Slavery for Almost One Hundred Years Before That Custom Was Recognized As a Social Disease and People Began to Fight It

GO BACK TO THE PREVIOUS CENTURY

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT, ETC. IN THE LATE 18TH CENTURY

“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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1775

At about the age of 46, Venture Smith purchased the freedom of his daughter Hannah, at this point aged about 23, from Ray Mumford for £44. She continued to reside with Ray Mumford. Shortly thereafter she married a free black man named Isaac, who would be termed “a wretch of a man.” Being about forty-fix years old, I bought my oldeft child Hannah, of Ray Mumford, for forty-four pounds, and fhe ftill refided with him. I had already redeemed from flavery, myfelf, my wife and three children, befides three negro men. SLAVERY

The Virginia legislature, in acting upon the recommendations of its committee on slaves, of which Thomas Jefferson had been a part, decided not to incorporate Jefferson’s “significant additions” to their code. We may infer from this that Jefferson’s aversion toward the presence in Virginia of non-enslaved Negroes, and his aversion toward white women who gave birth to children of mixed race, was more emphatic rather than less emphatic than the usual sentiment among white Virginians of the period. Conor Cruise O’Brien has commented, in regard to Jefferson’s desire to make an outlaw of any white woman with a baby of mixed race, his proposition that both mother and child if they did not leave the state within one year would be declared outside “the protection of the laws”:1 In the circumstances that proposition was a license for lynching — for the physical destruction of mother and child by any Virginian who might care to do the job. Volunteers would not be lacking.

1. Conor Cruise O’Brien, “Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist,” The Atlantic Monthly 278:4 (October 1996): 53-74. 596 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The much maligned Conor Cruise O’Brien is of course not alone in such sentiments: “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

An invention important to the development of the cloth industry occurred during this year. Richard Arkwright developed a series of combinations. Because this development would have an impact on the demand for bales of cotton as a raw material for cloth, it would eventually have an impact on the demand for field labor to grow this cotton, and therefore would have consequences in terms of human slavery — and in terms of the international slave trade.2

2. Bear in mind that in early periods the Southern states of the United States of America produced no significant amount of cotton fiber for export — such production not beginning until 1789. In fact, according to page 92 of Seybert’s STATISTICS, in 1784 a small parcel of cotton that had found its way from the US to Liverpool had been refused admission to England, because it was the customs agent’s opinion that this involved some sort of subterfuge: it could not have originated in the United States. 3. Beer, GESCHICHTE DES WELTHANDELS IM 19TEN JAHRHUNDERT, II. 67. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 597 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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including Arkwright’s, Watt’s, Compton’s, and Cartwright’s epoch-making contrivances.4 The effect which these inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to 572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830, and to 3,366,000 in 1860.5 Very early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney’s cotton-gin, soon answered this question: a new economic future was opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into this one staple. Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor large farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom, recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an industrial system. The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world’s cotton market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound, 8½d. From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the latter year it reached 4d.; the only exception to this fall was in the years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to “corner” the market, sent the price up as high as 11d. The demand for cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough 4. A list of these inventions most graphically illustrates this advance: — 1738, John Jay, fly-shuttle. John Wyatt, spinning by rollers. 1748, Lewis Paul, carding-machine. 1760, Robert Kay, drop-box. 1769, Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle. James Watt, steam-engine. 1772, James Lees, improvements on carding-machine. 1775, Richard Arkwright, series of combinations. 1779, Samuel Compton, mule. 1785, Edmund Cartwright, power-loom. 1803-4, Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine. 1817, Roberts, fly-frame. 1818, William Eaton, self-acting frame. 1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule. Cf. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, pages 116-231; ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, 9th ed., article “Cotton.” 5. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, page 215. A bale weighed from 375 lbs. to 400 lbs. 598 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had pronounced “prodigious,” and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which, except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and the Crimean War, continued until 1860.6 The steady increase in the production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822 the crop was a half- million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the world’s consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that, in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856, and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.7 Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in 1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton “corner;” by the end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy. The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave régime in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years 1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of the cotton market, risked all on a political coup-d’état, which failed in the war of 1861-1865.8

6. The prices cited are from Newmarch and Tooke, and refer to the London market. The average price in 1855-60 was about 7d. 7. From United States census reports. 8. Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, THE COTTON KINGDOM. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 599 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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George III signed an order freeing women and children working in British coal and salt mines. Many of the children freed were under 8 years of age and had been being forced to work 10 to 12 hour days. They had been being transferred with the mines or when their masters had no further use for them. The British Parliament enacted a gradual plan for the emancipation of the slaves of Scotland. Up to this point, on the inventory sheets of the collieries, human beings had been listed in precisely the same manner as machinery, as stocks, and as gin horses. At some point in the future, the intention was, hopefully by the turn of the new century, “Colliers and Coal-bearers and Salters” were no longer to be held “in a state of Slavery.”9

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: All the great geniuses of the British senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, Grey, Canning, ranged themselves on its side; the poet Cowper wrote for it: Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, in this country, all recorded their votes.

This would be a famous year for American liberty as well, for in this year the 1st society for the abolition of slavery was being organized, in Philadelphia.

The first American abolitionist society was founded in Pennsylvania. The slave population below the Mason- Dixon line exceeds 450,000. In South Carolina, Africans outnumber whites two to one.

Approximately one person out of each five of the people of the mainland North American colonies along the Eastern seaboard was at this point of African ancestry. The population of colonial Williamsburg, for instance, was 52% black.10 Unlike Latin America and the West Indies, North American slaves had a high rate of natural increase. Although only about 250,000 Africans had been brought to the mainland colonies before 1775, on the eve of the revolution the total black population numbered some 567,000. Most, of course, were enslaved on the tobacco and rice plantations of the Southern colonies — the population below the Mason/Dixon line exceeded 450,000. Black slaves outnumbered whites two to one in South Carolina, while in Virginia the numbers were about equal. In Pennsylvania, the 1st American abolition society was formed.

9. “Bearers” were slaves whose occupational specialty it was to carry the coal in sacks slung on their backs suspended from sumplines on their foreheads, or in baskets on their heads and shoulders, from working face to surface dump pile, at the rate of approximately 1 1/2 tons per day per slave. Typically, this occupation was filled by the wives, and often the sons and daughters, of the male slave miners. At the Dunmore colliery, for instance, the corporate asset sheets listed 28 colliers, 23 bearing wives, 17 bearing sons, and 29 bearing daughters. 10. When the town would be being “restored” in the 1920s, neither blacks nor slavery would be receiving any particular consideration! 600 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In spite of the fact that both slaves and free men served at Lexington and Concord, the colonists would become increasingly reluctant to have any blacks serving in their Army. The Council of War, under George Washington’s leadership, unanimously rejected the enlistment of slaves and, by a large majority, opposed their recruitment altogether. The Continental Congress decided that the revolutionary army would be a pure white- men-only segregated army. However, the British governor of Virginia, deciding against such a racist policy, extended an offer of freedom to all male slaves who joined his loyalist forces. The eager response of many slaves to Lord Dunmore’s invitation would gradually compel these pure-white colonists to reconsider their stand. Disregarding the instructions of the Continental Congress, therefore, our General Washington eventually would be forced to allow his recruiters to accept the enlistment of free black male Americans. Although many of these white Americans felt that the arming of their slaves was inconsistent with the principles for which their forces were fighting, the colonies with the exceptions of Georgia and South Carolina eventually would be recruiting slaves as well as freedmen. In most cases, such slaves would in fact be granted freedom at the end of their military service. During the war some 5,000 blacks would serve in the Continental Army, the vast majority of these blacks coming from the Northern colonies. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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Colonel Elisha Jones, a wealthy landowner and slaveholder of Weston MA, was an active Tory with 14 sons

and one daughter (Mary Jones –> Mary Jones Dunbar –> Mary Jones Dunbar Minot, Thoreau’s grandmother). DUNBAR FAMILY THOREAU WAS “CLEAR JONES” IN ONE RESPECT AT LEAST ...

After the Revolutionary War, eight of these sons would be banished for loyalty to England, and the Jones estates in Weston would be confiscated. Two sons who were in the Concord lockup as Tories escaped with a variant of the old “file baked in the cake” trick. Later, Henry Thoreau would consider it worthy of note, that one of the prisoners who had been in the Concord lockup with his relatives was named Hicks.

The man named Hicks in the jailGO was TO presumably MASTER the INDEX Doctor OF Jonathan WARFARE Hicks of Plymouth who had been traveling on the Polly with Doctor Josiah Jones of Hinsdale NH and who had been taken prisoner along with him by the captain, as men suspected of Tory sympathies, to be delivered to the Committee of Safety of Arundel ME.

[Arundel is now named Kennebunkport. This Hicks prisoner could not have been John Hicks of Rockaway LI, the father of Elias and of Elias’s five brothers Samuel, Jacob, John, Stephen, and Joseph, because that Hicks had become a convinced Friend, that is, a convert to Quakerism, a few years before the birth of Elias in 1748 and in 1774 he would have been 63. It could not have been any of Elias’s brothers, or the biographies of Elias would have noted this. During the Revolution, six Friends attempted to cross from the mainland to Paumanok “Long Island” to attend Yearly Meeting and were intercepted by the British, but they were kept aboard one of

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the prison hulks the British anchored off the Narrows and this was not until the late spring of 1777 whereas

what we are presently considering is the lockup in Concord MA circa 1775. When the British and their Hessian troops went through the port of New York for transportation at the end of the active fighting, 1,004 Quaker loyalists made an escape without their American property to the Maritime Provinces of Canada and among these 1,004 at least 6 families were named Hicks. As heads of families or as individual unattached males, there were John Hicks and Charles Hicks who were descendants of Elias Hicks’s great-grandfather Thomas Hicks, who was not a Quaker and in fact held the office of Sheriff which a Quaker cannot hold (these two emigrated to Annapolis County), and there were Oliver Hicks who emigrated to Digby, Sylvester Hicks who emigrated to Granville Township, Gilbert Hicks who emigrated to New Brunswick, and Samuel Hicks who emigrated to the Maritimes. Perhaps it was one of these men who was in the Concord lockup and participated with Thoreau’s two loyalist Jones ancestors in making their dramatic but nonviolent jailbreak, but there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to suppose that this Hicks might have been directly related to the family of

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Friend Elias Hicks or even, were he related, that he might have been a member of the Religious Society of Friends imprisoned because of a refusal to participate in warfare. There is no more reason to speculate here, than there is to fancy a connection between the Quaker painter Edward Hicks who was limning so many Peaceable Kingdoms On God’s Sacred Mountain and the William Hicks who would daub the marchésa

Planning a Peaceable Kingdom on God’s Holy Mountain

d’Ossoli in Rome. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do with this mention in Henry Thoreau’s journal, other than to use it as a demonstration that Thoreau was sensitive to the name Hicks, a fact for which no explanation has been offered other than his familiarity with the testimony of Friend Elias. The new stone Middlesex County jail in which Thoreau was to be kept overnight was not built until 1797, and had nothing whatever to do with the old wooden jail of Concord town, which had been nearly opposite the present library and near the old cemetery.]

January 18: Berthe, an opéra by François-André Danican-Philidor, François-Joseph Gossec and others to words of de Pleinchesne, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels. Danican-Philidor sent the overture from Paris on this day and it would not arrive until January 24th, but the opera would probably not be repeated.

A solemn mass in memory of Giovanni Battista Sammartini was sung by musicians of the Milan Cathedral and others. Several Sammartini symphonies were played.

Acton voted to compensate its minutemen for their regular training. A minute company was raised [in Acton] and commanded by Captain Isaac Davis; and the town voted, on the 18th of January, 1775, to pay 30 men 8d. per day to drill twice a week, 3 hours each day, until the first day of May. The important services rendered by this company in the Battle of Concord, on the 19th of April, and the unfortunate death of Captain Davis and Mr. Hayward, have already been noticed in the History of Concord. This and the standing company were distinguished for their prompt and

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energetic action on that and other occasions.11

Georgia did not ratify the articles of “Association.” Delegates showed up for the assembly from only five of Georgia’s twelve parishes, and a number of the delegates who did come intended to vote against Georgia’s association with the other colonies in their conflict with the mother country. Before this assembly could disapprove, however, the governor of the colony dismissed it on the ground that it was unrepresentative. Some of the delegates did sign an agreement to stop the importation of slaves by March 15, 1775, four months late; however, this article was of course not binding on the colony of Georgia. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The unanimity with which the colonists received this “Association” is not perhaps as remarkable as the almost entire absence of comment on the radical slave-trade clause. A Connecticut town-meeting in December 1774, noticed “with singular pleasure ... the second Article of the Association, in which it is agreed to import no more Negro Slaves.”12 This comment appears to have been almost the only one. There were in various places some evidences of disapproval; but only in the State of Georgia was this widespread and determined, and based mainly on the slave-trade clause.13 This opposition delayed the ratification meeting until January 18, 1775, and then delegates from but five of the twelve parishes appeared, and many of these had strong instructions against the approval of the plan. Before this meeting could act, the governor adjourned it, on the ground that it did not represent the province. Some of the delegates signed an agreement, one article of which promised to stop the importation of slaves March 15,

11. 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.) 12. Danbury, Dec. 12, 1774: Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1038. This case and that of Georgia are the only ones I have found in which the slave-trade clause was specifically mentioned. 13. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1033, 1136, 1160, 1163; II. 279-281, 1544; JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 13, 15, 17, 1775. 606 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1775, i.e., four months later than the national “Association” had directed. This was not, of course, binding on the province; and although a town like Darien might declare “our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America”14 yet the powerful influence of Savannah was “not likely soon to give matters a favourable turn. The importers were mostly against any interruption, and the consumers very much divided.”15 Thus the efforts of this Assembly failed, their resolutions being almost unknown, and, as a gentleman writes, “I hope for the honour of the Province ever will remain so.”16 The delegates to the Continental Congress selected by this rump assembly refused to take their seats. Meantime South Carolina stopped trade with Georgia, because it “hath not acceded to the Continental Association,”17 and the single Georgia parish of St. Johns appealed to the second Continental Congress to except it from the general boycott of the colony. This county had already resolved not to “purchase any Slave imported at Savannah (large Numbers of which we understand are there expected) till the Sense of Congress shall be made known to us.”18 May 17, 1775, Congress resolved unanimously “That all exportations to Quebec, Nova-Scotia, the Island of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Georgia, except the Parish of St. John’s, and to East and West Florida, immediately cease.”19 These measures brought the refractory colony to terms, and the Provincial Congress, July 4, 1775, finally adopted the “Association,” and resolved, among other things, “That we will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or elsewhere, after this day.”20 The non-importation agreement was in the beginning, at least, well enforced by the voluntary action of the loosely federated nation. The slave-trade clause seems in most States to have been observed with the others. In South Carolina “a cargo of near three hundred slaves was sent out of the Colony by the consignee, as being interdicted by the second article of the Association.”21 In Virginia the vigilance committee of Norfolk “hold up for your just indignation Mr. John Brown, Merchant, of this place,” who has several times imported slaves from Jamaica; and he is thus publicly censured “to the end that all such foes to the rights of British America may be publickly known ... as the enemies of American Liberty, and that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him.”22

14. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1136. 15. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 279-81. 16. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1160. 17. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1163. 18. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 13, 15, 1775. 19. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 17, 1775. 20. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 1545. 21. Drayton, MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I. 182. Cf. pages 181-7; Ramsay, HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, I. 231. 22. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 33-4. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 607 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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20th, 3d Month: “The Committee appointed to treat with those Friends who hold their fellow creatures as slaves made return that they had treated further with Latham Thurston as desired by the last Monthly Meeting and that he still refused to comply with the advice of the Yearly Meeting respecting holding mankind as slaves. Wherefore we, apprehending our selves clear of any further labour with him in that respect do disown him to be any longer a member of our Society.”

“By a minutes of our last monthly meeting the Clerk was directed to procure a Book to record manumissions, but upon further consideration we do direct that said manumissions be recorded in one end of our book for recording condemnations.” RHODE ISLAND QUAKER DISOWNMENT

March 27: The legislature of the colony of Delaware wanted to prohibit any further importation of slaves, but then the governor vetoed this legislation. Passed the Assembly and was vetoed by the governor. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 128-9. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Spring: In his AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA, Thomas Paine criticized slavery as inhumane. He was also acting as co-editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum (he would quite over inadequate pay in September, and begin the writing of COMMON SENSE). SLAVERY

April 14: Friend Anthony Benezet called together a group of seven Quakers, Thomas Paine, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and, one source alleges, Benjamin Franklin (Franklin would indeed, in 1787 after the death of Benezet, become the president of a successor organization), at the Rising Sun tavern in Philadelphia, to form the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This would grow into a group of 24 of whom 17 were Quakers, before being disbanded in the following year. SLAVERY

April 19: The inscription on the memorial to John Jack in the hill on the Old Hill Burying Ground near Concord’s Milldam was copied by a British officer, and would appear in an English magazine:23

“GOD WILLS US FREE; — MAN WILLS US SLAVES. I WILL AS GOD WILLS; GOD’S WILL BE DONE. HERE LIES THE BODY OF JOHN JACK, A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED MARCH, 1773, AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS. THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY, HE WAS BORN FREE. THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY, HE LIVED A SLAVE; TILL BY HIS HONEST THOUGH STOLEN LABOURS,

23. According to Concord account, the British officers had selected this spot in a grove of young locust trees “as a point of observation from which they could watch the movements of the Americans and indicate by signals to their own soldiery sent in different directions, the plan of operations which circumstances might require them to pursue.” 608 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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HE ACQUIRED THE SOURCE OF SLAVERY, WHICH GAVE HIM HIS FREEDOM: THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT, GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANCIPATION, AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS. THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE, HE PRACTICED THOSE VIRTUES, WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES.”

So, it would appear, regardless of what our naysayers might choose to believe, it appears that we did teach the Brits something or other about American freedom on this day — taught something by a Concord Tory!

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Professor Elise Lemire’s mom, Virginia Lemire, took a photo in Sleepy Hollow recently, getting the lettering of John Jack’s memorial stone to stand out admirably by rubbing it with snow (see blowup on following screen).

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There has been some derogatory talk about the accuracy of American riflefire. During the march back to Boston, the militia is said to have discharged some 75,000 rounds at the men of the army and to have hit them only approximately 274 times, which gives a “batting average” of approximately .365 for the day.

[A batting average of 365 would be, in baseball, a quite good batting average, but note, there is a decimal point in front of this particular “.365” number, indicating that it differs by a full three orders of magnitude from that fine batting average. If you ask me, that’s some shootin’ — it takes some doin’, to accomplish that many misses without someone looking over your shoulder and accusing you of missing on purpose!]

Another way to say this is that on that scorcher of an afternoon a militiaman Jonathan managed to rest his rifle on a stone wall and discharge it at a clump of army Johns walking down a road in the distance in the open in red jackets, without actually hurting anyone, a sum total of 74, 726 times.

