula and on the Iberian-controlled islands off the coast of Africa (Madeiras, Sao Thome, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Canaries), utilizing primarily African slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

The Island of Cape de verd discovered.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

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1441

Portuguese sailors entered the international slave trade, with African negroes at Cape Blanc. African slaves were sold in the market at Lisbon. (By 1901, about 10,000,000 Africans would have been transported to Europe.)

1442

From this year until 1496, Naples would be being ruled by the House of Aragon.

Prince Henry the Navigator ordered that the Moors who had been captured and enslaved by a Portuguese officer, Antam Goncalves, were to be returned to Africa. The Moors exchanged ten African slaves and some gold dust for their fellow countrymen. The Portuguese constructed forts on the coast of Africa and established a thriving trade in slaves. The first African slaves in the New World were slaves from Spain and Portugal. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1450

Pope Nicholas V authorized the Portuguese to “attack, subject, and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ southward from Cape Bajador and Non, including all the coast of Guinea.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1486

African slaves in the kingdom of Gaur in India rebelled and placed their own leader on the throne.

1490

Sugar cane was planted on the island of Sao Thome and slaves were transported from the kingdom of Benin and other African countries to work in the cane fields.

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1494

February 2: The 1st convoy of 12 ships bearing 500 Carib native Americans Christopher Columbus had taken in wars with the Caciques departed from the island of Española. They were to be sold as slavery in Seville, Spain. Queen Isabella would suspend the royal order for their sale and request an inquiry into the lawfulness of the sale. Theologians would differ on the lawfulness of the sale. The Caribs eventually would be shipped back to their home. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1495

February 24: The 2d convoy of 4 ships bearing native Americans destined for the slave market of Seville, Spain, departed from the island of Española began with 500 selected healthy young people, but 200 of the 500 would need to be thrown into the sea during the trip because they had died, or were dying. What now remains of this Caribbean grouping known as the Arawak? –The word “hammock.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE “...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915

1496

The Portuguese lost Teneriffe as Spain completed its conquest of the Canary Islands, and the native fair- skinned Guanche who had fought off invaders for a century were reduced to slavery.

The Statute of Piotkow deprived Polish peasants of freedom to move about.

1498

The Spanish shipped some 600 Caribs to Spain to be sold as slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

February: Sebastian Cabot sailed to North America and returned with three Indian slaves (there is some controversy as to exactly where Henry and his son Sebastian landed on their voyages). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1501

African slaves were introduced into Hispaniola at Santo Domingo by Spanish settlers. This was the first importation of African slaves into the Americas. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“When one is happy in forgetfulness, facts get forgotten.” — Robert Pen Warren, 1961 THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR

Summer: Gaspar de Corte-Real of Portugal kidnapped 57 Newfoundlanders from along the coast, to be sold as slavery. These captives, and Gaspar, would drown when the ship sank. A 2d vessel would however reach Portugal with seven Newfoundlanders to be sold. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE “...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915

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1502

At Florence, Piero Soderini got elected Gonfalionere.

Italians enlivened a Roman comedy staged at Ferrara with intermissions featuring satyrs chasing wild beasts and soldiers doing sword dances. Said a contemporary critic, “Neither the verses nor the voices struck me as very good, but the Moorish dances between the acts were very well danced.” Those “Moorish” dances were probably morisca, a kind of Spanish sword dance that was popular with both soldiers and common folk.

A group of Sephardic Jews gained a monopoly over Brazil’s nascent cane sugar industry and established the foundation for its rum trade, putting the converso Fernao de Noronha in position as Brazil’s first governor. Slaves would be imported from Africa to labor on Brazilian and Caribbean sugar plantations. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Meanwhile, Nicolas de Ovando, governor of Santo Domingo, was obtaining the permit he needed, to transport slaves born in Seville and other parts of Spain to that remote island — a permission that was being granted, of course, on condition that these slaves had previously received instruction in Christianity.

It wouldn’t be just these black slaves originating in Africa that would find new lives on this new continent. It seems that the Europeans also would introduce, in the Lesser Antilles entirely by accident, the big-headed Pheidole megacephala ant, also from Africa.

After Arawak slaves prove unable to survive the combination of overwork and unfamiliar Eurasian diseases, the Spanish start shipping disease-resistant West African slaves to the West Indies. By 1511, European merchants operating out of Sao Tomè and Mbanza would have turned slave-trading into big business. The way it worked was that African monarchs waged war on their neighbors and then marched their prisoners of war to the coast to trade them for glass, metal, cloth, liquor, and other manufactured goods.

1503

Nicolas de Ovando, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola, petitioned Ferdinand the Catholic to permit no more African slavery to be sent to Hispaniola. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1505

The first enslaved African reached the New World. At least 9,500,000 Africans would be brought to the New World, fully 2,500,000 would be deployed in the Caribbean area, where they would work substantially in the sugar industry. For 360 years slavery would be the key labor source for New World sugar production. Matthew Restall’s “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America” (The Americas, 57:2, October 2000, pages 171-205) notes that “Beginning as early as 1505, enslaved men and women were imported in increasingly large numbers to the Spanish colonies, at first from Iberian kingdoms but soon directly from Africa. King Ferdinand authorized in the first months of 1510 the transportation to Hispanola of 250 African slaves; thus formally began the trans-Atlantic expansion of a slave trade that would last into the nineteenth century and bring millions of Africans in chains to European colonies in the Americas.” (These were not the first Africans in the Americas, nor were they the first enslaved ones. Africans had been in the New World at least from 1496 when Juan Garrido, Juan Gonzalez Ponce de Leon, and others fought alongside Spaniards in Hispaniola. From there they joined the Caribbean conquests against Tainos, Caribs, and Aztecs. There had been enslaved Africans as early as 1503, because we have a record that Governor Ovando had complained in that year that enslaved Africans were escaping to join the Tainos of Hispaniola. This is merely the year in which serious importation of already enslaved people began, with “Guinea” born slaves imported from Lisbon to work in copper mines on Hispaniola.) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1506

The Spanish began growing sugar cane in the Caribbean’s Great Antilles, using the local population as their agricultural slaves.

1507

The Portuguese captured Zafi in Morocco and began a commerce in captive Moors, Berbers, and Jews. Many were female, all were called “white slaves” to distinguish them from African slaves.25 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1508

The native population of Hispaniola wasn’t doing so well, with the Spaniards in charge. Their numbers had by this point fallen to 60,000, in comparison with the original 200,000 to 300,000 of 1492. If they all died, what were these white people going to do to assure a continued cheap supply of colored local labor?

In disfavor with the King of Spain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar took up the contemplative life at the monastery of San Jerónimo in Córdoba.

1509

The African traffic in people sold off toward the Americas began when Bartolomé de Las Casas, the bishop of Chiapas, friend of the Indians, proposed that each Spanish settler should bring a certain number of African slaves to the New World. Yes, all this began out of religious compassion! THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

1510

A consignment of African slaves was transported to Brazil to labor on Portuguese sugar cane plantations. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

King Ferdinand ordered the transportation of African slaves to Santo Domingo to work the mines. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE 25. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 41 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1511

Poland established serfdom under laws passed by the diet.

1512

African slaves were imported into Hispaniola’s western settlement (Haiti) in large numbers to replace Indian slaves who were dying out from overwork and disease. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1513

Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez, who went to America as a member of Pedrarias Avila’s expedition, found that for 100 cocoa beans he was able to buy himself a slave.

1514

Pope Leo X issued a bull denouncing slavery and the slave trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1516

King Carlos I of Spain received, from Hispaniola’s inspector of gold mines, 6 loaves of sugar produced in the Americas. This was the first American sugar to reach Europe and it was well understood that to create this valuable commodity it was necessary for the sugar cane plantations to utilize large supplies of slave labor. Despite the Castilian regent Jiminez having forbidden the importation of slaves into Spanish colonies, therefore, Carlos granted license to his courtiers to bring slaves to these Spanish colonial islands. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

42 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1517

Archduke Charles granted a monopoly in the African slave trade to Flemish merchants. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Enslavement of Indians in the Americas was protested by Father Bartolomeo de Las Casas. Father Las Casas, bishop of Chiapa, first priest ordained in America and a former planter, went back to Spain to plead the case of the Indians to King Carlos I. In order to release the natives from slavery, he requested that each Spanish resident in Haiti be granted a license to import 12 Africans as slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1518

To replace the island’s fast-disappearing native population, the 28 Spanish sugar cane plantations on Santo Domingo were stepping up importation of slaves from Africa, to do the cane chopping and heavy lifting. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Hey, that sounds like a plan! There was a problem, however, on many of these plantations in this year. They were being devastated by an ant infestation, “as though fire had fallen from the sky and scorched them.” Presumably these ants had been introduced along with some plant that the Spanish had brought in. (Professor Edward O. Wilson now indicates that the culprit introduced species was likely to have been Solenopsis geminata, the tropical fire ant.)

Duarte Barbosa, in AN ACCOUNT OF THE COUNTRIES BORDERING ON THE INDIAN OCEAN AND THEIR INHABITANTS described sweet oranges in Ceylon. A later book by Garcia da Orta, 1562, one of the earliest European books printed in India, would comment that the oranges of Ceylon were “the best of the whole world in regard to sweetness and abundance of juice.” Prior to the discovery that China harbored sweet oranges, Europeans were less accustomed to consuming the fruit and considered citrus more valuable for its fragrance. PLANTS

1520

The first large group of new Negro slaves (300 persons) arrived in Cuba, to be put to work in a gold mine named Jaugua. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 43 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1522

The slaves on the large Caribbean island which local Arawaks had known as Haiti but which the Spaniards were terming La Isla Española, or Hispaniola, staged a large-scale uprising (within the following 31 years there would be at least 10 more of these). SERVILE INSURRECTION “I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.” — W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

Because it failed to dislodge the Spanish from the island or change their views about slavery, the rebellion was, from a European perspective, a failure. From an African perspective, though, the revolt was a qualified success, as the Spanish usually ignored slaves who escaped into the wilderness. (It was cheaper and easier to buy new slaves than to hunt down and recapture old ones.)

1523

Sugar cane was introduced into Cuba, to be grown on slave plantations.

Toward preventing the spread of Caribbean-style slave rebellions into Mexico, the Spanish passed laws requiring that black African slaves be segregated from Indian slaves.

The English government banned anyone with an annual income of less than £100 from owning firearms or crossbows.

1526

The first African slaves were imported to labor in the canefields of Cuba.

Congolese king Mbemba Nzinga protested to John III (Portugal) that Portuguese merchants were “taking every day our natives, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen and our vassals and our relatives.” The king was a convert to Christianity and he alleged that the slavers were depopulating his country. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

44 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1527

There was a slave revolt on the island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. SERVILE INSURRECTION

1530

It was at about this point that the trans-Atlantic slave trade began to be organized by the Portuguese, primarily for supplying their colony Brazil with a labor force. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

1531

This year marked the crossover in which the production of sugar with the use of slave labor on sugar cane plantations became as economically important to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World as their collection of existing gold objects through military expeditions and intimidation or through the mining of new gold by the use of slave labor underground. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1532

France began condemning its criminals as a fresh crop of galley slaves.

Sugar cane was cultivated for the 1st time in Brazil — with imported slave labor of course. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Spain banned the importation of new Negro slaves onto the Caribbean islands, from certain African regions (rest assured that the motivation for this ban was something other than benevolence). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 45 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1533

Slaves on the large Caribbean island which local Arawaks had known as Haiti but which the Spaniards were terming La Isla Española, or Hispaniola, staged an uprising which was suppressed with a great deal of bloodshed. SERVILE INSURRECTION

1537

Slaves on the large Caribbean island which local Arawaks had known as Haiti but which the Spaniards were terming La Isla Española, or Hispaniola, staged yet another uprising. SERVILE INSURRECTION

1538

French pirates, assisted by local slaves, burned Havana.

1539

Portugal’s agrarian system declined as a result of their dependence on the slave agricultural labor that had been being introduced since 1441.

1542

Spain forbade the enslavement of Indians, but without abolishing Indian enslavement. (Uh, how was that again?)

46 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1544

As the monasteries of the Catholics were broken up and their apiaries, formally tended by the monks, fell into decay, the Protestant Reformation was leading to a shortage of honey. This created a demand for more sweet stuff which in turn would create a demand for more slaves. (Huh, is this a planet on which everything is connected to everything?)

1545

Silver was discovered at Potosi in the altiplano of New Castile. Slave labor in these mines would yield an estimated $2,000,000,000 in silver, give or take a heartache or two.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 47 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1548

The native population of the large Caribbean island which local Arawaks had known as Haiti but which the Spaniards were terming La Isla Española, or Hispaniola, had fallen to fewer than 500, while the black population had swelled tremendously. At this point Hispaniola experienced yet another of its slave uprisings. SERVILE INSURRECTION

1549

Basically it was not freedom of religion, but the dangerous notion of economic enslavement not at all based upon race, which provoked the people of Norfolk to demonstrate against enclosures of English common land. But of course as soon as a leader, Robert Ket, had been captured and executed, the some 16,000 protesters dispersed. SERVILE INSURRECTION

1550

At this point Brazil had 5 sugar cane plantations run with imported slave labor. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1560S

At the age of 20, Francis Drake had his own wornout ship, left to him in the will of the man to whom he had been apprenticed. At least three times during this decade, Drake, under the leadership of his cousin John Hawkins of Plymouth, would assist in the selling of captives from the west coast of Africa into human chattel bondage in the Caribbean and elsewhere on the Spanish Main. SLAVERY THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

1561

France enacted the Ordonnance d’Orleans providing for the condemning of criminals as galley slaves.

48 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

Francis Drake’s cousin Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was doing illegal slaving in South America and the West Indies. This 1st English participation in the slave trade came about because he was able to hijack a Portuguese ship that was conveying a cargo of 105 to 300 African slaves to Brazil. He would trade these slaves in 1562 at Hispaniola for sugar, pearls, and ginger and make a huge profit. Drake would subsequently sell the worn-out ship he had inherited from his old master and join his cousin in Plymouth. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1562

Francis Drake’s cousin Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was doing illegal slavetrading in South America and the West Indies. In the previous year he had hijacked a Portuguese ship carrying African slaves to Brazil, and in this year he was trading these 105 to 300 slaves at Hispaniola for sugar, pearls, and ginger and making a huge profit. His eyes were opened and he saw: black people aren’t like you and me, who aren’t worth money wholesale! Drake would subsequently sell the wornout ship he had inherited from his old master and join his cousin in Plymouth. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Sir John Hawkins’s celebrated voyage took place in 1562, but probably not until 163126 did a regular chartered company undertake to carry on the trade.27 This company was unsuccessful,28 and was eventually succeeded by the “Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa,” chartered by Charles II. in 1662, and including the Queen Dowager and the Duke of York.29 The company contracted to supply the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually; but contraband trade, misconduct, and war so reduced it that in 1672 it surrendered its charter to another company for £34,000.30 This new corporation, chartered by Charles II. as the “Royal African Company,” proved more successful than its predecessors, and carried on a growing trade for a quarter of a century.

1563

John Hawkins completed the sale of a hijacked cargo of 105 to 300 African slaves in Hispaniola.

Queen Elizabeth I: “If any African were carried away without his free consent it would be detestable and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertaking.” The Queen, evidently, was living in a world of her own, a world in which people of color respectfully petitioned “Would you please enrich my life by enslaving me?”31 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE 26. African trading-companies had previously been erected (e.g. by Elizabeth in 1585 and 1588, and by James I in 1618); but slaves are not specifically mentioned in their charters, and they probably did not trade in slaves. Cf. Bandinel, ACCOUNT OF THE SLAVE TRADE (1842), pages 38-44. 27. Chartered by Charles I. Cf. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, page 135. 28. In 1651, during the Protectorate, the privileges of the African trade were granted anew to this same company for fourteen years. Cf. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, pages 342, 355. 29. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1661-1668, § 408. 30. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1669-1674, §§ 934, 1095. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 49 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1564

For Captain John Hawkins’s 2d voyage to the West Indies and Guinea, Queen Elizabeth I loaned him a ship and took shares in his slave-running ventures — apparently she wasn’t herself in fear of the vengeance she had in the previous year called down from Heaven. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

King Charles IX of France forbade the sentencing of convicts to the galleys for any period of service of less than 10 years. The galley slaves of France were being branded with the letters GAL.

31. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” 50 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1569

Francis Drake married Mary Newman, who was not from any well-connected or wealthy family. They would have no children and 12 years later, shortly after her husband was knighted, he would be left a widower. In this year he made a second attempt to sell a cargo of enslaved Africans to the Spanish in the New World: THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

This time he made an agreement for peace with Don Martin, Viceroy of Mexico, but the next morning Don Martin attacked, killing a number of English sailors and sinking two of the four ships in the expedition of Hawkins and Francis Drake.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 51 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1570

Large-scale traffic in African slaves began between the African coast of Sierra Leone and the Brazilian bulge 1,807 miles away.

Slave ships returning from Brazil brought peanuts, maize, manioc, sweet potatoes, and beans to supplement Africa’s few subsistence crops. Manioc (cassava) is very resistant to locusts and to deterioration in the field and serves as a reserve against famine.

Maize fueled the population growth necessary to provide the steady supply of African slaves required for the new trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

52 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1575

Miguel de Cervantes was captured by pirates and taken to Algeria as a slave (after a series of unsuccessful escape attempts he would in 1580, at the age of 33, be ransomed by the Trinitarian friar Juan Gil). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Abraham Ortelius was appointed geographer to King Philip II of Spain, with Arias Montanus vouching for both his expertise and his Catholic orthodoxy.

GEOGRAPHER

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 53 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1581

King Philip II of Spain sent some of his African slaves to St. Augustine. These were the first African slaves to be landed in North America. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

He unified control of the Oriental spice trade eliminating the competition in the sugar, spice, and slave trade that had existed before his takeover of Portugal in 1580.

1588

May 19: The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon. This fleet the Catholic king, Philip II, was sending against England, was carrying a considerable supply of handcuffs, leg-irons, and chains that had been specially manufactured, in order to maintain control over the thousands of Protestants the Spanish were expecting to seize and sell abroad as slaves. (This expedition would fail of its purpose.)

Those wonderful English Protestants who believed in freedom! In this year English merchants were forming the “Guinea Company,” to traffic in black slaves from Africa’s Guinea coast. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1591

North Africa’s African culture was destroyed when Spanish and Portuguese Mercenaries in the service of Moroccan pashas used firearms to defeat the Africans, destroyed Goa, and assisted the Moroccans in establishing themselves at Timbuktu. The pashas gained independence from Morocco in 1612 and ruled Timbuktu until 1780.

Portugal closed Brazil to further immigration of anyone except Portuguese but continued to import African slaves for their Brazilian plantations. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1592

In Russia the census officials instituted a practice of listing landless peasants under the names of the landholders on whose property they resided. On little cat feet would creep in the attitude that such persons were to be considered as “serfs” of such landlords — the owner of such land would be the owner of such person.

54 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1597

A Muscovite ukase required the seizure of runaway serfs and their return to their masters.

In Scotland, the Poor Law was being amended to reduce a tenth of the population to lifetime servitude. Those classified as “vagrants,” which is to say, the homeless, and their children, would be henceforth subject to being sentenced by a court to lifetime servitude to private employers.32

Alexander Hume had given up on the legal profession and returned to the University of St. Andrews to prepare himself for the ministry. It would have been in this timeframe, probably, that he took his ministerial degree.

1599

There were an estimated 900,000 Africans slaves in the Americas, most of them used for the production of cane sugar and molasses. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1600

Onate organized the colonization of New Mexico under the encomienda system. Spaniards “protected” the Indians in exchange for a tribute that was to be paid in labor or products. The Spaniards kidnapped Apaches, Navajos, and Utes who lived near colonies to use as slave labor or household servants.

32. In 1605 it would become no longer necessary for a local employer to wait out due process, for in that year the local employers would be themselves authorized to go out into the highways and byways and capture any such persons, and haul them before the magistrates to have them declared to be vagrants, so that whoever was the first one to catch up with them could then “set his burning iron upon thame” and “retaene thame as slaves” for the remainder of their natural lives. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 55 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

The Enlightenment was not innocent in founding itself on man’s ability to reason. Instead, this had a very great deal to do with racial politics. Already, at this point, enlightened (lactified?) Europeans were wondering whether or not the “species of men” which they were encountering in their forays into Africa would prove capable of mastering the arts and sciences of life. The philosophy of René Descartes is a fine example of how reason could be valorized, and thus privileged, above any other characteristic of humanity. Were the Afrik variety of humankind to prove themselves capable of reason, of course, then that variety and the European variety would be seen to be fundamentally related, and consequently it would be unseemly for one variety to be treating the other variety, merely because they had the power to do so, as one of their market commodities — slavery. Writing, with the spread of the printing press, had come to be taken as the preclusive evidence of rationality, so, were the dusky Afriks to prove to be incapable of creating any formalized literature on the civilized model, then clearly they were of an appropriate nature to be appropriated as the real world’s niggers of all work, and nobody need to go on any guilt trip about that traffic. For what other function could such beings have been placed here?

?

“The grandeur of a country is to assume all its history. With its glorious pages but also its more shady parts.” — President Jacques Chirac of France

SLAVEHOLDING

The Dutch entered the international slave trade. The ivory trade was so rampant that elephant numbers begin to decline in West Africa. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1601

The English adventurer John Smith, while serving with Transylvania’s Sigismund Báthory, was captured by the Turks and sold into slavery. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

56 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1603

John Smith killed his slavemaster (or so he would say), escaped from captivity east of the African Sea, and made his way back to England (in THE TRUE TRAVELS, ADVENTVRES, AND OBSERVATIONS OF CAPTAINE IOHN SMITH, IN EUROPE, ASIA, AFFRICA, AND AMERICA, FROM ANNO DOMINI 1593 TO 1629 ..., Smith would mention a drink the Turks called “coffa from a graine they call coava”). COFFEE

1605

William Alexander’s THE ALEXANDREAN TRAGEDY.

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER

In Scotland fully a tenth of the population were lifetime slaves. At this point it became possible for employers to go out into the highways and byways and take any homeless they could discover there under detention and haul them before the magistrate to have them certified as “vagrants,” so they could set their “burning iron upon thame and retaene thame as slaves” for the remainder of their natural lives.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 57 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1606

In Scotland, free coalminers and salt-pan workers, who had an unfortunate tendency to abandon their work “upon hope of greater gain” in some more lucrative occupation, were reclassified by the Privy Council as the bond slaves for life of whoever were their current employers. They might be sold as an asset along with the mine or the saltworks as such a facility changed hands, or otherwise disposed of by their owners. In addition, the owners of Scotland’s coal-mine and salt-pan resources were authorized to seek out and seize any Scotsmen who were demonstrably unemployed, whether homeless or not, and without further legal formality to bind them into slavery. In practice, this new status of bond slave for life would work out to be hereditary, and would continue until this practice would, at the end of the 18th Century, cease to be of economical advantage to the owners of Scotland’s coal-mine and salt-pan resources.

58 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1607

Ships need to carry cargo in both directions. They need never to be empty because empty equates not merely to lack of earnings but in addition to the loading of more ballast,33 which is a significant expense item. If ships were to be carrying something in bulk, such as tobacco and sugar, from the New World to the Old, they would also be needing to be carrying something in bulk from the Old World to the New. What then did the Old World have that was in plentiful supply, that could be had cheap because it was something that it did not need? People! During the period from 1607 into 1682 some 92,000 European laborers would be being transported to the Virginia and Delaware colonies to be sold there as chattel bond-servants, with the proceeds of such sales of human beings (or, to be more polite, of all of their services) allegedly going to reimburse their shippers for the cost of such transportation from the poverty of the Old World to the hopeful venues of the New: The “servant trade,” as it came to be called, that is, the export of chattel laborers from Europe, sprang up as a response to the profit-making needs of the tobacco business, and it soon became a special branch of commerce; these bond-laborers “provided a convenient cargo for ships going to the plantations to fetch tobacco, sugar, and the other raw materials available,” writes A.E. Smith: “-[T]he real stimulus to emigration was not the desire of servants to go to America, but the desire of merchants to secure them as cargo.” Investors found the trade attractive. In England, votaries of what today is euphemized as “market principles” sold English men and women for £2 per head (or even less, sometimes) if they had them already in captivity as convicts or workhouse inmates. In all, some 92,000 European immigrants were brought to Virginia and Maryland between 1607 and 1682, the great majority being sent to Virginia. More than three-quarters of them were chattel bond-laborers, the great majority of them English. In 1676, it was Governor Berkeley’s estimate that about 1,500 European chattel bond-laborers were then arriving in Virginia yearly, “the majority English, with a few Scots and fewer Irish.” Others were brought to the Chesapeake after the defeat of the Catholic cause in 1689, and they were for a time especially worrisome to the colonial authorities for fear that they might “confederate with the Negroes,” as Francis Nicholson warned when he was Governor of Maryland.

1610

Between this year and 1660, 110,000-135,000 white English would be voyaging to the Caribbean — they would be transported mainly as indentured labourers, although some would be transported as sentenced prisoners.

33. The problem of ballast will be explored in greater detail at other locations in this Kouroo Contexture. Suffice it to say here that the reason why it was economical to carry Chinese porcelain products from Canton to New England was that crates of these dishes could be stored low in the hold as needed ballast, and the reason why Providence, Rhode Island’s alleys are paved with cobblestones is that they had been brought here as ship ballast, and the reason why the original experimental ice shipments from New England ponds to Calcutta were made was that the ice was serving an extra role aboard ship, low in the hold as needed ballast. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 59 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1611

Edward Harlow captured five natives in the Cape Cod region. Epenow, a sachem of Capawak (Martha’s Vineyard), was among those enslaved, and would later be donated to Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Plymouth, England — he would eventually through a ruse escape and be able to return home. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE “...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915

The Half Moon was put back into service under the command of Laurens Reael.

Former Dutch lawyer Adriaen Block in the Tyger explored Manhattan Island. He returned to Europe with a cargo of furs and two kidnaped natives, to whom he gave the names Orson and Valentine. (Soon there would also be a trading voyage to Manhattan Island by Hendrick Christiansz in the Fortuyn. A fur trading post, Fort Nassau, would be created on an island in the Hudson River adjacent to the present site of Albany.) SLAVERY

60 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

1614

The Nauset and Mashpee bands of Wampanoag, living as they did on Cape Cod, had a fresh contact with the pale strangers from the ocean, this time with the expedition of Captain Thomas Hunt. At this point, while 27 of his tribespeople were being kidnapped to be sold into slavery in Malága, Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin “Yellow Feather,” was a young adult. Among the captives was a young man named Squanto or Tisquantum of Patuxet (the native village which afterward would be renamed as the “Plymouth” of the English people), who after being sold as a slave in Spain would escape to England. Most of the other victims of this slave raid eventually would also be redeemed (but by Spanish friars rather than, as the Walt Disney movie had it, by monks near Plymouth, England).

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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Since their villages along the Merrimack River were all well inland from the coast, Pennacook indigenes would have little direct contact with European intrusives before 1620. At about this point, nevertheless, there began among the Pennacook, already devastated by epidemic, another catastrophic epidemic. To the north, pre-existing hostilities between Abenaki (Penobscot) and Micmac were being aggravated by competition for the fur trade with the new French trading posts in Acadia, and these hostilities had finally exploded into what is known as the Tarrateen War (1607-1615). The Micmac were emerging from this eight-year struggle victorious, and soon their war parties would be sweeping down the coast of Maine into Pennacook territory. By 1617 the warfare would have reached into eastern Massachusetts, but there the Micmac would encounter a new and more terrible enemy, for in 1614 as the English slavers had been raiding Wampanoag villages, they had infected the population with a new and extremely deadly sickness to which there had been built up no local immunological resistance — the dreaded small pox.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY

1615

The very 1st time, a long long way from the last time, that a European wrote a poem against slavery: Gerbrand Brederoo’s THE LITTLE MOOR. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1616

January 8: The Reverend Francis Higginson got married with Anne Herbert at St Peter’s, Nottingham. During this year the bride would give birth to a son, John Higginson.

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In the area that would become the Boston Harbor, or off Cape Cod, a French trading ship in difficulties was taken by the native Americans. The ship was burned and all but five of its crewmembers were slaughtered. These five were made slaves of the local sagamores, of various native towns (including Namasket and Massachuset), who would use them for sport as well as for menial labor.34 In return for allowing Anglican SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS

missionaries to spread the Word of God among them, the Woodland Indians of the Powhatan Confederation begin acquiring snaphaunce muskets from the Virginians (the natives preferred snaphaunces to matchlocks because snaphaunces did not require either glowing coals or stinky matches, both of which might disclose a shooter’s position during ambushes, raids, and hunting trips; the Virginians preferred these snaphaunces, too, although usually they couldn’t afford them).

About this time another French ship was intercepted by the Americans near Peddock’s Island in Massachusetts Bay, and the entire crew was killed and the ship burned. MASSACHUSETTS BAY

Captain John Mason, who had been appointed in the previous year as Proprietary Governor of the Cuper’s Cove colony on the coast of Newfoundland, at this point arrived in the New World. He would prepare the 1st known English map of the locale, and a “Discourse” describing his findings.