We know that the tune to “Yankee Doodle,” which appears to date back to medieval times, had during the French and Indian campaigns been provided, by a British army surgeon, with lyrics in disparagement of American militias. On the march out to Concord in the morning this tune had been fifed to the regular army redcoats, and, while the army was on its panicked afternoon trip back to the safety of Boston, it is said that the colonial militia were singing those derogatory words24 back to them as they fired into the massed ranks from behind their stone fences. What would be Henry Thoreau’s reaction to living on this blood-stained ground sacred to human liberty? He would enter in his Journal on July 21, 1851:

24. Brother Ephraim fold his Cow Punk in Pye is very good And bought him a Com-mifion, And fo is Apple Lantern, And then he went to Canada Had you been whipp’d as oft as I To Fight for the Nation; You’d not have been fo wanton: But when Ephraim he came home Uncle is a Yankee Man He prov’d an arrant Coward, 'Ifaith he pays us all off, He wou’d’n’t fight the Frenchmen there And he has got a Fiddle For fear of being devour’d. As big as Daddy’s Hogs Trough. Sheep’s Head and Vinegar Seth’s Mother went to Lynn Butter Milk and Tanfy, To buy a pair of Breeches, Bofton is a Yankee town The firft time Vathen put them on Sing Hey Doodle Dandy: He tore out all the Stitches; Firft we’ll take a Pinch of Snuff Dolly Fufhel let a Fart, And then a drink of Water, Jenny Jones fhe found it, And then we’ll fay How do you do Ambrofe carried it to Mill And that’s a Yanky’s Supper. Where Doctor Warren ground it. Aminadab is juft come Home Our Jemima’s loft her Mare His Eyes all greaf’d with Bacon, And can’t tell where to find her, And all the news that he cou’d tell But fhe’ll come trotting by and by Is Cape Breton is taken: And bring her tail behind her Stand up Jonathan Two and two may go to Bed; Figure in by Neighbour, Two and two together, Vathen ftand a little off And if there is not room enough, And make the Room fome wider. Lie one a top o’to’ther.

Chriftmas is a coming Boys We’ll go to Mother Chafes, And there we’ll get a Sugar Dram, Sweeten’d with Melaffes: Heigh ho for our Cape Cod, Heigh ho Nantafket, Do not let the Bofton wags, Feel your Oyfter Bafket. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 611 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Excepting the omnipresent butcher with his calf cart –followed by a distracted & anxious cow– Be it known that in Concord where the first forcible resistance to British aggression was mad[e] in the year 1775 they chop up the young calves & give them to the hens to make them lay –it being considered the cheapest & most profitable food for them– & they sell the milk to Boston.

And, of course, Henry Thoreau would make a reference to this battle in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, comparing it caustically with a battle he had observed between some red Camponotus ants and some black Monomorium ants during the administration of President James Knox Polk, five years before the passage of Daniel Webster’s fugitive-slave bill. Even the son of Deacon Jonathan Hosmer, Abner the 21-year-old drummer for the Acton Minutemen whose face was half shot away in the first volley, figures in that battle between the ants who dismember each other to the strains of military music (text from WALDEN on following page, with added boldface to show the relevant sections).

After April 19, 1851 entry in Henry Thoreau’s JOURNAL: In ’75 2 or 300s of the inhabitants of Concord assembled at one of the bridges with arms in their hands to assert the right of 3 millions to tax themselves, & have a voice in governing themselves– About a week ago the authorities of Boston, having the sympathy of many of the inhabitants of Concord assembled in the grey of the dawn, assisted by a still larger armed force –to send back a perfectly innocent man –and one whom they knew to be innocent into a slavery as complete as the world ever knew Of course it makes not the least difference I wish you to consider this who the man was –whether he was Jesus christ or another –for in as much as ye did it unto the least of these his brethen ye did it unto him Do you think he would have stayed here in liberty and let the black man go into slavery in his stead? They sent him back I say to live in slavery with other 3 millions mark that –whom the same slave power or slavish power north & south –holds in that condition. 3 millions who do not, like the first mentioned, assert the right to govern themselvs but simply to run away & stay away from their prison-house. Just a week afterward those inhabitants of this town who especially sympathize with the authorities of Boston in this their deed caused the bells to be rung & the cannons to be fired to celebrate the courage & the love of liberty of those men who assembled at the bridge. As if those 3 millions had fought for the right to be free themselves –but to hold in slavery 3 million others Why gentlemen even consistency though it is much abused is sometimes a virtue.

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WALDEN: ... There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near foreleg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer’s eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddlebow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. “Æneas Sylvius,” say they, “after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,” adds that “This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.” A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.” The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill.

ANTS KIRBY AND SPENCE

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WALDEN: I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two reds ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle- field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary’s front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the mean while there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar, –for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red,– he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots’ side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick, –“Fire! for God’s sake fire!”– and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.

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Politics makes strange bedfellows: After the confrontation at Concord’s North Bridge, Dr. John Cuming, a local slavemaster and revolutionary activist, treated wounded British soldiers in the home of local Royalist sympathizer Daniel Bliss — who was a Royalist at least in part because he abhorred human enslavement as it was practiced in America.

At some point during this eventful day Major John Pitcairn visited the home of Squire Duncan Ingraham’s stepson and upon “seeing one of Mr. Ingraham’s negroes standing by the large pear tree in the rear of the house, with his hand behind him, commenced on him, as he did on the rebels at Lexington Common a few hours previously, by pointing a pistol at his head, and, in a loud tone of voice, ordering him to give up his arms; but as the unfortunate bondsman replied to order by holding up both his hands over his head, and saying ‘Dem is all the arms I have, massa,’ the serious consequence of the Lexington order was not repeated in Mr. Ingraham’s backyard.”

25th, 4th Month: “The women Friends inform that Damaris Fowler of Jamestown being left in possession of a Negro, but is informed that as her husband left no will the property is not hers but her childrens and desires the advice of Friends, on consideration of which we appoint John Hadwen and Gould Marsh to enquire into said matter and make return to our next Monthly Meeting.” SLAVERY RHODE ISLAND MANUMISSION QUAKER DISOWNMENT

30th, 5th Month: At the previous monthly meeting of the Jamestown Friends, a committee had been appointed to make a recommendation as to the standing of a slave belonging to the estate of a deceased man. Could the widow, Friend Damaris Fowler, manumit this slave? The committee had established that in accordance with “widow’s thirds” dower rights, “She hath no right to but one third of said Negro, for which (she) presented a bill of manumission to this Meeting which is ordered to be recorded on Friends Records.” The other 2/3ds of this person were (was?) the property of the widow Fowler’s children (who presumably were not treated of because they were not Quakers?).

Also, “The Preparative Meeting of Portsmouth informs this Meeting [the Rhode Island Monthly Meeting held in Newport on Aquidneck Island] that P. Jonothan [sic] Brownell hath taken the place of a Captain in the Military and enlisted in for that service. And it appearing to this Meeting that he hath been laboured with on that account but still persists therein, wherefore for the Clearing of Truth and our Christian Testimony we do disown him to be any longer a member of our Society and order that a copy of this Minute be read at the close of a First Day Meeting at Portsmouth between this and our next monthly meeting. Jacob Mott, Jr. is directed to read said Minute and to report back to our next Monthly Meeting.” QUAKER DISOWNMENT

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July: General George Washington, who in this month was in Cambridge MA assuming command over the main American army besieging the British army of occupation of the port of Boston, ordered and then the Continental Congress in Philadelphia confirmed that no more Americans of color were to be allowed to participate in our revolution. We are not an equal opportunity employer, as that might be unbearably offensive to our white Southron brothers!

CONTINENTAL CONGRESS However, those black Americans already enlisted might be suffered to remain in service to his Continental formations.25 There were already persons of color among the Minutemen of Massachusetts, and thus we saw some swarthy faces among the whites of the militia at the fights in Lexington and Concord: • Peter Salem, who had been the slave of the Belknaps in Framingham MA but had been manumitted expressly that he might enlist in the militia • Pompy or Pomp Blackman of Braintree • Cato Wood of Arlington • Prince of Brookline • Prince Estabrook, belonging to Benjamin Wellington of Lexington, one of those wounded on Lexington common

25. After some debate over whether the commander-in-chief had intended to exclude all blacks on the basis of race, or only slaves on the basis of status, the consensus became that he must of course have meant to exclude all blacks on the basis of race. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 617 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is the certificate provided to one such soldier of color, Juba Freeman of Connecticut:

July 4: The Provincial Congress adopted the “Association,” agreeing “That we will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or elsewhere, after this day.” INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The unanimity with which the colonists received this “Association” is not perhaps as remarkable as the almost entire absence of comment on the radical slave-trade clause. A Connecticut town-meeting in December 1774, noticed “with singular pleasure ... the second Article of the Association, in which it is agreed to import no more Negro Slaves.”26 This comment appears to have been almost the only one. There were in various places some evidences of disapproval; but only in the State of Georgia was this widespread and determined, and based mainly on the slave-trade clause.27 This opposition delayed the ratification meeting until January 18, 1775, and then delegates from but five of the twelve parishes appeared, and many of these had strong instructions against the approval of the plan. Before this meeting could act, the governor adjourned it, on the ground that it did not represent the province. Some of the delegates signed an agreement, one article of which promised to stop the importation of slaves March 15, 1775, i.e., four months later than the national “Association” had directed. This was not, of course, binding on the province; and although a town like Darien might declare “our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America”28 yet the powerful influence of Savannah was “not likely soon to give matters a favourable turn. The importers were mostly against any interruption, and the consumers very much divided.”29 Thus the efforts of this Assembly failed, their resolutions being almost unknown, and, as a gentleman writes, “I hope for the honour of the Province ever will remain so.”30 The delegates to the Continental Congress 26. Danbury, Dec. 12, 1774: Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1038. This case and that of Georgia are the only ones I have found in which the slave-trade clause was specifically mentioned. 27. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1033, 1136, 1160, 1163; II. 279-281, 1544; JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 13, 15, 17, 1775. 28. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1136. 29. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 279-81. 618 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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selected by this rump assembly refused to take their seats. Meantime South Carolina stopped trade with Georgia, because it “hath not acceded to the Continental Association,”31 and the single Georgia parish of St. Johns appealed to the second Continental Congress to except it from the general boycott of the colony. This county had already resolved not to “purchase any Slave imported at Savannah (large Numbers of which we understand are there expected) till the Sense of Congress shall be made known to us.”32 May 17, 1775, Congress resolved unanimously “That all exportations to Quebec, Nova-Scotia, the Island of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Georgia, except the Parish of St. John’s, and to East and West Florida, immediately cease.”33 These measures brought the refractory colony to terms, and the Provincial Congress, July 4, 1775, finally adopted the “Association,” and resolved, among other things, “That we will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or elsewhere, after this day.”34 The non-importation agreement was in the beginning, at least, well enforced by the voluntary action of the loosely federated nation. The slave-trade clause seems in most States to have been observed with the others. In South Carolina “a cargo of near three hundred slaves was sent out of the Colony by the consignee, as being interdicted by the second article of the Association.”35 In Virginia the vigilance committee of Norfolk “hold up for your just indignation Mr. John Brown, Merchant, of this place,” who has several times imported slaves from Jamaica; and he is thus publicly censured “to the end that all such foes to the rights of British America may be publickly known ... as the enemies of American Liberty, and that every person may henceforth break off all dealings with him.”36

About the middle of July 1775: Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, ceased to exercise the functions of his office when he, his wife, and their children took refuge on board the British man-of-war Fowey. From aboard ship he attempted to instigate the American slaves to servile insurrection. White Virginians responded by assembling for a convention. The British frigates then shelled the port of Hampton on Hampton Bay and the royal governor proclaimed martial law. Under martial law he “declared free all slaves or servants, black or white, belonging to rebels, provided they would take up arms and join the royal troops.” The governor came ashore at Norfolk and hundreds of loyalists and black Americans went there to join with him.

30. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1160. 31. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 1163. 32. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 13, 15, 1775. 33. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, May 17, 1775. 34. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 1545. 35. Drayton, MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I. 182. Cf. pages 181-7; Ramsay, HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, I. 231. 36. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, II. 33-4. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 619 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 1: Eve Bernon of Providence, Rhode Island, being still of Perfect Mind and Memory tho’ weak of Body and convinced from the Uncertainty of human Life of the Necefsity of difpofing of such worldly Estate as it hath pleafed God to blefs Her with whilst she was in full Enjoyment of her Rational Faculties, DID on this First Day of August AD 1775 make and publish her last Will and Testament. After bequeathing to her beloved Sister Mary Crawford, her Niece Freelove Crawford, her Niece Sarah Cooke, and this Niece’s daughter Abigail Mathewfon, the sum of £30 each, and after bequeathing her home to her near Friend & Kinfman Zachariah Allen, she provided for her two slaves, a Negro Woman named Amey37 and her son called Manny:

\àxÅ \ wÉ {xÜxuç ÅtÇâÅ|à áxà yÜxx tÇw W|áv{tÜzx Åç axzÜÉ jÉÅtÇ ÇtÅxwTÅxç tÇw {xÜ áÉÇ vtÄÄxw`tÇÇç yÜÉÅ tÄÄfxÜä|àâwxfÄtäxÜç ÉÜ fâu}xvà|ÉÇ ã{tàxäxÜ àÉ`x Åç[x|Üá ÉÜTyá|zÇá? z|ä|Çz tÇwfâÜÜxÇwxÜ|Çz âÑ àÉ à{xÅ tÄÄ Åçe|z{à9cÜÉÑxÜàç |Ç à{x|ÜcxÜyÉÇá M TÇw |y át|waxzÜÉTÅxç ÉÜ {xÜ áÉÇ uç fv|~Çxyá [sic] ÉÜ tÇç Éà{xÜ Tvv|wxÇà á{tÄÄ ux ÜxÇwxÜxw âÇtuÄx àÉ fâÑÑÉÜà à{xÅáxÄäxá à{xÇ Åç j|ÄÄ tÇw `xtÇ|Çz |á à{tà à{xç á{tÄÄ ux Åt|Çàt|Çxw tÇw fâÑÑÉÜàxw uç à{x yt|wmtv{tÜ|t{TÄÄxÇ `tÜçVÜtãyÉÜw YÜxxÄÉäxVÜtãyÉÜw ftÜt{VÉÉ~x tÇw Tu|zt|Ä`tà{xãyÉÇ Éâà Éy à{x Xáàtàx Z|äxÇ à{xÅ uç à{|á j|ÄÄ

MANUMISSION

30th, 9th Month: “The Committee appointed to treat with those that claim slaves as their property inform that Elisabeth Thurston (widow of Edward Thurston) was possessed of some and refused to liberate them, which after being considered is directed to be sent to the Meeting of Women Friends.” RHODE ISLAND MANUMISSION QUAKER DISOWNMENT

People were trying to kill each other at Stonington, Connecticut.

37. Would this Amey and Manny be descended from the black family of six disposed of by Gabriel Bernon in his 18th-Century will? “Negro man woman and 4 children £500.”... “Negro man Manuel, Negro woman Peggy, to be at disposition of wife also the Negro boy and girl and the product of them, if sold.”... “One Negro child being with daughter Esther Powell, is left to her.” Also “and a boy has been given to daughter.” 620 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 16: In Volume 19 page 310 of the Providence, Rhode Island record of Deeds and Mortgages, Benoni Pearce, the Executor to the Last Will and Testament of James Brown, difposed of one item belonging to the Estate of the said James Brown, to wit One certain Negro Man Named PERO who had gotten too old to do much work, by Releafing Dismifsing and Setting him Free fo that neither he nor his Heirs Executors or Administrators or any perfon or Perfons by his or their Means might or would have any Claim or Demand to the said Pero or his Service. This Executor declared against the holding of Negroes in slavery, Depriving them of that Liberty to which all Mankind are equally entitled, however kindly they may be treated by their Masters – unlefs, that is the persons in question had legally Forfeited such Freedom. Such enslavement activities were in general characterized as: • contrary to the Divine Law • inconfiftant with the Natural Rights of Mankind • inconfiftant with that Great Christian Precept “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” • perniciously tending to encourage the Iniquitous Traffick in Negroes and the importing them from their Native Country To all Intents and purpofes the manumitted elderly Negro Man Pero was put at his own Difpofal, but since he was utterly indigent after having performed a lifetime of free Services, Pearce undertook to provide at his own Expence [sic] all things comfortable and Necefsary for Pero’s Maintenance and Support for so long as this worn-out former slave continued alive.

\ UxÇÉÇ| cxtÜvx Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x vÉâÇàç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx 9áÖÇAtÅ tÑÑÉ|ÇàxwXåxvâàÉÜj{xÜxtá àÉ à{x_táàj|ÄÄ tÇwgxáàtÅxÇà Éy]tÅxáUÜÉãÇ Ätàx Éy át|wcÜÉä|wxÇvx`xÜv{tÇà Wxvxtyxw tÇwj{xÜxtá à{xÜx |á uxÄÉÇz|Çz àÉ à{xXáàtàx Éy à{x át|w]tÅxáUÜÉãÇbÇx vxÜàt|ÇaxzÜÉ`tÇ atÅxw cXeb ã{É |á ÇÉã ÉÄw tÇw ytÜ twätÇvxw |Ç _|yxM tÇw j{xÜxtá \ tÅ vÉÇä|Çvxw à{tà {ÉÄw|Çz axzÜÉxá |Ç fÄtäxÜç tÇw WxÑÜ|ä|Çz à{xÅ Éy à{tà _|uxÜàç àÉ ã{|v{ tÄÄ `tÇ~|Çw tÜx xÖâtÄÄç xÇà|àÄxw {ÉãxäxÜ ~|ÇwÄç à{xç Åtç ux àÜxtàxw uç à{x|Ü `táàxÜá âÇÄxyá à{xç {täx ÄxztÄÄç YÉÜyx|àxw à{x|Ü YÜxxwÉÅ |á |ÇvÉÇy|yàtÇà ã|à{ à{x atàâÜtÄ e|z{àá Éy `tÇ~|Çw tÇw {tá t ÑxÜÇ|v|Éâá àxÇwxÇvç àÉ xÇvÉâÜtzx à{x \Ç|Öâ|àÉâá gÜtyy|v~ |Ç axzÜÉxá tÇw à{x |ÅÑÉÜà|Çz à{xÅ yÜÉÅ à{x|Ü atà|äx VÉâÇàÜç tÇw |á vÉÇàÜtÜç àÉqà{xW|ä|Çx_tã uxvtâáx |ÇvÉÇy|yàtÇà ã|à{ à{tàZÜxtàV{Ü|áà|tÇcÜxvxÑàAÂWÉ âÇàÉ Éà{xÜá tá çÉâ ãÉâÄw {täx à{xÅ wÉ âÇàÉ çÉâAÊ \ WÉ à{xÜxyÉÜx tá XåxvâàÉÜ Éy à{|á át|w ]tÅxá UÜÉãÇ `tÇâÅ|à tÇw uç à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá exÄxtyx W|áÅ|yá tÇw fxà YÜxx à{x át|w axzÜÉ `tÇ cxÜÉ yÉ à{tà Çx|à{xÜ\ Åç [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá ÉÜ TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá ÉÜ tÇç ÑxÜyÉÇ ÉÜ cxÜyÉÇá uç Åç ÉÜ à{x|Ü `xtÇá á{tÄÄ ÉÜ ã|ÄÄ {täx tÇç VÄt|Å ÉÜ WxÅtÇw àÉ à{x át|w cxÜÉ ÉÜ {|á fxÜä|vx {xÜxuç wxvÄtÜ|Çz {|Å àÉ ux yÜxx àÉ tÄÄ \ÇàxÇàá tÇw ÑâÜÑÉyxá tÇw tà {|á ÉãÇ W|yÑÉytÄ @@@@ TÇw \ {xÜxuç cÜÉÅ|yx tÇw XÇztzx àÉ à{x át|w cxÜÉ |Ç VÉÇy|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{xfxÜä|vxá ã{|v{ {x {tà{ {xÜxàÉyÉÜx wÉÇx yÉÜ át|wXáàtàx àÉ y|ÇwcÜÉä|wx tÇwTÄÄÉã àÉ {|Å ÇÉã |Ç {|á ÉÄw Tzx tà Åç ÉãÇ XåÑxÇvx tÄÄ à{|Çzá vÉÅyÉÜàtuÄx tÇw axvxyátÜç yÉÜ {|á `t|ÇàxÇtÇvx tÇw fâÑÑÉÜà tá ÄÉÇz tá {x Ä|äxáAAAAAAA \Çj|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉy\ à{x yt|w UxÇÉÇ|cxtÜvx {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ yxà Åç[tÇw tÇw ------page 311 ------tÇwfxtÄ à{|áf|åàxxÇà{Wtç ÉybvàÉuxÜ |Ç à{xY|yàxxÇà{lxtÜ Éy {|á`t}xáàçËáex|zÇTÇÇÉÖâxWÉÅ|Ç|DJJH f|zÇxw fxtÄxw tÇw WxÄ|äxÜxw |Ç cÜxáxÇvx Éy âá etÄÑ{ XtÜÄx UxÇÉÇ| cxtÜvx ((L.S.)) _çw|t YÉáàxÜ cÜÉä|wxÇvx yá |ÇcÜÉä|wxÇvxbvàADIÜ à{: DJJH g{x tuÉäx ÇtÅxw UxÇÉÇ|cxtÜvxXáÖAÜ ÑxÜyÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw tÇw tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw à{xYÉÜxzÉ|Çz\ÇyáàÜâÅxÇà uç {|Å xåxvâàxw àÉ ux {|á yÜxx tÇwiÉÄâÇàtÜçTvà tÇwWxxw ———————————————————UxyÉÜx `x g{xÉwÉÜx YÉáàxÜ ]âáM cxtvx@@@@ g{x YÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâx VÉÑç exvÉÜwxw à{|á Gà{: Wtç Éy YxuÜâtÜç TAWADJJKAA j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜx YÉáàxÜ ]âáAA cxtvx@@@@ }

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November 7: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arrived in Weimar, where, encouraged by Duke Carl August, he would reside for the remainder of his life. His early works of the Sturm und Drang period there would include the play “Gotz von Berlichingen.”

The Royal Governor of Virginia, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, from the safe haven of a British ship off Norfolk, declared martial law in his province and promised freedom for every local slave who would join in his cause.

Governor Winton was formally deposed by act of the Rhode Island General Assembly.

The Rev. John Swift of Acton of the small-pox. During this year his son Dr. Swift of this town also died of this disease. The Rev. John Swift was born in Framingham, and graduated at Harvard College in 1733. During the prevalence of the small-pox in Acton, in 1775, he was severely attacked, and never able to preach afterwards. He died 7th November 1775, in the 62d year of his age, and the 37th of his ministry. He was a gentleman of talents, learning, and piety, though occasionally facetious, witty, and eccentric. His only printed publication which I [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have seen is a sermon preached at the ordination of Rev. Joseph Lee at Royalston. Mr. Swift married Abigail Adams of Medway, and had one child, who graduated at Harvard College.38 John Swift, only child of the Rev. John Swift, born 18th of November, 1741, graduated [at Harvard College, like his father, in] 1762, and settled as a physician in Acton, where he died of the small-pox about 1775.39

38. 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.) 39. Ibid. 622 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 23: The Williamsburg Convention, in Virginia, offered a curious communication to the general public, which would appear to have been at least in part propaganda intended to persuade local black slaves not to accept the British offer to participate in the war on the British side, in exchange for postwar freedom. On Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation: “Our Assemblies have repeatedly passed acts, laying heavy duties upon imported Negroes, by which they meant altogether to prevent the horrid traffick; but their humane intentions have been as often frustrated by the cruelty and covetousness of a set of English merchants.” ... The Americans would, if possible, “not only prevent any more Negroes from losing their freedom, but restore it to such as have already unhappily lost it.” Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, III. 1387. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: At the outbreak of the Revolution six main reasons, some of which were old and of slow growth, others peculiar to the abnormal situation of that time, led to concerted action against the slave-trade. The first reason was the economic failure of slavery in the Middle and Eastern colonies; this gave rise to the presumption that like failure awaited the institution in the South. Secondly, the new philosophy of “Freedom” and the “Rights of man,” which formed the corner-stone of the Revolution, made the dullest realize that, at the very least, the slave-trade and a struggle for “liberty” were not consistent. Thirdly, the old fear of slave insurrections, which had long played so prominent a part in legislation, now gained new power from the imminence of war and from the well-founded fear that the British might incite servile uprisings. Fourthly, nearly all the American slave markets were, in 1774-1775, overstocked with slaves, and consequently many of the strongest partisans of the system were “bulls” on the market, and desired to raise the value of their slaves by at least a temporary stoppage of the trade. Fifthly, since the vested interests of the slave-trading merchants were liable to be swept away by the opening of hostilities, and since the price of slaves was low,40 there was from this quarter little active opposition to a cessation of the trade for a season. Finally, it was long a favorite belief of the supporters of the Revolution that, as English exploitation of colonial resources had caused the quarrel, the best weapon to bring England to terms was the economic expedient of stopping all commercial intercourse with her. Since, then, the slave-trade had ever formed an important part of her colonial traffic, it was one of the first branches of commerce which occurred to the colonists as especially suited to their ends.41 Such were the complicated moral, political, and economic motives which underlay the first national action against the slave- trade. This action was taken by the “Association,” a union of

40. Sheffield, OBSERVATIONS ON AMERICAN COMMERCE, page 28; P.L. Ford, THE ASSOCIATION OF THE FIRST CONGRESS, in Political Science Quarterly, VI. 615-7. 41. Cf., e.g., Arthur Lee’s letter to R.H. Lee, March 18, 1774, in which non-intercourse is declared “the only advisable and sure mode of defence”: Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I. 229. Cf. also AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Series, I., page 240; P.L. Ford, THE ASSOCIATION OF THE FIRST CONGRESS, in Political Science Quarterly, VI. 614-5. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 623 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the colonies entered into to enforce the policy of stopping commercial intercourse with England. The movement was not a great moral protest against an iniquitous traffic; although it had undoubtedly a strong moral backing, it was primarily a temporary war measure.

1776

Despite having authored AN ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA UPON SLAVE-KEEPING, Dr. Benjamin Rush purchased William Grubber. SLAVERY

By gosh, I think I’ll do it!

British tobacco taxes were a major factor in exciting the “Tobacco Coast” (the Chesapeake), where the Revolutionary War would occasionally be referred to as “The Tobacco War.” The American slavemaster planters of tobacco had found themselves perpetually in debt to British merchants and, by this point, owed millions of pounds to the mercantile houses of England. The British tobacco taxes were a further grievance. Their slave-grown tobacco would help finance this revolutionary war, by serving as collateral for loans from France — so yes, Virginia, black slaves indeed did make a contribution to the American Revolution! “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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Britain’s House of Commons heard the first motion to outlaw slavery in Britain and her colonies. David Hartley proclaimed human enslavement to be “contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man” but his motion did not carry. “How is it,” asked Dr. Samuel Johnson, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” The British author was only one of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation run by slavemasters should be so noisily demanding its own freedom.

In a fresco by Brumidi on a wall of our federal capitol, a group of white slavemasters are caught in the act of demanding their own freedom:

Delaware forbade further importation of slaves. The slave population of the thirteen colonies reached 500,000.

Importations of female convicts sold as slaves exceeded 30.000 and large numbers continued to be transported.

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The Reverend Samuel Hopkins’s A DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE SLAVERY OF THE AFRICANS, SHOWING IT TO

BE THE DUTY AND INTEREST OF THE AMERICAN STATES TO EMANCIPATE ALL THEIR AFRICAN SLAVES. The Calvinist minister of the 1st Congregational Church at Newport, Rhode Island, a white guy, had manumitted his one black slave, and hoped for a future of benevolence, in which as a consequence of the Revolution, the practice of human enslavement in America would be discontinued, and the black people would go back to Africa where they belonged, because America should only be for us white people. Fair’s fair, so if we fail to condemn slavery here, then “The Africans have a good right to make slaves of us and our children.... And the Turks have a good right to all the Christian slaves they have among them; and to make as many more slaves of us and our children, as shall be in their power.” ANTISLAVERY RACISM

Discretion being the better part of valor, while Aquidneck Island was occupied by the British military, the Reverend would abandon his 1st Congregational Church there and preach instead at Newburyport in

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Massachusetts and at Canterbury and Stamford in Connecticut (he would not return to Newport until 1780).

This reverend’s training school for black missionaries to Africa would fall apart due to the disruption of the revolutionary fighting.

During Winter 1775/1776, acting on behalf of the Rhode Island legislature, militia General William West had been ferreting out loyalists. For the duration of the American Revolution, Newport sent its Loyalists, including Joseph Wanton (son of the deposed royal governor) and Thomas Vernon (the Comte de Rochambeau would use Vernon House, on Clarke Street in Newport, as his headquarters), to rusticate for the duration pleasantly and harmlessly in Glocester on the farm of Stephen Keach.

VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES

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During the Revolutionary War, Flushing, Paumanok Long Island was occupied by the British. Local Quakers would not participate in the war effort and a number of them suffered the confiscation of property as punishment. Flushing Meeting spoke out against members who aided the British or accepted military service. Consequently, the Friends meetinghouse was seized by the army and used for various purposes including a hospital, stable, and storage. It is believed that the army burned the original benches and picket fence as their

firewood, since this was in short supply. With this meetinghouse unavailable, New York Yearly Meeting moved its gatherings to Westbury, never to return. Monthly meetings in New York and other areas were

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formed, and Flushing Meeting became merely a local monthly meeting (which it remains today).

The American colonies were in revolt, and loyalties were divided. With all the pressures, divided loyalties were to be found even within the Religious Society of Friends. As an example of how Quaker disownment was used as a tool in this incendiary situation, here is a disownment that was announced in this year at the Fairfax, Maryland monthly meeting: “W.R. who by birth had a right of membership in our Religious Society but through levity and a disregard to that principle which would preserve if adhered to, he hath been seduced and drawn away with the Spirit of the Times so far as to inlist and join in the active part of war, leaving his place of abode to that end, and having given us no opportunity to treat with him on this sorrowful occasion, we, agreeable to our antient practice, think it requisite to deny him the right of membership among us, which is hereby confirmed by our monthly meeting and he so to stand until by due contrition he condemns his conduct which we can but desire on his behalf.” As an example of an acknowledgement of disownment due to warlike activity, here is a statement that was duly received and placed on file in this year by that same meeting: “Whereas I the subscriber have several times stood Centry in a military manner and having considered the same, I see it to be wrong, for which misconduct I am sorry, and hope to be more careful for the future, desiring that Friends would accept this my acknowledgment and continue me under their care as my future conduct shall render me worthy. J.L.”42 42.These are per Morse, BALTIMORE YEARLY MEETING, page 59. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 629 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On Paumanok Long Island, Friend Elias Hicks was standing steadfast and refusing to participate in the American Revolution or “use any coercive force or compulsion by any means whatever; not being overcome by evil, but overcoming evil with the good.”

THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY He well knew that any suggestion that we attempt to kill the Devil with a gun or a sword could have been a suggestion sponsored only by the Devil himself. Instead he chose to make his contribution to the cause of American liberty by paying visits to Quaker slavemasters on Paumanok “Long Island,” entreating them to strike a direct blow for human freedom by manumitting their black slaves.

As you can see, even Quakers have such cannon:

This cries out for explanation but first you need to think about it because there are several levels at which explanation must be attempted.

January 1: The Reverend James Fordyce, D.D.’s THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF THE FEMALE SEX, AND THE ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED BY YOUNG MEN FROM THE SOCIETY OF VIRTUOUS YOUNG WOMEN; ADISCOURSE IN THREE PARTS, DELIVERED IN MONKWELL STREET CHAPEL, 1ST JANUARY, 1776.

The frigate Liverpool, two corvettes, and Royal Governor Lord Dunmore’s armed sloop opened fire upon the port of Norfolk, Virginia while a detachment of British marines landed to put the torch to houses.

GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

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In Providence, Rhode Island, the slavemaster Nicholas Cooke gave his Negro Man named Mingo his Time, and forever difmifsed and difcharged him from Service to himself or his Heirs and Afsigns forever, but only on Condition that he carefully provide the Necefsaries of Life for himfelf and not fpend his Time in Idlenefs. If, through this former slave’s future Mifconduct or Negligence, he should become chargeable to his previous owner the said Nicholas Cooke or to the Community of Providence in General, then this document of manumission filed in Volume 19 on page 277 of the town’s Deeds and Mortgages book was null and void, and said Negro Man named Mingo again reduced to slavery.

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(Note carefully also that this manumitted slave’s name was “Mingo,” despite the fact that we learned in the Year of our Lord 1734 from published Harvard College Rule #20, that “to mingo” was slang for taking a leak, urinating.)

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March 25: Governor Samuel Ward of Rhode Island had died of the small pox in Philadelphia just three months prior to the Declaration of Independence, which would have included his signature. Attending him at his deathbed was his slave Cudgoe, whom he had purchased in 1768. His place at the Continental Congress had been taken on March 17th by the newly elected attorney William Ellery of Newport. His remains would be interred in the graveyard of the 1st Baptist Church in Philadelphia (in 1860 they would patriotically be relocated to the Common Burial Ground in Newport).

JOHN TRUMBULL

You’ll notice instantly that neither Samuel Ward nor Cudgoe are anywhere in this picture.

In regard both to the Reverend William Ellery Channing and to the poet Ellery Channing of Thoreau’s time period in Concord, bear in mind, as everyone else did during this period, that this name was a most famous name, for regardless of whoever gets credit for creating the Declaration of Independence, a William Ellery (1727-1820) later cosigned it on behalf of Rhode Island: New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson,

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George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

April 3: Publication of the 1st of Thomas Paine’s “The Forester’s Letters.”

The Continental Congress resolved (but not for the reasons that you’d suppose) “That no slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies.” SLAVERY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The strain of war at last proved too much for this voluntary blockade, and after some hesitancy Congress, April 3, 1776, resolved to allow the importation of articles not the growth or manufacture of Great Britain, except tea. They also voted “That no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies.”43 This marks a noticeable change of attitude from the strong words of two years previous: the former was a definitive promise; this is a temporary resolve, which probably represented public opinion much better than the former. On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably forced on the student of this first national movement against the slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before. The whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than the platitudes of many of the Revolutionists had assumed. The effect of the movement on the slave-trade in general was to begin, possibly a little earlier than otherwise would have been the case, that temporary breaking up of the trade which the war naturally caused. “There was a time, during the late war,” says Clarkson, “when the slave trade may be considered as having been nearly abolished.”44 The prices of slaves rose correspondingly high, so that smugglers made fortunes.45 It is stated that in the years 1772-1778 slave merchants of Liverpool failed for the sum of £710,000.46 All this, of course, might have resulted from the war, without the “Association;” but in the long run the “Association” aided in frustrating the very designs which the framers of the first resolve had in mind; for the temporary stoppage in the end created an extraordinary demand for slaves, and led to a slave-trade after the war nearly as large as that before. 43. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, II. 122. 44. Clarkson, IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE-TRADE, pages 125-8. 45. Clarkson, IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE-TRADE, pages 25-6. 46. Clarkson, IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE-TRADE, pages 25-6. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 633 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1776, June 29. Virginia: Preamble to Frame of Government.

July 2: The Constitution of New Jersey. READ THE FULL TEXT

When the 2nd Continental Congress prepared to take up the draft declaration of Independency that had been submitted for their consideration by the “committee of five” on June 28th, presumably during the intervening days any number of clerical copies of that draft had been made so that each delegate would be able to mark up, whenever possible in the press of the war business, his own personal copy with his own thoughts as to what such a declaration-of-war document ought to contain and how it ought to be worded. Since none of such copies have survived, a good hypothesis is that they were carefully gathered up and destroyed at the conclusion of the deliberations in order to quite obliterate any suspicious signs of internal dissent. The initial vote was 12 for, with New York abstaining. However, the press of urgent war-related business would prevent any real general discussion of the draft by the assembled delegates from being initiated until the 4th. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

From time to time one sees a question being uneasily raised as to which of our Founding Fathers, while striking this blow for nationhood and liberty, were themselves the holders of slaves. Typically, the folks who produce this question, and the folks who attempt to respond to it, are concerned about being considered unpatriotic (Heaven knows why). Here for what it is worth is an attempt at a list of known culprits as generated by PhD candidate Rob Parkinson of the University of Virginia for H-SHEAR on November 18, 2004: Carter Braxton (Virginia) Charles Carroll of Carrollton (Maryland) Samuel Chase (Maryland) William Ellery (Rhode Island) Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania) Button Gwinnett (Georgia) John Hancock (Massachusetts) Benjamin Harrison (Virginia) Thomas Heyward, Jr. (South Carolina) Francis Hopkinson (New Jersey) Thomas Jefferson (Virginia) Francis Lightfoot Lee (Virginia) Richard Henry Lee (Virginia) Francis Lewis (New York) Thomas Lynch, Jr. (South Carolina) Arthur Middleton (South Carolina) Robert Morris (Pennsylvania) John Morton (Pennsylvania) Thomas Nelson (Pennsylvania) George Read (Delaware) Caesar Rodney (Delaware) Benjamin Rush (Pennsylvania) Edward Rutledge (South Carolina) Richard Stockton (New Jersey) George Walton (Georgia) William Whipple (New Hampshire) James Wilson (Pennsylvania)

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John Witherspoon (New Jersey) George Wythe (Virginia)

July 12: On what would become Henry David Thoreau’s birthday, one of Thoreau’s remote relatives, the inventor William Dunbar of Mississippi,47 recorded in his journal with a sense of hurt and amazement that there had been a slave rebellion on his plantation: “Judge my surprise ... Of what avail is kindness & good usage when rewarded by such ingratitude.” When he would manage to recover his runaways, he would have them lashed with a hundred strokes, five different times so that they would have a chance to survive for the next lashing, for a total of 500 blows each, “and to carry a chain & log fixt to the ancle.” Toni Morrison has suggested that by disciplining black savagery in this extreme manner, what Dunbar was doing was demonstrating his white gentlemanliness: “[W]hatever his social status in London, in the New World he is a gentleman. More gentle, more man. The site of his transformation is within rawness: he is backgrounded by savagery.”48 Also, Captain Cook departed on the Resolution for his 3rd trip into the Pacific Ocean.

August-September: The Constitution of Delaware. “The Constitution or system of Government agreed to and resolved upon by the Representatives in full Convention of the Delaware State,” etc. § 26. “No person hereafter imported into this State from Africa ought to be held in slavery on any pretence whatever; and no Negro, Indian, or Mulatto slave ought to be brought into this State, for sale, from any part of the world.” Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 5th Series, I. 1174-9. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

47. Named, presumably, in honor of the famous Scottish poet William Dunbar. READ DUNBAR’S POEMS 48. To at all grasp the force of Morrison’s argument here, you will need to make a careful study of her PLAYING IN THE DARK: WHITENESS AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION (NY: Vintage Books, 1992). This is on page 44. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 635 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 18: The British advance out of New-York, transferred from Throg’s Neck, was delayed by an American defense at Pell’s Point — which is to say, to put this another way, people were trying to kill each other at Pelham Manor (New Rochell), New York.