34. Rhode Island College’s anthropologist, Professor Richard Lobban, has interestingly asserted that slavery began in New England as an export business — exporting native American prisoners of war at the suggestion of the Reverend Roger Williams after the Pequot campaign later in the 17th Century. In the light of the above information, that is a strangely ethnocentric stance in which to be discovering, of all persons, an anthropologist! “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 63 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1617

In Scotland, children of impoverished parents, whether orphaned or not, became bound to serve their masters until they had reached 30 years of age. This had the Catch-22 effect of transforming the lifetime slavery of the coal miners and the salt-pan workers into hereditary slavery, for after an adult miner had served his or her employer for the first year, perpetual servitude was required under the law.

1618

The British monarch allowed the “Guinea Company” to trade with West Africa: the main interest at the moment, however, was not Africa’s slaves but Africa’s gold. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1619

May 11: One hundred and forty transported white female convicts were sold at an auction in Jamestown, Virginia against their weight in tobacco “at a fixed poundage for the crop” and fetch between two hundred and six hundred pounds each depending on age and condition. This shipment of female convicts would be followed by another shipment in a few weeks which would include 105 women and girls. Transported convicts were slaves without any rights during the period of their sentence. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Meanwhile, in Jamaica, slaves were being sold not against tobacco but against sugar, a quantity averaging a value of about £7 each. Branding and flogging were usually included in the process.

End of August: From the diary of John Rolfe, back on the Virginia coast after the death of his wife, “About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.” This first slave transport had arrived at Point Comfort in Virginia (not at Jamestown) a few days after the first meeting of the House of Burgesses. The standard account by W.F. Craven, pages 77-80 of WHITE, RED, AND BLACK: THE SEVENTEENTH- CENTURY VIRGINIAN, notes that this ship was of about 160 tons and that its Captain sold to the Governor, Sir George Yeardley, and to the Cape Merchant, Abraham Piersey, “20. and odd Negroes.” The ship Treasurer under Captain Daniel Elfrith, which was sailing along with this Dutch vessel as the result of “an accidental consortship in the West Indies,” did not arrive at Point Comfort until three or four days afterward, and there is no record of any blacks having been delivered or sold from the Treasurer — though there is a record that this ship went on to Bermuda and there did offload 14 blacks. All standard textbook accounts of this are in need of revision because of the recent discovery of a large cache of early Virginia records in the Ferrar Papers in the Old Library of Magdalen College, Cambridge. There is reported to be in these records an item marked March 1619 that lists 15 black men and 17 black women already living in the colony as well as 4 native Americans in service to the planters. Clearly persons of color were living and working in the colony well before the

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canonical date. When that famous 20 and odd people brought from Africa arrived as described above by the tobacco planter, there were according to the record already 32 persons of African descent present in the English colony and there is every reason to presume that these African persons of color were expected to work and work hard but no reason whatever to presume that at this point such persons would have been enslaved for life or would have been treated in any particular any different than, say, your normal Irish or Scotch bond- laborer. It is suspected that from this point forward, however, about 11,500,000 persons would be loaded aboard ships to be brought across from Africa, but that about 2,000,000 of these 11,500,000 persons would have to be thrown overboard as damaged merchandise leaving only about 9,500,000 persons to follow this initial consignment35 of 20 persons onto the slave auction blocks of America.

This is what Howard Pyle (1853-1911) would make of it, for publication in the Harper’s Monthly Magazine issue of January 1901 (Volume 102, page 172):

35. I use the term “consignment” because, according to a poorly recollected albeit well documented clause of the US Constitution, a white person coming to the New World is to be considered to be a passenger whereas a person of color coming to the New World is to be considered to constitute a cargo item! “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 65 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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That Dutch man-of-war was out of Flushing, in Zeeland. The name Jesus, traditionally assigned, has been challenged:

SLAVERY

An interesting side issue: miscegenation in the USA began early, as the female captives disembarked from this ship had already been serviced and impregnated, by its crew. (At least, this will be found to be interesting by those who find this sort of thing interesting.)

These blacks were exchanged for food because that was what this ship needed. According to tradition, if the Africans had not been sellable, it is likely that they would have been thrown overboard to save their rations. The 90 English women that were being supplied by a private company cost 120 pounds of tobacco each, nominally to pay for their passage. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Dutch seem to have commenced the slave-trade to the American continent, the Middle colonies and some of the Southern receiving supplies from them. John Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia “a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars.”36 This was probably one of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading- companies which early entered into and developed the lucrative African slave-trade. Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home laden with sugar.37 Through the enterprise of one of these trading-companies the settlement of New Amsterdam was begun, in 1614. In 1621 the private companies trading in the West were all merged into the Dutch West India Company, and given a monopoly of American trade. This company was very active, sending in four years 15,430 Negroes to Brazil,38 carrying on war with Spain, supplying even the English plantations,39 and gradually becoming the great slave carrier of the day. The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and emulation of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was

36. Smith, GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA (1626 and 1632), page 126. 37. Cf. Southey, HISTORY OF BRAZIL. 38. De Laet, in O’Callaghan, VOYAGES OF THE SLAVERS, etc., page viii. 39. See, e.g., Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS; COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, page 279. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 67 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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aimed at them, and two wars were necessary to wrest the slave- trade from them and place it in the hands of the English. The final terms of peace among other things surrendered New Netherland to England, and opened the way for England to become henceforth the world’s greatest slave-trader. Although the Dutch had thus commenced the continental slave-trade, they had not actually furnished a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had, by 1698, brought a few thousand to New York, and still fewer to New Jersey.40 It was left to the English, with their strong policy in its favor, to develop this trade. READ ABOUT VIRGINIA

1621

A group of Sephardic Jews organized and became important shareholders in the Dutch West India Company which soon would dominate the African slave trade. SLAVERY JUDAISM W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Dutch seem to have commenced the slave-trade to the American continent, the Middle colonies and some of the Southern receiving supplies from them. John Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia “a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars.”41 This was probably one of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading- companies which early entered into and developed the lucrative African slave-trade. Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home laden with sugar.42 Through the enterprise of one of these trading-companies the settlement of New Amsterdam was begun, in 1614. In 1621 the private companies trading in the West were all merged into the Dutch West India Company, and given a monopoly of American trade. This company was very active, sending in four years 15,430 Negroes to Brazil,43 carrying on war with Spain, supplying even the English plantations,44 and gradually becoming the great slave carrier of the day. The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and emulation of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was aimed at them, and two wars were necessary to wrest the slave- trade from them and place it in the hands of the English. The final terms of peace among other things surrendered New Netherland to England, and opened the way for England to become henceforth the world’s greatest slave-trader. Although the Dutch 40. Cf. below, pages 27, 32, notes; also FREEDOMS, XXX., in O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1638-74 (ed. 1868), page 10; Brodhead, HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I. 312. 41. Smith, GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA (1626 and 1632), page 126. 42. Cf. Southey, HISTORY OF BRAZIL. 43. De Laet, in O’Callaghan, VOYAGES OF THE SLAVERS, etc., page viii. 44. See, e.g., Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS; COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, page 279. 68 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had thus commenced the continental slave-trade, they had not actually furnished a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had, by 1698, brought a few thousand to New York, and still fewer to New Jersey.45 It was left to the English, with their strong policy in its favor, to develop this trade.

1623

There were 350 cane sugar plantations in Brazil, operating with imported slave labor. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Thomas Warner founded the first successful English settlement on St. Kitts.

1624

The Dutch had entered the slave trade in 1621 with the formation of the Dutch West Indies Company. In this year black slaves were imported to serve on the Hudson Valley farms of the Dutch of New Amsterdam. By Dutch law, any children a slave bore subsequent to manumission were not born free, but –grok this!– would be born as the chattel property of the manumitted slave’s former owner. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY

In this year in which Virginia became a crown colony, as recorded in his TRAVELS AND WORKS, Captain John Smith warned Virginia very accurately, that basing the colony’s economy upon chattel bond- servitude could lead only “to misery.”

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

1625

Ten slaves were listed in the 1st census of Jamestown.

45. Cf. below, pages 27, 32, notes; also FREEDOMS, XXX., in O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1638-74 (ed. 1868), page 10; Brodhead, HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I. 312. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 69 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1626

An Englishman brought slaves from Africa to St. Kitts in the West Indies.46 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

46. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” 70 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 11: In Virginia colony, an unhealthy development in regard to American slavery: a white Englishman of the laborer category was sentenced to seven additional years of unpaid labor to begin at the end of his period of bonding, for the offense of having had sexual intercourse during his period of obligation.47

Later on, this sort of absurdly restrictive class slavery would become the basis for a developing race slavery.48 [T]he monstrous social mutation in English class relations instituted in that tiny cell of Anglo-American society was a precondition for the subsequent variation of hereditary chattel bond-servitude imposed on African-Americans in Virginia.

November: According to a letter which turned up in some Dutch archives in the 1840s, from Peter Jansen Schagen of the West India Company in Amsterdam to the States-General in The Hague, a ship had just arrived at the port of New Amsterdam bearing tidings that “our people ... have purchased the island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders; — tis 11,000 morgens in size.” READ THE FULL TEXT

What island was it that “our people” had just “purchased”? Who specifically was it who had done that purchasing, and who specifically was it who had done that selling? The record does not state, and 11,000 morgens (half a Dutch morgen was roughly equivalent to an English acre) would be far too large to fit the presumption that this thing that had been purchased under the name “Manhattes” was the Man-a-hatt-a we know as the island of Manhattan today. Even taking into account the various massive landfills which have occurred over the years, our Manhattan Island has not grown to anywhere near 22,000 acres in extent. The presumption has been that it was Peter Minuit who had done the purchasing, but Minuit was a French Protestant type rather than any sort of Dutchman type. There were Huguenot refugees already in the area, who would be settling on Staten Island, when Minuit had arrived from Europe on May 4th with a mandate from the Dutch for authority over the New Amsterdam, and he took over control from a previous governor named Verhulst who had himself been charged to establish a settlement on the Delaware or Hudson River and who himself had the authority to purchase said real estate. The only island we know for sure that Minuit himself “purchased” was Staten Island, for the Huguenot settlers. The presumption has been that this 60 guilders of “purchase” value amounted to $26, as per the Rogers and Hart lyric of 1939: Old Peter Minuit had nothing to lose When he bought the Isle of Manhattan For twenty-six dollars and a bottle of booze.... but the value in question would not have been a value in coinage, since when the deal was made slightly later for Staten Island we know the value was transferred as a sort of hostess gift, “some Diffles [duffle cloth], Kittles [cast-iron kettles], Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jews Harps, and diverse other wares.” Anyway, that figure that is commonly mentioned in dollars, $26 or $24, representing the 60 guilders of value in Schagen’s letter discovered in the 1840s, was an equivalence figure which we do not find published until the 1880s, at which point it surfaces in a local history of Harlem without any information as to the manner of

47. Since such laborers during their period of obligation were under total control, required to expend not just some but all their efforts at the discretion of and for the benefit of their master, and since any sexual activity would not be for the benefit of this master, nor would any progeny which resulted be owned by their owner as such bondage was not hereditary — therefore they simply were neither at liberty either to marry or to seek any sexual fulfilment. The sexual situation would change radically, of course, as soon as the slavery situation could be reconstructed here over a racial barrier rather than a class/ethic barrier, in such manner as to render the progeny of a bondsperson the property of his or her master, rebounding to his profit! 48. This is a telling factoid, in the struggle to keep racism and enslavement separate in our minds as two ordinarily related problems between which it is nevertheless vital for us to be able to draw a distinction. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 71 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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its computation. And we do not know what it would have been which was purchased with some trade goods equivalent to 60 guilders in value, since the native Americans with whom the transaction was being negotiated would not have had any conception of the distinction between sole ownership of land, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, permission to make shared temporary use of land. And, we do not know that the native American fisherman with whom these negotiations were accomplished had any claim upon the land he “sold,” since he was of a tribe which used some of the surrounding waters but did not reside on Manhattan Island itself. From the native American point of view, this deal may have been no more than a sucker ploy similar to our modern “Hey, buddy, I need some ready cash, ya wanna buy that Brooklyn Bridge over there?”49 About the only thing we know for sure in regard to this history is that immediately the Dutch West India Company brought the 1st slaves into this area!

“History is the why of now.”

— Austin Meredith

Nota Bene: There are some real comparisons to be drawn between this “purchase” of Manhattan and the problematic nature of the New York “records” of this New Amsterdam purchase, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the “purchase” of Musketaquid and the problematic nature of the Boston “records” of that Concord purchase. In both of these cases what we confidently proclaim now as fact actually amounts to the sheerest self-serving reconstruction based upon the merest fragments of an exceedingly problematic historical record.

49. The curious fact of compound interest has been pointed out, that had this fisherman been able to take the beads downtown and display them in a briefcase on a TV tray on a cracked sidewalk in the East Village, and sell them back to the white folks for this oft- mentioned $26.00 in coinage, and had he then walked this coinage into a 1st Federal Savings & Loan and socked it into an 8% savings account, by this year 2005 of the Common Era, barring a banking crisis, his red descendants might have owned the entire earth and all the starry heavens! 72 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1629

Black slaves were imported into Connecticut. Race slavery would be so utterly normal a part of the Connecticut landscape, that it would even be featured on the local currency:

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave- trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.

1630

King Charles I of England granted a patent to Sir Nicholas Crisp to trade to West Africa. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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“When one is happy in forgetfulness, facts get forgotten.” — Robert Pen Warren, 1961 THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR

Massachusetts enacted a law protecting slaves who were forced to flee their owners due to ill treatment.

In Jamestown, Hugh Davis was whipped for “abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of Christians by defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”50

1631

The pirate Jan Janszoon sailed to England and Ireland, landing his men at various spots along the coast and rounding up approximately 200 people they could sell as slaves in Algiers. From this point until 1640 not much is known about Janszoon’s actions. We know that he had to leave Salé for political reasons, and seems to have been for some time in Algiers and Tripoli. There is a possibility that he was for a time a prisoner of the Maltese Knights. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1634

George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) established a settlement in Maryland (he would die before he would see it). His sons sent two ships with 20 Catholic gentlemen and 200 Protestant laborers to found the first settlement at St. Mary’s. That colony had its first waterwheel. Black slaves were imported there, as well as into Massachusetts.

1635

In New-York, Jacob Stoffelsen was hired to oversee the Dutch West India Company’s slaves.

50. 1 LAWS OF VIRGINIA 146. Since we cannot determine, from the record, the gender of the Negro involved, and since the Council’s language is extreme, it may be that they were here dealing with a case of buggery. 74 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1637

The Council of the Narragansett of the bay of Rhode Island decided to ally with the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut in its war against the Mohegan tribe known locally as the “Pequot” or “Mankillers” (they knew themselves not as mankillers but as “the fox people”). Because of their location outside the boundaries of the United Puritan Colonies, their political and military autonomy, and the peculiar religious views of the most prominent white minister in their midst, the Reverend Roger Williams, Narragansett tribespeople were at that time able to discourage a flock of other ministers who were attempting to dissuade them from their religion.

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The Massachusetts militia massacred a Pequot village at Mystic. They killed about 600; taking 30 males offshore, they drowned them in the sort of event that is described as a “noyage”; their women and children were sold or handed around as slaves.51

(For most nations, wars are about power and self-interest, but for Americans, they have always been about righteousness. American look at war as an epic struggle between good and evil. As Dubya recently put the matter, it is up to our nation “to defend the hopes of all mankind.” This sort of attitude began long before we were a nation, for in 1630 Governor John Winthrop had planted a great Biblical aspiration on American soil: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” It is no accident that soon afterward his colonists had launched this war against Indian “devil worshippers.” The bodies of so many “frying in the fire,”

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according to William Bradford, seemed “a sweet sacrifice to God.” The anxieties of the Indian conflicts would next lead the society straight into internal hunts for “witches.” American Exceptionalism means, it seems, never needing to say that you are sorry.)

The Reverend Roger Williams wrote to Governor John Winthrop about the successful expedition against the “Pequot” or “Fox People”: “It having again pleased the Most High to put into our hands another miserable drove of Adam’s degenerate seed, and our brethren by nature, I am bold (if I may not offend in it) to request the keeping and bringing up of one of the children.”

The Pequot slaves were transported to the West Indies aboard the 1st American slave ship, the Desire.52 On its return voyage, the ship transported a cargo of African slaves to Connecticut. (Refer to A WONDERFUL VICTORY OVER THE ENEMIES OF GOD and MASSACRE AT FORT MYSTIC.) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Hugh Peter wrote to John Winthrop, Jr. that he had heard of a “dividend” of women and children from the Pequod captives and that he would appreciate being sent his own share, “a young woman or girl and a boy if you think good.”

51. A few Pequot warriors would elude capture and obtain refuge with other New England Algonquin groups. Most of those captured were executed but the Reverend Williams proposed that as a humanitarian measure, instead, they should be sold for a profit, and so about 1,400 persons would be exported. The peace treaty would systematically dismember what remained of the tribe in a manner designed to ensure that the Pequot could no longer function as a cohesive grouping. Some women and children would be distributed as “servants” to white households. The Narragansett and Eastern Niantic would accept some of the Pequot women and children, and one band was exiled to Long Island and became subject to the Metoac. For the most part, these Pequot would be absorbed by their “hosts” within a few years and would disappear. The remainder were placed under the Mohegan, and it is from this group that the two current Pequot tribes have evolved. The Mohegans would treat their Pequot guests so badly that by 1655 the English would be forced to remove them. Two reservations would be established for the Pequots in 1666 and 1683. By 1762 there would be only 140 Pequots and the decline would continue until a low point of 66 was reached as of the 1910 census. At present, the State of Connecticut recognizes two Pequot tribes: the Mashantucket and the Paucatuck. The 600 Paucatuck (Eastern Pequot) have retained the Lantern Hill Reservation (226 acres) at North Stonington but are not federally recognized. The Mashantucket (Western Pequot) received federal recognition in 1983. 52. The slave ship Desire, 120 tons, was constructed at Marblehead, Massachusetts and was one of the 1st ships, if not the very 1st, built in the colonies. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 77 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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To ensure a supply of African slaves for their sugar cane plantations in Brazil, Dutch forces took Elmina from the Portuguese and constructed forts along the Gold Coast.53

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Black slaves were imported into New-York. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1638

In the 1st public auction of slaves in Jamestown square, 23 persons were sold and purchased.

53. For this and other such maps: http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 79 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February: At the end of the war upon the Pequot of Connecticut, what had been known as the Pequot River was renamed the Thames, the village of Pequot was renamed New London, and the bulk of the surviving redskins were distributed as slaves among the tribes that had allied with the English. The English did receive a share of the slaves, fifteen Pequot boys and two women, and Captain William Pierce took them to Providence Island and there traded them off for some salt, some tobacco, some cotton, and some black slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“...the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” — Declaration of Independence

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave- trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade 80 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from New England soil. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In the individual efforts of the various colonies to suppress the African slave-trade there may be traced certain general movements. First, from 1638 to 1664, there was a tendency to take a high moral stand against the traffic. This is illustrated in the laws of New England, in the plans for the settlement of Delaware and, later, that of Georgia, and in the protest of the German Friends. The second period, from about 1664 to 1760, has no general unity, but is marked by statutes laying duties varying in design from encouragement to absolute prohibition, by some cases of moral opposition, and by the slow but steady growth of a spirit unfavorable to the long continuance of the trade. The last colonial period, from about 1760 to 1787, is one of pronounced effort to regulate, limit, or totally prohibit the traffic. Beside these general movements, there are many waves of legislation, easily distinguishable, which rolled over several or all of the colonies at various times, such as the series of high duties following the Assiento, and the acts inspired by various Negro “plots.” Notwithstanding this, the laws of the colonies before 1774 had no national unity, the peculiar circumstances of each colony determining its legislation. With the outbreak of the Revolution came unison in action with regard to the slave-trade, as with regard to other matters, which may justly be called national. It was, of course, a critical period, — a period when, in the rapid upheaval of a few years, the complicated and diverse forces of decades meet, combine, act, and react, until the resultant seems almost the work of chance. In the settlement of the fate of slavery and the slave-trade, however, the real crisis came in the calm that succeeded the storm, in that day when, in the opinion of most men, the question seemed already settled. And indeed it needed an exceptionally clear and discerning mind, in 1787, to deny that slavery and the slave- trade in the United States of America were doomed to early annihilation. It seemed certainly a legitimate deduction from the history of the preceding century to conclude that, as the system had risen, flourished, and fallen in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and as South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland were apparently following in the same legislative path, the next generation would in all probability witness the last throes of the system on our soil. To be sure, the problem had its uncertain quantities. The motives of the law-makers in South Carolina and Pennsylvania were dangerously different; the century of industrial expansion was slowly dawning and awakening that vast economic revolution in which American slavery was to play so prominent and fatal a rôle; and, finally, there were already in the South faint signs of a changing moral attitude toward slavery, which would no longer regard the system as a temporary makeshift, but rather as a permanent though perhaps unfortunate necessity. With regard to the slave-trade, however, there appeared to be substantial unity of opinion; and there were, in 1787, few things to indicate that a cargo of five hundred African slaves would openly be landed in Georgia in 1860.

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February 26: Governor John Winthrop made an entry in his journal that is now the earliest document we have of a trade in black slaves in Massachusetts. He noted that the Massachusetts ship Desire in returning from the West Indies had brought “some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, etc.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE JOHN WINTHROP JOURNAL

Since we have a record from this year that Samuel Maverick already had a number of blacks at his home on Noddles Island (which is now part of the general East Boston landfill), it would appear that there had been previous slave deliveries to the Bay Colony. SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS

“Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”

— Dwight David Eisenhower

September: Under the peace signed at Hartford, Connecticut, the Pequot group was dismembered. The 180 who had been captured near Fairfield were distributed as slaves, 80 being granted to the Mohegan, 80 to the Narragansett, and 20 to the Eastern Niantic. Of the 80 whom the English captured in other engagements, 30 were adult males and presumably warriors and were thus executed, and 50 who were female and/or children were sold into slavery in the British colony of Bermuda and islands of the West Indies such as the Spanish colony of Jamaica. One band, that had surrendered, was exiled to Long Island and made subject to the Metoac who by 1653 would become subject to the Narragansett. Other captives were distributed as “servants” to New England households, in which status they would remain until their deaths. The largest group, perhaps as many as 1,000, were placed under the control of Uncas and the Mohegan. The additional fighting force provided by these Pequot warriors would make the Mohegan, upon their defeat of the Narragansett in 1644, the most powerful tribe in southern New England.

October 12, about 9AM: A relatively minor incident occurred on Noddle’s Island in Boston Harbor, land which is now part of East Boston. John Josselyn, a guest of “Mr. Samuel Maverick, the only hospitable man (as he says) in all the country, giving entertainment to all comers gratis,” has filed the following incident report: The second of October about 9 of the clock in the morning Mr. Maverick’s negro came to my chamber window, and in her own Countrey language and tune sung very loud and shrill. Going out to her she used a great deal of respect towards me, and willingly would have expressed her grief in English, but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved to intreat him on her behalf for that I understood before that she had been a Queen in her own Countrey, and observed a very dutiful garb used toward her by another Negro who was her main. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed

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of Negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield by persuasion to company with a Negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, will’d she, nill’d she, to go to bed with her, but she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief.

The story ends at this point. We have never learned this defenseless woman’s name, or whether her rape and impregnation was eventually accomplished. We do know that, queen in her own country or not, Mr. Maverick had the local law entirely on his side. We know that, even if he had had that young man hold his “Negro woman” down while he did the filthy deed himself, the law of the Bay colony would still have been entirely at his command. Since he owned her he owned, also, her usufruct (this is not a dirty word but is the actual legal term — one still in use in Massachusetts, and elsewhere, in the grand old U S of A).

Notice carefully, how utterly alone this woman remained. Mr. Josselyn was not going to be the white knight who rode to her rescue — he was not, for instance, going to help her steal away and take her back to England with him and there situate her in some tolerable domestic-service situation. He was going to leave her as a slave to the tender mercies of her white owner, and go back to England and relate the story of the tragedy of her black life as a salacious tidbit.

Notice carefully, also, that although this situation involved few people and although it is still quite early in America’s history, we have already here the key element of a servile insurrection, to wit, that no proportionate response or protest would be of any avail, that the only responses that might be effective would of necessity be disproportionate (such as the poisoning of this family, the torching of the house) and would inevitably produce the most extreme retribution.

1639

Captain William Pierce made the first voyage from Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to carry enslaved native Americans to the West Indies and trade them there for black slaves to bring back to the continent. (Was this William Pierce an ancestor perhaps of President Franklin Pierce?)

Servile insurrection in the French part of St. Kitts.

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1640

The current population of the Boston peninsula was 1,200 (but we don’t know whether this round number included or excluded Hugh Bewett, the man banished in this year “for maintaining that he was free from original sin”). One account has it that the arrival of the “first shipload of black slaves to the Bay Colony,” brought by a Captain Smith, met with an ignominious greeting in this year, in that the General Court of Massachusetts demanded that these blacks be returned to from whence they had been brought.54 However, according to the section on “Colonial Statistics” of the 1960 edition of Historical Statistics of the United States, Z 1-20, page 756, the Bay Colony already had a “Negro” population of 150, every one of whom had arrived since 1630. By this account, Massachusetts had a number of blacks equal in number to those of Virginia, and the demographic ratio between whites and blacks also was about the same as that of Virginia. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The early Biblical codes of Massachusetts confined slavery to “lawfull Captives taken in iust warres, & such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us.”55 The stern Puritanism of early days endeavored to carry this out literally, and consequently when a certain Captain Smith, about 1640, attacked an African village and brought some of the unoffending natives home, he was promptly arrested. Eventually, the General Court ordered the Negroes sent home at the colony’s expense, “conceiving themselues bound by ye first oportunity to bear witnes against ye haynos & crying sinn of manstealing, as also to P’scribe such timely redresse for what is past, & such a law for ye future as may sufficiently deterr all othrs belonging to us to have to do in such vile & most odious courses, iustly abhored of all good & iust men.”56 The temptation of trade slowly forced the colony from this high moral ground. New England ships were early found in the West Indian slave-trade, and the more the carrying trade developed, the more did the profits of this branch of it attract Puritan captains. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the slave- trade was openly recognized as legitimate commerce; cargoes came regularly to Boston, and “The merchants of Boston quoted negroes, like any other merchandise demanded by their correspondents.”57 At the same time, the Puritan conscience began to rebel against the growth of actual slavery on New England soil. It was a much less violent wrenching of moral ideas of right and wrong to allow Massachusetts men to carry slaves to South Carolina than to allow cargoes to come into Boston, and become slaves in Massachusetts. Early in the eighteenth century, therefore, opposition arose to the further importation of Negroes, and in 1705 an act “for the Better Preventing of a Spurious and Mixt Issue,” laid a restrictive duty of £4 on all slaves imported.58 One provision of this act plainly illustrates

54. A few years later this ruling would be overthrown and there would be no limit, except of course the limit of finances, to the number of black slaves a white Bostonian could own. 55. Cf. THE BODY OF LIBERTIES, § 91, in Whitmore, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LAWS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY, published at Boston in 1890. 56. MASSACHUSETTS COLONIAL RECORD, II. 168, 176; III. 46, 49, 84. 57. Weeden, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND, II. 456. 58. MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCE LAWS, 1705-6, ch. 10. 84 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the attitude of Massachusetts: like the acts of many of the New England colonies, it allowed a rebate of the whole duty on re- exportation. The harbors of New England were thus offered as a free exchange-mart for slavers. All the duty acts of the Southern and Middle colonies allowed a rebate of one-half or three-fourths of the duty on the re-exportation of the slave, thus laying a small tax on even temporary importation. The Act of 1705 was evaded, but it was not amended until 1728, when the penalty for evasion was raised to £100.59 The act remained in force, except possibly for one period of four years, until 1749. Meantime the movement against importation grew. A bill “for preventing the Importation of Slaves into this Province” was introduced in the Legislature in 1767, but after strong opposition and disagreement between House and Council it was dropped.60 In 1771 the struggle was renewed. A similar bill passed, but was vetoed by Governor Hutchinson.61 The imminent war and the discussions incident to it had now more and more aroused public opinion, and there were repeated attempts to gain executive consent to a prohibitory law. In 1774 such a bill was twice passed, but never received assent.62 The new Revolutionary government first met the subject in the case of two Negroes captured on the high seas, who were advertised for sale at Salem. A resolution was introduced into the Legislature, directing the release of the Negroes, and declaring “That the selling and enslaving the human species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike vested in all men by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent with the avowed principles on which this, and the other United States, have carried their struggle for liberty even to the last appeal.” To this the Council would not consent; and the resolution, as finally passed, merely forbade the sale or ill-treatment of the Negroes.63 Committees on the slavery question were appointed in 1776 and 1777,64 and although a letter to Congress on the matter, and a bill for the abolition of slavery were reported, no decisive action was taken. All such efforts were finally discontinued, as the system was already practically extinct in Massachusetts and the custom of importation had nearly ceased. Slavery was eventually declared by judicial decision to have been abolished.65 The first step

59. MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCE LAWS, 1728-9, ch. 16; 1738-9, ch. 27. 60. For petitions of towns, cf. Felt, ANNALS OF SALEM (1849), II. 416; BOSTON TOWN RECORDS, 1758-69, page 183. Cf. also Otis’s anti-slavery speech in 1761; John Adams, WORKS, X. 315. For proceedings, see HOUSE JOURNAL, 1767, pages 353, 358, 387, 390, 393, 408, 409-10, 411, 420. Cf. Samuel Dexter’s answer to Dr. Belknap’s inquiry, Feb. 23, 1795, in Deane (MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLL., 5th Ser., III. 385). A committee on slave importation was appointed in 1764. Cf. HOUSE JOURNAL, 1763-64, page 170. 61. HOUSE JOURNAL, 1771, pages 211, 215, 219, 228, 234, 236, 240, 242-3; Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 131-2. 62. Felt, ANNALS OF SALEM (1849), II. 416-7; Swan, DISSUASION TO GREAT BRITAIN, etc. (1773), page x; Washburn, HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF LEICESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, pages 442-3; Freeman, HISTORY OF CAPE COD, II. 114; Deane, in MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLL., 5th Ser., III. 432; Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 135-40; Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 234-6; HOUSE JOURNAL, March, 1774, pages 224, 226, 237, etc.; June, 1774, pages 27, 41, etc. For a copy of the bill, see Moore. 63. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY PROCEEDINGS, 1855-58, page 196; Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 5th Ser., II. 769; HOUSE JOURNAL, 1776, pages 105-9; GENERAL COURT RECORDS, March 13, 1776, etc., pages 581-9; Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 149-54. Cf. Moore, pages 163-76. 64. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 148-9, 181-5. 65. Washburn, EXTINCTION OF SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS; Haynes, STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS; La Rochefoucauld, TRAVELS THROUGH THE UNITED STATES, II. 166. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 85 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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toward stopping the participation of Massachusetts citizens in the slave-trade outside the State was taken in 1785, when a committee of inquiry was appointed by the Legislature.66 No act was, however, passed until 1788, when participation in the trade was prohibited, on pain of £50 forfeit for every slave and £200 for every ship engaged.67

The Dutch seized Malacca and took control of most spice production in the East.