Gideon Manchester of Providence, in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Merchant, of his own free voluntary Will and Accord manumitted, fet free, and discharged his Negro Man Servant “Colette” from all Servitude, Slavery and Bondage whatfoever, requesting that all Magistrates and others permit this former slave to go and pafs freely about his own Bufinefs and Concernements without Molestation or Interruption for so long as He behaved Himfelf peaceably and in Subjection to the Law: gÉ tÄÄ cxÉÑÄx àÉ ã{ÉÅ à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá y{tÄÄ vÉÅx ZÜxxà|Çz? ^ÇÉã çx à{tà \ Z|wxÉÇ `tÇv{xáàxÜ ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx? |Ç à{xfàtàx Éye{Éwx\áÄtÇw tÇwcÜÉä|wxÇvxcÄtÇàtà|ÉÇá?`xÜv{tÇà?Éy Åç ÉãÇ yÜxx äÉÄâÇàtÜç j|ÄÄ tÇw TvvÉÜw Wb {xÜuç ÅtÇâÅ|à? yxà yÜxx? tÇw w|áv{tÜzx Åç axzÜÉ `tÇ fxÜätÇà vtÄÄxw VÉÄxààx yÜÉÅ tÄÄ fxÜä|àâwx? fÄtäxÜç tÇw UÉÇwtzx ã{tàyÉxäxÜA TÇw \ ÜxÖâxáà tÄÄ `tz|áàÜtàxá tÇw Éà{xÜá àÉ ÑxÜÅ|à à{x yt|w axzÜÉ `tÇ àÉ zÉ tÇw Ñtyá yÜxxÄç tuÉâà {|á ÉãÇ Uây|Çxyá tÇw VÉÇvxÜÇxÅxÇàá? ã|à{Éâà `ÉÄxáàtà|ÉÇ ÉÜ \ÇàxÜÜâÑà|ÉÇ? [x ux{tä|Çz [|ÅyxÄy ÑxtvxtuÄç tÇw |Ç fâu= }xvà|ÉÇ àÉ à{x _tãA Z|äxÇ âÇwxÜ Åç [tÇw tÇw fxtÄ? tà cÜÉä|wxÇvx? à{x X|z{àxxÇà{ Wtç Éy bvàÉuxÜ |Ç à{x lxtÜ Éy ÉâÜ _beW? bÇx g{ÉâytÇw fxäxÇ [âÇwÜxw tÇw fxäxÇàç f|åA ((L.S.)) Z|wxÉÇ `tÇv{xáàxÜA bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb j|àÇxyá VtÄxuZÉwyÜxç g{x yÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t àÜâx VÉÑçA exvÉÜwxw à{|á f|åà{ Wtç Éy]âÄç V{Ü|yàÉÑ{xÜ[âyáxç ]âÇAÜ } TAWA DJJKA j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇVÄxÜ~

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October 20: Fiume was transferred from Venice to Croatia.

The Reverend William Emerson died in Otter Creek, Vermont at the home of the minister at Rutland. At this early time there was a large barn with associated farmland across the road from what we now know as the “Old Manse” in Concord, which farm was being worked by three or more black slaves. There is a story that on his deathbed in Vermont the Reverend Emerson expressed a desire to free these slaves. Although it is unclear how the surviving family could have funded such a manumission except by its being a merely nominal one, it is a fact that two black men, named Caesar and Peter, would live across the road from the Old Manse for years. The body of the Reverend must have been buried at or near Rutland but no-one now knows exactly where.49 The deceased left five children of whom one, William Emerson, Junior, would become minister of the 1st Church (Old South Church) of Boston and father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, while another was Mary Moody Emerson — Waldo’s aunt “Polly” who had been in arms at the time of the Concord fight.

49. Eventually Waldo would go searching for his grandfather William Emerson’s grave and not be able to locate it. The brick tomb constructed to house his casket, close to the Old Manse and the North Bridge in Concord, has therefore always been empty, and the stone qualifies as a memorial rather than a gravestone.

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WALDO’S RELATIVES

There Mary is, in her mother’s arms. —See?

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1777

The 19-year-old Paul Cuffe joined with his brother John Cuffe and other free African and native American leaders near Westport in a protest against the fact that their property was being taxed by the government while that government was denying them, as local male property owners of long standing, the franchise to vote in local elections.

Dr. Benjamin Rush was appointed Physician General of the Military Hospital of the Middle Department, American Army. He argued that whites and blacks were genetically equivalent in ability and differed only in their life opportunities. What was taken to be innate inferiority was to be better understood as merely the product of a life environment of enslavement.50

“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

50. To understand the impact of this attitude, it is necessary to weigh it against other competing prevalent attitudes of the times. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had the attitude that blacks were of no use as soldiers and could never be citizens because although they might seem brave, they were merely foolhardy out of ignorance and thus could not be relied upon in the face of real danger. “Our” founding father was of the opinion that this ignorance was not the result of lack of opportunity for education but of an innate lack of rational capability, and thus could never be remedied, despite the fact that, of course, he had no evidentiary basis whatever for such a determination — it being merely the most convenient thing for a slaveholder such as himself to presume. 640 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Allen was able at the age of 17 to purchase his manumission from slavery, and became an itinerant preacher for interracial groups. Although attempts were made to prevent him from preaching to slaves in the vicinity of Radnor in New Jersey, he would persist.

The Maryland Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends banned slavery. Until this time, Quakers had grown in number. After this date, Friends who did not wish to give up their slaves would go Episcopalian, while Friends who would give up their slaves would be forced out of the area, as they could not compete in the growing of tobacco without the use of slaves.

The colony of Maryland decided to maintain its current high duties discouraging the importation of new black slaves. “An Act concerning duties.” “ ... no duties imposed by act of assembly on any article or thing imported into or exported out of this state (except duties imposed on the importation of negroes), shall be taken or received within two years from the end of the present session of the general assembly.” LAWS OF MARYLAND SINCE 1763: 1777, sess. Feb.-Apr., ch. xviii. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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January 7: The Committee of Safety ordered that, to halt British ships, British prisoners of war be put to work on a chain across the Hudson River at Fort Montgomery.

According to the Record of Deeds for 1617 to 1872, Book 19, page 309, on this day Jeremy Brown of Providence, Rhode Island in the presence of Thomas Olney and Smith Brown as witnesses manumitted his slave Anthony, offering by way of explanation that “GOD knows human Nature was born Free” and urging him to “Remember GOD” while following the practical advice “to Labour 6 days: Then attend Some House of Worship,” meanwhile noticing to him that “if you are in Want while I or my Children have, I would have you call for any thing you may stand in Need of”:

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July 1: General John Fellows, who in 1781 would successfully represent Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman in her suit for freedom, sold Ton, a slave, to Theodore Sedgwick (1746-1813). Know all Men by these Presents that I John Fellows of Sheffield in the County of Berkshire Esq. for & in Consideration of the sum of Sixty Pounds to me in Hand well and truly paid by Theodore -- Sedgwick of said Sheffield Esq. here and by these Presents bargain, sell and convey unto him the said Theodore Sedgwick his Executors, Administrators and Assigns, one Negro Woman named Ton and about thirty years old, and one Negro Girl named Bett, about four years old, to have and to hold said Negro Woman & Negro Girl to him the said Theodore Sedgwick his Executors, Administrators and Assigns the said Negro Woman for and during the Term of her natural Life and said Negro Girl Untill she shall arrive at the Age of twenty one years, and I the said John Fellows for my self and Heirs, Executors & Administrators do covenant promise & engage to and with said Theodore Sedgwick his Executors, Administrators and Assigns that I have good Right and lawful Authority to bargain & sell the said Negros in Manner aforesaid & that he the said Theodore Sedgwick his Executors, Administrators & Assigns may & shall Use, possess, and dispose of the said Negros for and during the Term aforesd. by Force & Virtue of these Presents, Witness my Hand & Seal this first Day 642 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of July Anno Dom: 1777 -- John Fellows Wm. Baron Ebzr. Fellows Genl. Fellows 1st July 1777 B. Sale of Sevt.

July 2: The Constitution of Vermont characterized slavery as a violation of “natural, inherent and unalienable rights” (VERMONT STATE PAPERS, 1779-86, page 244). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The early ordinances of the Dutch, laying duties, generally of ten per cent, on slaves, probably proved burdensome to the trade, although this was not intentional.51 The Biblical prohibition of slavery and the slave-trade, copied from New England codes into the Duke of York’s Laws, had no practical application,52 and the trade continued to be encouraged in the governors’ instructions. In 1709 a duty of £3 was laid on Negroes from elsewhere than Africa.53 This was aimed at West India slaves, and was prohibitive. By 1716 the duty on all slaves was £1 12½s., which was probably a mere revenue figure.54 In 1728 a duty of 40s. was laid, to be continued until 1737.55 It proved restrictive, however, and on the “humble petition of the Merchants and Traders of the City of Bristol” was disallowed in 1735, as “greatly prejudicial to the Trade and Navigation of this Kingdom.”56 Governor Cosby was also reminded that no duties on slaves payable by the importer were to be laid. Later, in 1753, the 40s. duty was restored, but under the increased trade of those days was not felt.57 No further restrictions seem to have been attempted until 1785, when the sale of slaves in the State was forbidden.58 The chief element of restriction in this colony appears to have been the shrewd business sense of the traders, who never flooded the slave market, but kept a supply sufficient for the slowly growing demand. Between 1701 and 1726 only about 2,375 slaves were imported, and in 1774 the total slave population amounted

51. O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1638-74, pages 31, 348, etc. The colonists themselves were encouraged to trade, but the terms were not favorable enough: DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, I. 246; LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, pages 81-2, note, 127. The colonists declared “that they are inclined to a foreign Trade, and especially to the Coast of Africa, ... in order to fetch thence Slaves”: O’Callaghan, VOYAGES OF THE SLAVERS, etc., page 172. 52. CHARTER TO WILLIAM PENN, etc. (1879), page 12. First published on Long Island in 1664. Possibly Negro slaves were explicitly excepted. Cf. MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY, XI. 411, and N.Y. HIST. SOC. COLL., I. 322. 53. ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, 1691-1718, pages 97, 125, 134; DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 178, 185, 293. 54. The Assembly attempted to raise the slave duty in 1711, but the Council objected (DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 292 ff.), although, as it seems, not on account of the slave duty in particular. Another act was passed between 1711 and 1716, but its contents are not known (cf. title of the Act of 1716). For the Act of 1716, see ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, 1691-1718, page 224. 55. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 37, 38. 56. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 32-4. 57. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VII. 907. This act was annually renewed. The slave duty remained a chief source of revenue down to 1774. Cf. REPORT OF GOVERNOR TRYON, in DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VIII. 452. 58. LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785-88 (ed. 1886), ch. 68, page 121. Substantially the same act reappears in the revision of the laws of 1788: LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785-88 (ed. 1886), ch. 40, page 676. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 643 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to 21,149.59 No restriction was ever put by New York on participation in the trade outside the colony, and in spite of national laws New York merchants continued to be engaged in this traffic even down to the Civil War.60 Vermont, who withdrew from New York in 1777, in her first Constitution61 declared slavery illegal, and in 1786 stopped by law the sale and transportation of slaves within her boundaries.62

59. The slave population of New York has been estimated as follows: — In 1698, 2,170. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, IV. 420. In 1703, 2,258. N.Y. COL. MSS., XLVIII.; cited in Hough, N.Y. CENSUS, 1855, Introd. In 1712, 2,425. N.Y. CENSUS, 1855, LVII., LIX. (a partial census). In 1723, 6,171. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 702. In 1731, 7,743. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 929. In 1737, 8,941. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 133. In 1746, 9,107. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 392. In 1749, 10,692. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 550. In 1756, 13,548. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 123; cited in Hough, as above. In 1771, 19,863. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 144; cited in Hough, as above. In 1774, 21,149. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 144; cited in Hough, as above. In 1786, 18,889. DEEDS IN OFFICE SEC. OF STATE, XXII. 35. Total number of Africans imported from 1701 to 1726, 2,375, of whom 802 were from Africa: O’Callaghan, DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I. 482. 60. Cf. below, Chapter XI.

61. VERMONT STATE PAPERS, 1779-86, page 244. The return of sixteen slaves in Vermont, by the first census, was an error: NEW ENGLAND RECORD, XXIX. 249. 62. VERMONT STATE PAPERS, page 505. 644 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 28: The slave who would eventually come to be known as Brister Freeman was enlisted in the American revolutionary forces under the name “Bristol Cuming,” to serve alongside his master, Colonel John Cuming (1728-1788), a wealthy Concord physician and land speculator. “Bristol” was a relatively common slave name, as were the names of other cities such as Boston, Cambridge, etc. Cuming and his enlisted slave would be present at the surrender of Lieutenant General John Burgoyne and his British troops on October 17, 1777.

In subsequent enlistment and military records, Dr. Cuming’s slave would appear during November 1778 as “Brister” Cummings [sic], in 1779 as Bristol Freeman, in 1780 as Bristo Freeman, and on a 1786 payroll as Brister Freeman, the name he would bear for the rest of his life.

Above is the home of Dr. John and Abigail Wesson Cuming (photo by Elise Lemire), where the slave they referred to as “Bristo” would serve them until sometime in 1778-1779. Now, as the Victim Service Unit of the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Concord, it is not open to the public: National Register of Historic Places, Middlesex County: Cuming, Dr. John, House (added 1977 - Building - #77000175) West of Concord at 999 Barretts Mill Road and Reformatory Circle, Concord Historic Significance: Person Historic Person: Cuming, Dr. John Significant Year: 1754 Area of Significance: Social History, Military, Health/Medicine Period of Significance: 1750-1799 Owner: State Historic Function: Domestic Historic Sub-function: Secondary Structure, Single Dwelling Current Function: Domestic

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Current Sub-function: Secondary Structure, Single Dwelling

Since his name signified his enslavement, Brister dropped the name Cuming and chose the name Freeman upon acquiring the power to fashion his own identity sometime between November 1778 and 1779.

At some point Brister Freeman married a woman named Fenda, who according to Henry Thoreau “told fortunes.” Since this name is African, possibly Muslim, and doesn’t match the pattern of slave naming in Concord, possibly she was not born in Concord, and possibly she was from Africa. The couple registered the births of three children: Nancy (born on March 9, 1772), Edward (born on November 17, 1781, died on September 13, 1788), and Amos (born during 1784).

October 1: In Northampton, New Jersey, Belinda Pash became black, twenty-one, and free:

MANUMISSION SLAVERY

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December 12: In Providence, Rhode Island, a Negro Servant named Quaco was promised his freedom forever, beginning on December 1, 1780, and not only his freedom and indeed his very clothing but also the sum of $50, plus a set of Shoe makers Tools — but for this Obligation to be in full Force Power and Virtue the condition would be that for the intervening three years he must behave himself faithful Trusty and obedient unto his Master Sam Butler and Miftrefs: \ à{xfâuyvÜ|uxÜWÉ ÑÜÉÅ|áx yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç[x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜá tÇwTyá|zÇág{tà ÅçaxzÜÉfxÜätÇà ÇtÅxwdâtvÉ á{tÄÄ ux yÜxx tÇw tà {|á_|uxÜàç yÜÉÅ`x Åç {x|Üá tÇwTyá|zÇá yÉÜxäxÜ yÜÉÅ tÇw tyàxÜ à{xY|Üáà wtç ÉyWxvxÅuxÜ |Ç à{xlxtÜ Éy bÇxg{ÉâátÇwfxäxÇ[âÇwÜxw tÇwX|z{àç tÇw tà à{x xÇw Éy à{x tyÉÜxyt|w g|ÅxA \ Wb ÑÜÉÅ|yx yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç[x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜá tÇwTyá|zÇá àÉ Ñtç tÇwWxÄ|äxÜ âÇàÉ à{x tyÉÜxyt|wfxÜätÇà ÇtÅxwdâtvÉ Y|yàçWÉÄÄtÜá ã|à{ ÉÇx áxà Éyf{Éx Åt~xÜágÉÉÄá tÇw tÄÄ {|áVÄÉà{|ÇzAíg{xVÉÇw|à|ÉÇá Éy à{x tuÉäx ÉuÄ|ztà|ÉÇ |áfâv{ à{tà |y ÅçaxzÜÉfxÜätÇà ÇtÅxwdâtvÉ tuÉäx ÅxÇà|ÉÇxw wÉà{ ux{täx {|ÅáxÄy yt|à{yâÄgÜâáàç tÇw Éuxw|xÇà âÇàÉ {|á`táàxÜ tÇw`|yàÜxyá tÇw àÉ {|á[x|Üá tÇwTyá|zÇá yÜÉÅ à{xWtàx {xÜx tyàxÜ ÅxÇà|ÉÇxwg{xÇ à{x tuÉäxbuÄ|ztà|ÉÇ àÉ ux |Ç yâÄÄ YÉÜvx cÉãxÜ tÇw i|Üàâx Éà{xÜã|yx àÉ ux äÉ|w tÇw Éy ÇÉ XyyxvàA Åç [tÇw à{|á gãxÄyà{ wtç Éy WxvxÅuxÜ DJJJA Táj|àÇxyá g{x YÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâx VÉÑç ftÅUâàÄxÜ exvÉÜwxw à{|áDFà{ Wtç Éy WxvxÅuxÜTAWADJKC Tààxyà g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~}

SLAVERY If Negro Servant Quaco should fail to convince these white overlords that he was indeed behaving himself faithful Trusty and obedient, then their said Obligation of course to be void and of no Effect. (One would like to be reassured that the other shoe did drop, on December 1, 1780.) MANUMISSION

1778

The condition of slavery had effectively been eliminated throughout the British Isles. Since the legal finding of June 22, 1772 some 14,000 persons, having a market value of some £500,000, had been released on their own recognizance.

We note, however, as a minor detail, that this condition had not been eliminated throughout the British empire, but only throughout the British “Isles,” to wit, the island of England/Wales/Scotland and the island of Ireland and various little offshore pieces of real estate such as the Orkneys. In fact, in this year, Captain William Bligh was being chartered to sail away and obtain breadfruit seedlings in Tahiti, and transport these seedlings to the British islands in the West Indies — in order to provide a cheap staple diet for England’s black slaves, still enslaved, in the Caribbean. England’s black slaves in its dependencies were to be freed to eat cheaper food, in order to make their unpaid labor more cost-effective for their owners. Fancy that. PLANTS

The 1st Massachusetts Constitution was rejected by the Massachusetts town meetings, in large part because it had neglected to end slavery and had neglected to allow universal adult male suffrage.

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Scottish miners gained some partial remission of their slavery — but they would not achieve manumission until 1779.

The Reverend James Manning, Friend Moses Brown, and disowned Quaker Stephen Hopkins (who himself owned six slaves, one of whom was his manservant Toney) began the first concerted multi-denominational effort to agitate for the abolition of slavery in Rhode Island, and participation by its citizens in the international slave trade.

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February 14, Wednesday: The US ship Ranger took the recently adopted Stars-and-Stripes flag overseas for the 1st time, as it flew this flag while arriving in a port of France.

The Slave Enlistment Bill of Rhode Island: “It is voted and resolved, that every able-bodied Negro, mulatto, or Indian man slave in this state, may enlist into either of the said 2 battalions, to serve during the continuance of the present war with Great Britain. That every slave, so enlisting, shall be entitled to, and receive all the bounties, wages and encouragements, allowed by the Continental Congress, to any soldier enlisting into their service. It is further voted and resolved, that every slave, so enlisting shall, upon passing muster before Colonel Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely FREE, as though he had never been encumbered with any kind of servitude or slavery...” MANUMISSION

Joseph Brown and his cousin Nicholas Power together owned a man named Prince whom they had at work on a farm in Grafton, Massachusetts. Prince would come to Providence and enlist in accordance with this Slave Enlistment Bill, but when his owners would learn of what he had done they would petition the General Assembly and their Prince would be sent back to his slave labors. (In May the assembly would revoke this offer, after several hundred persons of color were assembled for service.)

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February 9, Friday: The government of France recognized the independence of the United States of America from the British colonial empire. READ THE FULL TEXT

The Rhode Island General Assembly ordered that a “Regiment” (that is, a segregated military group) of slaves be raised. This group would never exceed a hundred enlistees. Out of their love of liberty, they pledged to slaves, not only Negro slaves but also mulatto slaves and native American slaves, who served the troops of General Washington’s army throughout the course of the revolution “all the bounties, wages and encouragements of other troops” — assuming of course that the colonies won against England. The “Black Regiment” would be mustered under the command of a white officer, Colonel Christopher Greene, in order to

replace white members of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment who had been killed in earlier campaigns. Slaves who provided acceptable services were to be immediately discharged from the service of their master or mistress, and at the successful culmination of the war were to be manumitted. Trust us, to the victors would belong the spoils. Richard Cozzens, Pomp Reaves, Felix Holbrook, and other free blacks from Providence also

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volunteered to serve in all-black companies under white officers in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment.

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Here, by way of illustration, is a list of slaves from Kings County of Rhode Island enlisted in the Continental Army, together with the names of their masters, and how much in Pounds their masters were saying that each one of them was worth on the open market:

Date Slave’s Name Master’s Name Value

February 25 Dick Champlain Stephen Champlain, South Kingstown £130

February 25 Jack Champlain Stephen Champlain, South Kingstown 110

April 2 Jack Fones Daniel Fones, North Kingstown 100

April 3 Cudjo Carpenter Heirs of Ann (widow), South Kingstown 120

April 3 Ceaser Wells James Wells, Jr., Hopkinton 100

April 3 Cuff Gardiner Chris. Gardiner, South Kingstown 120

April 3 Sharper Gardiner Benj. Gardiner, South Kingstown 120

April 3 Prince Hammond Wm. Hammond, North Kingstown 120

April 3 Quam Tanner Joshua Tanner, Hopkinton 120

April 3 Prince Bent John Bent, Hopkinton 120

April 11 York Champlain Robert Champlain, South Kingstown 120

April 23 Isaac Rodman Daniel Rodman, South Kingstown 120

April 24 Brittan Saltonstall Dudley Saltonstall, Westerly 105

May 8 James Clarke Gideon Clarke, South Kingstown 120

May 8 Mintel Gardiner Henry Gardiner, South Kingstown 110

May 8 Moses Updike Lodowick Updike, North Kingstown 93

May 8 Ceaser Updike Lodowick Updike, North Kingstown 120

May 8 Garrett Perry Benj. Perry, South Kingstown 120

May 8 Sampson Saunders Steph’n Saunders Heirs, Westerly 90

May 8 Ruttee Gardiner Nick’s Gardiner, Exeter 30

May 28 Ceaser Sheldon Palmer Sheldon, South Kingstown 120

May 29 Fortune Watson Sam’l Watson, North Kingstown 120

June 6 Ceaser Rose John Rose, South Kingstown 120

June 6 Edward Rose John Rose, South Kingstown 120

June 6 Peter Hazard Rob’t, of Rich. Hazard, South Kingstown 110

June 6 Primus Babcock Samuel Babcock, Hopkinton 120

July 2 Prince Rodman Rob’t Rodman, Jr., South Kingstown 120

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Date Slave’s Name Master’s Name Value

July 2 Mingo Rodman William Rodman, South Kingstown 120

July 2 Jacob Hazard Carder Hazard, South Kingstown 110

July 16 Primus Gardiner Nich’s Gardiner, South Kingstown 105

July 16 Peter Hazard Joseph Hazard, South Kingstown 120

July 16 Mingo Robertson Sylv’r Robinson, South Kingstown 120

July 16 William Greene Henry Greene, South Kingstown 120

July 31 Prince Vaughn Jonathan Vaughn, North Kingstown 114

September 5 July Champlain Stephen Champlain, South Kingstown 120

September 28 Hercules Gardiner Ezekiel Gardiner, North Kingstown 60

September 28 Philon Phillips Chris. Phillips, North Kingstown 120

October 14 Newport Champlain Jeffrey Champlain, South Kingstown 120

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May 28, Wednesday: At the head of a division, the Marquis de Lafayette commanded during the retreat from Barren Hill.

On page 315 of Volume 19 of the property transactions of Providence, Rhode Island, Joshua Hacker, Yeoman, manumitted Difcharged Liberated and Set free as a full and perfect Freeman a certain Mollato Man, Andrew

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Hacker, from all Bondage Slavery and Servitude whatsoever forever hereafter: ^ÇÉã tÄÄ`xÇ uç à{xáxcÜxáxÇàág{tà\]Éá{ât[tv~xÜ ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x vÉâÇàç ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{xfàtàx Éy e{Éwx\áÄtÇw tÇwcÜÉä|wxÇvxcÄtÇàtà|ÉÇálxÉÅtÇWÉ {xÜxuç`tÇâÅ|àW|yv{tÜzx _|uxÜtàx tÇwfxà yÜxx t vxÜàt|Ç`ÉÄÄtàÉ`tÇ vtÄÄxw TÇwÜxã[tv~xÜ yÜÉÅ tÄÄUÉÇwtzxfÄtäxÜç tÇwfxÜä|àâwx ã{tàáÉxäxÜ yÉÜxäxÜ {xÜxtyàxÜM TÇw \ wÉ {xÜxuçexÖâxáà tÄÄcxÜyÉÇáÉy àÉ vÉÇy|wxÜ tÇw âyx tvvÉÜw|ÇzÄç à{x yt|wTÇwÜxã[tv~xÜ tá t yâÄÄ tÇw ÑxÜyxvàYÜxxÅtÇA \Çj|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉy\ à{xyt|w]Éá{ât [tv~xÜ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ yxà Åç[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ à{xgãxÇàçX|z{à{Wtç Éy`tç |Ç à{x‰ lxtÜ‰ Éy ÉâÜ_beW bÇxg{ÉâytÇw fxäxÇ[âÇwÜxw tÇwfxäxÇàçX|z{‰à j|àÇxyxág{ÉAg{tçxÜ ]Éy{ât[tv~xÜ ((L.S.)) ftÄÄç[tv~xÜ ë g{x yÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâxVÉÑçM exvÉÜwxw à{|áFÜwWtç Éy]âÇxTAWADJJK j|àÇxyág{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜgÉãÇVÄxÜ~ ______ë

May 30, Friday: There was a notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette that a reward of eight dollars, plus reasonable expenses, was being offered by Thomas Maybury for the capture and return of his Mulattoe slave Anthony: “EIGHT DOLLARS REWARD. Runaway from the subscriber living at Carlisle Iron Works, a Mulattoe slave, named Anthony, about 26 years of age, 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; had on an old blanket coat with brown stripes: buckskin breeches, white woolen stockings and old shoes. Whoever takes up the said slave, so as his master may have him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by Thomas Maybury.”

September 7: Pennsylvania made an attempt to collect unpaid duties on Negroes and Mulattoe slaves. “An Act for the recovery of the duties on Negroes and Mulattoe slaves, which on the fourth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, were due to this state,” etc. Dallas, LAWS, I. 782. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE For the following ten days, Boonesborough would be under siege. Afterward Daniel Boone would rejoin his wife Rebecca and their children, in North Carolina.

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October: The Virginia legislature prevented “the farther importation of Slaves.” (“Thanks but no thanks — we got some yesterday.”) § 1. “For preventing the farther importation of slaves into this commonwealth, Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That from and after the passing of this act no slave or slaves shall hereafter be imported into this commonwealth by sea or land, nor shall any slaves so imported be sold or bought by any person whatsoever. § 2. “Every person hereafter importing slaves into this commonwealth contrary to this act shall forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand pounds for every slave so imported, and every person selling or buying any such slaves shall in like manner forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds for every slave so sold or bought,” etc. § 3. “And be it farther enacted, That every slave imported into this commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall, upon such importation become free.” § 4. Exceptions are bona fide settlers with slaves not imported later than Nov. 1, 1778, nor intended to be sold; and transient travellers. Re-enacted in substance in the revision of October, 1785. For a temporary exception to this act, as concerns citizens of Georgia and South Carolina during the war, see Act of May, 1780. Hening, STATUTES, IX. 471; X. 307; XII. 182. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Next to South Carolina, Virginia had probably the largest slave-trade. Her situation, however, differed considerably from that of her Southern neighbor. The climate, the staple tobacco crop, and the society of Virginia were favorable to a system of domestic slavery, but one which tended to develop into a patriarchal serfdom rather than into a slave-consuming industrial hierarchy. The labor required by the tobacco crop was less unhealthy than that connected with the rice crop, and the Virginians were, perhaps, on a somewhat higher moral plane than the Carolinians. There was consequently no such insatiable demand for slaves in the larger colony. On the other hand, the power of the Virginia executive was peculiarly strong, and it was not possible here to thwart the slave-trade policy of the home government as easily as elsewhere. Considering all these circumstances, it is somewhat difficult to determine just what was the attitude of the early Virginians toward the slave-trade. There is evidence, however, to show that although they desired the slave-trade, the rate at which the Negroes were brought in soon alarmed them. In 1710 a duty of £5 was laid on Negroes, but Governor Spotswood “soon perceived that the laying so high a Duty on Negros was intended to discourage the importation,” and vetoed the measure.63 No further restrictive legislation was attempted for some years, but whether on account of the attitude of the governor or the desire

63. LETTERS OF GOVERNOR SPOTSWOOD, in VA. HIST. SOC. COLL., New Ser., I. 52. 656 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the inhabitants, is not clear. With 1723 begins a series of acts extending down to the Revolution, which, so far as their contents can be ascertained, seem to have been designed effectually to check the slave-trade. Some of these acts, like those of 1723 and 1727, were almost immediately disallowed.64 The Act of 1732 laid a duty of 5%, which was continued until 1769,65 and all other duties were in addition to this; so that by such cumulative duties the rate on slaves reached 25% in 1755,66 and 35% at the time of Braddock’s expedition.67 These acts were found “very burthensome,” “introductive of many frauds,” and “very inconvenient,”68 and were so far repealed that by 1761 the duty was only 15%. As now the Burgesses became more powerful, two or more bills proposing restrictive duties were passed, but disallowed.69 By 1772 the anti-slave-trade feeling had become considerably developed, and the Burgesses petitioned the king, declaring that “The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your Majesty’s American dominions.... Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty’s governors of this colony, which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce.”70 Nothing further appears to have been done before the war. When, in 1776, the delegates adopted a Frame of Government, it was charged in this document that the king had perverted his high office into a “detestable and insupportable tyranny, by ... prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by law.”71 Two years later, in 1778, an “Act to prevent the further importation of Slaves” stopped definitively the legal slave-trade to Virginia.72

1779

The property of the wealthy Philipse family, including Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, New York, was confiscated because the family had been loyal to the king of England. Everything, including every one of their numerous slaves, now belonged to somebody else — some one or another of the victorious Freedom Fighters who had struck a blow for human dignity. 64. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IV. 118, 182. 65. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IV. 317, 394; V. 28, 160, 318; VI. 217, 353; VII. 281; VIII. 190, 336, 532. 66. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, V. 92; VI. 417, 419, 461, 466. 67. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VII. 69, 81. 68. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VII. 363, 383. 69. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VIII. 237, 337. 70. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 1672-1865, in VA. HIST. SOC. COLL., New Ser., VI. 14; Tucker, BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES, I. Part II. App., 51. 71. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IX. 112. 72. Importation by sea or by land was prohibited, with a penalty of £1000 for illegal importation and £500 for buying or selling. The Negro was freed, if illegally brought in. This law was revised somewhat in 1785. Cf. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IX. 471; XII. 182. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 657 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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An invention important to the development of the cloth industry occurred during this year. Samuel Compton developed a mule. Because this development would have an impact on the demand for bales of cotton as a raw material for cloth, it would have an impact on the demand for field labor to grow this cotton, and therefore would eventually have consequences in terms of human slavery — and in terms of the international slave trade.73

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The history of slavery and the slave- trade after 1820 must be read in the light of the industrial revolution through which the civilized world passed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between the years 1775 and 1825 occurred economic events and changes of the highest importance and widest influence. Though all branches of industry felt the impulse of this new industrial life, yet, “if we consider single industries, cotton manufacture has, during the nineteenth century, made the most magnificent and gigantic advances.”74 This fact is easily explained by the remarkable series of inventions that revolutionized this industry between 1738 and 1830, including Arkwright’s, Watt’s, Compton’s, and Cartwright’s epoch-making contrivances.75 The effect which these inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to 572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830,

73. Bear in mind that in early periods the Southern states of the United States of America produced no significant amount of cotton fiber for export — such production not beginning until 1789. In fact, according to page 92 of Seybert’s STATISTICS, in 1784 a small parcel of cotton that had found its way from the US to Liverpool had been refused admission to England, because it was the customs agent’s opinion that this involved some sort of subterfuge: it could not have originated in the United States. 74. Beer, GESCHICHTE DES WELTHANDELS IM 19TEN JAHRHUNDERT, II. 67. 75. A list of these inventions most graphically illustrates this advance: — 1738, John Jay, fly-shuttle. John Wyatt, spinning by rollers. 1748, Lewis Paul, carding-machine. 1760, Robert Kay, drop-box. 1769, Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle. James Watt, steam-engine. 1772, James Lees, improvements on carding-machine. 1775, Richard Arkwright, series of combinations. 1779, Samuel Compton, mule. 1785, Edmund Cartwright, power-loom. 1803-4, Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine. 1817, Roberts, fly-frame. 1818, William Eaton, self-acting frame. 1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule. Cf. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, pages 116-231; ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, 9th ed., article “Cotton.” 658 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and to 3,366,000 in 1860.76 Very early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney’s cotton-gin, soon answered this question: a new economic future was opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into this one staple. Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor large farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom, recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an industrial system. The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world’s cotton market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound, 8½d. From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the latter year it reached 4d.; the only exception to this fall was in the years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to “corner” the market, sent the price up as high as 11d. The demand for cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough had pronounced “prodigious,” and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which, except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and the Crimean War, continued until 1860.77 The steady increase in the production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822 the crop was a half- million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the world’s consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that, in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856, and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.78 Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in 1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton “corner;” by the end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic foundation, but it had built a 76. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, page 215. A bale weighed from 375 lbs. to 400 lbs. 77. The prices cited are from Newmarch and Tooke, and refer to the London market. The average price in 1855-60 was about 7d. 78. From United States census reports. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 659 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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closed oligarchy with a political policy. The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave régime in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years 1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of the cotton market, risked all on a political coup-d’état, which failed in the war of 1861-1865.79

March 14: Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish human slavery.

79. Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, THE COTTON KINGDOM. 660 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: British forces began to be evacuated from Newport. Bon voyage! They took with them almost all of the Newport town records previous to December 6, 1779, in a ship which would soon be sunk in the East River off New-York. When these records would be recovered from the wreck after three years of submersion, they would generally prove not to be salvageable.

Curiously, on this pewter medallion commemorating the flight of the British forces from the Narragansett Bay in 1779, the word “vlugtende” at the bottom has been carefully reworked and the die built up so that what appears now instead of this charged word “fleeing” is an innocent and meaningless scroll:

For example, we know that during this month the legislature of Rhode Island was enacting “An Act prohibiting slaves being sold out of the state, against their consent,” but the title only of this bill having been located (COLONIAL RECORDS, VIII. 618; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 449), we lack the details of this

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restriction on the slave trade.80

According to the “Book of Negroes” (an enumeration of the 3,000 black Americans who would sail with the British from New-York harbor in 1783 when that city was evacuated after the revolution had succeeded), when the British evacuated Newport at this point, departing with them as free persons were 24 African-American men and women who had been slaves in Rhode Island. 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.”81 This law was for a time enforced,82 but by the beginning of the 80. We do have, however, a comparison piece of legislation that dates to this very same year, if not to the same month, an enactment of the legislature of Vermont entitled “An Act for securing the general privileges of the people,” etc., that abolished slavery inside the state (VERMONT STATE PAPERS 1779-1786, page 287). 81. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240. 82. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240. 662 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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.83 This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.84 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.85 They took 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.86 “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.”87 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.”88 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.89 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 1732.90 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.91 Four years later the city of Providence 83. 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. 84. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225. 85. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60. 86. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80. 87. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615. 88. Preamble of the Act of 1712. 89. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3. 90. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 471. 91. Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 304, 321, 337. For a probable copy of the bill, see NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 299. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 663 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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.92 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 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.”93 In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was passed,94 and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.95 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.96

92. 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. 93. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 251-2. 94. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 329; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 444; RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VIII. 618. 95. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 506. 96. 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. 664 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: In Virginia, the sheriff went to the home of Friend Robert Hunnicutt of Blackwater monthly meeting on account of his “testimony against war” and consequent refusal to pay war taxes, and seized one of his slaves. The sheriff selected a 6-year-old to seize –not worth nearly as much as an adult– so he wouldn’t need to make change. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

(What was a Quaker doing, with black slaves? –Don’t ask.) THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

December 2: It would be made a matter of record in the property-transaction records of Providence, Rhode Island that, in regard to a Negro slave named Juba –recently taken on Board a vefsel of the British enemy of the United States and Brought into the Port of New-London by Captain Sage, the Commander of the Schooner Experiment, and Efeek Hopkins, Jr., the Commander of the Schooner Lively– unanimous agreement had been obtained among the interested parties, to not simply Sell the person of the faid Juba for whatever he might bring on the open market, but to instead manumit him and give him his Freedom for Life:

tÄÄ |à Åtç vÉÇvxÜÇ à{tà]âut taxzÜÉ uxÄÉÇz|Çz àÉ tÇXÇxÅç Éy à{xhÇ|àxwfàtàxá ãtá àt~xÇ ÉÇUÉtÜw tUÜ|à|á{g{|áVxÜà|y|xá äxyáxÄ9UÜÉâz{à |ÇàÉ à{xcÉÜà Éyaxã@_ÉÇwÉÇ uçVtÑàAftzxVÉÅÅtÇwxÜ Éy à{xfv{ÉÉÇxÜXåÑxÜ|ÅxÇà tÇwXyxx~[ÉÑ~|Çá]âÇAÜ VÉÅÅtÇwxÜ Éy à{xfv{ÉÉÇxÜ_|äxÄçN tÇw |à ãtá âÇtÇ|ÅÉâáÄç tzÜxxwUxàãxxÇ à{xbãÇxÜá tÇwTzxÇàá yÉÜ à{xixyáxÄá àÉ ÇÉàfxÄÄ à{x yt|w ]âut uâà àÉ z|äx {|Å {|á YÜxxwÉÅ yÉÜ _|yx AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA j|àÇxyá ]AUA[ÉÑ~|Çá yÉÜ bãÇxÜá Éy fv{ÉÉÇxÜ XåÑxÜ|ÅxÇà ítÇw TzxÇà yÉÜ fv{ÉÉÇxÜ _|äxÄçAAAAAAA ctâÄ TÄÄxÇ Tyt jtàxÜÅtÇ jÅ jtÄÄ W _tãÜxÇvx a|v{A VÉÉ~x ] ` itÜÇâÅAAAAA g{x YÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâx VÉÑç exvÉÜwxw à{|á Dáà Wtç Éy ]tÇâtÜç TW DJKCAA j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~} ESEK HOPKINS Later in the year, Lafayette persuaded the government of King Louis XVI to send an expeditionary army of 6,000 soldiers to the aid of the insurgent British colonists on the North American continent, to fight under the command of a general named George Washington whom they had defeated during the previous hostilities, the “French and Indian Wars” on that terrain. Both because this general had made himself the enemy of their British enemies, and because the French had previously been able to force him to surrender his army to their superior forces, this American general obviously was in need of such assistance.

1780

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts adopted a Constitutional document which declared that all men were born free and equal. Passage in the Constitution which was held by the courts to

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abolish slavery: “Art. I. All men are born free and equal, and have certain, natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties,” etc. CONSTITUTION OF MASSACHUSETTS, Part I., Art. 1; prefixed to PERPETUAL LAWS (1789).

This would eventually come to be considered by some to have abolished local race slavery, though nobody at the time supposed that that was what they had accomplished, and though such an after-the-fact re- interpretation is entirely unfounded and utterly self-magnifying:

This clause is inserted as an abolition of human bondage. It gives liberty to the slaves here and elsewhere. Thus fell one of the greatest abominations ever chargeable upon the home of the Puritans. Well, unspeakably well, would it have been for no small portion of our Republic, could it have been influenced by the same enlightened views, and by the same righteous motives. But we are aware that it is not so. The cries of oppressed multitudes still throng Heaven’s tribunal for awful retribution upon our land. Millions, holding their fellow-beings in servitude, are bequeathing to their children a heritage of peril, iniquity, blood, and carnage.