The British West Indies had a population of 20,000, most of it employed in the growing of sugar cane. During this decade the plant would be being cultivated on the island of Barbados by mixed teams of white and black laborers.

Greenwich Village had been known to Native Americans as, among other variants of the term, Sapponckanican — “tobacco fields,” or “land where the tobacco grows.” Nieuw Amsterdam’s Gov. Wouter Van Twiller had in 1629 appropriated a farm belonging to the Dutch West India Company in the Bossen Bouwery (“Farm in the woods”) area of Manhattan island, and there he had begun growing tobacco. The first Dutch references to the name Sapponckanican appear around this year.

In this year, also, a Dutch church was erected inside the stockade.

1641

Richard Bellingham became the governor of Massachusetts.

In this year in which the Bay Psalm Book was being published, the Bay Colony enacted a trendsetting document entitled BODY OF LIBERTIES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY IN NEW-ENGLAND, a document created by Nathaniel Ward which made it possible for all free white male adults of the colony, freemen or not, to attend town meetings but, surprisingly, amounted not to human freedom but instead to the 1st positive legislation establishing human enslavement in America — by recognizing its existence as a substantial fact and by codifying that fact within the legal system: its “Body of Liberties,” so called, legally sanctioned the enslavement of “lawfull Captives in just Warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.” “Liberties of Forreiners & Strangers”: 91. “There shall never 66. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 225. 67. PERPETUAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-89, page 235. The number of slaves in Massachusetts has been estimated as follows: — In 1676, 200. Randolph’s REPORT, in HUTCHINSON’S COLL. OF PAPERS, page 485. “ 1680, 120. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1708, 550. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY; Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 50. “ 1720, 2,000. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 50 “ 1735, 2,600. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1749, 3,000. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1754, 4,489. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1763, 5,000. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1764-5, 5,779. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1776, 5,249. Deane, CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH SLAVERY, page 28 ff. “ 1784, 4,377. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 51. “ 1786, 4,371. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 51 “ 1790, 6,001. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 51 86 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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be any bond slaverie villinage or Captivitie amongst vs, unles it be lawfull Captives taken in iust warres, & such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And those shall have all the liberties & Christian usages wch ye law of god established in Jsraell concerning such psons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be Judged there to by Authoritie.”68 “Capitall Laws”: 10. “If any man stealeth a man or mankinde, he shall surely be put to death” (marginal reference, Exodus xxi. 16). Re-enacted in the codes of 1649, 1660, and 1672. Whitmore, REPRINT OF COLONIAL LAWS OF 1660, etc. (1889), pp. 52, 54, 71-117.

There is a category of words known as “Janus words,” words which mean both a thing and its opposite. A Janus-faced word is a contronym, a word like “cleave” that has two opposing meanings. You can call them fence-sitters, because these words sit on the fence, ready to say a thing or its opposite. They are autoantonyms, antagonyms, contronyms, enantiodromics, amphibolous words, or Janus words. To cleave, is it to join unto or is it to divide? To ravel is to what, to tangle or to disentangle? When we sanction a project, do we allow it or prohibit it? Are we going to be commended for our oversight (watchful care) or reprimanded for an oversight (error or omission)? Easy examples of such Janus words or contronyms are: • Clip, which means both “to attach” and “to separate” • Inoculate, which means both “to protect against” and “to infect with” • Cull, which means both “to select” and “to reject” • Alight, which means both “to settle onto” and “to dismount from” • Went off, which means both “to start” and “to stop” (the alarm ~ when the light ~) • Fix, which means both “a solution” and “a problem” (also fixed) • Screen, which means both “to display” (~ a movie) and “to hide” (~ his view) • Protest, which means both “to object” and “to affirm” (also, protestations) • Cork, which means both “to take out” and “to insert” a cork from a bottle • Trim, which means both “to remove from” (~ the tree) and “to add to” (~ the Christmas tree) • Enjoin, which means both “to direct” and “to forbid” • Dust, which means both “to remove from” (~ the table) and “to add to” (~ the cake) • Clip, which means both “to partition” (~ the paper) and “to join” (~ the papers) • Secrete, which means both “to give off” and “to conceal” • Rent, which means both “to grant possession in exchange for rent” and “to take and hold under an agreement to pay rent” • Can, which means both “to save” (~ the peaches) and “to discard” (~ the worker) • Settle, which means both “to move” (the pile ~d) and “to stop moving” (we ~d in) • Flesh, which means both “to add substance (~ out)” to and “to clean a hide of flesh” • Seed, which means both “to put seeds in” and “to take seeds out” • Garnish, which means both “to add something to” or “to take away from (a form of ~ee)” • Root, which means both “to get something to take root” or “to pull up (root out)” • Joint, which means both “to combine or attach with a joint” and “to separate (esp. meat) at a joint” • Snap, which means both “to break into pieces” and “to fasten together” • Tube, which means both “to insert a tube in” and “to enclose in a tube” • Reel, which means both “to wind onto” and “to let out from” • Lease, which means both “to pay for use” and “to be paid for use” • Water, which means both “to pour water out” and “to take on water” • Wear, which means both “to last under use” and “to erode under use” 68. This enabling of human servitude has, perversely, by some, been interpreted as a ban on it. Thus one can find on the internet such strange assertions as: “1641 >> In its ‘Body of Liberties,’ Massachusetts outlaws slavery.”) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 87 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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• Weather, which means both “to disintegrate or wear” and “to come through safely, survive” • Crop, which means both “to plant or grow” and “to cut or harvest”

Now I’m going to say something that is merely etymological. The name of the Roman deity Janus comes from the Latin ianua, an entrance gate. Janus was the deity having to do with doorways and gateways. Since one may pass through a door in either direction, Janus came to represent both the past and the future. His image was of a man with two faces, able to look forward and backward.

But now I’m going to say something important. In our American life, the word “liberty” is our most significant such “Janus word.” Liberty has been created out of our ability to prevent other people who are more powerful than us from abusing us and liberty also has been created out of our ability to abuse others who are less powerful than us — you won’t understand much of our national trajectory until you stare this in the face as a fact. For instance, no way are you going to be able to understand this BODY OF LIBERTIES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY IN NEW-ENGLAND document, and the manner in which it proclaimed liberties by establishing human enslavement, without your coming to grips with this as a fact.

(So much for the claim “Bastion of our Liberties”! It would not be until 1659 that another colony, Connecticut, would follow the lead of Massachusetts and sanction human enslavement. –Later, however, Massachusetts politicians and historians would be discovered attempting to allege, quite egregiously, that slavery had been forced upon unwilling white colonists by the mother country — until they would be forced by this incontrovertible documentary evidence to withdraw from any and all such assertions. Albeit this code had included a rider forbidding the capture of slaves by “unjust violence,” Massachusetts, that society taking such inordinate pride in having been “the cradle of our liberties,” actually had been the 1st of the English colonies, a trendsetter, not in the proclamation of human freedom but in the providing of legal recognition and accredited status to human enslavement.)69

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“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7 In a perhaps somewhat related enactment, despite the fact that adultery was in England being punished at this time with a small fine, Boston prescribed that its penalty for adultery was to be death on the gallows.

1642

Upon the outbreak of civil war, Oliver Cromwell joined the Parliamentary force serving under Edward Montagu, Duke of Manchester in opposition to Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers. |Transportation and sale of convicts and prisoners of war would, during the English Civil War from 1642 to 1649, become a major branch of the slave trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

April 3: New Netherlands enacted a 10% duty on certain imports and exports such as slaves: “Ordinance of the Director and Council of New Netherland, imposing certain Import and Export Duties.” O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND (1868), page 31. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

69. In a related development, quite recently, at the beginning of the year 2000, as my spouse and I were emigrating from California to Rhode Island, a controversy was arising in that state over its official long name, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The demand was being made that the word “Plantations” be deleted from the official long name of the smallest state, because this is a word reeking of human enslavement. Defenders of the state name, in the ProJo (the Providence Journal), denied that “plantation” was a tainted word reeking of slavery, and alleged that the word merely designated that innocent plants had been being innocently planted into the innocent ground. Husbandry, inoffensive husbandry! The ProJo editorialized that what slavery had existed in the “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” colony had been rather benign, and of small scale, and of short duration — in other words, politically correct. The unfortunate fact, however, is that there once were more slaves in “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” than in the rest of New England, put together, and that the term “Plantations” in the state name in fact did mean precisely the use of enslaved labor to perform tasks of husbandry — primarily not the planting of plants but the tending of sheep and of cows. When this sorry fact was pointed out to the ProJo, what resulted was further editorial obfuscation. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 89 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At Québec, Father Jean de Brébeuf was entrusted with the care of the native Americans at the reservation at Sillery.

Another Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, was captured in an ambush. After being kept around as a slave for some time in an Iroquois village, he would be tortured and murdered and in 1646 his head would be impaled on the village’s palisade. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the martyred Metacom, we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime against a white man, in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs.

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The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the torture of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable memento mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because this native religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as an authentic martyr — but because he utterly flunks our test of skin color. No proper commemorative plaque marks the spot in Salem at which that red martyr’s head was impaled. MARTYRDOM THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS

After Fathers Isaac Jogues and Bressani had been captured during effort to reach the Huron country, Father Jean de Brébeuf was appointed to make a 3d attempt. He succeeded. With him on this journey were Fathers Noel Chabanel and Garreau, both of whom would afterward be murdered. They reached St. Mary’s on the Wye, which was the central station of the Huron Mission.

December 1: From the CAPITALL LAWS (PUBLIC RECORDS OF THE COLONY OF CONNECTICUT, Volume 1, re-enacted in Ludlow’s code of 1650. COLONIAL RECORDS, I. 77), the first law protecting human enslavement in Connecticut: If a man stealeth a man or mankind, he shall be put to death.70

70. Note well: This was not a law against human enslavement but a law protecting the enslavement of human beings. It was against the freeing or taking of someone else’s slaves (a criminal trade known to the ancient Romans as being a “plagiarist,” and as we can see here it was considered as at about the same level as being a damned horsethief). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 91 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1643

May 19: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Plymouth, and the short-term New Haven colony allied together as the United Colonies of New England.

READ THE FULL TEXT In order to present a united front against the red natives of the continent, and so “that as in nation and religion, so in other respects we may be and continue one,” the white ethnics of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven entered into a confederation from which certain white ethnics were being deliberately excluded. Rhode Island would need to solicit the protection of the Monarch, and so it would be that during the spring of this year Roger William would set sail from New-York harbor for England. When Williams would arrive in London, however, he would find the mother country to be in the throes of civil war. Instead of treating with the King of England, he would need to treat with a recently constituted parliamentary committee on Foreign Plantations. READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

During this year or the next, the name of Aquidneck Island would be changed to “the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island.”

By agreement of the members of this United Colonies of New England confederation, the only evidence needed for conviction of one of their runaway slaves would be “certification by a magistrate.”

Samuell Gorton founded Shawomet, Rhode Island’s 4th settlement. The town would be renamed Warwick a

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few years later in honor of its patron, the Earl of Warwick.

READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

1644

February 25: As the English settlers in this year took control of the government of the Nieu Netherlands colony, fully one out of five of that colony’s population was black: there were 300 black slaves and 15 free blacks. The English were going to prove themselves more “masterful” than the Dutch ever had been, and on this day they granted a sort of conditional manumission to a number of those slaves, including Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese, who had labored for the West India company for more than 18 years. These 11 black men were freed to live in the vicinity of what has now become Greenwich Village, on condition of a bond payable in labor (since their children remained enslaved, this indebtedness had to have been considered by the white people to have been “adequately secured”).

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1645

Captain James Smith of the Rainbowe brought two Africans from the Guinea Coast to Boston. The slaves were forfeited and returned (MASSACHUSETTS COLONIAL RECORDS, II. 115, 129, 136, 168, 176; III. 13, 46, 49, 58, 84). RACE SLAVERY SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS

Barbados was holding 6,000 as slaves.

1646

By this date an astounding total of 140 university graduates had emigrated from England to New England. Most of these had been Cambridge men of one college or another, and 35, or one in four, had graduated from one specific school in Cambridge: Emanuel College. One way to explain the settling of the English in the Bay Colony would be as a conspiracy among the Emanuel old boys. We need not wonder that they named their new college community on the bank of the Charles in New England after a town on the bank of the Cam in England: Cambridge. And, of course, the Reverend John Harvard was, despite dying young, one of these Emanuel “old boys.” Boston in fact had during this period one of the highest per capita concentrations of university degrees to be found anywhere on this sorry planet.

In a later timeframe, the Reverend William Hubbard would have his own imitable comments on this “lustre of years” in the history of New England.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

READ HUBBARD TEXT Chapter XLV. The general affairs of New England, from 1641 to 1646. Chapter XLVI. Various occurrents in New England, from 1641 to 1646.

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Chapter XLVII. Troubles occasioned to the Massachusetts inhabitants by one Samuel Gorton, and his company, all of them notorious Familists. Chapter XLVIII. Ecclesiastical affairs in New England, from the year 1641 to 1646. Chapter XLIX. Memorable accidents in New England, from 1641 to 1646. Chapter L. The Colonies of Connecticut and New Haven disturbed by the Dutch at Manhatoes, and the Swedes at Delaware Bay, during this lustre, from 1641 to 1645. Chapter LI. Conspiracies of the Indians against the English in New England discovered and prevented; from the year 1641 to 1646. Chapter LII. The Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; the grounds and reasons leading thereunto, with the Articles agreed upon for that end. Chapter LIII. Ships seized in the harbors of the Massachusetts, by pretended commissions of the Admiralty in England, in the year 1644. Chapter LIV. Transactions between the Massachusetts and some of the Governors of the French Plantations in Acady, from the year 1641 to 1646. Chapter LV. The general affairs of New England, from the year 1646 to 1651. Chapter LVI. Various occurrents in New England, from 1646 to 1651. Chapter LVII. Memorable accidents in New England, from the year 1646 to 1651. Chapter LVIII. Ecclesiastical affairs in New England, (rom the year 1646 to 1651.

A Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, who had been captured in 1642 in an ambush, who had been being held by the Iroquois as a slave, was at this point tortured and murdered, and his head was impaled on the palisade of the village. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the martyred Metacom, we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime against a white man, in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs. The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the torture of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable memento mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because this native religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as an authentic martyr — but because he utterly flunks our primary test, which is that of skin color. MARTYRDOM THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS

Sir Thomas Browne wrote against the slave trade in PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA, OR VULGAR ERRORS.

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May: Arrival, from Brazil, of the 1st cargo of slaves to be sold in New Amsterdam.71

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

November 4: James Smith, a member of Boston church, had brought home two blacks as slaves from the coast of Guinea, where he had helped kill almost a hundred more. He was required to send these two blacks back home at his own expense. The General Court conceiving themselves bound by the 71. This is an illustration by Howard Pyle (1853-1911) for an article “The New York Slave-Traders” that would appear in the Harpers New Monthly Magazine for January 1895 (pages 293-303). Its caption “the choicest pieces of her cargo were sold at auction...” was taken from the article. 96 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is past and such a law for the future, as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter with others unlawfully taken, be by the first opportunity at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country (Guinea) and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof desiring our honored Governor would please put this order in execution. Some historical sources allege that in response to this enslaving of black Africans, the General Court of Massachusetts made a “Declaration against Man-Stealing.” However, when we take a closer look at this “Declaration against Man-Stealing,” we find that it was not directed against the enslaving of free Blacks, but was directed instead in the opposite direction, against the freeing of enslaved Blacks. It was merely Massachusetts’s version of the law that had been enacted on December 1, 1642 in Connecticut. These were laws that protected, in Connecticut and then in Massachusetts, the white slavemasters from being deprived of their black human property.

Also on this day some penalties were established. For failing to attend a church service, the penalty was to be five shillings. For persistently refusing to believe that the Bible was the Word of God, the penalty was to be death.

1647

Just when and how the economic logic of slave ownership took shape is a fascinating question. One wonders what analogies slave owners used as they considered the implications of owning female slaves AND the offspring of these females. Clearly, this logic was different from that entailed by servitude, for in general the masters of servants in early America struggled not to get them to reproduce themselves but instead to prevent them from engaging in any sexual relations (with each other, at least). In general they did not want their female servants either to marry or to get pregnant, because either of these would of course diminish the amount of labor the master could extract from the distracted servant. The most obvious analogy is between the ownership of black slaves and the ownership of ordinary livestock. As early as the 1640s, Virginia planters were selling and bequeathing female “Negroes” using language that resembled the wording of similar deeds for the transfer of livestock. In a document dating to this year in the county court records of Northampton County VA, a slavemaster, Stephen Charlton, gave to one of his daughters some livestock and “a Negro girle named Sisley aged about foure or five yeares, to injoye them and their increase both male & female for ever.” The word “them” in this document clearly referred not only to the bequested livestock but also to the bequested “Negro girle.” His daughter was to “injoye” not only the “Negro girle” Sisley but also Sisley’s “increase both male & female for ever.” This of course is fifteen years before a statute, in 1662, would direct that the status of the child followed that of the mother — Virginia planter slavemasters already had were acting as if there were no question whatsoever about this. The handling of human slaves clearly was quite a bit more delicate than the handling of livestock. One should resist any temptation to equate slave reproduction with the breeding of farm animals. Discussion of the “breeding” issue tends sometimes to be one-dimensional. What is missing is the slaves’ perspective, or more

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precisely their actions and choices with respect to reproduction. If they had children, and they did, surely it was not solely because owners wished to produce new laborers. Female and male slaves, like other humans, desired to have sexual relations, desired to have children, desired to form families, and they did so, albeit within a system that imposed constraints that were often horrific. For instance, who among us is going to fault Sally Hemings for forming the ignoble alliance which she formed with a well endowed white man? She was bred, but not exactly like a farm animal. Perhaps she would have preferred to marry someone, had more alternatives been available to her. Perhaps she would have appreciated it if Jefferson had at some point after fucking her, after producing children in her, set her free, something which he never would get around to doing, even at his death. We can trust, however, that this breeding relationship was something more complicated than a white rape of a black woman.

October 28: At the remarkable Putney debates, lower ranking soldiers would be allowed to debate political principles with their generals Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

Colonel Rainsborough attempted to make a case that there was no basis for excluding poor men from voting, because without having a voice in the making of laws one is not obliged to comply with those laws:72

...for really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.

The Leveler constitution was drawn up to be presented and agreed to by the people, and was distributed in pamphlet form as AN AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. Two variations of this would be produced in subsequent years. The proposed constitution aimed to control government by dispersing power among separated executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The House of Lords was to be abolished. Certain individual rights were to be protected from government infringement by constitutional guarantee. The obvious parallel here is with the American revolutionaries, who would enshrine their concept of natural rights in a constitution which was aimed at causing government to struggle within itself:

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AN AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE FOR A firme and present Peace, upon grounds of common-right and freedome; As it was proposed by the Agents of the five regiments of Horse; and since by the general approbation of the Army, offered to the joynt concurrence of all the free COMMONS of ENGLAND. The Names of the Regiments which have already appeared for the Case, of The Case of the Army truly stated, and for this present Agreement, VIZ. Of Horse. • 1. Gen. Regiment. • 2. Life-Guard • 3. Lieut. Gen. Regiment • 4. Com. Gen. Regiment. • 5. Col. Whaleyes Reg. • 6. Col. Riches Reg. • 7. Col. Fleetwoods Reg. • 8. Col. Harrisons Reg. • 9. Col. Twisldens Reg. Of Foot. • 1. Gen. Regiment. • 2. Col. Sir Hardresse Wallers Reg. • 3. Col. Lamberts Reg. • 4. Col. Rainsboroughs Regiment. • 5. Col. Overtons Reg. • 6. Col. Lilburns Reg. • 7. Col. Backsters Reg. • Printed Anno. Dom. 1647. Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned our cause, as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands: We do now hold our selves bound in mutual duty to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition, and chargable remedy of another war: for as it cannot be imagined that so many of our countrymen would have opposed us in this

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quarrel, if they had understood their own good; so may we safely promise to ourselves, that when our Common Rights and liberties shall be cleared, their endeavors will be disappointed, that seek to make themselves our Masters: since therefore our former oppressions, and scarce yet ended troubles have been occasioned, either by want of frequent National meetings in Council, or by rendering those meetings ineffectual; We are fully agreed and resolved, to provide that hereafter our Representatives be neither left to an uncertainly for the time, nor made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto we declare: • I. That the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs, for the election of their deputies in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned, according to the number of the inhabitants; the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present Parliament.73 • II. That to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the long continuance of the same persons in authority, this present Parliament be dissolved upon the last day of September, which shall be in the year of our Lord 1648. • III. That the people do of course choose themselves a Parliament once in two years, viz., upon the first Thursday in every second March, after the manner as shall be prescribed before the end of this Parliament, to begin to sit upon the first Thursday in April following, at Westminster, or such other place as shall be appointed from time to time by the preceding Representatives, and to continue till the last day of September then next ensuing, and no longer. • IV. That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this nation is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons,74 to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws; to the erecting and abolishing of Offices and Courts; to the appointing, removing, and calling to account Magistrates and officers of all degrees; to the making War and peace; to the treating with foreign States; and generally to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves.75

Which are as followeth: • 1. That matters of Religion, and the ways of God’s Worship, are not at all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot remit or exceed a tittle of what our Consciences dictate to be the mind of God, without willful sin; nevertheless the public way of instructing the Nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to their discretion. • 2. That the matter of impressing and constraining any of us to serve in the wars is against our freedom, and therefore we do not allow it in our Representatives; the rather, because money (the 73. This document served as the focus for debates held in Putney Common between top officers of the New Model Army, known as “Grandees,” and representatives chosen by the regiments, known as “agitators.” There is no official record of the conclusion of these debates, but the following was reported in A Letter from Several Agitators to the Regiments:

We sent some of them to debate in love the matter and manner of the Agreement. And the first article thereof, being long debated, it was concluded by vote in the affirmative:- Viz., That all soldiers and others, if not servants or beggars, ought to have their voices in electing those which shall represent them in Parliament, although they have not forty shillings per annum in freehold land. And there were but three voices against this your native freedom.

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sinews of war) being always at their disposal, they can never want numbers of men apt enough to engage in any just cause. • 3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to the late public differences, otherwise than in execution of the judgments of the present Representatives, or House of Commons.76 • 4. That in all Laws made, or to be made, every person may be bound alike,77 and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place, do confer any exemption from the ordinary course of legal proceedings, whereunto others are subjected. • 5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.78 These things we declare to be our native Rights, and therefore are agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities against all opposition whatsoever, being compelled thereunto not only by the examples of our Ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of their Freedoms, suffering themselves, through fraudulent accommodations, to be still deluded of the fruit of their victories, but also by our own woeful experience, who, having long expected, and dearly earned, the establishment of these certain rules of government, are yet made to depend for the settlement of our Peace and Freedom upon him that intended our bondage79 and brought a cruel war upon us. Dear Country-men, and fellow-Commoners, For your sakes, our friends, estates and lives have not been dear to us; for your safety and freedom we have cheerfully endured hard Labours and run most desperate hazards, and in comparison to your peace and freedom we neither do nor ever shall value our dearest blood and we profess, our bowels are and have been troubled, and our hearts pained within us, in seeing and considering that you have been so long bereaved of these fruits and ends of all our labours and hazards, we cannot but sympathize with you in your miseries and oppressions. Its grief and vexation of heart to us, to receive your meat or monies, while you have no advantage, nor yet the foundations of

75. The ninth and tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution derive directly from this last clause:

IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. “the late public differences”

The first civil war was fought from 1642 to 1646. In 1629, King Charles I had dissolved Parliament, and for eleven years tried to rule on his own authority, to raise taxes, etc. On the occasion of a war on Scotland, he finally felt obliged to recall Parliament, but when they convened they took him to task for his abuses of power. By 1642, the two sides were mustering their own armies, and the war followed. 76. This is a demand for amnesty for what the soldiers may have done while fighting for Parliament in the civil war, and in the confrontation between the Army and Parliament in the spring and summer of 1647. 77. “every person may be bound alike” The essential break with remnants of feudalism, this places the levelling principle on the political agenda for evermore. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 101 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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your peace and freedom surely laid: and therefore upon most serious considerations, that your principal right most essential to your well being is the clearness, certainty, sufficiency and freedom of your power in your representatives in Parliament, and considering that the original of most of your oppressions & miseries has been either from the obscurity and doubtfulness of the power you have committed to your representatives in your elections, or from the want of courage in those whom you have entrusted to claim and exercise their power, which might probably proceed from their uncertainty of your assistance and maintenance of their power, and minding that for this right of yours and ours we engaged our lives; for the King raised the war against you and your Parliament, upon this ground, that he would not suffer your representatives to provide for your peace, safety and freedom that were then in danger, by disposing of the Militia and otherwise, according to their trust; and for the maintenance and defense of that power and right of yours, we hazarded all that was dear to us, and God has borne witness to the justice of our Cause. And further minding that the only effectual means to settle a just and lasting peace, to obtain remedy for all your grievances, & to prevent future oppressions, is the making clear & secure the power that you betrust to your representatives in Parliament, that they may know their trust, in the faithful execution whereof you will assist them. Upon all these grounds, we propound your joining with us in the agreement herewith sent unto you; that by virtue thereof, we may have Parliaments certainly called and have the time of their sitting and ending certain & their power or trust clear and unquestionable, that hereafter they may remove your burdens, & secure your rights, without oppositions or obstructions, & that the foundations of your peace may be so free from uncertainty, that there may be no grounds for future quarrels, or contentions to occasion war and bloodshed; and we desire you would consider, that as these things wherein we offer to agree with you, are the fruits & ends of the Victories which God has given us: so the settlement of these are the most absolute means to preserve you and your Posterity, from slavery, oppression, distraction, & trouble; by this, those whom your selves shall choose, shall have power to restore you to, and secure you in, all your rights; & they shall 78. Compare the sense of this clause with that of the preface to the Constitution:

We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

79. “him that intended our bondage” — refers to King Charles I, who the soldiers believed had forced the war upon Parliament and so upon everyone who had taken up the Parliamentary cause. Soon after the debates in Putney Common, even while the Agreement was being published, the king escaped from house arrest (or was secretly released), which created a crisis atmosphere in which the Levellers were unable to push the Agreement any further. Charles rallied royalist supporters and, this time in alliance with the Scots, fought a second round of civil war, but was again defeated. He was then tried by Parliament and executed, for treason against the people of England. 102 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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be in a capacity to taste of subjection, as well as rule, & so shall be equally concerned with your selves, in all they do. For they must equally suffer with you under any common burdens, & partake with you in any freedoms; & by this they shall be disenabled to defraud or wrong you, when the laws shall bind all alike, without privilege or exemption; & by this your Consciences shall be free from tyranny & oppression, & those occasions of endless strife, & bloody wars, shall be perfectly removed: without controversy by your joining with us in this Agreement, all your particular & common grievances will be redressed forthwith without delay; the Parliament must them make your relief and common good their only study. Now because we are earnestly desirous of the peace and good of all our Country-men, even of those that have opposed us, and would to our utmost possibility provide for perfect peace and freedom, & prevent all suits, debates, & contentions that may happen amongst you, in relation to the late war: we have therefore inserted it into this Agreement, that no person shall be questioned for anything done, in relation to the late public differences, after the dissolution of this present Parliament, further than in execution of their judgement; that thereby all may be secure from all sufferings for what they have done, & not liable hereafter to be troubled or punished by the judgment of another Parliament, which may be to their ruin, unless this Agreement be joined in, whereby any acts of indemnity or oblivion shall be made unalterable, and you and your posterities be secure. But if any shall enquire why we should desire to join in an Agreement with the people, to declare these to be our native Rights, & not rather petition to the Parliament for them; the reason is evident: No Act of Parliament is or can be inalterable, and so cannot be sufficient security to save you or us harmless, from what another Parliament may determine, if it should be corrupted; and besides Parliaments are to receive the extent of their power, and trust from those that betrust them; and therefore the people are to declare what their power and trust is, which is the intent of this Agreement; and it’s to be observed, that though there have formerly been many acts of Parliaments every year, yet you have been deprived of them, and enslaved through want of them, and therefore both necessity for your security in these freedoms, that are essential to your well-being, and woeful experience of the manifold miseries and distractions that have been lengthened out since the war ended, through want of such a settlement, requires this Agreement and when you and we shall be joined together therein, we shall readily join with you, to petition the Parliament, as they are our fellow Commoners equally concerned, to join with us. And if any shall inquire, Why we undertake to offer this Agreement, we must profess, we are sensible that you have been so often deceived with Declarations and Remonstrances, and fed with vain hopes that you have sufficient reason to abandon all confidence in any persons whatsoever, from whom you have no other security of their intending your freedom, than bare Declaration: And therefore, as our consciences witness, that in “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 103 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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simplicity and integrity of heart, we have proposed lately in the Case of the Army stated, your freedom and deliverance from slavery, oppression, and all burdens: so we desire to give you satisfying assurance thereof by this Agreement whereby the foundations of your freedoms provided in the Case, etc. shall be settled unalterably, & we shall as faithfully proceed to, and all other most vigorous actings for your good that God shall direct and enable us unto; And though the malice of our enemies, and such as they delude, would blast us by scandals, aspersing us with designs of Anarchy, and community; yet we hope the righteous God will not only by this our present desire of settling an equal just Government, but also by directing us unto all righteous undertakings, simply for public good, make our uprightness and faithfulness to the interest of all our Countrymen, shine forth so clearly, that malice itself shall be silenced and confounded. We question not, but the longing expectation of a firm peace, will incite you to the most speedy joining in this Agreement: in the prosecution whereof, or of anything that you shall desire for public good; you may be confident, you shall never want the assistance of Your most faithfull fellow-Commoners, now in Arms for your service. Edmond Bear Robert Everard Lieut. Gen. Regiment George Garret Thomas Beverley Com. Gen. Regiment William Pryor William Bryan Col. Fleetwood’s Regiment Matthew Weale William Russell Col. Whaley’s Regiment John Dover William Hudson Col. Rich’s Regiment Agents coming from other Regiments unto us, have subscribed the Agreement to be proposed to their respective Regiments, and you. For Our much honoured, and truly worthy Fellow-Commoners, and Soldiers, the Officers and Soldiers under Command of His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax. Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers; The deep sense of many dangers and mischiefs that may befall you in relation to the late War, whensoever this Parliament shall end, unless sufficient prevention be now provided, has

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constrained us to study the most absolute & certain means for your security; and upon most serious considerations, we judge that no Act of Indemnity can sufficiently provide for your quiet, ease, and safety; because, as it has formerly been, a corrupt Party (chosen into the next Parliament by your Enemy’s means) may possibly surprise the house, and make any Act of Indemnity null, seeing they cannot fail of the King’s Assistance and concurrence, in any such actings against you, that conquered him. And by the same means, your freedom from impressing also, may in a short time be taken from you, though for the present, it should be granted; we apprehend no other security, by which you shall be saved harmless, for what you have done in the late war, than a mutual Agreement between the people & you, that no person shall be questioned by any Authority whatsoever, for anything done in relation to the late public differences, after the dissolution of the present house of Commons, further than in execution of their judgement; and that your native freedom from constraint to serve in war, whether domestic or foreign, shall never be subject to the power of Parliaments, or any other; and for this end, we propound the Agreement that we herewith send to you, to be forthwith subscribed. And because we are confident, that in judgement and Conscience, you hazarded your lives for the settlement of such a just and equal Government, that you and your posterities, and all the freeborn people of this Nation might enjoy justice & freedom, and that you are really sensible that the distractions, oppressions, and miseries of the Nation, and your want of your Arrears, do proceed from the want of the establishment, both of such certain rules of just Government, and foundations of peace, as are the price of blood, and the expected fruits of all the peoples cost: Therefore in this Agreement we have inserted the certain Rules of equal Government, under which the Nation may enjoy all its Rights and Freedoms securely; And as we doubt not but your love to the freedom and lasting peace of the yet distracted Country will cause you to join together in this Agreement. So we question not: but every true English man that loves the peace and freedom of England will concur with us; and then your Arrears and constant pay (while you continue in Arms) will certainly be brought in out of the abundant love of the people to you. And then shall the mouths of those be stopped, that scandalize you and us, as endeavouring Anarchy, or to rule by the sword; & then will so firm a union be made between the people and you, that neither any homebred or foreign Enemies will dare to disturb our happy peace. We shall add no more but this, that the knowledge of your union in laying this foundation of peace, this Agreement, is much longed for, by Yours, and the People’s most faithful Servants. Postscript. GENTLEMEN.

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We desire you may understand the reason of our extracting some principles of common freedom out of those many things proposed to you in the Case truly stated, and drawing them up into the forme of an Agreement. It’s chiefly because for these things we first engaged against the King. He would not permit the people’s Representatives to provide for the Nation’s safety, by disposing of the Militian, and other ways, according to their Trust, but raised a War against them, and we engaged for the defence of that power, and right of the people, in their Representatives. Therefore these things in the Agreement, the people are to claim as their native right, and price of their blood, which you are obliged absolutely to procure for them. And these being the foundations of freedom, it’s necessary, that they should be settled unalterably, which can be by no means, but this Agreement with the people. And we cannot but mind you, that the ease of the people in all their Grievances, depends upon the settling those principles or rules of equal Government for a free people, & were but this Agreement established, doubtless all the Grievances of the Army and people would be redressed immediately, and all things propounded in your Case truly stated to be insisted on, would be forthwith granted. Then should the House of Commons have power to help the oppressed people, which they are now bereaved of by the chief Oppressors, and then they shall be equally concerned with you and all the people, in the settlement of the most perfect freedom: for they shall equally suffer with you under any Burdens, or partake in any Freedom. We shall only add, that the sum of all the Agreement which we herewith offer to you, is but in order to the fulfilling of our Declaration of June the 14. wherein we promised to the people, that we would with our lives vindicate and clear their right and power in their Parliaments. Edmond Bear Robert Everard Lieut. Gen. Reg. George Garret Thomas Beverley Com. Gen. Reg. William Pryor William Bryan Col. Fleetwood Reg. Matthew Wealey William Russell Col. Whaley Reg. John Dover William Hudson Col. Rich Reg. 106 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Agents coming from other Regiments unto us, have subscribed the Agreement, to be proposed to their respective Regiments and you.

1649

Servile insurrection on the island of Barbados. SERVILE INSURRECTION

In Scotland, any British subjects acquired the right to capture any vagrant, that is, any homeless person, and to sell him or her, or reduce him or her to personal servitude of unlimited duration. The sole obligation placed upon such a slavemaster was that all such slaves were to be provided with food and apparel. In the Edinburgh Review, the comment was made that “It is impossible to read this law in any other sense than as establishing a slave trade in Scotch vagrants, and throwing it open to the male inhabitants of the empire.”

William Withington took half a share in the vessel Beginning, which sailed from Rhode Island via Barbados to the Guinea coast of Africa, then back via Barbados and Antigua to Boston. What sort of cargo had this vessel conveyed from the Guinea coast to the West Indies islands? In the absence of records, we are obliged to suspect that it had been black slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave- trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.

(Over the following two centuries, about half the American participation in the international slave trade would be sailing out of the harbors of 1st Newport and then Bristol — order of magnitude, that’s about 1,000 out of about 2,000 middle passages.)

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In Virginia colony, there were at this point some 300 slaves. “William Watts and Mary (Mr. Cornelius Lloyds negro woman) are ordered each of them to doe penance by standing in a white sheete with a white Rodd in their hands in the Chapell of Elizabeth River in the face of the congregation on the next sabbath day that the minister shall make penince service and the said Watts to pay the court charges.” William and Mary had been caught doing the nasty to each other and they were not even of the same hue of skin — this also was a transgression of boundaries. There were at this point some 300 blacks such as this Mary, “Mr. Cornelius Lloyds negro woman,” in the Virginia colony. Were they lifetime hereditary slaves?

1650

By this decade some of the indentured servants in Virginia had earned their freedom. Because replacements, whether black or white, were in limited supply and costly, the Virginia plantation owners, who were growing rich on tobacco exports, considered the advantages of the “perpetual servitude” policy exercised by Caribbean landowners. Following the lead of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Virginia would legalize slavery in 1661. In 1672 the king of England would charter the Royal African Company to bring the shiploads of slaves into trading centers like Jamestown VA, Hampton, and Yorktown.

September 4: After Scotland opted to support Charles II it was invaded by the 16,000-man army of Oliver Cromwell, who had just made himself lord general of England. The small quay at Dunbar on the coast of Scotland having been damaged during a severe storm, Cromwell’s administrators had provided £300 towards building a new pier and a small harbor.

Cromwell had however been held up in Leith. For what would become known as the 2d battle of Dunbar, the forces of David Leslie had pushed Cromwell’s army back to Dunbar, and had almost starved the English to the point of surrender when on this day Covenanters among the Irish troops demanded that a spirited charge be made at the enemy from their stronghold on Doon Hill about three miles southeast of the town. The charge proved to be a sad mistake, resulting in 3,000 slain Scots and 10,000 Scottish prisoners at the cost of but 20 English dead. (At least some of these 10,000 prisoners would find themselves shipped off to the Massachusetts Bay colony as white slaves )

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Here is the painting of Oliver Cromwell leading the troops at Dunbar, by Gow:

At the Battle of Dunbar, Edward Whalley again distinguished himself. Colonel William Goffe commanded a regiment. In the battle, 3,000 Scots would be killed outright and 10,000 taken prisoner. Only 9,000 would escape. Of those taken prisoner a number were badly enough wounded that Cromwell did not consider them to represent any real future threat, and they were released. The balance of the prisoners would be force-marched to Durham, and 3,000 would survive this march to find themselves imprisoned in a cathedral. Half of these survivors would perish in the cathedral and the other half would be sent to the New World as slaves. (Most of these Scot warriors transported as slaves to the New World would slide beneath the surface of history without so much as a bubble, but one would become an ancestor of Rhode Island’s famous jumper, Sam Patch.) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1651

May 28: In the New England Historic and Genealogical Society book dated October 1847, typewritten at the top of page 378 is the heading “Scotch Prisoners sent to Massachusetts in 1652 by order of the English Government.” The following pages contain among other things an extract from a letter written by the Reverend John Cotton in Boston to the Lord General Oliver Cromwell, having to do with the 10,000 Scottish fighters who had surrendered at the second battle of Dunbar in 1650, and had been shipped off to the Bay Colony as white slaves: The Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof so were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and shyrur. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 years as we do our owne; and he that bought the most of them (I heare) buildeth houses for them, for every four a house, layeth some acres of ground thereto, which he gave them as their owner, requiring 3 dayes in the weeke to worke for him (by turnes) 4 days for them themselves, and promiseth, as soone as they can repay him the money he layed out for them, he will set them at liberty. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1652

The Parliamentary soldier William Edmundson rode into Derbyshire and married a young woman, to whom he had been contracted before. After some time he and his wife determined to relocate to Ireland, and got off the boat in the port of Dublin not long after the plague.

During this period, finally, through a negotiated agreement between Lord Protector Cromwell and King Charles I’s advocate, Lawrence Wilkinson was allowed to find refuge in Providence, Rhode Island. He and his wife Susanna Smith Wilkinson, daughter of Christopher Smith, would have sons Joseph Wilkinson, born on March 2, 1654, Samuel Wilkinson, and John Wilkinson, and daughters Susanna Wilkinson, born on March 9, 1652; Joanna Wilkinson, born on March 2, 1657, and Susanna Wilkinson (again), born during February 1662. (It would be, presumably, this youngest son John Wilkinson who would become a grandfather of Jemimah Wilkinson, the “Publik Universal Friend” of Rhode Island, and also an ancestor of Oziel Wilkinson the metal worker of Pawtucket.) WILKINSON FAMILY

At the culmination of the rebellion which had begun in 1641 in Ireland, after eleven years of intense hostilities, the island had been stripped and was “void as a wilderness.” The half of the people who had attempted to oppose Cromwell who were still alive were reduced to eating human flesh, when they were not consuming carrion. The victorious English colonists brought about the sale by drovers and other intermediaries of some

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35,000 to 40,000 defeated Irish warriors, to the armies of foreign powers. This “transplantation” was in all particulars an Irish slave trade “to Hell or Connaught” begun after the remaining Irish had been forced to move west of the River Shannon. By and large these men would be able to continue in the status of soldier, albeit by serving a foreign master in a foreign clime, except for some unfortunate number of the more intransigent ones, probably somewhat less than a thousand, who could not be trusted with their weapons but would instead need to be reduced as common laborers on the sugar-cane plantations of the West Indies.80 As all these thousands upon thousands of defeated warriors were being transshipped out of Irish ports, some 6,000 Irish Catholic priests, Irish Catholic women, and Irish Catholic boys were in addition sent along with them for free, in order to be disposed of them locally, without any separate record being maintained of these civilian auxiliaries. This Irish slave trade would not be brought to a completion until 1657.81 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared that “Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty pounds.”82 This law was for a time enforced,83 but by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of £3 on Negroes imported.84 This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.85 From the year 1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in America. Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she became the clearing- house for the trade of other colonies. Governor Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies.86 They took 80. As a footnote, a pointy reminder by Theodore W. Allen: “It is only a ‘white’ habit of mind that reserves ‘slave’ for the African- American and boggles at the term ‘Irish slave trade’.” 81. When the proposal was recently made by a black reverend in Providence, Rhode Island that we should now remove the word “plantation” from the official state name “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” on grounds that such a word honored the state’s history of human slavery, some white clown-in-denial wrote to the ProJo local newspaper and insisted that while indeed there had been slavery in Rhode Island, the local historical “slaves” (this clown, or the clowning newspaper editor of the clownish ProJo newspaper, had put the term inside scarequotes) had been merely white people such as the Irish warriors who had been indentured as slaves for a period of ten years. Nothing for us to be ashamed of, he trumpeted informedly! INDENTURE 82. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240. 83. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240. 84. The text of this act is lost (COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 34; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 31). The Acts of Rhode Island were not well preserved, the first being published in Boston in 1719. Perhaps other whole acts are lost. 85. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225. 86. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 111 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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out lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a slave voyage in between. From this, the trade grew. Samuel Hopkins, about 1770, was shocked at the state of the trade: more than thirty distilleries were running in the colony, and one hundred and fifty vessels were in the slave-trade.87 “Rhode Island,” said he, “has been more deeply interested in the slave- trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in New England.” Later, in 1787, he wrote: “The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share in this traffic, of all these United States. This trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended. That town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches.”88 The Act of 1708 was poorly enforced. The “good intentions” of its framers “were wholly frustrated” by the clandestine “hiding and conveying said negroes out of the town [Newport] into the country, where they lie concealed.”89 The act was accordingly strengthened by the Acts of 1712 and 1715, and made to apply to importations by land as well as by sea.90 The Act of 1715, however, favored the trade by admitting African Negroes free of duty. The chaotic state of Rhode Island did not allow England often to review her legislation; but as soon as the Act of 1712 came to notice it was disallowed, and accordingly repealed in 1732.91 Whether the Act of 1715 remained, or whether any other duty act was passed, is not clear. While the foreign trade was flourishing, the influence of the Friends and of other causes eventually led to a movement against slavery as a local institution. Abolition societies multiplied, and in 1770 an abolition bill was ordered by the Assembly, but it was never passed.92 Four years later the city of Providence resolved that “as personal liberty is an essential part of the natural rights of mankind,” the importation of slaves and the system of slavery should cease in the colony.93 This movement finally resulted, in 1774, in an act “prohibiting the importation of Negroes into this Colony,” — a law which curiously illustrated the attitude of Rhode Island toward the slave-trade. The preamble of the act declared: “Whereas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which, that of personal freedom must be considered as the greatest; as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others; — Therefore,” etc. The statute then proceeded to enact “that for the future, no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into this 87. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80. 88. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615. 89. Preamble of the Act of 1712. 90. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3. 91. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 471. 92. Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 304, 321, 337. For a probable copy of the bill, see NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 299. 93. A man dying intestate left slaves, who became thus the property of the city; they were freed, and the town made the above resolve, May 17, 1774, in town meeting: Staples, ANNALS OF PROVIDENCE (1843), page 236. 112 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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colony; and in case any slave shall hereafter be brought in, he or she shall be, and are hereby, rendered immediately free....” The logical ending of such an act would have been a clause prohibiting the participation of Rhode Island citizens in the slave-trade. Not only was such a clause omitted, but the following was inserted instead: “Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to any negro or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa, into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and which negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West Indies, but shall be brought into this colony. Provided, that the owner of such negro or mulatto slave give bond ... that such negro or mulatto slave shall be exported out of the colony, within one year from the date of such bond; if such negro or mulatto be alive, and in a condition to be removed.”94 In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was passed,95 and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.96 Not until 1787 did an act pass to forbid participation in the slave-trade. This law laid a penalty of £100 for every slave transported and £1000 for every vessel so engaged.97

May 18-20: In Rhode Island, at the general assembly called by Gorton, perpetual slavery was prohibited, so to speak (COLONIAL RECORDS, I. 243). Henceforth, allegedly, no slave, black or white, could be held in servitude for more than ten years (this sounded nice, on paper, although on the ground it never would mean anything at all — there would be little compliance and even less enforcement, and a black or red slave in “Rogue Island” would continue as a black or red slave for life). READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

“To understand is not to forgive. It is only to understand. It is not an end but a beginning.”

— Rebecca West

By 1700, enslavement, since it was for life, would be limited to persons who were not wholly white, and thus, in 1784, a Rhode Island slave named Amy Allen would be able to obtain release from her condition of servitude by special act of the state legislature on the grounds that –irregardless of her family history and status– her appearance happened to be the appearance of a wholly white person.

94. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 251-2. 95. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 329; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 444; RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VIII. 618. 96. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 506. 97. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. The number of slaves in Rhode Island has been estimated as follows: — In 1708, 426. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 59. In 1730, 1,648. RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL TRACTS, No. 19, pt. 2, page 99. In 1749, 3,077. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1756, 4,697. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1774, 3,761. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 253. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 113 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Below appears the rotting hulk of the slave ship Jem, as of the Year of Our Lord 1891 at Fort Adams near Newport on Aquidneck Island.

Presumably while this Rhode Island vessel was still above water, and loaded with cargo, its deck plan would have looked something like this:

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1654

In Concord, Simon Willard and Thomas Brooks were deputies and representatives to the General Court.

Also, until 1667, Robert Merriam would serve as the Town Clerk.

Simon Willard would be an Assistant and Counsellor, until 1676.

Thomas Brooks was appointed in Concord to enforce sobriety among the resident Indians.

In general in the Massachusetts Bay Colony it was time for the “carrot and stick” approach to native populations. The enticing “carrot” was for some natives to be the BIBLE, and was for other natives to be “strong liquors,” while the “stick” was that if someone did not come into one or another Christianizing village his family would be hunted down and exterminated. The Reverend John Eliot printed off 500 or 1,000 copies of the 1st book of his “Indian Library,” A PRIMER OR CATECHISM in the Nipmuc language (what had previous to this been coming off his press, since 1647, had amounted to a series of pamphlets rather than books). The Reverend founded seven additional villages for his Christianizing natives, over and above Natick, including the Nashobah Plantation of Nagog Pond near Concord. Thomas Brooke, Senior of Concord and William Cowdrey of Reading obtained a liquor license to sell such “strong liquors to the Indians, as to their judgments shall seem most meete and necessary” — but at most one pint at a time. Meanwhile, among themselves, the four groupings of European intrusives in the New England area had managed to pull together an army of 40 armed white men with horses and 270 armed white men without horses, with which to wage race war upon the surviving native Americans who were still on the loose, who had not yet been rounded up into these Christianizing villages. Headman Ninigret of the Niantics became the designated target of the Commissioners of this ethnic cleansing –he being the Saddam Hussein double of his time– and Major Simon Willard of Concord being appointed by the Commissioners as in charge of the extermination campaign — he being the General Norman Schwartzkopf designate of his time. Pretty soon, the Commissioners became dissatisfied at the lack of killing, and wrote to their “loving friend Major Willard,” bringing to his attention “his non- attendance to his commission” to get out there into the forests and mountains and kill some Americans wholesale.98

98. It wasn’t the entire Willard family. During this period they were providing not only any number of white warriors to the cause of improved race relations but also two Presidents of Harvard College to the cause of a higher learning. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 115 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” — L. Frank Baum, author of the OZ books

Mr. Trust Me, the White Man’s Ambassador

It may be useful to compare and contrast this New England race encounter with race encounters at other locations on the globe during this same year. For instance, in the Cape region of Africa, a proposal was being contemplated to enslave the Khoikhoi and !Kung tribespeople,99 but the white tribe who had moved there evidently would decide that this couldn’t effectively be accomplished, for instead we find that they began to import their necessary slaves initially from West Africa, and then from the Malay peninsula and from Ceylon.100In 1654, an expedition had been undertaken by the United Colonies against Ninigret, principal Sachem of the Naraganset Indians, when 250 foot and 40 horsemen were raised and “sent forth under the Christian and most courageous Major Simon Willard of Concord as commander-in-chief.”101 Several of the Concord troops accompanied him; and this was the first time that our early settlers were engaged in war.102

99. These were aboriginal peoples the whites of Capetown would later declare to have been “nonexistent,” in asserting their prior entitlement to that portion of the earth’s surface. 100. We can see that the correct translation for the Afrikanner concept “nonexistent” is “recalcitrant” or otherwise “invisible.” 101.Mather’s Relation, page 69. See Hoyt, Antiquarian Researches, page 70. 102. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

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1655

The Witte paert was the 1st vessel to import slaves into New-York (O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, edition of 1868, page 191n). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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Admiral Sir William Penn (father of Friend William Penn) subjugated the Spanish island of Jamaica to the rule of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, his force of 5,000 men meeting with but little resistance.

As this kerfuffle of hegemony among the white folks was being transacted, various of the slaves of the Spanish residents seized upon their one golden opportunity. Escaping into the mountains of the interior of the island, they there established their own “Maroon” settlements. Admiral Sir William Penn thus unwittingly freed more black slaves, than his high-principled Quaker son ever would! Robert Sedgwick, born in Woburn, Bedfordshire, England in about 1611 and baptized on May 6, 1613, who had settled at Charlestown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 and become a successful merchant there, for many years had represented Charlestown in the General Court and had helped organize the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, of which he had been the captain during 1640. He had during 1652 been the commander of all the Massachusetts militia, and had supervised the construction of the 1st fort at Boston. Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell had promoted him to major general, making him the first Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With John Winthrop, Jr., and others, he had established in 1643/1644 the first ironworks in the North America. In 1654 he had driven the French from the Penobscot region and Fort Pentagouet. In this year this Robert Sedgwick accompanied this British naval expedition against Jamaica, and would be made Governor General of the island (he would die there).

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

Within a few years Spain would have abandoned all efforts to recover this colony and the English settlers would be growing crops such as tobacco, cotton and cocoa, and logging off the indigo wood. However, it would be privateering and piracy that would help Port Royale (Kingston) become one of the richest towns in the Americas as well as most certainly the most notorious:

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1640-1713 seven slave revolts in the islands of the British West Indies

1655 With Jamaica in transition between Spanish control and English control, some 1,500 slaves escaped into the mountains to form maroon communities.

1656 Juan de Bolas led many of the escaped slaves in the maroon communities of the mountains of Jamaica down to the plains and the coast with a deal in which the English granted pardon and freedom. Many maroons, however, would elect to remain in the moun- tains.

1668 “Lobby’s rebellion” on Jamaica — several hundred black slaves escaped to the mountains.

1725-1740 1st Maroon War on Jamaica

March 1, The 1st Maroon War on Jamaica ended in a treaty guaranteeing freedom for the maroons, 1738-1739 the deal being that henceforward they would capture and turn in for a reward any new slave or bond-laborer escapees.

1760 slave uprising on Jamaica

1776 slave uprising on Jamaica

1784 slave uprising on Jamaica

1795-1796 2d Maroon War on Jamaica

1823 slave uprising on Jamaica

1824 slave uprising on Jamaica

1831 slave uprising on Jamaica

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1656

William Paine had an Indian slave named Mary.

A slave revolt in Guadeloupe was led by Angolans. SERVILE INSURRECTION

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Juan de Bolas led many of the escaped slaves in the maroon communities of the mountains of Jamaica down to the plains and the coast with a deal in which the English granted them pardon and freedom. Many of the maroons, however, would elect to remain in the mountains:

1640-1713 seven slave revolts in the islands of the British West Indies

1655 With Jamaica in transition between Spanish control and English control, some 1,500 slaves escaped into the mountains to form maroon communities.

1656 Juan de Bolas led many of the escaped slaves in the maroon communities of the mountains of Jamaica down to the plains and the coast with a deal in which the English granted pardon and freedom. Many maroons, however, would elect to remain in the moun- tains.

1668 “Lobby’s rebellion” on Jamaica — several hundred black slaves escaped to the mountains.

1725-1740 1st Maroon War on Jamaica

March 1, The 1st Maroon War on Jamaica ended in a treaty guaranteeing freedom for the maroons, 1738-1739 the deal being that henceforward they would capture and turn in for a reward any new slave or bond-laborer escapees.

1760 slave uprising on Jamaica

1776 slave uprising on Jamaica

1784 slave uprising on Jamaica

1795-1796 2d Maroon War on Jamaica

1823 slave uprising on Jamaica

1824 slave uprising on Jamaica

1831 slave uprising on Jamaica

1657

In the period since the Irish Catholic defeat in 1652, the victorious English colonists had brought about the sale by drovers and other intermediaries, of some 35,000 to 40,000 defeated Irish warriors, to the armies of foreign powers. In addition, as these defeated warriors were being transshipped out of Irish ports, some 6,000 Catholic priests, Irish Catholic women, and Irish Catholic boys had been sent along with them for free, in order to be disposed of them locally, without any separate record being maintained. In this year this Irish slave trade was brought to a completion. There was no-one left unabjected, to sell and deport. The remainders of the Irish Catholics would have to stay at home to be oppressed.103 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

103. As a footnote, a pointy reminder by Theodore W. Allen: “It is only a ‘white’ habit of mind that reserves ‘slave’ for the African- American and boggles at the term ‘Irish slave trade’.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 121 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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John Washington jumped ship in Virginia, and purchased land. The first Quakers appeared in Virginia. Some of them, such as Friend Robert Pleasants at Curles, Virginia, would come to own plantations and considerable numbers of slaves — until they became convinced that they needed to disentangle themselves from this as a “seed of war.”

Bags of “tay” were first offered for sale at Garway’s Coffee House in London. The bags were made of a “Hessian” fabric, and all anyone there knew of the provenance of their contents was that such bags of vegetable substance were being made available to Portuguese and Dutch traders, in Canton. TEA CHINA

1659

Connecticut became the 2d of our colonies to recognize human enslavement as a legal institution. (The 1st colony to grant a legal status to slavery had been Massachusetts, in 1641.)104

In this year we know that a person was accused of witchcraft in Saybrook, Connecticut and that there was some sort of indictment or presentment in which the accused appeared before the courts preliminary to trial. We don’t know any more than that.

104. Note well, that we were institutionalizing human enslavement along racial lines because we were racists. This may not seem at all strange, but if one reflects deeply, one may become able to see it as strange when one bears in mind that when we would finally get around to abolishing this legal institution of human enslavement, a number of generations later during our civil war, we would not be abolishing it because we had become non-racist, but because we had remained racist. The proof of the above startling assertion is as follows:

1.) Had American whites not been racist, they would not have been denying equality of opportunity to free black Americans. 2.) Had American whites not been denying equality of opportunity to free black Americans, and had these free black Americans not been able to identify along race lines across class lines, then free black Americans would not have become abolitionists. Like the immigrant Irish in their quest to become white people, and in their head-on competition for jobs and incomes, these free blacks Americans would have become pro-slavery. Only racial identification as white people, which is to say, racism, created the rabid anti-abolitionism of the Irish immigrants and its alliance with more centrally situated groups of white Americans, and only racial identification as people of color, which is to say, racism, created the insistent abolitionism of the free black Americans and its alliance with more centrally situated groups of white Americans. 3.) Had free blacks Americans been pro-slavery, the phenomenon of white abolitionism is a phenomenon which simply could not have arisen. Black attitudes of pro-slavery would have been a most effective damper to any such white enthusiasm. 4.) Had abolitionism not arisen, had only slaves wanted for slaves to be freed, since the enslaved have effectively no political voice slavery could never have become a problematic of our democratic culture. 5.) Had human enslavement not been rendered problematic, it would never have been abolished. 6.) We practiced human enslavement along racial lines, and this demonstrates that we were racists; we abolished human enslavement along racial lines, and this demonstrates that we had remained racists.