Article III of the Massachusetts Constitution provided for an established “Publick religion.” Although it protected rights of conscience and permitted religious pluralism, it also authorized the state legislature to require towns to institute the public worship of God, to provide tax support for elected “public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality,” and to “enjoin attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers” for residents who could conscientiously and conveniently attend. Those townsfolk who regularly worshiped with other denominations could if they chose stipulate that their taxes were to be disbursed to their own ministers, but for everyone else, these taxes would go toward the maintenance of the community’s chosen public minister. Article III enabled three manifestations of state religion: • “institutional” — this would prove to be unworkable, in practice, and would be removed by constitutional amendment in 1833 • “ceremonial,” invoking the name and presence of God in public rituals, as when public officials swore their oaths of office, in the tradition the Puritan covenantalism • “moral,” taking the form of endorsements of religious morality as the prerequisite for civil liberty

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This Article III actually had not received the requisite 2/3rds majority in the popular vote which ratified the Constitution — but the representatives delegated to attend the constitutional convention chose to disregard that expression of popular opinion.Puritans, who had been running the established commonwealth church since SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

1691, fell in this year from that state of grace as Massachusetts became the first of the former colonies to give lip-service to the idea that freedom was a constitutional right of its citizens. Also, almost as if these people had no idea what it was that they had just declared, over the protests of local religious dissenters and other malcontents a state constitution was adopted which allowed for governmental support of religion. The exemption to which Quakers and Baptists had been accustomed, by which they could support their religious institutions directly and voluntarily rather than formally and enforcedly by way of the town clerk, was eliminated. Everyone, like Episcopalians, had to pay a tax to the government, which was then supposedly passed on to the church of their registry. A number of times, however, powerful Congregationalist clerks would be able to stall and stonewall rather than pass that money on to powerless non-Congregationalist assemblies, and when taken to court, the Federalists on the bench would also be able effectively to stall and stonewall, and invoke technicalities. We know of one egregious example in which a Baptist group had to spend $100.00 in a four-year struggle to get their hands on $4.00 that was clearly due to them. (Would they have been motivated by the principal?)

In Concord, Ephraim Wood, John Buttrick, and George Minott were Selectmen.

In Concord, Ephraim Wood was again Town Clerk.

In Concord, Abijah Bond was again Town Treasurer.

Joseph Hosmer was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

By this year in which, in Bohemia and Hungary, serfdom was being discontinued, in Concord, Massachusetts, Brister Freeman had become a free man (probably he became free in 1778 or 1779). In this year, therefore, his name appeared on the tax roll, as a single person. In the years ahead, struggling financially, he either could not or would not pay taxes.

In THE FIRST EMANCIPATION: THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE NORTH (1967), Arthur Zilversmit wrote: Despite growing antislavery sentiment, when the General Court drafted a constitution for the new state it took no steps to end slavery. On the contrary, the 1778 constitution (which was rejected by the electorate) recognized slavery and denied Negroes the right to vote.... The new charter that was finally adopted did include a bill of rights that ... declared all men to be free and equal by birth. But the new constitution did not mention slavery, and there is no evidence that the convention considered its abolition. Nonetheless, the 1780 constitution became the means for eliminating slavery in Massachusetts. In a new series of freedom cases, the abolitionists succeeded in persuading the courts to interpret the constitution in a way that was probably never intended by its framers. (112-113)

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In Concord, as throughout Massachusetts, slaves won their freedom on a case-by-case basis.97 Caesar Robbins, who had been the slave of Simon Hunt who lived near the North Bridge, was in this year freed.98 Here is a synopsis of the Robbins family in Concord: • Rose Robbins was Caesar Robbins’s wife. She bore at least two children, Peter Robbins and a daughter for whom we have established no given name. • Peter Robbins, son of Caesar Robbins and Rose Robbins, also lived in the area. It would have been either Peter Hutchinson or Peter Robbins that was the origin of the place-names “Peter’s Field” and “Peter’s Spring.” • The Robbinses lived across from the old Manse in the Great Meadow and the Great Fields. “Caesar’s Wood,” as part of the Great Meadows, was named after Caesar Robbins.

The Hon. Eleazer Brooks of Lincoln would be, until 1786, a senator.

Nearby Lincoln has been said to have been (despite lack of real statistics upon which to base such a claim) a reasonably healthy town:

From 1760 to 1770, to 1780, to 1790, to 1800, to 1810, to 1820, —Total.

Intentions of Marriage 56 79 65 69 73 59 =401.

Marriages 38 40 35 48 87 56 =274.

Births 185 196 186 192 168 164 =1091.

Deaths 83 122 104 86 118 94 =607.

It appears from this table that the excess of births over the deaths is 484, more than two to one; and, according to the census, that, from 1790 to 1800, one in 86 died annually; from 1800 to 1810, one in 64; and from 1810 to 1820, one in 78; a result which is highly favorable to the healthiness of the town

97. Later, in the Quock Walker cases of 1781 and 1783, “bold judicial construction” would gradually transform the 1st clause of this Declaration of Rights until by re-interpretation and construction it had been made into a virtual abolition of slavery. (However, the key word here is “gradually.”) 98. Would Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt the schoolteacher who evidently lived at her parents’ home on Ponkawtasset Hill, and who committed suicide in 1845 by drowning herself in the Concord River, be a descendant of this slaveowning Simon Hunt who had lived near the North Bridge in Concord? 668 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[of Lincoln].99 Town Clerks of Lincoln100

Ephraim Flint 1746-1752, 1754, 1756-1757 Grosvenor Tarbell 1799-1803

Ebenezer Cutler 1753, 1755, 1759 Thomas Wheeler 1804-1806

Samuel Farrar 1758, 1760-1766 Elijah Fiske 1810-1821

John Adams 1767-1777 Stephen Patch 1822-1827

Abijah Pierce 1778-1779, 1781 Charles Wheeler 1828-1830

Samuel Hoar 1780, 1782, 1787-1798, Elijah Fiske 1831 1807-1809

Richard Russell 1783-1786

Representatives of Lincoln101

Chambers Russell ’54-57, ’59, ’62, ’63, ’5. Joshua Brooks 1809-1811.

Samuel Farrer 1766-1768. Leonard Hoar 1812-1814.

Eleazer Brooks ’74-’78, ’80, ’5, ’7, ’90-’2. William Hayden 1815, 1816.

Chambers Russell 1788. Elijah Fiske 1820-1822.

Samuel Hoar ’94, ’95, ’97, ’98, 1801, ’3-’8. Joel Smith 1824.

Samuel Farrar, Jr. 1800. Silas P. Tarbell 1827, 1828.

Not represented 1758, ’60, ’62, ’69-’73, ’79, ’81, ’82, ’86, ’89, ’93, ’96, ’99, 1802, ’17, ’23, ’25, ’26.

99. 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.) 100. 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. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) 101. Ibid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 669 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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15th day 1st month: Friend William Robinfon of Newport, Rhode Island manumitted his previously enslaved Negrow man named Ifrael.

March 1: Pennsylvania began a gradual process of emancipation by decreeing that no child born in Pennsylvania after March 1, 1780 should be a slave. It had been Thomas Paine who had authored the preamble on emancipation to Pennsylvania’s “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.” READ THE FULL TEXT

It would be during this month that Paine’s THE AMERICAN CRISIS, No. 8 would be published. READ THE FULL TEXT

“An Act for the gradual abolition of slavery.” § 5. All slaves to be registered before Nov. 1. § 10. None but slaves “registered as aforesaid, shall, at any time hereafter, be deemed, adjudged, or holden, within the territories of this commonwealth, as slaves or servants for life, but as free men and free women; except the domestic slaves attending upon Delegates in Congress from the other American States,” and those of travellers not remaining over six months, foreign ministers, etc., “provided such domestic slaves be not aliened or sold to any inhabitant,” etc. § 11. Fugitive slaves from other states may be taken back. § 14. Former duty acts, etc., repealed. Dallas, LAWS, I. 838. Cf. PENN. ARCHIVES, VII. 79; VIII. 720. SLAVERY

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September: The Smithfield, Rhode Island monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends received Pink Harris, the slave of Friend David Harris, into membership. She eventually would be granted a manumission document.

20th, 11th Month: The situation of the French troops in Newport, Rhode Island would be described by François Jean, Marquis de Chastellux. MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX

“Was read in this Meeting to good satisfaction an Epistle from the Quarterly Meeting held at Dartmouth the 12th and 13th of 10th month 1780 by which they desire we would treat with such Friends as are concerned in keeping slaves, they having had information that there were some such among us, whereupon we appoint Isaac Lawton and Sampson Shearman to treat with them and report to next Monthly Meeting.” MANUMISSION QUAKER DISOWNMENT

Between 1775 and 1780: The Friends of Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island had recorded 22 manumissions of black slaves between 1775 and 1780, while disowning during that period 14 members of the Society who after being visited and labored with had refused to sign such documents. At the end of this process the comment was made that there was “hardly a Friend” who continued as a slaveholder. “Hardly?” –We do know of one such Quaker: Ann Bower was still holding her slaves, nor had she been disowned. QUAKER DISOWNMENT

1781

The first Quock Walker case having to do (more or less, or supposedly) with the outlawing of slavery in Massachusetts under its new Constitution of 1780. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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The descendants of the native Americans who had been enslaved after “King Philip’s War” had in Connecticut and Rhode Island already been set free as of the Year of our Lord 1774, and this was the year in which freedom came to visit in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as well. Work gangs of these race slaves had been being utilized throughout New England to construct much of that attractive, mossy old stone walls, field fencing which today we fancy to have been constructed through the dedicated labor of “our” stereotypically sturdy and industrious (because white) Yankee-farmer forebears.

James Watt invented the sun-and-planet gear system which adapted the reciprocating engine for rotary motion, and produced two shaft revolutions for each stroke of the steam engine. A rotary-motion steam engine: would such a device make the use of human muscles unnecessary, and thus — would it be the end of human slavery?

Whereas that earlier machine, with its up-and-down pumping action, had been ideal for draining mines, this new rotary-motion engine could be used to drive many different types of machinery. Richard Arkwright would be quick to grasp the importance of this new invention, and in 1783 he would begin using Watt’s steam-engine in his textile factories. Others would follow his lead and by 1800 there were over 500 of Watt’s machines in Britain’s mines and factories.

Unfortunately, there were still a few things that an enslaved human being could do that a rotating machine could not. At the age of about 14, under the name “Telemaque” which he had been assigned by his owner Joseph Vesey, Denmark Vesey was sold and put to work on a Haitian plantation chopping sugar cane. (Don’t think loyalty here, think: “What, was this pretty black boy becoming overage for his skipper’s rancid inclinations?”) However, evidently by faking epilepsy, Telemaque got out of spending the rest of his life chopping cane through his new owner taking him back to Captain Vesey and asking for his purchase money back. (Fair dealing and good faith were things much insisted upon among white slavetraders.)

Thus it was that Telemaque arrived in this year in the port of Charleston in our Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave for the 1st time, aboard Captain Vesey’s slaver trading ship. This port of Charleston was mainland North America’s largest slave port.

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March 31: We find on page 340 of volume 19 of the Providence, Rhode Island records of title transfers, that on this day Nicholas Power et al was selling a certain slave named Ceafar or Cesar Power, of about 26 years of age, to Elisha Harding and Josiah Robbins or Robins of Franklin MA, so that they could have him serve in their place as a Continental soldier for a term of three years, after which this Negro Man would be manumitted and set free not only from his military obligations but also from these white slavemasters. Interestingly, this document doesn’t state how many “Hundred Good Silver Spanish Milled Dollars to Me in Hand already paid” a man’s freedom from chattel slavery in this case was worth in America:

cÜÉä|wxÇvx `tÜv{ FDAáà DJKDAj{xÜxtá t vxÜàt|Ç axzÜÉ `tÇ ÇtÅxw VxtytÜ tuÉâà gãxÇàç f|ålxtÜá ÉyTzx? à{xcÜÉÑxÜàç Éya|v{ÉÄtácÉãxÜ |ÇcÜÉä|wxÇvx ÉÇx Éy à{xfâuyvÜ|uxÜá‰ |á yÉÄw àÉXÄ|á{t [tÜw|Çz tÇw]Éá|t{eÉu|Çá [sic]ÉyYÜtÇ~Ä|Ç |Ç`tyátv{âyxààáfàtàxA tá tVÉÇà|ÇxÇàtÄfÉÄw|xÜ yÉÜ à{x gxÜÅ Éyg{ÜxxlxtÜá‰‰g{|á Åtç vxÜà|yç à{tà à{x yt|waxzÜÉVxtytÜ |á àÉ ux vÉÇy|wxÜxw tá yÜxxw yÜÉÅ tÇç WxÅtÇw Éy yâàâÜxfxÜä|vxá yÜÉÅ âá ÉÜ ÉâÜ[x|Üá yÉÜxäxÜ ÉÇ {|á ux|Çz w|yv{tÜzxw yÜÉÅ à{xVÉÇà|ÇxÇàtÄTÜÅç \Çj|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉyjx {täxf|zÇxw ÉâÜatÅxáA‰‰‰ É \Ç à{xcÜxyxÇvx Éy a|v{ AcÉãxÜ ]Éá|t{eÉuu|Çá ]ÉáxÑ{eÉzxÜáe|v{tÜw_Éà{ÜÉÑ g{xYÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á tgÜâxVÉÑçexvÉÜwxwXÄ|á{t[tÜw|Çz à{|áY|yà{Wtç ÉyTÑÜ|ÄTWDJKD‰ ë j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜgÉãÇVÄxÜ~

April: General George Washington endorsed a plan to build a prison on Pollopel Island in the Hudson (nothing would come of this).

British ships worked their way up the Potomac to Mt. Vernon and a substantial number of General Washington’s slaves fled to or were seized by these raiders (according to Fritz Hirschfeld in GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY: A DOCUMENTARY PORTRAYAL, U of Missouri P, 1997). When Washington would bargain hard with Carleton at the close of this war, about the return of fugitives, he may well have had a personal stake as well as a national issue to pursue.

April 16, Monday: People were trying to kill each other at Augusta, Georgia. (They’d be keeping on trying to kill each other there all the way until June 5th — it all must have been Hell! Well, at least they’d had the sense to wait to get this thing going until after Easter Sunday when Jesus rose to Heaven. :-)

We find on page 340 of volume 19 of the Providence, Rhode Island records of title transfers, that on this day Nicholas Power was manumitting and setting free his Negro Man Prince:

cÜÉä|wxÇvx TÑÜ|Ä DIADJKD g{|á Åtç vxÜà|yç g{tà \ à{x fâuyvÜ|uxÜ {täx `tÇâÅ|ààxw tÇw fxà YÜxx Åç axzÜÉ `tÇ cÜ|Çvx yÜÉÅ `x Åç [x|Üá tÇw Tyá|zÇá yÉÜxäxÜ yÜÉÅ à{|á Wtàx gxáà UxÇ}tÅ|ÇVâá{|Çz]âÇAÜ _â~xTÜÇÉÄw ‰‰‰‰‰ ë a|v{ÉÄtácÉãxÜ g{x YÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâx VÉÑç exvÉÜwxw à{|á DJAà{ Wtç Éy TÑÜ|Ä TWDJKD‰ j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~ ë SLAVERY

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May 16: We find on page 341 of volume 19 of the Providence, Rhode Island records of title transfers, that our good ol’ buddy Efek Hopkins was on this day up to selling a girl to her own mother, a resident of Newport, “for and in Confideration of the Sum of One Hundred Good Silver Spanish Milled Dollars to Me in Hand already paid” (kindly don’t ask me to explain how something like this can go down, here or anywhere). Isn’t it interesting that the age of this girl isn’t specified, nor are we told how it came about that the child of a free woman was

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being treated as a slave?

^ÇÉã tÄÄ`xÇ uç à{xáxcÜxáxÇàág{tà\Xyx~[ÉÑ~|Çá ÉyaÉÜà{cÜÉä|wxÇvx? |Ç à{xVÉâÇàç ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw tÇw cÜÉä|wxÇvx cÄtÇàtà|ÉÇá? XáÖA yÉÜ tÇw |ÇVÉÇy|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{x fâÅ ÉybÇx [âÇwÜxw ZÉÉw f|ÄäxÜ fÑtÇ|á{ `|ÄÄxw WÉÄÄtÜá àÉ`x |Ç[tÇw tÄÜxtwç Ñt|w uçYÄÉÜtjtÇàÉÇ tYÜxxaxzÜÉjÉÅtÇ ÉyaxãÑÉÜà |Ç à{xVÉâÇàç ÉyaxãÑÉÜà? |Ç à{x fàtàx Éye{Éwx\áÄtÇw9v tyÉÜxát|w? ã{|v{ yt|wYÄÉÜtjtÇàÉÇ |á`Éà{xÜ Éy tVxÜàt|ÇaxzÜÉfxÜätÇàZ|ÜÄ vtÄÄxwcxzzç? ÇÉã uxÄÉÇz|Çz àÉ`x à{x át|wXyx~[ÉÑ~|Çá? à{xexvx|Ñà Éy ã{|v{ át|wfâÅ Éy`ÉÇxç\ {xÜxuç tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxA exÅ|yxw exÄxtáxw tÇwYÉÜxäxÜdâ|àvÄt|Åxw tÇw uç à{xyxcÜxyxÇàá Wb ÜxÅ|yxexÄxtáx tÇw yÉÜxäxÜdâ|àvÄt|Å TÄÄ à{xe|z{à?g|àÄx?\ÇàxÜxyà[täx cÜÉÑxÜàçVÄt|Å tÇwWxÅtÇw ã{tàxäxÜ ã{|v{\ xäxÜ {tw ÇÉã {täx? ÉÜ vtÇ {täx Éy? |Ç tÇw àÉ à{x át|wfxÜätÇàaxzÜÉ Z|ÜÄ vtÄÄxwcxzzç? àÉ {xÜ`Éà{xÜ? à{x át|wYÄÉÜtjtÇàÉÇ? |Ç ÉÜwxÜ à{tà à{x à{x [sic] át|wcxzzç Åtç ux ÅtwxYÜxx? tÇw yÉÜ à{|á câÜÑÉáx\ {xÜxuçUtÜzt|Ç tÇwfxÄÄ tÄÄ Åç át|we|z{à tÇwg|àÄx àÉ à{x át|waxzÜÉZ|ÜÄ àÉ {xÜ át|w`Éà{xÜ à{x át|wYÄÉÜt yÉ à{tà Çx|à{xÜ\? Åç[x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜáTwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá ÉÜ tÇç Éà{xÜ ÑxÜyÉÇ vÄt|Å|Çz yÜÉÅ uç ÉÜ âÇwxÜ`x? ÉÜ à{x|Ü ÉÜ x|à{xÜ Éy à{xÅ á{tÄÄ {täx tÇçVÄt|Å ã{tàxäxÜ àÉ à{xfxÜä|vx Éy à{x át|wcxzzç yÜÉÅ tÇwTyàxÜ à{xWtàx Éy à{xáx cÜxyxÇàá uâà á{tÄÄ tÇw ã|ÄÄ ux à{xÜxyÜÉÅ yÉÜxäxÜ utÜÜxw tÇw xåvÄâwxw uç à{xáxcÜxáxÇàáA‰TÇw\ vÉäxÇtÇàg{tà g{tà [sic]\ ã|ÄÄjtÜÜtÇà àÉ à{x át|wYÄÉÜtjtÇàÉÇ àÉ wxyxÇw tzt|Çáà à{x_tãyâÄVÄt|Åá Éy tÄÄ ÑxÜyÉÇá vÄt|Å|Çz tÇçe|z{à ÉÜg|àÄx àÉ à{xfxÜä|vxá Éy át|waxzÜÉZ|ÜÄcxzzç |ÇVÉÇáxÖâxÇvx Éy tÇçVÉÇäxçtÇvx {xÜxàÉyÉÜx ÅtwxA j|àÇxyá Åç[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ à{|áf|åàxxÇà{Wtç Éy`tçTWADJKDA f|zÇxwfxtÄxw tÇwWxÄ|äxÜxw |ÇcÜxyxÇvx Éy âá g|ÅÉà{çUâÜwxÇAAAAA‰‰ Xyx~[ÉÑ~|Çá ZÜ|yy|à{[tÜÜ|áAA‰‰‰ ë g{xYÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á tgÜâxVÉÑçA exvÉÜwxw à{|áDIAà{ Wtç Éy`tçTWADJKD j|àÇxyág{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇVÄxÜ~‰ ë

SLAVERY MANUMISSION

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Guess what, we have named a public high school after this person. (And, in Providence, “public” means “mostly black.”)

May 20: In Providence, Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins made his last will and testament: “I give to all my Negroes102 their Freedom, to take Place immediately with Respect to those who shall be of Age, and of the others, the Males at Twenty One and the Females at Eighteen years of Age.” MANUMISSION SLAVERY

102. We note that this document is in accord with the 1774 census, which indicates that he owned six slaves, and refutes the convenient story now offered by the Quakers, that Hopkins had owned but one slave, a woman named Hannah. 676 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 29: The widowed Mary Crouch of Providence, Rhode Island sold her Negro Man named Peter to himself for the sum of 300 Spanish Milled Dollars, manumitting him and forever setting him Free and at his own Liberty, in the moft full and ample Manner a Freeman, and forever Discharging and Acquiting him from all Services which she had or ever had had a Right to claim:

^ÇÉã tÄÄ ÅxÇ uç à{xáxcÜxáxÇàá à{tà\`tÜçVÜÉâv{ ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{xVÉâÇàç ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvxj|wÉã yÉÜ tÇw |ÇVÉÇá|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{xfâÅ Éyg{Üxx[âÇwÜxwfÑtÇ|á{`|ÄÄxwWÉÄÄtÜá àÉ Åx Ñt|w uç ÅçaxzÜÉ`tÇ ÇtÅxwcxàxÜ tÇw ÅÉÜx xyÑxv|tÄÄç yÉÜ à{xZÉÉwfxÜä|vxá ã{|v{ {x {tà{ wÉÇx`x Wb uç à{xáxcÜxáxÇàá`tÇâÅ|à tÇw yÉÜxäxÜ áxà yÜxx {|Å à{x yt|wcxàxÜ tÇwWÉ yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç[x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜá tÇwTwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá yÉÜxäxÜW|áv{tÜzx tÇwTvÖâ|à {|Å à{x át|wcxàxÜ yÜÉÅ tÄÄfxÜä|vxá ã{|v{\ ÇÉã {täx ÉÜ xäxÜ {tw te|z{à àÉ vÄt|Å àÉ {|á ÑxÜyÉÇ ÉÜfxÜä|vxá {xÜxuç wxvÄtÜ|Çz tuyÉÄâàxÄç YÜxx tÇw tà {|á ÉãÇ _|uxÜàç |Ç à{x ÅÉyà yâÄÄ tÇw tÅÑÄx `tÇÇxÜ t YÜxxÅtÇA‰ ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ à{|ágãxÇàça|Çà{Wtç Éy`tç |Ç à{xlxtÜ Éy Éâ\Çj|àÇxááÜ _beW bÇxg{ÉâátÇwfxäxÇ [âÇwÜxw tÇwX|z{àçbÇxADJKDA j|àÇxyáxá Wtä|w j|Ä~|ÇyÉÇ T YxÇÇxÜ ]âÇÜ `tÜçVÜÉâv{ g{xYÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á tgÜâxVÉÑçexvÉÜwxwë à{|á ELAWtçà{ Éy`tçTWDJKD j|àÇxyá g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~‰ SLAVERY

29th, 5th Month: “The Women’s Meeting informs that Ann Bowers is holding slaves and refused to follow anyone’s advice.” A committee of male Friends was formed, to labor along with the women. RHODE ISLAND MANUMISSION QUAKER DISOWNMENT

July 13: The British had had a long-standing policy of promising after-war freedom to any able-bodied American black slaves who would do wartime heavy lifting for the army of occupation in what were known as “Black Pioneer” brigades. On this date General Alexander Leslie wrote to General Charles Cornwallis:

Above 700 Negroes are come down the River in the Small Pox. I shall distribute them about the Rebell Plantations.

For the final defeat of the besieged army under General Cornwallis at Yorktown, the revolutionary forces had made use of funds collected from people living in the area of the present states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, which were at that time part of Mejico. This siege at Yorktown in which the British finally were defeated had been planned by Captain Francisco de Saavedra and had involved expenditure not only of £500,000 from Cuba but also of £1,000,000 donated to the Continental Congress by King Carlos of Spain. During the withdrawal of the army, pursuing revolutionaries began to notice numbers of sick or dying blacks along the sides of the road and very correctly began to suspect that germ warfare was being conducted

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against them:

Within these days past, I have marched by 18 or 20 Negroes that lay dead by the way-side, putrifying with the small pox ... [abandoned by the Brits to] spread smallpox thro’ the country.

VARIOLA

The comment that has been made about this by Elizabeth A. Fenn, writing on the topic of biological warfare for the New York Times on April 11, 1998, OP-ED page A25, column 5, is:

Not only did the British perpetrate biological warfare, but they used desperate slaves to commit the deed.

Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel’s regiment, in his description of this siege, would write: “The labor on the Virginia plantations is performed altogether by a species of the human race cruelly wrested from their native country, and doomed to perpetual bondage, while their masters are manfully contending for freedom and the natural rights of man. Such is the inconsistency of human nature.” After the surrender at Yorktown, some 1,800 slaves would be collected by the revolutionary forces and restored to their American masters. Well was it said by Dr. Barnes, in his late work on Slavery: “No slave was any nearer his freedom after the surrender of Yorktown than when Patrick Henry first taught the notes of liberty to echo among the hills and vales of Virginia.” On the basis of this sad history of human abuse of humans, in 1847 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier would write:

YORKTOWN. FROM Yorktown’s ruins, ranked and still, Two lines stretch far o’er vale and hill: Who curbs his steed at head of one? Hark! the low murmur: Washington! Who bends his keen, approving glance, Where down the gorgeous line of France Shine knightly star and plume of snow? Thou too art victor, Rochambeau! The earth which bears this calm array Shook with the war-charge yesterday, Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel, Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel; October’s clear and noonday sun Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun, And down night’s double blackness fell, Like a dropped star, the blazing shell. Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines Stand moveless as the neighboring pines; While through them, sullen, grim, and slow, The conquered hosts of England go: O’Hara’s brow belies his dress, Gay Tarleton’s troop rides bannerless: Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes, Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes! Nor thou alone: with one glad voice 678 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Let all thy sister States rejoice; Let Freedom, in whatever clime She waits with sleepless eye her time, Shouting from cave and mountain wood Make glad her desert solitude, While they who hunt her quail with fear; The New World’s chain lies broken here! But who are they, who, cowering, wait Within the shattered fortress gate? Dark tillers of Virginia’s soil, Classed with the battle’s common spoil, With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine, With Indian weed and planters’ wine, With stolen beeves, and foraged corn, — Are they not men, Virginian born? Oh, veil your faces, young and brave! Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave! Sons of the Northland, ye who set Stout hearts against the bayonet, And pressed with steady footfall near The moated battery’s blazing tier, Turn your scarred faces from the sight, Let shame do homage to the right! Lo! fourscore years have passed; and where The Gallic bugles stirred the air, And, through breached batteries, side by side, To victory stormed the hosts allied, And brave foes grounded, pale with pain, The arms they might not lift again, As abject as in that old day The slave still toils his life away. Oh, fields still green and fresh in story, Old days of pride, old names of glory, Old marvels of the tongue and pen, Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men, Ye spared the wrong; and over all Behold the avenging shadow fall! Your world-wide honor stained with shame, — Your freedom’s self a hollow name! Where’s now the flag of that old war? Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star? Bear witness, Palo Alto’s day, Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey, Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak, Fleshes the Northern eagle’s beak; Symbol of terror and despair, Of chains and slaves, go seek it there! Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks! Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva’s banks! Brave sport to see the fledgling born Of freedom by its parent torn! Safe now is Speilberg’s dungeon cell, Safe drear Siberia’s frozen hell: With Slavery’s flag o’er both unrolled, What of the New World fears the Old?

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Fall: Friend Elias Hicks, after making his way home from a missionary journey to the Vermont border in which he had had to impress his way past army deserters who had turned bandit, came down with a debilitating fever. While in his delirium, he made himself believe that he had received a call from God to go testify in a location on Paumanok “Long Island” at which traveling Quaker ministers were currently being abused. Then, while he was convalescing from this fever, he had a vision in which he was making this visit which had been commanded, and in this vision he came to a town which he did not recognize and felt that he needed to give testimony. When he cried out, a black man took him into a different part of the town, and pointed out to him a place where he could hold his meeting and give his testimony.

“Mum Bet” or “Mumbet” was in her late 30s at this point, and she and her younger sister Lizzie were slaves in Stockbridge MA. Their owner attempted to injure Lizzie and, amazingly, Mumbet was able to persuade the town’s lawyer, a Mr. Sedgwick, to solicit the protection of the court. Not only were they awarded damages of 30 shillings, not only was the Stockbridge slaveholder forced to pay court costs of 5 pounds, 14 shillings, and 4 pence, but also, the court awarded “Mum Bet” or “Mumbet” her manumission papers and she was able to assume the free name of Elizabeth Freeman. She would do domestic work for wages in the Sedgwick home for the remaining years of her life, and would gradually made herself into what the white family would come to acknowledge as “the main pillar of the household.” When she would die she would be buried in the Sedgwick family plot, in Stockbridge Cemetery on Main Street, and her tombstone would be engraved to read:

SHE COULD NEITHER READ NOR WRITE, YET IN HER OWN SPHERE SHE HAD NO SUPERIOR OR EQUAL… GOOD MOTHER FARE WELL.103

103. Consult Arthur Zilversmit’s “Mumbet: Folklore and Fact,” Berkshire History, Spring 1971, Volume I, Number 1, Arthur C. Chase’s THE ASHLEYS – A PIONEER BERKSHIRE FAMILY, a booklet published for the Colonel Ashley House, and pages 47-49 of Lillian E. Preiss’s SHEFFIELD, FRONTIER TOWN for the story of Mumbet of Ashley Falls and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. 680 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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...the citizens of Massachusetts had been concerned with their own state constitution, which was adopted in 1780 and contained many of the features later incorporated into the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since Colonel Ashley was a prominent lawyer and an influential Southern Berkshire resident, it was only natural that his home would be the scene of many discussions about the document. In his household there was a young slave woman, affectionately called Mumbet, who, with her sister Lizzie, had been purchased as a child from Mrs. Ashley’s family, the Hogabooms of Claverack NY. As she waited on the Ashley family, Mumbet overheard many of the conversations about freedom and liberty. One day in a fit of anger Mrs. Ashley was about to strike the younger girl with a heated shovel. Stepping between the two, Mumbet received the blow intended for her sister; then, resentful of the injustice, she left the house. Persuading a fellow slave named Brom to join her, she hastened to the home of Theodore Sedgwick, Sheffield’s leading lawyer and a friend of Colonel Ashley’s. There they sought his assistance in obtaining their freedom. In answer to Sedgwick’s question about how she ever got such an idea, she replied that in listening to the talk about the Bill of Rights, “she never heard but that all people were born free and equal, and she thought long about it, and resolved she would try whether she did not come among them.” Intrigued by the “palpable illogic of slavery at a time when Massachusetts was engaged in a fight for freedom from imperial regulation and control,” Sedgwick accepted the case. The suit for freedom of the two slaves, Brom and Bett vs. Ashley, was heard in August 1781 before the County Court of Common Pleas in Great Barrington. Colonel Ashley pleaded that the Negroes were his legal servants for life, but the plaintiffs, represented by Sedgwick and Tapping Reeve, a distinguished lawyer of Litchfield, Connecticut, won their case. The jury found that the Negroes were freemen illegally detained in servitude by the Ashleys and assessed damages of thirty shillings against the defendants. Mumbet was awarded compensation for her services from the time she was 21 years of age. Ashley decided to withdraw the appeal, for he was still tainted by the opprobrium clinging to him as one of the “obnoxious seventeen” rescinders of 1789. Welcomed cordially into the Sedgwick family, Mumbet, taking the surname of “Freeman,” remained with the Sedgwicks for the rest of her life as a beloved friend and helper. Catherine Sedgwick, late a popular novelist, wrote of her: “One should have known this remarkable woman, the native majesty of her deportment.... Mumbet was the only person who could tranquilize my mother when her mind was disordered –the only one of her friends whom she liked to have about her– and why? She treated her with the same respect she did when she was sane. As far as possible, she obeyed her commands and humored her caprices; in short, her superior instincts hit upon the mode of treatment that science has since adopted.” When Mumbet died in 1829, she was buried in the Sedgwick plot in Stockbridge near the center of the family circle. Her epitaph, written by Charles Sedgwick, reads: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good Mother, farewell.” Mumbet’s case was one of the most important in a series of slave cases in 1781 which led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. 682 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 6: People were trying to kill each other at New London and at Fort Griswold (Groton Hill), Connecticut.

The negrero Zong set sail from the coast of Africa under the command of Luke Collingwood. James Gregson and a number of other slave-dealers in Liverpool had invested in this voyage, and had taken out a life insurance policy covering themselves against loss in the event that they needed to suppress an insurrection among the slaves, but not covering themselves against loss in the event of deaths due to disease and malnutrition. Aboard the vessel were approximately 470 slaves, and 17 whites. The conditions of the voyage would be claiming 60 in this slave cargo, and 7 crewmen. An attempt to cut the investors’ losses by making a claim against the insurance would result in 133 ill members of the cargo being pitched overboard alive just prior to their arrival in Jamaica (one of these 133 “sick” people would manage to grab a rope and clamber back onboard, to be sold

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in port).

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: In the case of the ship Zong, in 1781, whose master had thrown one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, to cheat the underwriters, the first jury gave a verdict in favor of the master and owners: they had a right to do what they had done. Lord Mansfield is reported to have said on the bench, “The matter left to the jury is, — Was it from necessity? For they had no doubt, — though it shocks one very much, — that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. It is a very shocking case.”

THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

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November 29: The negrero Zong had made its way west across the Atlantic Ocean and was in Jamaican waters, just short of its destination, but by this point disease and malnutrition had already taken 60 in its slave cargo, and 7 of its crewmen. On this day Captain Luke Collinwood, overruling objections by his 1st Mate, James Kelsal, determined to jettison the remaining Africans whom they might not be able to vend in Jamaica, in order instead to make a claim against the cargo life insurance policy which the vessel’s investors had taken out in England. There is an account that he assembled the crew and explained that if the slaves died of illness, there would be a financial loss for these investors (William, John, and James Gregson, Edward Wilson, and James Aspinwall), but, reading the fine print of the insurance policy they had taken out on their cargo, if they were to pretend that the slaves had been thrown into the sea in order to quell an insurrection on their part, or because of a lack of drinkable water, then the ship’s underwriters would have to bear the cost of this loss: The insurer takes upon him the risk of the loss, capture, and death of slaves, or any other unavoidable accident to them: but natural death is always understood to be excepted: by natural death is meant, not only when it happens by disease or sickness, but also when the captive destroys himself through despair, which often happens: but when slaves are killed, or thrown into thrown into the sea in order to quell an insurrection on their part, then the insurers must answer. He does not seem to have confessed to the crew that his financial interests were at stake as well, because his contract called for him to be paid not only 100 shillings per month in salary, but also the customary commission on the cargo, plus the value of the “privilege” slaves aboard. He is reported to have characterized the action as a mercy slaying, a courageous deed of kindness on the part of us decent white men. Help the poor sick black wretches not to suffer any more than they need to: It would not be so cruel to throw the poor sick wretches into the sea, as to suffer them to linger out a few days under the disorders with which they were afflicted. That day they threw 54 living people overboard. Over the following two days a total of 133 living people would be pitched overboard (the final ten, apparently recognizing that their chances were slightly better if they weren’t dragged down by being chained together into a coffle, leaped overboard before the fetters could be put on their ankles; one of those jettisoned would manage to grab a rope and climb back onboard to be sold in port). When the claim would be made that the slaves had needed to be jettisoned due to a water shortage, the insurers would investigate and counter that on December 1st the captain passed up an opportunity to take on water, suggesting that in fact there had been no such shortage of water, and that the Zong landed in Jamaica on December 22d with 420 gallons of drinkable water to spare. The claim would become the court case Gregson v. Gilbert (this was not a case alleging 132 acts of murder but a case alleging insurance fraud) heard during March 1783 in London. Although this case would not result in a change in the law, it would become famously useful to the abolitionist cause.

THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

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November 30: The crew of the negrero Zong had on the previous day thrown 54 members of their slave cargo overboard. On this day they threw overboard an additional 42, bringing the total to 60 slaves who had died aboard of malnutrition and illness and whose corpses had been disposed of by throwing them overboard, and 96 who had been alive when thrown overboard. THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

The preliminary meeting for the Treaty of Paris.

December 1: The white crew of the negrero Zong had on the two previous days thrown 96 members of their black cargo overboard. On this day they threw overboard an additional 36, bringing the total to 60 slaves who had died aboard of malnutrition and illness and whose corpses had been disposed of by throwing them overboard, and 132 who had been alive when thrown overboard.

THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

People were trying to kill each other at Dorchester, South Carolina.

In the pages of the “Atlantic Neptune,” which was published from about 1780 to 1783, there appeared a 39 1 inch by 30 /2 inch Chart of Boston Bay bearing this date. Also in the pages of this magazine appeared a 40 1 inch by 28 /2 inch “Plan of the Harbor and Coast from Nachant [sic] to Weymouth River, accompanied with a valuable series of copperplate views of the islands and landmarks of the harbor.” The chart had been compiled by Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres, “surveyor of the coast and harbors of North America,” in about 1775, on the basis of surveys taken by Samuel Holland, Esq., Surveyor General of Lands, and by his assistants, who had been employed on that service as early as 1764. The Des Barres chart is of especial interest because it “exhibits the face of the country and the hills and bluffs of the islands.”

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December 22: The negrero Zong arrived at the dock in Jamaica with its surviving cargo. During its Middle Passage a total of 133 slaves of the cargo had been pitched overboard alive (one of these slaves condemned as “ill” had managed to grab a rope and climb back onboard). When the insurance claim would be submitted that this cargo had needed to be jettisoned because of a water shortage, the insurers would investigate and counter that on December 1st the captain passed up an opportunity to take on water, suggesting that in fact there had been no such shortage of water, and that the Zong arrived at its destination with 420 gallons of drinkable water to spare, with no-one ever having been put on short water rations. The claim would become the court case Gregson v. Gilbert (this was not a case alleging 132 acts of murder but a case alleging life insurance fraud) heard during March 1783 in London. Although this case would not result in a change in the law, it would become famously useful to the abolitionist cause.

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1782

English Quakers formed an association “for the relief and liberation of the slaves in the West Indies, and for the discouragement of the slave trade on the coast of Africa.”

Maryland forebad further importation of slaves.104 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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In Concord, Ephraim Wood, John Buttrick, and George Minott were Selectmen.

In Concord, Ephraim Wood was again Town Clerk.

In Concord, Timothy Minott was Town Treasurer.