Since human enslavement in the United States of America was abolished not because we became non-racists but because we remained racists, we need not search further for an explanation for the failure of Reconstruction and the beginning of our “Jim Crow,” “Ku Klux Klan” period of racial segregation.

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1660

During this decade the demand for African slave labor for the sugar plantations of Barbados would be intensifying. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1661

Maryland condemned free-born English women who were intermarrying with Negro slaves: “whatsoever free- born woman shall intermarry with any slave, shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; all the issues of such free-born women, so married, shall be slaves as their fathers were.” (Children were condemned to 30-year slavery. Twenty years later this would be amended to promise freedom to women and children — if the owner’s permission were obtained.) RACE AMALGAMATION

The Virginia assembly began to award some official recognition to the existence of human slavery, making it begin to be somewhat de jure as well as de facto.

In Scotland, the Parliament extended human enslavement. Not only were the people working in the mines themselves to have the status of lifetime bound slaves, but also, the workers around the mines were to have the status of lifetime bound slaves.

1662

Those who want to consider Massachusetts to have been the originator of liberty should reflect on the sad fact that Massachusetts was the 1st English colony to legalize slavery. One of the few free blacks in the Boston area about whom we know anything from the pivotal decade of the 1650s is Bostian Ken (or Sebastian Kane). He was a seaman who owned a modest amount of property in Dorchester. He was active in the coastwise trade between Massachusetts Bay and Virginia. In this year he moved his residence from Dorchester to the Virginia Eastern Shore, where he would live until his death in 1670. Clearly, for this free black seaman, the Virginia Eastern Shore was in 1662 for some reason preferable to Dorchester, Massachusetts!

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Sir William Petty suggested that a condition of enslavement be imposed upon Englishmen who could be classified as “insolvent Thieves.” Don’t hang such persons, make full use of them. Transform an expense item into something of an asset:

“As slaves they may be forced to as much labour and as cheap fare as nature will endure.”

One thing that could be done with such “insolvent Thieves” was to transport them involuntarily to the colonies, and put them to work there at involuntary bond-labor allegedly to recoup the costs of their passage. In Virginia, the bond-laborers were kept very much on a corn-and-water diet, supplemented by whatever they might dare to scrounge or steal. If a bond-laborer should be caught during one of the usual dietary supplementations, which was stealing a hog, butchering and smoking it in the swamp, and consuming it on the sly, it was decided in this year that the penalty that would need to be paid for such theft would be one additional year of servitude. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

The Virginia Assembly discarded the English common-law rule whereby familial descent was to be traced through the father, adopting in its place the opposite Justinian standard, whereby the status of the child was partvs seqvitvr ventram the status of its mother. Henceforth, if a master got his servant girl with child, it would no longer be necessary to prosecute the girl for her fornication and whip her, for the rule would be that “Children got by an Englishman upon a Negro woman shall be bond or free according to the condition of the mother.” The master would be considered merely to be using her services to generate another servant for himself to use or to sell to some other master to use. (This sort of understanding, however, had been being the regular practice in Virginia at least since the 1640s already. )

The 1st Virginia laws against intermarriage and against interracial sex: “if any Christian shall committ fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the ffines imposed by the former act [which had set fines for fornication at 500 pounds of tobacco].”

“Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”

— Dwight David Eisenhower

1663

During this year a law was being enacted in Maryland, according to which the only status which a black person might have was the status of slave. In addition, if any free white women marry these blacks, they are to be the slaves of the owners of their husbands during their husbands’ lifetimes. (Ironically, a 1681 law would moderate this by regarding the children born of such a union as free.)

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September 6-7, Saturday and Sunday: A group of veterans of the army of Cromwell, whom the triumphant forces of King Charles II had had transported to Virginia to serve as bond-laborers, met over this weekend in Gloucester County, Virginia to conspire “for their freedom.” One thing they all knew how to do was march, and this required no weapons. They therefore determined upon a freedom march, to occur on their next day of liberty, Sunday, September 14th. Their plan was that they would march upon the governor, and, if the governor would not grant them their freedom from their bond service, they would then “march out of the Country.” These Cromwellian veterans would be betrayed by a bond-servant named Berkenhead on the day before, Saturday, September 13th, in exchange for his personal freedom from bond-servitude, and four of the veterans, captured, would be hanged for having participated in such a plan. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

September 13: The Cromwellian veterans were betrayed. In Gloucester County VA, a bond-servant named Berkenhead revealed the plot by white and black bond-servants in exchange for his personal freedom from his bond. Four army veterans who were identified and apprehended were hanged. This was the 1st serious worker conspiracy in colonial American history — and, the demand for equality of opportunity being what it perennially is, this would not be the last such effort. SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

The authorities declared that henceforth, in Virginia, September 13th would be a holy day.

1664

In Maryland, slavery became sanctioned by law; slaves were to serve for life. Marriages between “diverse free- born English women” and black men were described as “shamefull Matches” and as “disgrac[ing] our nation,” and were prohibited.105 This particular act would remain in effect for over 300 years, and between 1935 and 1967 this race law would in fact be extended, to forbid as well the amalgamation of Malaysians with either whites or blacks. (The miscegenation statute would finally be repealed, in 1967.)

Plockhoy’s Dutch Mennonite settlement on the Delaware was raided by Sir Robert Carr and the Massachusetts militia. First the women would be raped by these God-fearing Puritans — and then the men, women, and children who managed to survive the raid and its aftermath would be sold into slavery in Virginia and the West Indies. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In the individual efforts of the various colonies to suppress the African slave-trade there may be traced certain general movements. First, from 1638 to 1664, there was a tendency to take a high moral stand against the traffic. This 105. To give some idea of the extent to which this was prohibited: the issue of a union between an indentured white servant woman and a black man would be termed, in the 18th-Century Chesapeake Bay region, a “mulatto bastard,” and such a person would of necessity serve themselves as a servant until age 28 or 31. If such a “mulatto bastard” person who had become by descent a servant herself bore a child before becoming free, that child also would be deemed a servant until age 31. By the 1780s and 1790s, there would be in the region a few 3d generation servants of this sort, who come to our attention in part because they would attempt to challenge their status in court. The issue would face away only with the gradual disappearance of indentured servitude, but would still have some resonance in the early 1800s: the evangelist and anti-slavery writer, Daniel Coker, would be born as such a “mulatto servant.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 125 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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is illustrated in the laws of New England, in the plans for the settlement of Delaware and, later, that of Georgia, and in the protest of the German Friends. The second period, from about 1664 to 1760, has no general unity, but is marked by statutes laying duties varying in design from encouragement to absolute prohibition, by some cases of moral opposition, and by the slow but steady growth of a spirit unfavorable to the long continuance of the trade. The last colonial period, from about 1760 to 1787, is one of pronounced effort to regulate, limit, or totally prohibit the traffic. Beside these general movements, there are many waves of legislation, easily distinguishable, which rolled over several or all of the colonies at various times, such as the series of high duties following the Assiento, and the acts inspired by various Negro “plots.” Notwithstanding this, the laws of the colonies before 1774 had no national unity, the peculiar circumstances of each colony determining its legislation. With the outbreak of the Revolution came unison in action with regard to the slave-trade, as with regard to other matters, which may justly be called national. It was, of course, a critical period, — a period when, in the rapid upheaval of a few years, the complicated and diverse forces of decades meet, combine, act, and react, until the resultant seems almost the work of chance. In the settlement of the fate of slavery and the slave-trade, however, the real crisis came in the calm that succeeded the storm, in that day when, in the opinion of most men, the question seemed already settled. And indeed it needed an exceptionally clear and discerning mind, in 1787, to deny that slavery and the slave- trade in the United States of America were doomed to early annihilation. It seemed certainly a legitimate deduction from the history of the preceding century to conclude that, as the system had risen, flourished, and fallen in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and as South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland were apparently following in the same legislative path, the next generation would in all probability witness the last throes of the system on our soil. To be sure, the problem had its uncertain quantities. The motives of the law-makers in South Carolina and Pennsylvania were dangerously different; the century of industrial expansion was slowly dawning and awakening that vast economic revolution in which American slavery was to play so prominent and fatal a rôle; and, finally, there were already in the South faint signs of a changing moral attitude toward slavery, which would no longer regard the system as a temporary makeshift, but rather as a permanent though perhaps unfortunate necessity. With regard to the slave-trade, however, there appeared to be substantial unity of opinion; and there were, in 1787, few things to indicate that a cargo of five hundred African slaves would openly be landed in Georgia in 1860.

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1665

England imported less than 88 tons of slavery-produced sugar during this year (this import would increase to about 10,000 tons annually, by the year 1700, as prices would fall and tea-drinking would increase in popularity, so it is abundantly clear that the low figures of sweetness import for this period were not being caused by any abhorrence on the part of the teasip public of the peculiar institution of human enslavement).

1667

A Dutch fleet defeated the English in Medway River. Then the Treaty of Breda among Netherlands, England, France, and Denmark, by bringing the 2d Anglo-Dutch War to an end, positioned English transport ships off the labor-supply coastline of Africa. The English did not as yet possess shipping specially designed for mass transportation of new slaves, and would not possess such shipping until the mid-1680s, but of course they had English ingenuity, and old English bottoms which could be repurposed. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Just in case any slave supposed that he or she was going to be able to get away with anything — in Virginia in this year an Act to Regulate Negroes on the Plantations declared that slavemasters who killed slaves whilst punishing them shall not be accounted guilty of murder. Also, at least here on this mortal coil, “Baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedome.”

OK, there’ll be pie in the sky when you die. Now get back to work.

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1668

In what would be known as “Lobby’s rebellion” in Jamaica, several hundred black slaves escaped to the mountains, becoming “Maroons”:

1640-1713 seven slave revolts in the islands of the British West Indies

1655 With Jamaica in transition between Spanish control and English control, some 1,500 slaves escaped into the mountains to form maroon communities.

1656 Juan de Bolas led many of the escaped slaves in the maroon communities of the mountains of Jamaica down to the plains and the coast with a deal in which the English granted pardon and freedom. Many maroons, however, would elect to remain in the moun- tains.

1668 “Lobby’s rebellion” on Jamaica — several hundred black slaves escaped to the mountains.

1725-1740 1st Maroon War on Jamaica

March 1, The 1st Maroon War on Jamaica ended in a treaty guaranteeing freedom for the maroons, 1738-1739 the deal being that henceforward they would capture and turn in for a reward any new slave or bond-laborer escapees.

1760 slave uprising on Jamaica

1776 slave uprising on Jamaica

1784 slave uprising on Jamaica

1795-1796 2d Maroon War on Jamaica

1823 slave uprising on Jamaica

1824 slave uprising on Jamaica

1831 slave uprising on Jamaica

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1670

In 1641, in its “Body of Liberties,” Massachusetts had legally sanctioned the enslavement of “lawfull Captives in just Warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.” At this point the Bay Colony legislature deleted the word “strangers” — the reason was that of some 10,000 “rogues, vagabonds, and beggars” transported from England, some were sent to be sold in the American colonies, and a goodly number of these new white slaves were being purchased by residents of Boston. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

In Virginia in this year, voting rights were being removed from recently freed slaves and indentured servants. Non-Christians who had been brought to the Virginia coast “by shipping” were to be slaves for life, whereas

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those who entered by land as adults under conditions of service were to serve until the age of 30.

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November: In the cities of England, “crimping” of vulnerable citizens to be shipped to the New World and sold there as chattel bond-laborers had become by this point in time a “fully developed” profession, one in which nothing was being left to chance and in which no opportunity was being left unexplored: William Haverland was a hunter and trapper, and was accounted a most aggressive one. His role was that of initial seducer and capturer of the laborer. Thomas Stone, one of Haverland’s prey, told of the experience. One day late in November 1670, he was accosted in a London street by Haverland whom he did not know, but who represented himself to be a native of Stone’s own county. By deceit coupled with brute force, Haverland delivered the besotted Thomas to a ship’s captain to be taken and sold as a plantation laborer in America. John Steward and William Thiew, on the other hand, were traders. Since the late 1650s Steward had been buying from such men as Haverland such kidnap victims as Stone, at a price of twenty-five shillings a head. Thiew, another of Haverland’s customers during this period, in just one year “spirited away” 840 persons. Besides the acquisition costs, there were other expenses, for storage, maintenance and transportation, which had to be borne by the entrepreneurs at various stages of the supply process. The cost of holding and maintaining a person for five or six weeks pending shipment came to £3. Clothes provided for the prospective bond-laborer might cost £4, or possibly a little more. But in 1649 this item was reckoned at £3 7s. 10d.; and in 1631 the Essex overseers of the Poor “layd [sic] out in parill [sic] for two boys that were sent to Virginia, four pownde [sic] seven shillings three pence,” which 1 averages only £2 2s. 9 /2d. each. In cases where the merchant and shipper were one, the cost of transporting a bond-laborer came to about £3; otherwise, the owner of the laborer paid £5 or £6 for each worker’s passage. The price per head of bond-labor delivered live in the plantation colonies varied considerably in response to fluctuations of supply and demand, but merchants could generally count on a profit of from 50 to 200 percent on the transaction. Until 1683, captains of ships delivering European bond-laborers received an additional bonus, a fifty-acre head- right on each one, a claim that the shippers almost invariably sold rather than entering into the cultivation of tobacco themselves. After that, the Virginia practice was followed, limiting such awards to those who used the bond-laborers to improve the land for which they had received patents within a limited period of time. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1671

Richard Borden of Portsmouth, Rhode Island died. In the estate of this Quaker we can’t help but notice that among the livestock are listed not only swine, pigs, turkeys, geese, and fowls, but also a negro man and woman valued at £50 and their three children valued at £25. SLAVERY

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Maroon societies (also “marron,” “cimarron,”) were bands or communities of fugitive slaves who had succeeded in establishing a society of their own in some geographic area, usually difficult to penetrate, where they could not easily be surprised by soldiers, slave catchers, or their previous owners. Africans enslaved in Spanish New World territories were most likely to run away and form such communities. Maroon societies were of several degrees of stability. At the least stable end were the gangs of runaway men who wandered within a region, hiding together, and who sustained themselves by raids or by prevailing upon their friends and relatives for food. Other societies included both men and women and might have developed a trade relationship with outsiders. Some maroon societies felt themselves safe enough to plant crops and attempt at least a semi-permanent settlement. The thought of maroons emerging from their hiding places to merge with slaves in revolt was a troubling one for slavemasters. In this year a Virginia law promised to pay a bounty for heads of any such maroons.

In his GOSPEL FAMILY-ORDER: BEING A SHORT DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE ORDERING OF FAMILIES, BOTH OF WHITES AND BLACKS AND INDIANS, Friend George Fox sought to negate the racism associated with the curse of God upon the son of Noah who saw his nakedness, by saying that it was not a curse upon a race but a curse upon any who spend themselves in “debaucheries.” What the curse means is not racial at all, could in no way serve as any defense of the practice of enslavement, but was merely a a warning that should a people “serve sin and Evil, they must look for Destruction, both of families and Nations, who profess in God in words, but deny him in their works, lives, and conversations.” Regardless of race, there is a spiritual kinship which unites all who truly lead lives of faithfulness. Therefore instruct slaves, and preach “to the Ethyopians, the Blacks, and Tawnymoors … Jesus Christ to them in your families.” Fox’s practical proposal was that, since spiritual conditions are so more important than physical conditions, the way out of the situation is to begin to treat present slaves not as slaves but as indentured servants, in the Jewish “poor brother slave” tradition.

As slaves were freed after a period of service, they were not simply to be turned loose, but were to be compensated for their slave labor so that they would have the means with which to begin free life (and, in fact, later, Quakers were the only body of the English community to provide such compensation along with the manumission papers). In about the same period, Fox wrote in his journal:

Then as to their blacks or negroes, I desire them to endeavor to train them up in the fear of God, as well them that were bought with their money as them that were born in their families, that all might come to the knowledge of the Lord; that so, with Joshua, every master of a family might say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I desire them also that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their negroes, and not use cruelty toward them, as the manner of some hath been and is; and that after certain years of servitude they would make them free. Many sweet and precious things were opened in these meetings by the Spirit, and in the power of the Lord, to the edifying, confirming, and building up of Friends, both in the faith and holy order of the gospel.

Ann Conway was acquainted with Friend George and other early Friends, and herself would become a Quaker shortly before her death. Written in English presumably during this period between 1671 and 1675 and

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published posthumously in 1890 in Latin translation, her THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOST ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY, CONCERNING GOD, CHRIST, AND THE CREATURE; THAT IS CONCERNING SPIRIT AND MATTER IN GENERAL would have an influence upon Leibniz. When an English edition would be prepared in 1692, it would have to be back-translated from the Latin version, the original manuscript in the meanwhile having been lost. (In 1996 her opus would be republished by Cambridge UP in a new translation as edited by Alison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse.)

At this point in the writings, the chronology of events is reiterated: The sentence of præmunire had been passed against Margaret Fell in 1663, whereupon for about seven years (George Fox supposed ten years) she had been the prisoner of the Binges, and her estate in jeopardy. She was taken to prison again about three months after their marriage, in 1669. When the husband received notice of this, he sent two of her daughters to the King and the King ordered the sheriff of Lancashire to release her. One would have supposed that with such a writ, she would have been set at liberty, but in the storm of persecution that had come suddenly over England, the local authorities found means to hold her still.

Fox’s AMERICAN DIARIES, which date to this period between 1671 and 1673, are the only materials now extant which may correctly be characterized as a “JOURNAL” kept by Fox. They are the only ones, that is, which are even roughly contemporary with the events of his life which are described in what now purports to have been his journals — and they also happen to be the only ones of which any originals have survived for us to evaluate the extent of the editorial emendations which have silently been made in layer after layer upon the basal materials:

But now the persecution a little ceasing, I was moved to speak to Martha Fisher, and another woman Friend, to go to the King about her liberty. They went in the faith, and in the Lord’s power; and He gave them favour with the King, so that he granted a discharge under the broad seal, to clear both her and her estate, after she had been ten years a prisoner, and præmunired; the like whereof was scarce to be heard in England. * I sent down the discharge forthwith by a Friend; by whom also I wrote to her, to inform her how to get it delivered to the justices, and also to acquaint her that it was upon me from the Lord to go beyond sea, to visit the plantations in America; and therefore I desired her to hasten to London, as soon as she could conveniently after she had obtained her liberty, because the ship was then fitting for the voyage. In the meantime I got to Kingston, and stayed at John Rous’s till my wife came up, and then I began to prepare for the voyage. But the yearly meeting being near at hand, I tarried till that was over. Many Friends came up to it from all parts of the nation, and a very large and precious meeting it was; for the Lord’s power was over all, and His glorious, everlastingly-renowned Seed of Life was exalted above all.

JOURNAL

August 12: A fast but leaky vessel, the Industry, sailed from England for the New World with 13 Quaker preachers aboard, on a missionary journey first to the West Indies and then to North America. One of the Quaker missionary preachers was George Fox.

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After this meeting was over, and I had finished my services for the Lord in England, the ship and the Friends that intended to go with me being ready, I went to Gravesend on the 12th of Sixth month, my wife and several Friends accompanying me to the Downs. We went from Wapping in a barge to the ship, which lay a little below Gravesend, and there we found the Friends that were bound for the voyage with me, who had gone down to the ship the night before. Their names were Thomas Briggs, William Edmundson, John Rous, John Stubbs, Solomon Eccles, James Lancaster, John Cartwright, Robert Widders, George Pattison, John Hull, Elizabeth Hooton, and Elizabeth Miers. The vessel was a yacht, called the Industry; the captain’s name Thomas Forster, and the number of passengers about fifty. I lay that night on board, but most of the Friends at Gravesend. Early next morning the passengers, and those Friends that intended to accompany us to the Downs, being come on board, we took our leave in great tenderness of those that came with us to Gravesend only, and set sail about six in the morning for the Downs. Having a fair wind, we out-sailed all the ships that were outward-bound, and got thither by evening. Some of us went ashore that night, and lodged at Deal, where, we understood, an officer had orders from the governor to take our names in writing, which he did next morning, though we told him they had been taken at Gravesend. In the afternoon, the wind serving, I took leave of my wife and other Friends, and went on board. Before we could sail, there being two of the King’s frigates riding in the Downs, the captain of one of them sent his press-master on board us, who took three of our seamen. This would certainly have delayed, if not wholly prevented, our voyage, had not the captain of the other frigate, being informed of the leakiness of our vessel, and the length of our voyage, in compassion and much civility, spared us two of his own men. Before this was over, a custom-house officer came on board to peruse packets and get fees; so that we were kept from sailing till about sunset; during which delay a very considerable number of merchantmen, outward-bound, were several leagues before us. Being clear, we set sail in the evening, and next morning overtook part of that fleet about the height of Dover. We soon reached the rest, and in a little time left them all behind; for our yacht was counted a very swift sailer. But she was very leaky, so that the seamen and some of the passengers did, for the most part, pump day and night. One day they observed that in two hours’ time she sucked in sixteen inches of water in the well.

JOURNAL

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One of the results of this trip was a letter which has troubled the Society of Friends ever since, for it makes Fox appear to have been soft on slavery. The letter was as follows:

For the Governor of Barbadoes, with his council and assembly, and all others in power, both civil and military, in this island; from the people called Quakers. WHEREAS many scandalous lies and slanders have been cast upon us, to render us odious; as that “We deny God, and Christ Jesus, and the scriptures of truth”, &c. This is to inform you, that all our books and declarations, which for these many years have been published to the world, clearly testify the contrary. Yet, for your satisfaction, we now plainly and sincerely declare, that we own and believe in God, the only wise, omnipotent, and everlasting God, who is the creator of all things both in heaven and in the earth, and the preserver of all that he hath made; who is God over all, blessed for ever; to whom be all honour, glory, dominion, praise and thanksgiving, both now and for evermore! and we own and believe in Jesus Christ, his beloved and only begotten Son, in whom he is well pleased; who was conceived by the holy ghost, and born of the virgin Mary; in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins; who is the express image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, by whom were all things created that are in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, dominions, principalities, or powers; all things were created by him. And we own and believe that he was made a sacrifice for sin, who knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; and that he was crucified for us in the flesh, without the gates of Jerusalem; and that he was buried, and rose again the third day by the power of his Father, for our justification; and we believe that he ascended up into heaven, and now sitteth at the right hand of God. This Jesus, who was the foundation of the holy prophets and apostles, is our foundation; and we believe there is no other foundation to be laid but that which is laid, even Christ Jesus who we believe tasted death for every man, and shed his blood for all men, and is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world: according as John the Baptist testified of him, when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world” [John 1:29]. We believe that he alone is our Redeemer and Saviour, even the captain of our salvation, who saves us from sin, as well as from hell and the wrath to come, and destroys the devil and his works; who is the seed of the woman that bruises the serpent’s head, to wit, Christ Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. That he is (as the scriptures of truth say of him) our wisdom and righteousness, justification and redemption; neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved. He alone is the shepherd and bishop of our souls: he is our prophet, whom Moses long since testified of saying, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things, whatsoever he shall say unto you: and it shall come to pass, that every soul that will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people” [Acts 2:22-23]. He it is that

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is now come “and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true”. And he rules in our hearts by his law of love and life, and makes us free from the law of sin and death. We have no life, but by him; for he is the quickening spirit, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, by whose blood we are cleansed, and our consciences sprinkled from dead works, to serve the living God. He is our Mediator, that makes peace and reconciliation between God offended and us offending; he being the oath of God, the new covenant of light, life, grace, and peace, the author and finisher of our faith. Now this Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly man, the Emanuel, God with us, we all own and believe in; he whom the high priest raged against, and said, he had spoken blasphemy; whom the priests and elders of the Jews took counsel together against, and put to death; the same whom Judas betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, which the priests gave him as a reward for his treason; who also gave large money to the soldiers to broach a horrible lie, namely, “That his disciples came and stole him away by night whilst they slept”. And after he was risen from the dead, the history of the Acts of the apostles sets forth how the chief priests and elders persecuted the disciples of this Jesus, for preaching Christ and his resurrection. This, we say, is that Lord Jesus Christ, whom we own to be our life and salvation. “And as concerning the holy scriptures, we believe they were given forth by the holy spirit of God, through the holy men of God, who “spoke as they were moved by the holy ghost” [2 Peter 1:21]. We believe they are to be read, believed, and fulfilled, (he that fulfils them is Christ): and they are “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, (2 Tim. iii. 16.) and are able to make wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus”. We believe the holy scriptures are the words of God; for it is said in Exod. xx. 1 “God spake all these words, saying”, &c. meaning the ten commandments given forth upon mount Sinai. And in Rev. xxii. 18. saith John, “I testify to every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man addeth unto these, and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy”, (not the Word), &c. So in Luke i. 20. “Because thou believest not my words” And so in John v. 47. xv. 7. xiv. 23. xii. 47. So that we call the holy scriptures, as Christ, the apostles, and holy men of God called them, viz. the words of God. “Another slander they have cast upon us, is, “that we teach the negroes to rebel”; a thing we utterly abhor and detest in our hearts, the Lord knows it, who is the searcher of all hearts, and knows all things, and can testify for us, that this is a most abominable untruth. For that which we have spoken to them, is to exhort and admonish them to be sober, to fear God, to love their masters and mistresses, and to be faithful and diligent in their service and business, and then their masters and overseers would love them, and deal kindly and gently with them; also that they should not beat their wives, nor the wives their husbands; neither should the men have many wives; that they should not steal, nor be drunk, nor commit adultery, nor fornication, nor curse, swear, nor lie, nor give bad words to one another, nor to any one else; for there is something in them that tells them they should not practise these nor any other evils.

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But if they notwithstanding should do them, then we let them know there are but two ways, the one that leads to heaven where the righteous go; and the other that leads to hell, where the wicked and debauched, whoremongers, adulterers, murderers, and liars go. To the one the Lord will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”; to the other, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”: so the wicked go into “everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal” [Matthew 25]. Consider, friends it is no transgression for a master of a family to instruct his family himself, or for others to do it in his behalf; but rather it is a very great duty incumbent upon them. Abraham and Joshua did so: of the first, we read the Lord said, Gen. xviii. 19. “I know that Abraham will command his children, and his household after him; and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham the things that he hath spoken of him”. And the latter, we read, said, Josh. xxiv. 15. “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. We declare, that we esteem it a duty incumbent on us to pray with and for, to teach, instruct, and admonish those in and belonging to our families; this being a command of the Lord, disobedience whereunto will provoke his displeasure; as may be seen in Jer. x. 25. “Pour out thy fury upon the Heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name”.

Fox commented upon this letter and its circumstance, in his journal:

Now, negroes, tawnies, indians, make up a very great part of the families in this island; for whom an account will be required by him who comes to judge both quick and dead at the great day of judgment, when every one shall be “rewarded according to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good, or whether they be evil”; at that day, we say, of the resurrection both of the good and of the bad, and of the just and of the unjust, when, “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe in that day” [2 Thessalonians 1:8, 2 Peter 3:3, &c.]. This wicked slander (of our endeavouring to make the negroes rebel) our adversaries took occasion to raise, from our having some meetings amongst the negroes; for we had several meetings with them in divers plantations, wherein we exhorted them to justice, sobriety, temperance, chastity, and piety, and to be subject to their masters and governors. Which was altogether contrary to what our envious adversaries maliciously suggested against us. As I had been to visit the governor, as soon as I was well able, after I came thither; so sometime after when I was at Thomas Rouse’s, the governor came to see me, carrying himself very courteously.

JOURNAL

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End of October: Friend George Fox was finally well enough, after his problems due to eating contaminated meat during the voyage, to begin to address assemblies. The first assembly which he addressed was of 300 to 400 persons, at the plantation house of Thomas Rous. He would go on to speak in the colony’s capital town, Bridgetown, at a “General Meeting,” with many members of the island’s elite in attendance, “colonels, and justices, and judges, and captains.” He would meet a couple of times with Deputy Governor Christopher Codrington, who had control of the colony during William Lord Willoughby’s absence between 1669 and 1672.

Remarks he made during this period would later be published as GOSPEL FAMILY-ORDER. He suggested that the whites not “slight” the “Ethiopians, the Blacks” among them, because Christ “died for Tawn[i]es and for the Blacks as well as for you that are called whites.” He suggested that to the “Ethiopians that are in your Families,” which is to say, house servants rather than field slaves, they “preach Christ,” “so they may be free Men indeed.” He suggested that it would be in order, to begin to keep record of the births, marriages, and deaths of their blacks. He and two other Traveling Friends, Solomon Eccles and John Stubbs, would hold several meetings among the slaves. He alarmed the planter class by suggesting that slaves who served their white masters “faithfully,” perhaps for “30 yeares after more or less,” might properly be set free in their old age, and not only that, but “not goe away empty handed.” We can imagine the planter caste responding with something like: “Hey, Quaker dude, get a clue will you, slavery isn’t about masters serving slaves — it’s about slaves serving masters.” Fox asked, “Did not Christ dye for the Blacks and the Taunies, as well as for the Whites? and was not [Christ’s] Blood shed for all men and are they not men?” Some island clergymen, it is to be noted, charged that what Fox and the other itinerants had mind in the making of such outrageous remarks was “a Design to teach the Blacks to rebel,” quote unquote. Fox would feel the need to respond, in a letter to Governor Codrington and the Assembly, that his Quakers in fact “utterly abhor[red] and detest[ed]” the prospect of slave rebellion, and merely desired to urge the island’s slaves “to be sober and to fear God, and to love their masters and mistresses.” From the journal that would be published in 1715, written by Friend William Edmundson, pages 65/66: At length we got within the Cape of Virginia, and up the great Bay of Cheseapeak, to the Mouth of the Patuxent River in Maryland, where we anchored ; but a violent Storm arising we could not get ashore for some Days, though our Provision and Water were spent. When the Storm ceased, Friends hearing of us, came in a Boat and Fetched us ashore. Here we met with John Burnyeat ready to take Shipping for England. We had several large heavenly Meetings, and the Lord's Power and Presence with us, to or great Comfort : Then we traveled severally in our Services, as the Lord Ordered us ; George Fox, John Burnyeat, and several other Friends accompanying them, traveled to New-England. I took Boat, and went to Virginia, where Things were much out of Order ; but the Lord's Power and Testimony went over all.

November: In Maryland, a planter named Turner had gotten his bond-laborer Lucy Stratton, an English woman, with child. Charged therefore with being a fornicator, Lucy attempted to save herself from being publicly whipped by announcing that the father of her child, actually, was her master. Nevertheless she was awarded thirty lashes at the whipping post. Turner was offering to marry her and make legitimate his child, but she refused on the ground that she could never come to love such a man, and asked instead that he support his child. The court of course refused the child support, as the mother had refused her master’s kind offer of legitimacy. SLAVERY

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1672

The English government had in 1662 chartered a “Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa.” At first this company had been mismanaged, but in 1663 it had been reorganized. A new objective had clearly stated that the company would engage in the international slave trade. To the great dissatisfaction of England’s merchants, only this monopoly was allowed to engage in the trade. The Company had not fared well, due mainly to the war with Holland, and in 1667 it had collapsed. Out of its ashes in this year English merchants formed a London-based Royal African Company to re-monopolize the African slave trade. Between 1680 and 1686 this new monopoly would be transporting an average of 5,000 slaves a year. Between 1680 and 1688 it would sponsor a total of 249 voyages to Africa. In 1698, Parliament would open the slave trade to all and the end of the monopoly would mean that the number of slaves transported on English ships would increase dramatically — to an average of more than 20,000 a year. By the end of the 17th century, England would be leading the world in the trafficking of slaves. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Sir John Hawkins’s celebrated voyage took place in 1562, but probably not until 1631106 did a regular chartered company undertake to carry on the trade.107 This company was unsuccessful,108 and was eventually succeeded by the “Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa,” chartered by Charles II. in 1662, and including the Queen Dowager and the Duke of York.109 The company contracted to supply the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually; but contraband trade, misconduct, and war so reduced it that in 1672 it surrendered its charter to another company for £34,000.110 This new corporation, chartered by Charles II. as the “Royal African Company,” proved more successful than its predecessors, and carried on a growing trade for a quarter of a century.

March 2: Deputy Governor John Leverett (1616-1679) and secretary Edward Rawson (1615-1693) signed an order to the keeper of the Boston prison, that he hold Deacon Parker’s negro servant/slave Silvanus Warro on the charges of night-walking, disobedience, and fornication with Elizabeth Parker. To the keeper of the prison in boston You are requyred in his majestyes [Majesty’s] Name herewith to receyve the boddy of silvanus warro negro servt to deacon parker & him safely keep that he may be forth Comeing to Answer for his Comitting ffornication with Elizabeth Parker & begitting her with chyld, & for his disobedience & night walkeing for your so doeing these shal be yor warrant. dated in boston the 2. march. 1671/2. 106. African trading-companies had previously been erected (e.g. by Elizabeth in 1585 and 1588, and by James I in 1618); but slaves are not specifically mentioned in their charters, and they probably did not trade in slaves. Cf. Bandinel, ACCOUNT OF THE SLAVE TRADE (1842), pages 38-44. 107. Chartered by Charles I. Cf. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, page 135. 108. In 1651, during the Protectorate, the privileges of the African trade were granted anew to this same company for fourteen years. Cf. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, pages 342, 355. 109. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1661-1668, § 408. 110. Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS, COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1669-1674, §§ 934, 1095. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 139 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Jno: Leverett dept. Gor. the sd Silvanus answd the whole charg . in . ys wart. expresst in open Court 7 mach 71 as Attest Edw. Rauson [flourish] secret A full decade later, on October 19, 1682, a Deacon William Park or Parks (presumably the same person as the Deacon Parker above) would instance the expense of caring for the “bastard child” of a servant Sylvanus Warro who had run away. An acct. of wt[what] I disbursed for my Servt Sylvanus Warro negro. 1. To his Master ytl. I boughtb. d him off I pd hand Maj: Genll Gook in. 5 years, — 40. 0. 0 as appears by his receite. 2. Wn he ran away from my Service in charges ex- =pended in finding of him & bringing of him to me & money he stole then from mee & damage by ye Court he was l orderd to pay me as by a Court ordr now prs enterd. l3. 00. 0. besides Court & prison Charge. 0. 07. 6. for his bastard Child I pd — 12. 00. 0 ffor money he stole from me as by Cort ordr aprs. 20. 0. 0 This Sum by me disbursd & for him to pay me 85. 7. 6. This Negro ran away from my Service before he servd me one year of ye eight wch he was to serve me & carryed away forty pounds of my Estate with him wch md me to seek him up but it would have been less loss to me to have lost yt forty pounds than eer to have sought him up any more. An Acct of wt I recevd in pt of wh I disbursd & wt sd Ne- =gro was by ye Corts ordred to pay unto me l. b. d 1. by 4 yrs & 3 qrs unfaithfull Service — 20. 0. 0 2. in pt of ye mony he stole from me — 03. 5. 0 & of Pet: Manning — 0. 12. 0 3. Recevd of his Mastr. mr Jonath: Wade — 26. 10. 0 this is all yt I received — 50. 07. 0 rest still due to me to ballance accts — 35. 00. 6 witness myne hand this. 15. of decemb 1682 William Park. Sworn in Court by Wm Parks yt this is a true Narrative, he owning yt Capt Wade hath now his sole right. Jona. Remington Cler 19. 10. 82. Dora Capia The Danforth R. [over] Deacon Parks. 1682 We are not told who this Elizabeth Parker was but she must have been a white woman, and an intimate of the family — because this “bastard child” must have been kin and of an exceedingly light complexion or he or she certainly would not have been being cared for to the tune of £12 in expenditure.

October: In Connecticut, a law was enacted against Man-Stealing. “The General Laws and Liberties of Conecticut” 140 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Capital Laws”: 10. “If any Man stealeth a Man or Man kinde, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be put to death. EXOD. 21. 16.” LAWS OF CONNECTICUT, 1672 (reprinted 1865), page 9. This was not a law against slaveholding; rather, it was a law against “plagiarism,” that is to say, a law to punish a white man who absconds with a slave who is considered to be the property of some other white man.

1674

Richard Baxter denounced slave hunters as “enemies of mankind” — but it is to be noted that this English Puritan did not denounce plantation slavery itself, so long as the slaves were being well treated.

February 18: Friend George Fox wrote to the Quakers in Barbados, challenging them in regard to their convenient racism:

“Send me over a black boy of your instructing, that I may see some of your fruits, and as I shall see, I shall make him a free man, or send him to you again.”

But they would not send him one of their slaves, nor in fact would he expect them to — he was merely “jerking their chain,” so to speak:

“And as for sending a Negro to me (it is no matter) I did it to try them.”

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1675

Dutch traders were purchasing African slaves at an average price of 30 þorins each on the coast of Angola and were selling some 15,000 survivors of the Middle Passage per year in the Americas — at 300 to 500 þorins each.

On Jamaica, 35 enslaved people were executed for conspiracy to rebel.

In the coming race war in New England, one or two hundred white colonists would be killed and hundreds of outlying pieces of property destroyed from a total white population probably at this point approaching 40,000.111 [The race war which we term King Philip’s War was] a war before television, before film, before photography ... even crude wood engravings were rare and printed books an uncommon commodity. When the English and Algonquian peoples of seventeenth-century New England went to war in 1675, they devastated one another. In proportion to population, their short, vicious war inflicted greater casualties than any other war in American history. Yet a single image of the fighting survives: half a dozen tiny, crouching figures shooting at one another along the creases of John Seller’s map of New England printed in an English atlas in 1675. It tells us precious little.... [N]ot even Christian Indians loyal to the English were spared; in the fall of 1675 most were removed from their towns and imprisoned on barren islands, where many died of cold or hunger during the long winter. Always brutal and everywhere fierce, King Phil[l]ip’s War, as it came to be called, proved to be not only the most fatal war in all of American history but also one of the most merciless.

111. The total native American population of which they professed to be so fearful, including women and children, probably numbered at this point fewer than 20,000, and a very significant percentage of this native population was Christian or friendly or allied rather than in any way hostile. 142 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Actually, to speak very coldbloodedly about the matter, the statistics indicate that merely one person out of every 400 would die at best and one person out of every 200 would die at worst, and such statistics compare nicely with today’s death rate due to peacetime automotive accidents! (A comparison statistic would be that four children die by having a heavy TV set fall on them in their home –perhaps while they are being thrilled by a videotape of “Jaws”– for every child that dies of a shark attack while swimming at the beach.) Face it, the genocide would turn out to be a really good deal from the standpoint of the white intrusives, despite what has been written about how “disastrous” “King Phillip’s War” had been. In fact, if you believe that such population simplifications can solve problems (I happen not to believe this, myself), then this amounted to minimal losses with maximal gains.

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“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” — L. Frank Baum, author of the OZ books

Mr. Trust Me, the White Man’s Ambassador

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The intrusive culture had reached critical mass and the native culture of the Wampanoag and Narragansett, with their “Welcome, Englishman, Welcome, Englishman,” and with their “What cheer, nehtop,” was at this point doomed to be virtually extinguished. Previously, they had been the white man’s valued allies against the Pequots, but the fact was, the English were white and delightsome and these people were red and unenlightened. Uncounted thousands of the red previous allies would be offed outright and then the remnants would become available to be sold into the international slave trade for foreign life slavery for approximately £3 per head after being transported in a vessel somewhat like this one, the Brooke:

Or, if young enough and congenial enough, they might avoid all this by being resituated into domestic indentured service to white families, or exiled to tribes farther toward the wilderness of the interior.

[Below appears the rotting hulk of the slave ship Jem, as of the Year of Our Lord 1891 at Fort Adams near Newport on Aquidneck Island:]

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By this point in time the promontory known as Mount Hope in the bay of Rhode Island was amounting merely to a little strip of de facto reservation land, approximately two miles wide and six long. The whites of Swansea had even erected “a very substantial fence quite across the great neck,” Bristol Neck, which was virtually preventing land access by the Narragansett to their little peninsula between Narragansett Bay and Mount Hope bay.

AS, THE SITUATION WOULD BE REPORTED IN with refpect to the The place where this King Philip doth dwell, is on a parcel of Land, called in Englifh, Mount-Hope, about twelve Miles long, and judged to be the beft Land in New England : And it was about thirty

New-England five Miles off of this Place to the Northward, that the firft Englifh that ever came there, Landed ; and by degrees built Houfes, and called the name of the place New-Plimouth, (becaufe Plimouth in Old England was the Indian laft place they were at there). War. The Prefent State of [hearsay offered by a Merchant of Bofton]

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After the coming race war Captain Nathaniel Reynolds, ancestor of the Concord reverend who would officiate at Henry Thoreau’s funeral, would be taking possession of this one last little strip, renaming it Bristol

An attempt was made to separate the friendly Christian Indians from the wild savages, and some were brought in to Deer Island in Boston harbor. Others [primarily women and young children, and excluding any males of warrior age] were brought to Concord and entrusted to John Hoar, who built a workshop and stockade for them next to his own house, which is now known as Orchard House. This caused a furor in Concord. Many considered the Christian Indians just spies and informers. The town defenses were in a precarious state [due to the fact that many of the white men were away, fighting in the race war].

As you might imagine, the sachem Metacom’s take on the situation differed considerably from the attitude of the English in Plymouth and Boston.

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Here I think that the attitude expressed by the amateur historian Reverend Grindall Reynolds of Concord is considerably more accurate and cogent than the attitude expressed by any of the professional historians of this period:

Read Philip’s pathetic story recorded in Arnold’s history [Arnold’s RHODE I SLAND, Volume I, page 394] and you will know how it looked to the conquered. Said he to John Borden of Rhode Island:— “The English who came to this country were but a handful of people, forlorn, poor, and distressed. My father was then Sachem. He relieved their distresses. He gave them land to build and plant upon. He did all in his power to serve them. Their numbers rapidly increased. My father’s counsellors became uneasy and alarmed. They advised him to destroy them before they should become too strong. But my father was also the father of the English. His advice prevailed. It was then concluded to give victuals to the English. Experience had taught that the fears of my father’s counsellors were right. By various means they got possessed of a great part of his territory. My elder brother became Sachem. They pretended to suspect him of evil designs. He was seized and confined, and thrown into sickness and died. After I became Sachem they disarmed all my people. They tried them by their own laws, assessed damages which they could not pay, and their land was taken. Thus tract after tract is gone. But a small part of the dominion of my ancestors remains. I am determined not to live till I have no country.” So it is evident that life and death grapple, called King Philip’s War, had to come. I am with those who doubt the accepted theory about it. Our fathers excited by natural, and for the most part well founded fears, exaggerated both the capacity and plans of Philip. They believed that he had formed a gigantic Indian Confederacy. This theory rested on slender foundations. The King Philip of the annals is certainly a creature of the imagination. The real Philip had not head enough to plan such a confederacy, nor courage enough to carry it into effect. His commanding influence, if he ever had any, began with the attack on Swanzey and closed with his flight to the Nipmucks. From that moment as a great figure he disappears. Indeed, if we suppose the affair at Swanzey to be the culmination of years of plotting, what further proof of Philip’s weakness is needed? There was no preparation whatever for defense. A few hundred hasty levies in forty-eight hours swept his tribe out of existence. There is very slight evidence that he was in command at any of the later undertakings. He certainly fled for a time to the Mohawks. Had not a certain Nemesis brought him back to die on his own hearthstone, and so lent pathos to life’s close, he might almost have been forgotten.

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Mary McCarthy, writing in 1946, would term Hiroshima “a hole in human history.”

There is such a hole in human history, it would seem, at every point at which an atrocity has been committed by some group which then “won.” For instance, the hole in Concord history which resulted from the racial mass murder on Mount Misery at the watershed of Walden Pond as of the Massachusetts race war in 1675- 1676, and the hole in human history which would result from the use of the Christian Dakota as hostages during the race war of 1863.

Writing thirty years after the fact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ralph Lapp, who had worked on the A-bomb, would ask “If the memory of things is to deter, where is that memory?” He would add that “Hiroshima has been taken out of the American conscience, eviscerated, extirpated.”

With much of their territory sold or “mortgaged,” the sachems of the Narragansett became embroiled in the conflict that was intensifying between the English of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag sachem Metacom of Mount Hope. However, when the United Colonies demanded Wampanoag women and children as hostages, they attempted to refuse.

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The following is the manner in which this sad history of hostaging is reflected in Henry Thoreau’s A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS:

Daniel Gookin, who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, apologizes for presenting his matter clothed in a wilderness dress, says that on the breaking out of Philip’s war in 1675, there were taken up by the Christian Indians and the English in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, seven Indians belonging to Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had all been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; and, hearing of the war, they reckoned with their master, and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away without his privity, and, being afraid, marched secretly through the woods, designing to go to their own country. However, they were released soon after. Such were the hired men in those days.

(Bear in mind, in excuse for Henry Thoreau here, that he did not have the objective, unbiased, culture- independent historical materials available to him which we wonderful people have made so freely available today. All he had available were such materials as above, which he was able to cite and pay proper attention to despite their subjective, biased, culturally determined nature.)

At some point during this year, Peter Folger’s poem “A Looking Glasse for the Times,” of which no printed copy has survived, would comment upon the hostilities.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a special levy of the towns, to pay for the general race war. There were 49 towns. The tax for “Mendham,” for instance, was £16 6s. 2d.

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1676

At this point Dutch traders were purchasing 15,000 black Africans per year on the coast of Angola, at approximately 30 florins each, and selling them in the Americas at some 300 to 500 florins each. “[We must defend ourselves] against all Indians in general, for that they were all Enemies.” This was the unequivocal view of Nathaniel Bacon, a young, wealthy Englishman who had recently settled in the Virginia backcountry. The opinion that all Indians were enemies was also shared by a many other Virginians, especially those who lived like Bacon in the interior. It was not the view, however, of the governor of the colony, William Berkeley. Berkeley was not opposed to fighting Indians who were considered enemies, but attacking friendly Indians, he thought, could lead to what everyone wanted to avoid: a war with “all the Indians against us.” Berkeley also didn’t trust Bacon’s intentions, believing that the upstart’s true aim was to stir up trouble among settlers, who were already discontent with the colony’s government because of the heavy taxes he was levying on tobacco. Bacon attracted a large following who, like him, wanted to kill or drive out every Indian in Virginia. The main fighting force of these rebels was made up of white and black bond laborers who were seeking an end to their servitude. At a place at the head of the York River in Virginia which had been named “West Point” after its owner, a Colonel West, some “four hundred English and Negroes in Armes” were demanding “freedom from their slavery.”112

In 1675, when Berkeley had denied Bacon a commission to lead soldiers, Bacon had taken it upon himself to lead his followers in a crusade against the “enemy.” They had marched to a fort held by a friendly tribe, the Occaneechees, and convinced them to capture warriors from an unfriendly tribe. When the Occaneechees had returned with captives, Bacon’s men had first killed the captives and then turned on their native “allies” and opened fire. Considerable booty was then collected, in the form of furs. All the Indians about the Chesapeake Bay were made tributary to the whites as the result of a campaign against them by Bacon, who defeated and nearly exterminated them in a battle fought on the present site of the city of Richmond. Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel and charged him with treason. Just to be safe, the next time Bacon returned to Jamestown VA, he had brought along 50 armed men. He had been arrested, but Berkeley had pardoned him instead of

112. Edmund S. Morgan has asserted that the Southrons would be seeking to prevent a replay of Bacon’s Rebellion by “racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous slave blacks by a screen of racial contempt,” in accordance with Sir Francis Bacon’s advice, that the wise ruler divides and breaks off “all factions and combinations that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust among themselves.”

What this strategy would of course not contemplate would be that circumstances might be brought to occur, in which the black slaves could be divided away from the protection of their rich white owners, and then slaughtered by the poor whites in a spasm of genocide, bringing about the destruction not only of the black slaves which these poor whites had been trained so to contemn, but also their rich white owners who could not survive as such if divested of their investment in their chattel servants. — Which is very much what almost would be brought about in consequence of Captain John Brown’s ill-advised 1859 attempt to equip an army of escaping slaves with pikes at Harpers Ferry! 152 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sentencing him to death, the usual punishment for such treason. Still without the commission he felt he deserved, Bacon had returned to Jamestown later the same month, this time accompanied by 500 men. Berkeley had been forced to give Bacon the commission, only to later declare that it was void. Bacon, in the meantime, had continued his fight against Indians. When he learned of the Governor’s declaration, he headed back to Jamestown. The governor immediately fled, along with a few of his supporters, to Virginia’s eastern shore. Each leader tried to muster support. Each promised freedom to slaves and servants who would join their cause. Bacon’s following was much greater than William Berkeley’s and in September, he and his men would be able to set Jamestown on fire. Britain sent a royal force to assist in quelling the uprising and arresting scores of committed rebels, white and black. When Nathaniel Bacon suddenly died in October, probably of dysentery, his rebellion fizzled out. Theodore W. Allen has commented on this history that: [J]ust as the overthrow of the tenancy in the 1620s had cleared the way for the institution of chattel bond-servitude, so the defeat of Bacon’s Rebellion cleared the way for the establishment of the system of lifelong hereditary chattel bond-servitude.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Nicholas Easton died, bequeathing the sum of £20 “in country pay” and his home and the land on which it stood to the Newport Friends (possibly, some of the adjacent land may also have been acquired by purchase from the widowed Ann Easton). This repurposed structure probably served as the 1st permanent place of worship for the local Quakers (for instance, the 1672 debate between the Reverend Roger Williams and various Quakers in Newport had taken place in a Friends meetinghouse). The piece of land eventually would be used in 1699 for the Great Meetinghouse of the Friends.

Friend Nicholas also left “to the maintenance of the burial yard where his body lyes, one Barrell of pork, to be managed by Christopher Houlder.”

Dutch traders were buying black slaves at 30 florins each in Angola and were selling 15,000 per year in the Americas at 300 to 500 florins each. In this year in Newport, Rhode Island the public friend William Edmundson became the first Christian of English extraction to categorize the holding of others in slavery as a “sin” (this had been a totalizing declaration which Friend George Fox had always avoided). –For this new totalizing conviction of his, Friend William would be at first shunned, and then excluded, from the fellowship of Friends. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

January 8: Evidently something that his advisers had said had gotten through to King Charles II of England, as he was rubbing his neck and withdrawing the proclamation against coffeehouses which he had issued 11 days before, and was doing so out of “princely consideration,” and out of “royal compassion.” COFFEE

March 3, Thursday: In western New Jersey, an ordinance seems to have in one way or another regulated slavery (but actually may have been prohibiting not slavery itself but only the fresh enslaving of current residents of New Jersey who were currently free, or may have been merely a prohibition of the arrest in a courthouse of persons appearing there to attend a court session). “The Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Province of West New-Jersey, in America.” Chapter XXIII. “That in all publick Courts of Justice for Tryals of Causes, Civil or Criminal, any Person or Persons, Inhabitants

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of the said Province, may freely come into, and attend the said Courts, ... that all and every Person and Persons Inhabiting the said Province, shall, as far as in us lies, be free from Oppression and Slavery.” Leaming and Spicer, GRANTS, CONCESSIONS, etc., pages 382 and 398.

June: The Virginia Assembly determined that any “enemy Indians taken in war” during this period of Bacon’s Rebellion were to be “held and accounted slaves dureing [sic] life.”

At a meeting of the selectmen of Woburn MA, officials took steps “to break up all those irregular and vicious habits, which usually terminate in pauperism, or lead to confirm depravity and spiritual ruin.” The solution manifested itself in the form of Tithingmen, whose office it would be “to have oversight of their neighbours, and see that they keepe good orders in their houses.” To ensure its effectiveness all families in Worburn were “assigned” to their respective Tithingman. Among specific duties of these officers would be that of preventing disorderly conduct in private families and public houses; suppressing or checking profanity, Sabbath breaking, idleness, intemperance, and sundry other immoralities. (Think Taliban.)

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June 26: Metacom had such a high regard for Captain Thomas Willett that during the race war he had ordered that the Willett family not be harmed. At this point, however, some native warriors who had not heard of this order captured Hezekiah Willett, a son of Captain Thomas Willett, 25 years of age, in or near Swansea, and cut off his ears and nose. (Possibly he remained alive until July 1st.) They then carried his head to their war leader, thinking they would be praised — but when Metacom would see this head he would adorn it with wampum, and comb its hair.

A slave of Captain Thomas Willett, captured at Swansea, would escape to Taunton to inform the people there of an impending Indian assault he had heard being discussed. Being thus warned, the Taunton people would be ready on July 11, 1676, and only two of their houses would be fired by the Indians, and only one Englishman killed. (Several years later, in gratitude, this black man would be manumitted.) “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

July 30: On the Virginia coast, the main force of the rebels under a farmer general consisted of some “four hundred English and Negroes in Armes” demanding “freedom from their slavery.” Here is this day’s “Declaration of Nathaniel Bacon in the Name of the People of Virginia”:113 For having, upon specious pretenses of public works, raised great unjust taxes upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends, but no visible effects in any measure adequate; for not having, during this long time of his government, in any measure advanced this hopeful colony either by fortifications, towns, or trade. For having abused and rendered contemptible the magistrates of justice by advancing to places of judicature scandalous and ignorant favorites. For having wronged his Majesty's prerogative and interest by assuming monopoly of the beaver trade and for having in it unjust gain betrayed and sold his Majesty's country and the lives of his loyal subjects to the barbarous heathen. For having protected, favored, and emboldened the Indians against his Majesty's loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring, or appointing any due or proper means of satisfaction for their many invasions, robberies, and murders committed upon us.

113. Per FOUNDATIONS OF COLONIAL AMERICA: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, SOUTHERN COLONIES, ed. Keith Kavenagh (NY: Chelsea House, 1973, pages 1783-4).

Edmund S. Morgan has asserted that the Southrons would be seeking to prevent a replay of Bacon’s Rebellion by “racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous slave blacks by a screen of racial contempt,” in accordance with Sir Francis Bacon’s advice, that the wise ruler divides and breaks off “all factions and combinations that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust among themselves.” What this strategy would of course not contemplate would be that circumstances might be brought to occur, in which the black slaves could be divided away from the protection of their rich white owners, and then slaughtered by the poor whites in a spasm of genocide, bringing about the destruction not only of the black slaves which these poor whites had been trained so to contemn, but also their rich white owners who could not survive as such if divested of their investment in their chattel servants. — Which is very much what almost would be brought about in consequence of Captain John Brown’s 1859 attempt to equip an army of escaping slaves with pikes at Harpers Ferry. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 155 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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For having, when the army of English was just upon the track of those Indians, who now in all places burn, spoil, murder and when we might with ease have destroyed them who then were in open hostility, for then having expressly countermanded and sent back our army by passing his word for the peaceable demeanor of the said Indians, who immediately prosecuted their evil intentions, committing horrid murders and robberies in all places, being protected by the said engagement and word past of him the said Sir William Berkeley, having ruined and laid desolate a great part of his Majesty's country, and have now drawn themselves into such obscure and remote places and are by their success so emboldened and confirmed by their confederacy so strengthened that the cries of blood are in all places, and the terror and consternation of the people so great, are now become not only difficult but a very formidable enemy who might at first with ease have been destroyed. And lately, when, upon the loud outcries of blood, the assembly had, with all care, raised and framed an army for the preventing of further mischief and safeguard of this his Majesty's colony. For having, with only the privacy of some few favorites without acquainting the people, only by the alteration of a figure, forged a commission, by we know not what hand, not only without but even against the consent of the people, for the raising and effecting civil war and destruction, which being happily and without bloodshed prevented; for having the second time attempted the same, thereby calling down our forces from the defense of the frontiers and most weakly exposed places. For the prevention of civil mischief and ruin amongst ourselves while the barbarous enemy in all places did invade, murder, and spoil us, his Majesty's most faithful subjects. Of this and the aforesaid articles we accuse Sir William Berkeley as guilty of each and every one of the same, and as one who has traitorously attempted, violated, and injured his Majesty's interest here by a loss of a great part of this his colony and many of his faithful loyal subjects by him betrayed and in a barbarous and shameful manner exposed to the incursions and murder of the heathen. And we do further declare these the ensuing persons in this list to have been his wicked and pernicious councilors, confederates, aiders, and assisters against the commonalty in these our civil commotions. Sir Henry Chichley Richard Whitacre Lt. Col. Christopher Wormeley Nicholas Spencer Phillip Ludwell Joseph Bridger Robt. Beverley William Claiburne, Jr. Ri. Lee Thomas Hawkins Thomas Ballard William Sherwood William Cole John Page Clerke John West John Clauffe Clerk Hubert Farrell Thomas Reade Math. Kempe

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And we do further demand that the said Sir William Berkeley with all the persons in this list be forthwith delivered up or surrender themselves within four days after the notice hereof, or otherwise we declare as follows. That in whatsoever place, house, or ship, any of the said persons shall reside, be hid, or protected, we declare the owners, masters, or inhabitants of the said places to be confederates and traitors to the people and the estates of them is also of all the aforesaid persons to be confiscated. And this we, the commons of Virginia, do declare, desiring a firm union amongst ourselves that we may jointly and with one accord defend ourselves against the common enemy. And let not the faults of the guilty be the reproach of the innocent, or the faults or crimes of the oppressors divide and separate us who have suffered by their oppressions. These are, therefore, in his Majesty's name, to command you forthwith to seize the persons abovementioned as traitors to the King and country and them to bring to Middle Plantation and there to secure them until further order, and, in case of opposition, if you want any further assistance you are forthwith to demand it in the name of the people in all the counties of Virginia. Nathaniel Bacon General by Consent of the people. William Sherwood

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October 12: Two Native Americans were executed on Boston Common.

Later, some of the surviving local tribespeople would be returning to Concord to serve as indentured servants, and see white farmers in control of what had been their fields. —And any runaways from this period of indenture, if recaptured, could under the laws of the time be sold by their employers into lifelong foreign

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slavery.114

“Land! Land! Hath been the idol of many in New England!”–Increase Mather “KING PHILLIP’S WAR” I, Concord, have power, take notice To carry towns and move millstones Yes, I am an invincible one for all enemies But sighing and weeping will overwhelm those who crush my followers And they will lose their refuge with great shame As has become clear in various lands But whoever loves me and keeps me in mind He must lock up Discord Or otherwise he’ll find himself deceived in the end.115

114. Wheeler, Ruth R. CONCORD: CLIMATE FOR FREEDOM. Concord MA: The Concord Antiq. Soc., 1967, page 54:

After a successful search for Biblical precedents, these poor Indians were sold into slavery.

New England Native Americans of the Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Nipmuk groups were sold into slavery not only in Virginia and Bermuda and the islands of the West Indies such as Jamaica, but also in the Azores, and in Spain and Portugal. By 1775, there would be only 1,500 Nipmuc left – and by Thoreau’s time there would be none at all. Generally, with exceptions, adult males were hanged on suspicion of having been warriors, and it was only women and children who were sold as slaves. The slavery situation was particularly difficult due to the well-deserved reputation of Americans, that they made difficult slaves. One of the slave vessels was turned away in port after port, and had to dispose of its cargo finally in Tangier.

115. Translated from this woodcut prepared by Cornelis Anthonisz, “The Misuse of Prosperity.” (The Increase Mather quote on the previous page is cited in Slotkin & Folsom, SO DREADFULL A JUDGEMENT, pages 71-2.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 159 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend John Higginson declared the hostilities to be a test, to probe “whether, according to our profession and [God’s] expectation, we would keep his commandments, or not.”116 The Concord murders indicate that war is not the best way to incite people to keep the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”

Of course, one might have anticipated some such finding.

116. Quoted in the Reverend Cotton Mather’s MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA (Hartford CT: Silas Andrus & Son, 1855), Volume I, page 16.

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1677

There were a total of 14 “Ordinaries & publick drinking Howses” in Salem. Captain Richard More and his wife had a “neager” slave named Judeth, possibly procured in Barbados, to help them around their tavern. The tavern evidently had deep drinkers among the “travailers & strangers” that made up its transient clientele, as during this year the old Captain arranged for a shipment of “two tonnes of strong beer” to be shipped there by way of Virginia. SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1678

A “slave mutiny” was reported and martial law was enforced on Jamaica. SERVILE INSURRECTION

The political council of the Cape colony prohibited marriage between Dutch burghers and freed slaves (this would be reaffirmed in 1685).

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A small vessel brought 40 to 50 slaves from Madagascar to Boston.117 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

117. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New York City in August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” 162 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1679

There was a slave revolt in Haiti. SERVILE INSURRECTION

The penalty for a bond-laborer in Virginia, should he or she get caught stealing a hog to supplement the corn and water diet supplied by a master, was to have one year of additional servitude tacked onto the end of his of her bond. That not having proven to be enough to deter the starving bond-laborers, it was decided in this year that “three strikes and you are out” — on the third such offense a perpetrator was to be executed. SLAVERY

1680

Between 1680 and 1700, The Royal African Company would be exporting 140,000 slaves from Africa, while private adventures would be exporting another 160,000. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Governor Simon Bradstreet of the Massachusetts Bay Colony responded to an inquiry by “the lords of his Majesties privy council”: There had been no company of blacks or slaves brought into the country since the beginning of this plantation, for the space of 50 years, only one small vessell about two yeares since after 20 month’s voyage to Madagascar brought hither betwixt 40 and 50 negros, most women and children, sold for 10 pounds, 15 pounds and 20 pounds apiece, which stood the merchants in near 40 pounds apiece one with another: now and then two or three negros are brought hither from Barbados and other of his majesties plantations, and sold here for about 20 pounds apiece, so that there may bee within our government about 100 or 120, and it may bee as many Scots brought hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and most now married and living here, and about halfe so many Irish brought hither at several times as servants.

According to Hugh Thomas’s THE SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE, 1440-1870 (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997), during this decade a ship captained by a Quaker, Friend William Frampton, would bring the initial African slaves to Philadelphia.

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The transportation of English convicts to the American colonies was at this point in time a fully developed practice: The shipment of convicts, as “His Majesty’s passengers,” to be plantation bond-laborers was an especially profitable branch of the trade since it was subsidized by the authorities in England. Although this practice proceeded systematically on a national scale under a law passed by Parliament in 1717, convicts were sent to the Chesapeake colonies in the seventeenth century. Those convicts who survived the voyage were sold by the ship’s captain for his own or his employer’s account. James Revel arrived in Virginia some time before 1680 at eighteen years of age, having been sentenced to fourteen years’ bond-servitude. He later wrote recollections of his experiences, which began with the dockside marketing process. After a seven-week trip, the convicts were put ashore, where they were cleaned up to be made presentable to the prospective customers. The men and women were displayed separately, for “Examening [sic] like Horses.” “Some view’d our teeth, to see if they were good, Or fit to chew our hard and homely Food. If any like our look, our limbs, our trade, the Captain then good advantage made.”

Before this point, the concept “white” had not been made much use of in Virginia. After this point, things would be changing. The white race was going to be invented. However, the first use of the term “white” in a Virginia statute, to designate the European-Americans as a social category, would not appear until the Year of Our Lord 1691.

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The British Parliament granted the New York colony a monopoly on the bolting, or sifting and production of wheat, and as a result the demand for the labor of enslaved Africans in the Hudson Valley would be increasing significantly. By the Revolution, New York would be 2nd only to Charleston as an urban center of North American slavery.

In a continuous series of enactments designed to split the laboring class by fostering the contempt of poor whites toward both blacks and reds as their inherent inferiors, the Virginia legislature prescribed 30 lashes on the bare back “if any negro or other slave shall presume to lift up his hand in opposition against any Christian,” thereby allowing white indentured servants, considered at least nominally to be all Christians, to bully dark slaves without fear of retaliation, and thereby placing the light servants more on a psychological par with their masters.

1681

The following is from THE DIARY OF JOHN EVELYN: The captain of the Gally gave us most courteous entertainment in his Cabine, the Slaves in the interim playing both on loud &

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soft musique very rarely: Then he shew’d us how he commanded their motions with a nod, & his Wistle, making them row out; which was to me the newest spectacle I could imagine, beholding so many hundreds of miseraby naked Persons, having their heads shaven cloose, & onely red high bonnets, a payre of Course canvas drawers, their whole backs, & leggs starke naked, doubly chayned about their middle, & leggs, & made fast to their seates: and all Commanded in a trise, by an Imperious & cruell seaman: One Turke amongst them he much favourd, who waited on him in his Cabine, but naked as he was, & in a Chayne lock’d about his leg; but not coupled.... Their rising forwards, & falling back at their Oare is a miserable spactacle, and the noyse of their Chaines with the roaring on the beaten Waters has something of strange & fearfull in it, to one unaccustom’d. They are ruld, & chastiz’d with a bulls-pizle dry’d upon their backs, & soles of their feete upon the least dissorder, & without the least humanity. SLAVERY

1682

King Charles II of England bought himself a black boy, paying £50. (In a subsequent year, he would make of this lad a gift to a friend.) SLAVERY

In Virginia, the planters were being authorized to purchase native Americans from the American tribes, and to hold such purchased persons as slaves for life.

–And while we are speaking of things which enable slavery for life, let us not neglect to remember that this was also the year of Robert Gould’s misogynous satire “Love Given O’re: or, A Satyr against the Pride, Lust, Inconstancy, &c. of Woman”!

October 19: Thomas Browne died.

A full decade earlier, Deputy Governor John Leverett (1616-1679) and secretary Edward Rawson (1615-1693) had signed an order to the keeper of the Boston prison, that he hold Deacon Parker’s negro servant/slave Silvanus Warro on the charges of night-walking, disobedience, and fornication with Elizabeth Parker. To the keeper of the prison in boston You are requyred in his majestyes [Majesty’s] Name herewith to receyve the boddy of silvanus warro negro servt to deacon parker & him safely keep that he may be forth Comeing to Answer for his Comitting ffornication with Elizabeth Parker & begitting her with chyld, & for his disobedience & night walkeing for your so doeing these shal be yor warrant. dated in boston the 2. march. 1671/2. Jno: Leverett dept. Gor.

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the sd Silvanus answd the whole charg . in . ys wart. expresst in open Court 7 mach 71 as Attest Edw. Rauson [flourish] secret In a document prepared on this date, a Deacon William Park or Parks (presumably the same person as the Deacon Parker above) instanced the expense of caring for the “bastard child” of a servant Sylvanus Warro who had run away. An acct. of wt[what] I disbursed for my Servt Sylvanus Warro negro. 1. To his Master yt I bought him off I pd hand Maj: Genll Gook l. b. d in. 5 years, — 40. 0. 0 as appears by his receite. 2. Wn he ran away from my Service in charges ex- =pended in finding of him & bringing of him to me & money he stole then from mee & damage by ye Court he was l orderd to pay me as by a Court ordr now prs enterd. l3. 00. 0. besides Court & prison Charge. 0. 07. 6. for his bastard Child I pd — 12. 00. 0 ffor money he stole from me as by Cort ordr aprs. 20. 0. 0 This Sum by me disbursd & for him to pay me 85. 7. 6. This Negro ran away from my Service before he servd me one year of ye eight wch he was to serve me & carryed away forty pounds of my Estate with him wch md me to seek him up but it would have been less loss to me to have lost yt forty pounds than eer to have sought him up any more. An Acct of wt I recevd in pt of wh I disbursd & wt sd Ne- =gro was by ye Corts ordred to pay unto me l. b. d 1. by 4 yrs & 3 qrs unfaithfull Service — 20. 0. 0 2. in pt of ye mony he stole from me — 03. 5. 0 & of Pet: Manning — 0. 12. 0 3. Recevd of his Mastr. mr Jonath: Wade — 26. 10. 0 this is all yt I received — 50. 07. 0 rest still due to me to ballance accts — 35. 00. 6 witness myne hand this. 15. of decemb 1682 William Park. Sworn in Court by Wm Parks yt this is a true Narrative, he owning yt Capt Wade hath now his sole right. Jona. Remington Cler 19. 10. 82. Dora Capia The Danforth R. [over] Deacon Parks. 1682 We are not told who this Elizabeth Parker was but she must have been a white woman, and an intimate of the family — because this “bastard child” must have been kin and of an exceedingly light complexion or he or she certainly would not have been being cared for to the tune of £12 in expenditure.

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1683

On the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, a conspiracy to create servile insurrection was detected and promptly exterminated.

1684

Dr. François Bernier was the first to replace the prevailing classificatory system for humans, that by continent of origin (European, African, Asian, etc.) with a new classificatory system, that by color of skin. It is not known that the English and the African had come face to face prior to the 16th Century, but initially, when these contacts had been taking place, they had not been taking place in any sort of context in which to be Negro would be equivalent to being enslaved. Black individuals were only different, only perhaps inferior in some respects, rather than categorically inferior to all white individuals. Slaves, in ancient times, had not been readily distinguishable by appearance unless their status was subtly indicated by the sloppiness of their haircut, the raggedness and filthiness of their attire, the condition of their teeth, the appearance of a body twisted by constant rough labor, or unless their status had been more unsubtly marked by a shaven head, by an identification tablet which they were forbidden to remove, by a welded slave collar, by tattooings, or by actual branding. By the late 17th Century, however, skin tone would be becoming the primary organizing principle around which the European natural historian would be classifying categorical human differences.118

English traders brought 150 African slaves to Philadelphia for resale. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

118. Dr. Bernier himself, however, would not accept that his recategorization in accordance with skin albedo necessitated any hierarchical order of being, with lighter superior to darker. There was thus an inherent contradiction in the thought of Bernier, as was present also in the thought of Carl von Linne (Carolus Linnaeus), Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788), and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. They all accepted whiteness as “the real and natural color of man,” as the norm for our species from which all other colors are deviations, while they all yet argued that this normativization did not imply any inherent hierarchialization. 168 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1685

At this point the English were beginning to use “negreros,” ships specifically predesigned for the slave trade, rather than merely shipping off Africans toward the Virginia coast in any old freighter that happened to come to hand.

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE But enslavement wasn’t just for black people: Judge Jefferies accused Bristol aldermen and justices of kidnapping English people to serve on their plantations in the Caribbean and Virginia., and in Edinburgh, Scotland at this point, all ablebodied vagrants and all unemployed persons of over the tender age of five years were being consigned to lifetime servitude in manufacturing work.

Two women from Wigtown on the south-west coast of Scotland, Margaret Maclachlan (born in 1620) and Margaret Wilson (born in 1667) refused to accept the authority of the King in religious matters and were fastened to stakes in the Solway Firth and forced to watch the tide come in until they drowned.

Dunnottar Castle was used as a prison for 167 Covenanters, including 45 women, who were crowded into the “Whigs Vault,” a dungeon with a window open to the sea, and left to die.

During this year and the following one a servile insurrection on Jamaica was being suppressed.

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In this year the Dutch law of the Cape of Africa prohibited any marriage between white men and slave women. Some unions of white men with free women of color would continue to take place, and some of these unions would be regarded as legal, but this sort of practice would gradually decline. During this year, also, Article 9 of the Code noir of Louis XIV would threaten white men who were living in concubinage with a black slave woman with the high fine of 2000 livres (to be paid in sugar, and, to use the vernacular, that’s a whole lot of sugar). —Said payment in pounds of sugar could be avoided if the man so charged were unmarried and if he then married the slave woman, in a marriage which also legitimated any earlier offspring.

As a result of a new militia act, the persecution of Barbados Quakers intensified. Previously, when a Quaker would refuse to show up for militia training, the crown had seized quantities of sugar. At this point, when a Quaker failed to appear, the military authorities would seize and sell one or another of this Quaker slaveholder’s blacks: “they levy their execution upon our most serviceable negroes, both men, women and children, taking away, parting and selling husbands, wives, and children one from another, to the great grief, lamentation and distraction of our negro families.”

(Isn’t that precious? — They needed to protect “our negro families.” What, wasn’t it going to constitute ample righteousness, for these Quakers to shun war the way they did? Were they also going to need to disentangle themselves from human slavery?) RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Three years after Friend Robert Barclay had been made the nonresident governor of the Province of East Jersey (part of present-day New Jersey), Friend George Keith traveled there to take the post of Surveyor-General.

The Quaker Governor William Penn –who just in the previous year had declared that “Governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and government cannot be bad. If it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their tune”– reversing his previous rulings, allowed slave-trading enterprises to base themselves in his Philadelphia of brotherly love! RACISM

“Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”

— Dwight David Eisenhower

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January 26: In Virginia, an English bond-laborer named Katherine Higgins, forbidden to marry because of course, being a bond-laborer, her activities belonged exclusively to the owner of her bond, and in addition forbidden sex outside of marriage by a law against “fornication” which was selectively enforced against the lower classes, was found guilty of nevertheless having become a mother. Her sentence would be that she would need to be whipped (she might serve the owner of her bond an extra half a year if he would agree to pay her fine to spare her this whipping), plus she would anyway need to serve the owner of her bond for an additional two years in order to recompense him for the anticipable loss of the labor which he had already lost while she was in labor to give birth, and which she would naturally be expending in the rearing of this child. SLAVERY

1688

In the Languedoc-Dauphine area of southern France where persecution of Huguenots was severe, the first Huguenot “saints” began to appear, shaking, falling down, choking, having convulsions, and announcing that the end of the world would come in the next year, 1689. MILLENNIALISM

At least the 10th, and possibly the final, shipload of enslaved French Huguenots (ten shiploads, that is, are presently known to historians) arrived from Marseilles in the islands of Guadeloupe, St. Martin, St. Eustatius, and St. Domingo in the Caribbean. The mortality had been about 25% and there were about a thousand left alive to begin tropical labor under Catholic slavemasters. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“The grandeur of a country is to assume all its history. With its glorious pages but also its more shady parts.” — President Jacques Chirac of France

SLAVEHOLDING

The Bristol, England ship Society laden with enslaved Africans and “elephants teeth” from Guinea was seized and condemned in Virginia for breaking the monopoly of the Royal African Company — as was the Betty, also NEGREROS of Bristol, England. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Governor Denonville of French Canada petitioned King Louis XIV to authorize the colony to purchase African slaves to perform its labor. (Such permission would be granted by the King, but then the Governor would find out that there was such heavier demand for such slaves farther south, in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic coast of North America and in South America, that his colony simply could not compete, could not afford to purchase in competition with these southern slave plantations.) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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With its glorious pages but also its more shady parts.” — President Jacques Chirac of France

SLAVEHOLDING

In the colony of Pennsylvania, an informed citizenry, to wit the Dutch-speaking Mennonite Quakers of Germantown, as the first formal protest against slavery in the Western Hemisphere, registered their utter lack of union with Governor William Penn in his tolerance of slavetrading119 — but the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends took no action on their petition. It would not be until 1696 that Quakers importing slaves would be threatened with expulsion from the Society. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: One of the first American protests against the slave-trade came from certain German Friends, in 1688, at a Weekly Meeting held in Germantown, Pennsylvania. “These are the reasons,” wrote “Garret henderich, derick up de graeff, Francis daniell Pastorius, and Abraham up Den graef,” “why we are against the traffick of men-body, as followeth: Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner?... Now, tho they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?”120 This little leaven helped slowly to work a revolution in the attitude of this great sect toward slavery and the slave-trade. The Yearly Meeting at first postponed the matter, “It having so General a Relation to many other Parts.”121 Eventually, however, in 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised “That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more Negroes.”122 This advice was repeated in stronger terms for a quarter-century,123 and by that time Sandiford, Benezet, Lay, and Woolman had begun their crusade. In 1754 the Friends took a step farther and made the purchase of slaves a matter of discipline.124 Four years later the Yearly Meeting expressed itself clearly as “against every branch of this practice,” and declared that if “any professing with us should persist to vindicate it, and be concerned in importing, selling or purchasing slaves, the respective Monthly Meetings to which they belong should manifest their disunion with such persons.”125 Further, manumission was recommended, and in 1776 made compulsory.126 The effect of this attitude of the Friends was early manifested in the legislation of all the colonies where the sect was influential, and particularly in 119. Friend Penn was of the attitude that black servants were preferable to white ones, because eventually an indentured person could free himself or herself while in the case of servants of African descent, “a man has them while they live.” 120. From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880. Cf. Whittier’s poem, “Pennsylvania Hall” (POETICAL WORKS, Riverside ed., III. 62); and Proud, HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA (1797), I. 219. 121. From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880. 122. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM. (1864), I. 383. 123. Cf. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, PASSIM. 124. Janney, HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 315-7. 125. HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 317. 126. Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 395. 172 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Pennsylvania. One of the first duty acts (1710) laid a restrictive duty of 40s. on slaves, and was eventually disallowed.127 In 1712 William Southeby petitioned the Assembly totally to abolish slavery. This the Assembly naturally refused to attempt; but the same year, in response to another petition “signed by many hands,” they passed an “Act to prevent the Importation of Negroes and Indians,”128 — the first enactment of its kind in America. This act was inspired largely by the general fear of insurrection which succeeded the “Negro-plot” of 1712 in New York. It declared: “Whereas, divers Plots and Insurrections have frequently happened, not only in the Islands but on the Main Land of America, by Negroes, which have been carried on so far that several of the inhabitants have been barbarously Murthered, an Instance whereof we have lately had in our Neighboring Colony of New York,”129 etc. It then proceeded to lay a prohibitive duty of £20 on all slaves imported. These acts were quickly disposed of in England. Three duty acts affecting Negroes, including the prohibitory act, were in 1713 disallowed, and it was directed that “the Depty Govr Council and Assembly of Pensilvania, be & they are hereby Strictly Enjoyned & required not to permit the said Laws ... to be from henceforward put in Execution.”130 The Assembly repealed these laws, but in 1715 passed another laying a duty of £5, which was also eventually disallowed.131 Other acts, the provisions of which are not clear, were passed in 1720 and 1722,132 and in 1725-1726 the duty on Negroes was raised to the restrictive figure of £10.133 This duty, for some reason not apparent, was lowered to £2 in 1729,134 but restored again in 1761.135 A struggle occurred over this last measure, the Friends petitioning for it, and the Philadelphia merchants against it, declaring that “We, the subscribers, ever desirous to extend the Trade of this Province, have seen, for some time past, the many inconveniencys the Inhabitants have suffer’d for want of Labourers and artificers, ... have for some time encouraged the importation of Negroes;” they prayed therefore at least for a delay in passing the measure.136 The law, nevertheless, after much debate and altercation with the governor, finally passed. These repeated acts nearly stopped the trade, and the manumission or sale of Negroes by the Friends decreased the number of slaves in the province. The rising spirit of independence enabled the colony, in 1773, to restore the 127. PENN. COL. REC. (1852), II. 530; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 415. 128. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLECTED, etc., 1714, page 165; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 387. 129. See preamble of the act. 130. The Pennsylvanians did not allow their laws to reach England until long after they were passed: PENN. ARCHIVES, I. 161-2; COL. REC., II. 572-3. These acts were disallowed Feb. 20, 1713. Another duty act was passed in 1712, supplementary to the Act of 1710 (COL. REC., II. 553). The contents are unknown. 131. ACTS AND LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1715, page 270; Chalmers, OPINIONS, II. 118. Before the disallowance was known, the act had been continued by the Act of 1718: Carey and Bioren, LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1700-1802, I. 118; PENN. COL. REC., III. 38. 132. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 165; PENN. COL. REC., III. 171; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 389, note. 133. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 214; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 388. Possibly there were two acts this year. 134. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA (ed. 1742), page 354, ch. 287. Possibly some change in the currency made this change appear greater than it was. 135. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 371; ACTS OF ASSEMBLY (ed. 1782), page 149; Dallas, LAWS, I. 406, ch. 379. This act was renewed in 1768: Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 451; PENN. COL. REC., IX. 472, 637, 641. 136. PENN. COL. REC., VIII. 576. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 173 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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prohibitive duty of £20 and make it perpetual.137 After the Revolution unpaid duties on slaves were collected and the slaves registered,138 and in 1780 an “Act for the gradual Abolition of Slavery” was passed.139 As there were probably at no time before the war more than 11,000 slaves in Pennsylvania,140 the task thus accomplished was not so formidable as in many other States. As it was, participation in the slave-trade outside the colony was not prohibited until 1788.141 It seems probable that in the original Swedish settlements along the Delaware slavery was prohibited.142 This measure had, however, little practical effect; for as soon as the Dutch got control the slave-trade was opened, although, as it appears, to no large extent. After the fall of the Dutch Delaware came into English hands. Not until 1775 do we find any legislation on the slave-trade. In that year the colony attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves, but the governor vetoed the bill.143 Finally, in 1776 by the Constitution, and in 1787 by law, importation and exportation were both prohibited.144

February 18: Four Mennonites of Germantown, Pennsylvania signed a declaration “against the traffic of menbody.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

READ THE FULL TEXT

February 30: The petition of four Mennonites of Germantown, Pennsylvania “against the traffic of menbody” was presented to the Dublin, Pennsylvania monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

April 30: A proposed minute was brought to the Germantown Monthly Meeting, a meeting often characterized as a joint Quaker-Mennonite meeting, on day 30, 2 month, 1688. The minute is justly famous as the very first formal protest against slavery by any Christian group anywhere, and as the very first formal protest against slavery made anywhere in the Western Hemisphere: This is to ye Monthly Meeting held at Richard Worrell’s. These are the reasons we are against the traffick of men Body, as followeth: Is there any that would be done or handled in this

137. A large petition called for this bill. Much altercation ensued with the governor: Dallas, LAWS, I. 671, ch. 692; PENN. COL. REC., X. 77; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 388-9. 138. Dallas, LAWS, I. 782, ch. 810. 139. LAWS, I. 838, ch. 881. 140. There exist but few estimates of the number of slaves in this colony: — In 1721, 2,500-5,000. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 604. In 1754, 11,000. Bancroft, HIST. OF UNITED STATES (1883), II. 391. In 1760, very few. Burnaby, TRAVELS THROUGH N. AMER. (2d ed.), page 81. In 1775, 2,000. PENN. ARCHIVES, IV 597. 141. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 142. Cf. ARGONAUTICA GUSTAVIANA, pages 21-3; DEL. HIST. SOC. PAPERS, III. 10; HAZARD’S REGISTER, IV. 221, §§ 23, 24; HAZARD’S ANNALS, page 372; Armstrong, RECORD OF UPLAND COURT, pages 29-30, and notes. 143. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Ser., II. 128-9. 144. AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 5th Ser., I. 1178; LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 884, ch. 145 b. 174 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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manner? viz., to be sold or be made a slave of for all the time of his life? How fearfull & fainthearted are many at sea when they see a strange vessel, being afraid it should be a Turck, and they would be Tacken and sold for slaves into Turckey. Now what is this better done as Turcks doe? yea rather it is worse for them, wch say they are Christians; for we hear that ye most part of such Negers are brought heither against their will & consent; and that many of them are stollen. Now, tho’ they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men, licke as we will be done our selves; making no difference of what generation, descent, or Colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of Conscience, wch is right & reasonable; here ought to be lickewise liberty of ye body, except of evildoers, wch is another case. But to bring men hither, or to robb and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for Conscience sacke; and here there are those who are oppressed wch are of a black Colour. And we, who know that men must not comitt adultery, some doe comitt adultery in others, separating wifes from their husbands and giving them to others; and some sell the children of these poor Creatures to other men. Oh! doe consider well this thinge, you who do it; if you would be done in this manner? and if it is done according Christianity? You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing. This mackes an ill report in all those Countries of Europe, where they hear off, that ye Quackers doe here handel men licke they handel there ye Cattel. And for this reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither, and who shall maintaine this your cause or plaid for it? Truely we can not do so, except you shall inform us better hereoff, viz: that christians have liberty to practice this thinge. Pray! What thing in the world can be done worse towards us, then if men should robb or steal us away, & sell us for slaves to strange Countries, separating housband from their wifes & children. Being now that this is not done at that manner, we will be done at, therefore we contradict & are against this traffick of menbody. And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must lickewise avoid to purchase such things as are stollen, but rather to help stop this robbing and stealing is possible; and such men ought to be delivered out of ye hands of ye Robbers & and sett free as well as in Europe. Then is Pennsilvania to have a good report, instead it hath a bad one for this sacke in other Countries. Especially whereas ye Europeans are desirous to know in what manner ye Quackers does rule in their Province; & most of them doe loock upon us with an envious eye. But if this is well done, whal shall we say is done evil? If once these slaves (:wch they say are so wicked and stubbern men:) should joint themselves, fight for their freedom and handel their masters and mastrisses as they did handel them before; will these masters and mastrisses tacke the sword at hand & warr against these poor slaves, licke we are able to believe, some will not refuse to doe? Or have these Negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep

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them slaves? Now consider well this thing, if it is good or bad? and in case you find it good to handel these blacks at that manner, we desire & require you hereby lovingly, that you may informe us here in, which at this time never was done, viz., that Christians have such a liberty to do so. to the end we shall be satisfied in this point, & satisfie lickewise our good friends & acquaintances in our natif Country, to whose it is a terrour or fearful thing that men should be handled so in Pennsilvania. This is from our Meeting at Germantown held ye 18. of 2. month 1688. to be delivred to the Monthly Meeting at Richard Worrel’s. gerret hendricks derick op de graeff Francis Daniell Pastorious Abraham op Den graef. The Monthly meeting would respond with the following minute: At our monthly meeting at Dublin ye 30-2mo-:1688 we having inspected ye matter above mentioned and considered of it, we finde it so weighty that we think it not Expedient for us to meddle with it here, but do Rather comit it to ye consideration of ye Quarterly meeting; ye tennor of it being nearly related to ye truth. On behalfe of ye monthly meeting. Signed, P[per] Jo:Hart. It would be presented to the quarterly meeting, and forwarded to the Yearly Meeting, which would adopt the following minute: This above mentioned was read in our quarterly meeting at Philadelphia, the 4 of ye 4th mo 88 and was from thence recommended to the Yearly Metting and the above-said Derick and the other two mentioned therein to present the same to ye Abovesaid meetting it being a thing of too great A weight for this meeting to determine. Signed by ye order of ye meetting, Anthony Morris. The minute that would be adopted by the Yearly Meeting would be as follows: At a Yearly Meeting held at Burlington the 5th day of the 7th month, 1688. A Paper being here presented by some German Friends concerning the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Buying and keeping Negroes, It was adjudged not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the Case, It having so General a Relation to many other Parts, and therefore at Present they forbear It. Five years later, the Quaker followers of George Keith would publish “An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or keeping of Negroes,” New York (William Bradford). On its last page is the statement, “Given forth by our Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia, the 13th day of the 8th Month, 1693, and recommended to all our Friends and Brethren who are one with us in our Testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ, and too all others professiong Christianity.” The text adds “In 1696, also, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting [of the Religious Society of Friends] received anti-slavery protests from some of its Pennsylvania members (prominent among whom was Cadwallader Morgan), and it advised its members against the importation of slaves.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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July 5: The petition “against the traffic of menbody” was presented to the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1690

On the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, a major slave conspiracy to create servile insurrection, beginning in Clarendon, was detected and promptly exterminated.

1691

In about 1680 the concept “white” had been introduced in Virginia. Such usage had been growing. This year provides the 1st record of the term “white” in a Virginia statute, to designate European-Americans as a social category. The Assembly of the colony decided that from this time forward, it would be permissible for the planters to purchase captives from the native American tribes in a “free and open trade for all persons at all times and at all places with all Indians whatsoever.” It would not be noted either during this era or when this law would be reaffirmed, in 1705 and then in 1733, that such purchasing of enslaved persons from native Americans necessarily involved a presumption that a native American seller was a free man, entitled as such to enter into contracts at law — and that therefore it was actually quite impermissible under the existing understanding of the nature of the law for any native American ever to be thus reduced to a condition of enslavement!

In a continuous series of enactments designed to split the laboring class by fostering the contempt of poor whites toward both blacks and reds as their inherent inferiors, the Virginia legislature also acted against “abominable mixture and spurious issue”: their penalty for whites who married a black, mulatto, or Indian would henceforth be permanent removal from the dominion; the white female indentured servant who gave birth to an illegitimate child by a Negro or Mulatto was to pay the state 15 pounds sterling and be banished, or serve her master for two additional years and then be sold for five more, and such a bastard mulatto child was to be sold to be a servant until he or she reached the age of 30, the proceeds of such sale to be divided equally among the king, the parish, and the informer.145

1692

On the island of Barbados, a slave conspiracy to massacre whites was discovered. SERVILE INSURRECTION

The Reverend John Rogers had an Indian slave named James Huntaway.

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1693

During this year and the following year, the transportation cost of bulk cargos of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean was at this point estimated as ten pounds, ten shillings per head. This was quite high, in contrast with the fact that one might transport one or another volunteer, a white bond servant from England with nothing much going for him or her at home, to the plantations of the New World for certainly not more than five or six pounds. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

8mo. 13: A printed text amounting to some six pages, unsigned except as by “our Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia” but now attributed to Friend George Keith, entitled “An Exhortation & Caution to Friends concerning buying or keeping of Negroes,” was presumably (having been set in type by William Bradford of New-York) the 1st American protest against slavery to be put through the printing process. This initial publication would be referred to in Gabriel Thomas’s HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA (1698) and in a 1789 letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Wright, and the material would be reprinted on some date in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and reprinted again as an offset by that magazine in 1889.

Although this seems to have been the 1st anti-slavery declaration by American Quakers to make its way through a printing press, it was not their 1st anti-slavery declaration for one such had already been expressed, at a gathering in Germantown five years earlier, in 1688, without then however being distributed in print form. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

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AN EXHORTATION & CAUTION TO FRIENDS

CONCERNING BUYING OR KEEPING OF NEGROES

[GEORGE KEITH]

[Moore, George, ed. The First Printed Protest Against Slavery in America, Reprinted from “The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.” Philadelphia: n.p., 1889.]

Seing our Lord Jesus Christ hath tasted Death for every Man, and given himself a Ransom for all, to be testified in due time, and that his Gospel of Peace, Liberty and Redemption from Sin, Bondage and all Oppression, is freely to be preached unto all, without Exception, and that Negroes, Blacks, and Taunies are a real part of Mankind, for whom Christ hath shed his precious Blood, and are capable of Salvation, as well as White Men; and Christ the Light of the World hath (in measure) enlightened them, and every Man that cometh into the World; and that all such who are sincere Christians and true Believers in Christ Jesus, and Followers of him, bear his Image, and are made conformable unto him in Love, Mercy, Goodness and Compassion, who came not to destroy men’s Lives, but to save them, nor to bring any part of Mankind into outward Bondage, Slavery or Misery, nor yet to detain them, or hold them therein, but to ease and deliver the Oppressed and Distressed, and bring into Liberty both inward and outward. Therefore we judge it necessary that all faithful Friends should discover themselves to be true Christians by having the Fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which are Love, Mercy, Goodness, and Compassion towards all in Misery, and that suffer Oppression and severe Usage, so far as in them is possible to ease and relieve them, and set them free of their hard Bondage, whereby it may be hoped, that many of them will be gained by their beholding these good Works of sincere Christians, and prepared thereby, through the Preaching the Gospel of Christ, to imbrace the true Faith of Christ. And for this cause it is, as we judge, that in some places in Europe Negroes cannot be bought and sold for Money, or detained to be Slaves, because it suits not with the Mercy, Love & Clemency that is essential to Christianity, nor

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to the Doctrine of Christ, nor to the Liberty the Gospel calleth all men unto, to whom it is preached. And to buy Souls and Bodies of men for Money, to enslave them and their Posterity to the end of the World, we judge is a great hinderance to the spreading of the Gospel, and is occasion of much War, Violence, Cruelty and Oppression, and Theft & Robery of the highest Nature; for commonly the Negroes that are sold to white Men, are either stollen away or robbed from their kindred, and to buy such is the way to continue these evil Practices of Man-stealing, and transgresseth that Golden Rule and Law, To do to others what we would have others do to us. Therefore, in true Christian Love, we earnestly recommend it to all our Friends and Brethren, Not to buy any Negroes, unless it were on purpose to set them free, and that such who have bought any, and have them at present, after some reasonable time of moderate Service they have had of them, or may have of them, that may reasonably answer to the Charge of what they have laid out, especially in keeping Negroes Children born in their House, or taken into their House, when under Age, that after a reasonable time of service to answer that Charge, they may set them at Liberty, and during the time they have them, to teach them to read, and give them a Christian Education. Some Reasons and Causes of our being against keeping of Negroes for Term of Life. First, Because it is contrary to the Principles and Practice of the Christian Quakers to buy Prize or stollen Goods, which we bore a faithful Testimony against in our Native Country; and therefore it is our Duty to come forth in a Testimony against stollen Slaves, it being accounted a far greater Crime under Moses’s Law than the stealing of Goods: for such were only to restore four fold, but he that stealeth a Man and selleth him, if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to Death, EXOD. 21. 16. Therefore as we are not to buy stollen Goods, (but if at unawares it should happen through Ignorance, we are to restore them to the Owners, and seek our Remedy of the Thief) no more are we to buy stollen Slaves; neither should such as have them keep them and their Posterity in perpetual Bondage and Slavery, as is usually done, to the great scandal of the Christian Profession. Secondly, Because Christ commanded, saying, All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. Therefore as we and our Children would not be kept in perpetual Bondage and Slavery against our Consent, neither should we keep them in perpetual Bondage and Slavery against their Consent, it being such intollerable Punishment to their Bodies and Minds, that none but notorious Criminal Offendors deserve the same. But these have done us no harm; therefore how inhumane is it in us so grievously to oppress them and their Children from one Generation to another. Thirdly, Because the Lord hath commanded, saying, Thou shalt not deliver unto his Master the Servant that is escaped from his Master unto thee, he shall dwell with thee, even amongst you in “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 181 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that place which he shall chuse in one of thy Gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt oppress him, DEUT. 23. 15. 16. By which it appeareth, that those which are at Liberty and freed from their Bondage, should not by us be delivered into Bondage again, neither by us should they be oppressed, but being escaped from his Master, should have the liberty to dwell amongst us, where it liketh him best. Therefore, if God extend such Mercy under the legal Ministration and Dispensation to poor Servants, he doth and will extend much more of his Grace and Mercy to them under the clear Gospel Ministration; so that instead of punishing them and their Posterity with cruel Bondage and perpetual Slavery, he will cause the Everlasting Gospel to be preached effectually to all Nations, to them as well as others; And the Lord will extend Peace to his People like a River, and the Glory of the Gentiles like a flowing Stream; And it shall come to pass, saith the Lord, that I will gather all Nations and Tongues, and they shall come and see my Glory, and I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the Nations, to Tarshish, Pull and Lud that draw the Bow to Tuball and Javan, to the Isles afar off that have not heard my Fame, neither have seen my Glory, and they shall declare my Glory among the Gentiles, ISA. 66. 12-18. Fourthly, Because the Lord hath commanded, saying, Thou shalt not oppress an hired Servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy Brethren, or of the Strangers that are in thy Land within thy Gates, least he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee; Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the Land of Egypt, DEUT. 24. 14, 15. EXOD. 12. 21. But what greater Oppression can there be inflicted upon our Fellow Creatures, than is inflicted on the poor Negroes! they being brought from their own Country against their Wills, some of them being stollen, others taken for payment of Debt owing by their Parents, and others taken Captive in War, and sold to Merchants, who bring them to the American Plantations, and sell them for Bond Slaves to them that will give most for them; the Husband from the Wife, and the Children from the Parents; and many that buy them do exceedingly afflict them and oppress them, not only by continual hard Labour, but by cruel Whippings, and other cruel Punishments, and by short allowance of Food, some Planters in Barbadoes and Jamaica, ’tis said, keeping one hundred of them, and some more, and some less, and giving them hardly any thing more than they raise on a little piece of Ground appointed them, on which they work for themselves the seventh days of the Week in the after-noon, and on the first days, to raise their own Provisions, to wit, Corn and Potatoes, and other Roots, &c. the remainder of their time being spent in their Masters service; which doubtless is far worse usage than is practised by the Turks and Moors upon their Slaves. Which tends to the great Reproach of the Christian Profession; therefore it would be better for all such as fall short of the Practice of those Infidels, to refuse the name of a Christian, that those Heathen and Infidels may not be provoked to blaspheme against the blessed Name of Christ, by reason of the unparallel’d Cruelty of these cruel and hard hearted pretended Christians: Surely the Lord doth behold their

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Oppressions & Afflictions, and will further visit for the same by his righteous and just Judgments, except they break off their sins by Repentance, and their Iniquity by shewing Mercy to these poor afflicted, tormented miserable Slaves! Fifthly, Because Slaves and Souls of Men are some of the Merchandize of Babylon by which the Merchants of the Earth are made Rich; but those Riches which they have heaped together, through the cruel Oppression of these miserable Creatures, will be a means to draw Gods Judgments upon them; therefore, Brethren, let us hearken to the Voice of the Lord, who saith, Come out of Babylon, my People, that ye be not partakers of her Sins, and that ye receive not her Plagues; for her Sins have reached unto Heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities; for he that leads into Captivity shall go into Captivity, Rev. 18. 4, 5. & 13. 10. Given forth by our Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia, the 13th day of the 8th Moneth, 1693. and recommended to all our Friends and Brethren, who are one with us in our Testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ, and to all others professing Christianity. THE END.

1695

English officials were not only criticizing Rhode Island for failing to observe the customs laws, but also for serving as an actual base for pirates. The Earl of Bellomont financed an expedition by Captain William Kidd against pirates “from New England, Rode Island, New York, and other parts in America.”

The Rhode Island legislature established an annual tax rate of 1s. 8d. for each negro man servant and 10s. for each negro woman servant. (That’s according to the published history book but this can only be a printer’s typo, for the tax on ownership of a female slave could not conceivably have been that much more than the tax on a male. More likely, the tax on a female slave would have been 10p., or perhaps 1s.) READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

May: In Maryland, a Duty Act imposed a new 10s. tax upon the import into the province of any Negro, any slave, or any white person. This duty would prove to be a popular way for the government to increase its revenue: “An Act for the laying an Imposition upon Negroes, Slaves, and White Persons imported into this Province.” Re-enacted in 1696, and included in Acts of 1699 and 1704. Bacon, LAWS, 1695, Chapter IX; 1696, Chapter VII; 1699, Chapter XXIII; 1704, Chapter IX. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1696

The brigantine Seaflower, which had been exporting native American slaves to the Bahamas, was brought from Africa with a cargo of 47 black slaves and stopped off in Newport, Rhode Island with 19 of them as yet unpurchased, and after being able to dispose of 14 of them locally, marched the remaining 5 overland to Boston to turn them over to the owners of the vessel.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Friends Cadwalader Morgan and William Southeby were persuading the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to advise Quakers to “be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more negroes.” THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY “That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more negroes.” Bettle, “Notices of Negro Slavery,” in Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem. (1864), I. 383. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: One of the first American protests against the slave-trade came from certain German Friends, in 1688, at a Weekly Meeting held in Germantown, Pennsylvania. “These are the reasons,” wrote “Garret henderich, derick up de graeff, Francis daniell Pastorius, and Abraham up Den graef,” “why we are against the traffick of men-body, as followeth: Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner?... Now, tho they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?”146 This little leaven helped slowly to work a revolution in the attitude of this great sect toward slavery and the slave-trade. The Yearly Meeting at first postponed the matter, “It having so General a Relation to many other Parts.”147 Eventually, however, in 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised “That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more Negroes.”148 This advice was repeated in stronger terms for a quarter-century,149 and by that time Sandiford, Benezet, Lay, and Woolman had begun their crusade. In 1754 the Friends took a step farther and made the purchase of slaves a matter of discipline.150 Four years later the Yearly Meeting expressed itself clearly as “against every branch of this practice,” and declared that if “any professing with us should persist to vindicate it, and be concerned in importing, selling or purchasing slaves, the respective Monthly Meetings to which they belong should manifest their disunion with such persons.”151 Further, manumission was recommended, and in 1776 made compulsory.152 The effect of this attitude of the 146. From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880. Cf. Whittier’s poem, “Pennsylvania Hall” (POETICAL WORKS, Riverside ed., III. 62); and Proud, HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA (1797), I. 219. 147. From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880. 148. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM. (1864), I. 383. 149. Cf. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, PASSIM. 150. Janney, HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 315-7. 151. HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 317. 184 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Friends was early manifested in the legislation of all the colonies where the sect was influential, and particularly in Pennsylvania. One of the first duty acts (1710) laid a restrictive duty of 40s. on slaves, and was eventually disallowed.153 In 1712 William Southeby petitioned the Assembly totally to abolish slavery. This the Assembly naturally refused to attempt; but the same year, in response to another petition “signed by many hands,” they passed an “Act to prevent the Importation of Negroes and Indians,”154 — the first enactment of its kind in America. This act was inspired largely by the general fear of insurrection which succeeded the “Negro-plot” of 1712 in New York. It declared: “Whereas, divers Plots and Insurrections have frequently happened, not only in the Islands but on the Main Land of America, by Negroes, which have been carried on so far that several of the inhabitants have been barbarously Murthered, an Instance whereof we have lately had in our Neighboring Colony of New York,”155 etc. It then proceeded to lay a prohibitive duty of £20 on all slaves imported. These acts were quickly disposed of in England. Three duty acts affecting Negroes, including the prohibitory act, were in 1713 disallowed, and it was directed that “the Depty Govr Council and Assembly of Pensilvania, be & they are hereby Strictly Enjoyned & required not to permit the said Laws ... to be from henceforward put in Execution.”156 The Assembly repealed these laws, but in 1715 passed another laying a duty of £5, which was also eventually disallowed.157 Other acts, the provisions of which are not clear, were passed in 1720 and 1722,158 and in 1725-1726 the duty on Negroes was raised to the restrictive figure of £10.159 This duty, for some reason not apparent, was lowered to £2 in 1729,160 but restored again in 1761.161 A struggle occurred over this last measure, the Friends petitioning for it, and the Philadelphia merchants against it, declaring that “We, the subscribers, ever desirous to extend the Trade of this Province, have seen, for some time past, the many inconveniencys the Inhabitants have suffer’d for want of Labourers and artificers, ... have for some time encouraged the importation of Negroes;” they prayed therefore at least for a delay in passing the measure.162 The law, nevertheless, after much debate and altercation with the governor, finally passed. These repeated acts nearly stopped the trade, and the

152. Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 395. 153. PENN. COL. REC. (1852), II. 530; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 415. 154. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLECTED, etc., 1714, page 165; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 387. 155. See preamble of the act. 156. The Pennsylvanians did not allow their laws to reach England until long after they were passed: PENN. ARCHIVES, I. 161-2; COL. REC., II. 572-3. These acts were disallowed Feb. 20, 1713. Another duty act was passed in 1712, supplementary to the Act of 1710 (COL. REC., II. 553). The contents are unknown. 157. ACTS AND LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1715, page 270; Chalmers, OPINIONS, II. 118. Before the disallowance was known, the act had been continued by the Act of 1718: Carey and Bioren, LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1700-1802, I. 118; PENN. COL. REC., III. 38. 158. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 165; PENN. COL. REC., III. 171; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 389, note. 159. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 214; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 388. Possibly there were two acts this year. 160. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA (ed. 1742), page 354, ch. 287. Possibly some change in the currency made this change appear greater than it was. 161. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 371; ACTS OF ASSEMBLY (ed. 1782), page 149; Dallas, LAWS, I. 406, ch. 379. This act was renewed in 1768: Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 451; PENN. COL. REC., IX. 472, 637, 641. 162. PENN. COL. REC., VIII. 576. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 185 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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manumission or sale of Negroes by the Friends decreased the number of slaves in the province. The rising spirit of independence enabled the colony, in 1773, to restore the prohibitive duty of £20 and make it perpetual.163 After the Revolution unpaid duties on slaves were collected and the slaves registered,164 and in 1780 an “Act for the gradual Abolition of Slavery” was passed.165 As there were probably at no time before the war more than 11,000 slaves in Pennsylvania,166 the task thus accomplished was not so formidable as in many other States. As it was, participation in the slave-trade outside the colony was not prohibited until 1788.167 It seems probable that in the original Swedish settlements along the Delaware slavery was prohibited.168 This measure had, however, little practical effect; for as soon as the Dutch got control the slave-trade was opened, although, as it appears, to no large extent. After the fall of the Dutch Delaware came into English hands. Not until 1775 do we find any legislation on the slave-trade. In that year the colony attempted to prohibit the importation of slaves, but the governor vetoed the bill.169 Finally, in 1776 by the Constitution, and in 1787 by law, importation and exportation were both prohibited.170

163. A large petition called for this bill. Much altercation ensued with the governor: Dallas, LAWS, I. 671, ch. 692; PENN. COL. REC., X. 77; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 388-9. 164. Dallas, LAWS, I. 782, ch. 810. 165. LAWS, I. 838, ch. 881. 166. There exist but few estimates of the number of slaves in this colony: — In 1721, 2,500-5,000. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 604. In 1754, 11,000. Bancroft, HIST. OF UNITED STATES (1883), II. 391. In 1760, very few. Burnaby, TRAVELS THROUGH N. AMER. (2d ed.), page 81. In 1775, 2,000. PENN. ARCHIVES, IV 597. 167. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 168. Cf. ARGONAUTICA GUSTAVIANA, pages 21-3; DEL. HIST. SOC. PAPERS, III. 10; HAZARD’S REGISTER, IV. 221, §§ 23, 24; HAZARD’S ANNALS, page 372; Armstrong, RECORD OF UPLAND COURT, pages 29-30, and notes. 169. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Ser., II. 128-9. 170. AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 5th Ser., I. 1178; LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 884, ch. 145 b. 186 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 27: 11 men and a woman were condemned at the February Sessions, of whom the woman found to be quick with child. Robert Maynard was respited to the 4th of May.

When Captain William Kidd set sail in his new privateer galley with oars, the Adventure Galley didn’t get very far on the Thames estuary before it was stopped by a warship of the Royal Navy, and a major portion of Kidd’s crew was “crimped”, leaving him with barely enough men to handle the sails. He would proceed down the English Channel to recruit new crewmen at Plymouth. IMPRESSMENT

1698

The British Parliament did away with the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the international slave trade, opening it to all British merchants, who would in some cases carry on a triangular trade from New England to Africa to the Caribbean islands to New England. Merchant vessels would carry New England rum to African slavers, and African slaves on the “Middle Passage” to the West Indies, and West Indian sugar and molasses to New England — for the rum distilleries there.

There would be numerous distilleries on the shores of the Narragansett Bay. Roughly half the spirits produced there would be consumed in New England, and the other half would be high-proof stuff intended for trading along the coast of Africa.

The 1st legal slaving venture out of Bristol, England: the Beginning carried enslaved Africans from Africa to Jamaica. TRIANGULAR TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In 1698 Parliamentary interference with the trade began. By the Statute 9 and 10 William and Mary, chapter 26, private traders, on payment of a duty of 10% on English goods exported to Africa, were allowed to participate in the trade. This was brought about by the clamor of the merchants, especially the “American Merchants,” who “in their Petition suggest, that it would be a great Benefit to the Kingdom

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to secure the Trade by maintaining Forts and Castles there, with an equal Duty upon all Goods exported.”171 This plan, being a compromise between maintaining the monopoly intact and entirely abolishing it, was adopted, and the statute declared the trade “highly Beneficial and Advantageous to this Kingdom, and to the Plantations and Colonies thereunto belonging.” Having thus gained practically free admittance to the field, English merchants sought to exclude other nations by securing a monopoly of the lucrative Spanish colonial slave-trade. Their object was finally accomplished by the signing of the Assiento in 1713. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: South Carolina had the largest and most widely developed slave-trade of any of the continental colonies. This was owing to the character of her settlers, her nearness to the West Indian slave marts, and the early development of certain staple crops, such as rice, which were adapted to slave labor.172 Moreover, this colony suffered much less interference from the home government than many other colonies; thus it is possible here to trace the untrammeled development of slave- trade restrictions in a typical planting community. As early as 1698 the slave-trade to South Carolina had reached such proportions that it was thought that “the great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this Collony may endanger the safety thereof.” The immigration of white servants was therefore encouraged by a special law.173 Increase of immigration reduced this disproportion, but Negroes continued to be imported in such numbers as to afford considerable revenue from a moderate duty on them. About the time when the Assiento was signed, the slave-trade so increased that, scarcely a year after the consummation of that momentous agreement, two heavy duty acts were passed, because “the number of Negroes do extremely increase in this Province, and through the afflicting providence of God, the white persons do not proportionately multiply, by reason whereof, the safety of the said Province is greatly endangered.”174 The trade, however, by reason of the encouragement abroad and of increased business activity in exporting naval stores at home, suffered scarcely any check, although repeated acts, reciting the danger incident to a “great importation of Negroes,” were passed, laying high duties.175 Finally, in 1717, an additional duty of £40,176 although due in depreciated currency, succeeded so nearly in stopping the trade that, two years later, all existing duties were repealed and one of £10 substituted.177 This continued during the time of resistance to the proprietary government, but by 1734 the importation had again reached large proportions. “We must 171. Quoted in REPORT OF THE LORDS OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL, under “Most Material Proceedings in the House of Commons,” Vol. I. Part I. An import duty of 10% on all goods, except Negroes, imported from Africa to England and the colonies was also laid. The proceeds of these duties went to the Royal African Company. 172. Cf. Hewatt, HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF S. CAROLINA AND GEORGIA (1779), I. 120 ff.; reprinted in S.C. HIST. COLL. (1836), I. 108 ff. 173. Cooper, STATUTES AT LARGE OF S. CAROLINA, II. 153. 174. The text of the first act is not extant: cf. Cooper, STATUTES, III. 56. For the second, see Cooper, VII. 365, 367. 175. Cf. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS OF S. CAROLINA, page xvi, No. 362; Cooper, STATUTES, II. 649. Cf. also GOVERNOR JOHNSON TO THE BOARD OF TRADE, Jan. 12, 1719-20; reprinted in Rivers, EARLY HISTORY OF S. CAROLINA (1874), App., xii. 176. Cooper, STATUTES, VII. 368. 177. Cooper, STATUTES, III. 56. 188 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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therefore beg leave,” the colonists write in that year, “to inform your Majesty, that, amidst our other perilous circumstances, we are subject to many intestine dangers from the great number of negroes that are now among us, who amount at least to twenty-two thousand persons, and are three to one of all your Majesty’s white subjects in this province. Insurrections against us have been often attempted.”178 In 1740 an insurrection under a slave, Cato, at Stono, caused such widespread alarm that a prohibitory duty of £100 was immediately laid.179 Importation was again checked; but in 1751 the colony sought to devise a plan whereby the slightly restricted immigration of Negroes should provide a fund to encourage the importation of white servants, “to prevent the mischiefs that may be attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province.”180 Many white servants were thus encouraged to settle in the colony; but so much larger was the influx of black slaves that the colony, in 1760, totally prohibited the slave-trade. This act was promptly disallowed by the Privy Council and the governor reprimanded;181 but the colony declared that “an importation of negroes, equal in number to what have been imported of late years, may prove of the most dangerous consequence in many respects to this Province, and the best way to obviate such danger will be by imposing such an additional duty upon them as may totally prevent the evils.”182 A prohibitive duty of £100 was accordingly imposed in 1764.183 This duty probably continued until the Revolution.

Transported convicts were being sold in Monserrat for a fixed price of 2,500 pounds of sugar “per servant, male or female.”

178. From a memorial signed by the governor, President of the Council, and Speaker of the House, dated April 9, 1734, printed in Hewatt, HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF S. CAROLINA AND GEORGIA (1779), II. 39; reprinted in S.C. Hist. Coll. (1836), I. 305-6. Cf. N.C. COL. REC., II. 421. 179. Cooper, STATUTES, III. 556; Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, page xxxi, No. 694. Cf. Ramsay, HISTORY OF S. CAROLINA, I. 110. 180. Cooper, STATUTES, III. 739. 181. The text of this law has not been found. Cf. Burge, COMMENTARIES ON COLONIAL AND FOREIGN LAWS, I. 737, note; Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA, I. 286. See instructions of the governor of New Hampshire, June 30, 1761, in Gordon, HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I. letter 2. 182. Cooper, STATUTES, IV. 187. 183. This duty avoided the letter of the English instructions by making the duty payable by the first purchasers, and not by the importers. Cf. Cooper, STATUTES, IV. 187. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 189 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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George Keith’s A THIRD NARRATIVE OF THE PROCEEDINGS AT TURNERS-HALL, APRIL 21, 1698.

A Quaker meetinghouse was erected on the south-west corner at the intersection of Second and High (Market) Streets in Philadelphia.184

Robert Pyle of the Concord (near Philadelphia) Friends monthly meeting proposed, at Yearly Meeting, that a time schedule should be set up, within which Quaker households were to manumit their slaves.185

We see material relevant to this dispute in that colonial treatise printed in this year in London and titled “ANHISTORICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA...”: ... Jealousie among men is here very rare, nor are old maids to be met with; for all commonly marry before they are twenty years of age. The way of worship the Swedes use in this countrey, is the Lutheran; the English have four sorts of religious meetings 184. This structure would be pulled down in 1755 and another erected — which would itself be, in 1808, demolished. 185. In subsequent yearly meetings for a number of years (until 1711, in fact) there would be silence on this proposal, and the primary propagator of this doctrine, George Keith, would be forced out of Quakerism. 190 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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here; the Church of England, who built a very fine church in this city in the year 1695; the Anabaptists; the Presbyterians; and two sorts of Quaker, (of all the most numerous by much) one party held with George Keith; but whether both parties will joyn together again in one I cannot tell. He gave strict charge concerning plain language and plain habit, and that they should not be concerned in the compelling part of the worldly government; that they should set their negroes at liberty after some reasonable time of service; and that they should not take advantage of the law against one another, as to procure them any corporal punishment. These instructions were given forth, in the year 1693, by the meeting held by George Keith, at P. James’s house in Philadelphia. He shortly after went to England, where he now, in this year 1697, keeps a meeting, at Turners-hall, London, on Sundays in the afternoon....

October 8: Fear of servile insurrection, due to the increasing importation of black slaves, prompted the government to offer a cash incentive for the bringing of servants who were white into (South) Carolina. “An Act for the Encouragement of the Importation of White Servants.” “Whereas, the great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this Collony may endanger the safety thereof if speedy care be not taken and encouragement given for the importation of white servants.” § 1. £13 are to be given to any ship master for every male white servant (Irish excepted), between sixteen and forty years, whom he shall bring into Ashley river; and £12 for boys between twelve and sixteen years. Every servant must have at least four years to serve, and every boy seven years. § 3. Planters are to take servants in proportion of one to every six male Negroes above sixteen years. § 5. Servants are to be distributed by lot. § 8. This act to continue three years. Cooper, STATUTES, II. 153.

1699

Rhode Island had become the only New England colony to make extensive use of black slaves both for labor and as a commodity in trade. The major international slave trade markets in the American colonies were located (now hear this) at Newport and at Bristol. This factoid has been so heavily papered over by the revisionist-history industry that we don’t now have any idea where they had positioned their slave barracoons. At least a few of the slave importers (now hear this) and at least a few of the privateers were Quakers. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave- trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 191 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.

The completion of the Great Meetinghouse of the Friends at Newport, Rhode Island on the land donated in 1676 by Friend Nicholas Easton made this the largest structure of any kind in the colonies between Boston and New-York. They set the new building back from the existing house that they had inherited from Friend Nicholas Easton, on Farewell Street. One thousand worshipers could be seated.186

80% of Caribbean residents were African slaves.

April: In order to fund the erection of a capitol building, Virginia imposed a 20-shilling duty upon the importation of servants and slaves: “An act for laying an imposition upon servants and slaves imported into this country, towards building the Capitoll.” For three years; continued in August, 1701, and April, 1704. Hening, STATUTES, III. 193, 212, 225. THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

CONTINUE TO READ CHRONOLOGICALLY

186. Although this view of the meetinghouse is from a lithograph made in 1865, it dates to approximately 1740 since the lithograph was based upon an over-mantle oil painting that is at the Newport Historical Society. The image depicts the meetinghouse still in its original square configuration, and still with its steeple. Notice that after there weren’t enough Quakers in Rhode Island anymore, to justify such a large structure, it would be repurposed in 1905 as a black amusement center, hosting dances and that sort of thing — but that after it had been restored as a Quaker meetinghouse for purposes of the Newport tourist industry and carriage trade, no mention would be made in the tourist literature that the structure had also served as a black dancehall! –Gee, I wonder why it might be that the irony of it all so escapes people.... 192 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2012. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: December 31, 2012

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 193 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.

194 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.

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