James Barrett was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

When Dr. John Cuming, a prominent citizen of Concord of the most impeccable revolutionary and social standing, fell ill in this year, he made a will in which he declared: “I give and bequeath to my two negros (that was) viz. Bristo and Jem thirty pounds sterling each, the expending of which money to be under the Special Directions of the Selectmen of Concord.”105 BRISTER FREEMAN

Concord’s revolutionary Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety was renewed. The committee of correspondence, etc., chosen March, 1776 [for Concord], were John Cuming, Esq., Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Capt. Jonas Heywood, Capt. Joseph Hosmer, James Barrett, Esq., Capt. David Brown, and Capt. George Minot. In 1777, Colonel John Buttrick, Josiah Merriam, Isaac Hubbard, Capt. Abishai Brown, Capt. David Wheeler, Mr. Ephraim Potter, and Lieut. Nathan Stow. In 1778, John Cuming, Esq., Colonel John Buttrick, Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Jonas Heywood, Esq., James Barrett, Esq., Capt. David Brown, and Mr. Josiah Merriam. These were re-elected in 1779, 1780, 1781 & 1782. In 1783, James Barrett, Esq., Jonas Heywood, Esq., Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Capt. David Wood, and Lieut. Joseph Hayward. This committee was not chosen afterwards.106

104. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New-York during 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.” 105. Note that as “Bristo” was short for “Bristol,” so also “Jem” was short for “James”; in the context of a legal document what we have here is two adults being diminished. The designation of the Town Selectmen as custodians for the fund makes it clear that Cuming’s bequest was in no sense largesse, but was intended merely to reassure his fellow white townsmen that after his death his manumitted slaves would not make themselves a financial burden on the town. (Cuming would live until 1788 and then it would require several additional years before this will would be settled.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 689 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Serfdom was abolished in Austria and her dominions. EMANCIPATION MANUMISSION

Monk Estill became the first manumitted slave in Kentucky history.

The Virginia legislature authorized manumission of slaves. Some 10,000 Virginia slaves would be freed over the following 8 years — largely because they were too old, ill, or costly for their masters to maintain. (Independence has a high price as British subsidies on critical commodities were ended and Britain shifted her trade elsewhere.)

Thomas Jefferson was composing his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA; WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1781, SOME- WHAT CORRECTED AND ENLARGED IN THE WINTER OF 1782, FOR THE USE OF A FOREIGNER OF DISTINCTION, IN ANSWER TO CERTAIN QUERIES PROPOSED BY HIM (initially for the benefit of M. Barbè de Marbois, Secretary of the French Legation, although it would be printed at Paris during1784/1785) — which would turn out to be his only book to be published during his lifetime despite the fact that in his spare time he would be rewriting the four gospels of the New Testament into one “nondiscrepant and consolidated” narrative. Jefferson took a familiar tack: since contact with black slaves was having a pernicious influence upon the moral character of white people, we ought to have apartheid in America.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

106. 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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You see if you can read this 1985 book now and perceive the [white] and [black] interpolations which I have inserted below to be inappropriate ones! The fact is, Jefferson was disturbed by slavery not primarily out of concern for the slaves themselves, but primarily out of concern for its degrading impact upon the white people such as himself who inevitably were forced into contact with such people. That is to say, his concern for getting rid of slavery could have been fully disposed of had it been technologically possible to put all slaves underground where they could not be observed and where there could be none of these unfortunate interactions with white people:

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our [white] people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between [white] master and [black] slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our [white] children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal.... The [white] parent storms, the [white] child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The [white] man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.

One wonders whether Jefferson’s relationship with his sex slave Sally Hemings might have been describable as a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, involving on his part the most unremitting despotism

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and on Sally’s part the most degrading submissions:

[N]ever yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration.

In this book Jefferson coined the term “belittle.”

Professor Paul Finkelman, Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa College of Law, believes this writing by Jefferson to have been the definitive moment in a transition from justifications for slavery in terms of culture (such as lack of Christian religion or coming from a foreign and backwards place) to justifications for slavery in terms of biology (in term, that is, of race inferiority). “Having declared we are all ‘created equal’ he [Thomas Jefferson] then had to explain slavery and did it by ‘discovering’ that blacks were not equal.” “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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January 24:In Providence, Rhode Island, the widowed Mary Cheekly or Cheekley formally pledged that, on condition that her Negro-Man Cato “serve me faithfully” during the next approximately six months “as he has hitherto done,” then as of July 18, 1783 she would grant to her said Negro-Man Cato his Release from Servitude and make him Free — no longer held “in Slavery or Bondage from and after the Day above mentioned.” Her pledge was duly notarized and witnessed and certified, and placed on record on page 43 of Volume 22 of the town records:

\ `tÜç V{xx~Äxç [sic] Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x VÉâÇàç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx 9 fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw 9 j|wÉã? |Ç vÉÇá|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{x yt|à{yâÄ yxÜä|vx Éy Åç axzÜÉ@`tÇ VtàÉ? {xÜxuç Åt~x ~ÇÉãÇ g{tà yÜÉÅ tÇw tyàxÜ à{x DKà{ Wtç Éy ]âÄç? ã{|v{ ã|ÄÄ ux |Ç à{x lxtÜ DJKFA \ WÉ? uç à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá exÄxtáx à{x át|w VtàÉ yÜÉÅ fxÜä|P @àâwx tÇw Åt~x {|Å YÜxx? {xÜxuç 9 yÉÜxäxÜ dâ|à|Çz@VÄt|Å? tÇw ÜxÇÉâÇv|Çz tÄÄ Ü|z{à 9 g|àÄx Éy ã{tà atÅx ÉÜ atàâÜx áÉxäxÜ? ã{|v{ \ {täx ÇÉã ÉÜ xäxÜ {tw àÉ {|á áxÜä|vxá? uç ã{|v{ yÉÜ Åç [x|Üá ÉÜ Tyá|zÇá Å|z{à ÉÜ vÉâÄw {ÉÄw {|Å |Ç fÄtäxÜç ÉÜ UÉÇwtzx yÜÉÅ tÇw tyàxÜ à{x Wtç tuÉäx ÅxÇà|ÉÇxwM hÑÉÇ vÉÇw|à|ÉÇ? à{tà {x? à{x át|w VtàÉ áxÜäx Åx yt|à{yâÄÄç? tá {x {tá {|à{xÜàÉ wÉÇx? âÇà|ÄÄ à{x |ÇàxÜÅx@ @w|tàx g|Åx yÜÉÅ à{x Wtàx {xÜxÉy àÉ à{x át|wDKà{ Wtç Éy ]âÄçTWDJKF ux yâÄÄç vÉÅÑÄxàxw tÇw xÇwxwA‰ \Ç j|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉy? \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç [tÇw tÇw tyy|åxw Åç áxtÄ |Ç cÜÉä|wxÇvx tyÉÜxát|w? à{|á EGà{ Wtç Éy ]tÇâtÜç TW DJKE YÉÜ cÜxáxÇvx Éy âá

[xÇÜç UtvÉÇ `tÜç V{xx~Äç [sic] ((L.S.)) } cÜÉä|wxÇvxftÄÄç V{âÜv{ \Ç cÜÉä|wxÇvx à{|á EGà{ Wtç Éy ]tÇâtÜç TWDJKI ÑxÜáÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw `ÜáA `tÜç V{xx~Äxç? tÇw tv~ÇÉã@ @Äxwzxw à{x ã|à{|Ç \ÇáàÜâÅxÇà àÉ ux {xÜ iÉÄâÇàtÜç Tvà? uxyÉÜx Åx‰ g{ÉA gÜâÅtÇ ]âáà|vx Éy à{x cxtvx‰

MANUMISSION SLAVERY Notice who was in control here. Notice whose needs were being served here. The white person was in control. The black person was at risk. It was up to the white person to decide, later, whether to keep this “promise,” based upon a subjective appreciation of whether the conduct of the black person had or had not been suitably “faithful.” How about the timing? Did this black person need to be enslaved for an additional six months? Did this black person need not to be set free immediately? Or, is the black person, said Negro-Man Cato, being further manipulated — was it exclusively the white person’s need, the widowed Mary Cheekly or Cheekley’s need, for an additional six months of over-the-top service, which was setting the timing here?

What we see in this document –as in so many other of the manumission documents stored under the roof of the Providence Town Hall– is how racial extortion can masquerade as white benevolence.

April 19: In Connecticut, Nathaniel Shaw died: I do hereby Emancipate & set at Liberty all my Negro slaves Except Silah who is to be free at Twenty One Years of Age. MANUMISSION

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September 14: In Providence, Rhode Island, Ezekiel Durfey sold for 140 Good Silver Spanish Milled Dollars his 13- year-old slave Abraham Tikey to Arthur Tikey, a Free Negro Man of Newport — who was, presumably that lad’s father. We may presume that Arthur did not then sell Abraham to any other person or hold him otherwise in bondage, and that therefore, effectively, this property transaction which has been labeled in the town records as a “sale of a Negro,” between a white man and a black man, amounted to a manumission, of a black boy by a black man:

uç à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá g{tà \ Xéx~|xÄ WâÜyxç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x VÉâÇàç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x fàtàx ^ÇÉãÉye{Éwx\áÄtÇw tÄÄ tÇwcÜÉä|wxÇvxcÄtÇà `xÇ tà|ÉÇá`tÜ|ÇxÜ yÉÜ tÇw |ÇVÉÇy|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{xfâÅ ÉybÇx[âÇwÜxw tÇwYÉÜàçZÉÉw f|ÄäxÜ fÑtÇ|á{ `|ÄÄxw WÉÄÄtÜá àÉ `x |Ç [tÇw tÄÜxtwç Ñt|w uç TÜà{âÜ g|~xç t YÜxx axzÜÉ `tÇ Éy axãÑÉÜà |Ç à{x VÉâÇàç Éy axãÑÉÜà |Ç yt|w fàtàx à{x exvx|Ñà ã{xÜxÉy \ {xÜxuç tv~ÇÉãÄxwzx tÇw wÉ ÜxÖâ|à tÇw W|áv{tÜzx à{x át|w TÜà{âÜ g|~xç {|á [x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜá tÇwTwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá Éy à{x átÅx? Z|äxÇZÜtÇàxwUtÜzt|ÇxwfÉÄw tyá|zÇxwfxà ÉäxÜ tÇw vÉÇäxçxw tÇw uç à{xyx cÜxyxÇàá Wb Z|äx ZÜtÇà UtÜzt|Ç fxÄÄ tyá|zÇ[täx fxà ÉäxÜ tÇw yÜxxÄç yâÄÄç tÇw tuyÉÄâàxÄç vÉÇäxç âÇàÉ {|Å à{x át|w TÜà{âÜ g|~xç {|á [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá tÇw Tyá|zÇá bÇx VxÜàt|Ç axzÜÉ UÉç vtÄÄxw TuÜt{tÅ g|~xç ã{É ãtá uÉÜÇ |Ç yt|w axãÑÉÜà tÇw ã{É |á ÇÉã |Ç à{x g{|ÜàxxÇà{ lxtÜ Éy {|á TzxA à{x át|waxzÜÉUÉç vtÄÄxwTuÜt{tÅg|~xç àÉ {|Å à{x át|wTÜà{âÜg|~xç {|á [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜágÉ[täx tÇw tÇwgÉ[ÉÄw Tyá|zÇá yÉÜxäxÜ àÉ {|á tÇw à{x|Ü ÉÇÄç âyx tÇw UxÇxy|à yÉ à{tà Çx|à{xÜ \ à{x át|w Xéx~|xÄ WâÜyxç ÉÜ Åç [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá ÉÜ Tyá|zÇá ÉÜ tÇç ÉÜ x|à{xÜ Éy à{xÅ á{tÄÄ ÉÜ ã|ÄÄ {täx tÇç e|z{à g|àÄx VÄt|Å ÉÜ WxÅtÇw ã{tàxäxÜ àÉ à{x át|w axzÜÉ UÉç ÉÜ {|á fxÜä|vxá tyàxÜ à{x Wtç Éy à{x Wtàx {xÜxÉy uâà yÜÉÅ à{x átÅx à{xç tÇw xäxÜç Éy à{xÅ tÜx {xÜxuç ã{ÉÄÄç UtÜÜxw tÇw xåvÄâwxwA TÇw \ {xÜxuç VÉäxÇtÇà yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá tÇw TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá g{tà \ {täx ZÉÉw e|z{à àÉ fxÄÄ tÇw vÉÇäxç à{x át|w axzÜÉ UÉç tá tyÉÜxyt|w tÇw ã|ÄÄ jtÜÜtÇà fxvâÜx tÇw WxyxÇw à{x yt|w axzÜÉ UÉç vtÄÄxw TuÜt{tÅ g|~xç àÉ {|Å à{x át|w TÜà{âÜ g|~xç tÇw àÉ {|á [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜáTwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá tÇwTyá|zÇá yÉÜxäxÜ tzt|Çáà à{x_tãyâÄVÄt|Åá ÉÜWxÅtÇwá Éy tÇç ÑxÜyÉÇ ÉÜ ÑxÜyÉÇá ã{ÉyÉxäxÜA ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉfxà Åç[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ à{|áYÉâÜàxxÇà{Wtç ÉyfxÑàxÅuxÜTÇÇÉWÉÅ|Ç|bÇxg{ÉâytÇwfxäxÇ[âÇwÜxw\Çj|àÇxyá tÇwX|z{àçgãÉA f|zÇxw fxtÄxw tÇw WxÄ|äxÜxw |Ç cÜxyxÇvx Éy âá Xéx~|xÄ WâÜyxçA atà{tÇ|xÄÄ [sic]]tvÉuá AA } ]É{Ç cA ]ÉÇxáAAA g{x YÉÜxzÉ|Çz |á t gÜâx VÉÑç exvÉÜwxw à{|á DKà{: Wtç Éy fxÑàxÅuxÜ TWDJKE ‰ [squiggle] g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~AA}‰

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1783

The “Meeting for Sufferings” committee of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, with Friend Moses Brown acting as clerk of that committee, noted that £134 was lying around in their education kitty and decided to bite the bullet and create a Yearly Meeting School. They considered Providence, Portsmouth, and East Greenwich in Rhode Island, and Lynn in Massachusetts, and settled on Portsmouth because they were offered the use of a room in the local Friends meetinghouse together with the rental income from a number of house lots that Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting owned in Newport. Friend Isaac Lawton there could be the schoolmaster at an annual salary of £75, and local families were volunteering to provide room and board for as many as 30 young scholars.

John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island provided half the funds for a “compleat Philosophical Apparatus and Library” of science at the College of Rhode Island — clearly they were able to take a “philosophical” pecunia-non-olet attitude, at the time, toward the fact that such moneys arose at least in part from the international vending of human beings, both between Africa and America (the international trade in new

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slaves) and from region to region along the American coast (local resale of used slaves).

Here is an example of the local resale of used slaves mentioned above (something that we seldom take into consideration when thinking about these issues), a local resale practice that would be allowed to continue unimpeded even after the “international slave trade” and its dread Middle Passage had been benevolently interdicted. In this year, a white widow of Warren, Rhode Island, Roby Luther Whitting, was having difficulties with her slave lad Fantee. She had leased her property to Edward Jones of Providence on May 22, 1782 to be used for a period of one year, but Jones had been dissatisfied with Fantee’s labor and also dissatisfied with Fantee’s general attitude. In a letter to the widow on January 17, 1783 he asked to be paid damages, alleging that the boy had been guilty of “every vice under the sun,” vices unspecified. In this situation, Fantee escaped, was recaptured and imprisoned, and was then returned in disgrace in irons to the widow in Warren. The slavemistress, at her wit’s end, on February 6, 1783 entrusted her black, “about Eighteen or Twenty Years Old a Healthy Active Lad,” to Isaac Gorham of the Patty to be sold in the West Indies, to be taught a lesson he wouldn’t forget by being gradually worked to death in the cane fields. (On the voyage thither, Captain Gorham’s sloop would be intercepted by a British warship and lucky Fantee would find himself confiscated as contraband.) “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

In Philadelphia, the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends circulated a petition against the international slave trade to the Federal Congress, as follows: To the United States in Congress Assembled The Address from the Yearly Meeting of the People Called Quakers 4th Day of the Tenth Month 1783

Being through the favour of Divine Providence met as usual at this season in our annual Assembly to promote the cause of Piety

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and Virtue, We find with great satisfaction our well meant endeavours for the relief of an oppressed part of our fellow Men have been so far blessed, that those of them who have been held in bondage by Members of our Religious Society are generally restored to freedom, their natural and just right. Commiserating the afflicted state into which the Inhabitants of Africa are very deeply involved by many professors of the mild and benign doctrines of the Gospel, and affected with a sincere concern for the essential Good of our Country, We conceive it our indispensable duty to revive the lamentable grievance of that oppressed people in your view as an interesting subject evidently claiming the serious attention of those who are entrusted with the powers of Government, as Guardians of the common rights of Mankind and advocates for liberty. We have long beheld with sorrow the complicated evils produced by an unrighteous commerce which subjects many thousands of the human species to the deplorable State of Slavery. The Restoration of Peace and restraint to the effusion of human Blood we are persuaded excite in the minds of many of all Christian denominations gratitude and thankfulness to the all wise controller of human events; but we have grounds to fear, that some forgetfulness of the days of Distress are prompted from avaricious motives to renew the iniquitous trade for slaves to the African Coasts, contrary to every humane and righteous consideration, and in opposition to the solemn declarations often repeated in favour of universal liberty, thereby increasing the too general torrent of corruption and licentiousness, and laying a foundation for future calamities. We therefore earnestly solicit your Christian interposition to discourage and prevent so obvious an Evil, in such manner as under the influence of Divine Wisdom you shall see meet.

Signed in and on behalf of our Yearly Meeting held in Philadelphia for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and the western parts of Maryland and Virginia dated the fourth day of the tenth month 1783. SLAVERY Here are the signatures on this above petition against the international slave trade, rearranged for your convenience into alphabetic sequence: • ACER/STEER, Jos. Jr. ? • ALLEN, David • ALLINSON, Saml. • ASHBRIDGE, Geo. • ATKINSON, William • ATKINSON, William • ATTMORE, Caleb • ATTMORE, Tho.

• BACON David • BAILY John • BALDERSON John • BALDWIN Joshua ? • BALL Joseph “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 697 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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• BALLINGER Daniel • BARKER/PARKER Thompson ? • BARNARD Richard • BARTLETT Richard • BATES Hezekiah • BEALE John • BELLANGER Thomas • BENERES Anthony ? • BERNARD Jeremiah Jr. • BERRIS/BERRY John ? • BETTS Simes ? • BIDDLE Owen • BIRCHALL Jno. • BLACKFORD Gerard Jr. • BONSALL Edward • BONSALLE Isaac • BORTON/BARTON Isaac ? • BRADWAY Edward • BREWER William • BRIGGS Samuel • BRINGHURST James • BRINGHURST Joseph • BRINTON Joseph • BRITT Daniel • BROTHERTON Henry • BROWN ? • BROWN Jonathan • BROWN Joshua • BROWN Richard • BROWN Saml. • BROWN Thomas • BUCKLEY Phins. • BUDD Joseph • BUNTING Joshua • BUNTING Josiah • BUNTING Samuel • BURROUGH Joseph • BUTLER John • BYRNES Daniel

• CADWALADER Isaac • CADWALADER Moses ? • CAMERON Dugald • CANBY Samuel • CAREY Thomas • CARPENTER John • CATHRALL Benjamin • CATTELL Jonas • CHESTNUTWOOD Jacob ? • CHILD John • CHURCHMAN George • CHURCHMAN Mord. • CLARK Joseph • CLARKE Benjamin

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• CLARKE Isaac • CLARKE Saml ? • CLAYTON Aaron • CLEAVER Ellis • CLEAVER Ezekial • CLIFFORD Thomas • CLIFFTON William • CLIFTON Henry • COALE William • COATES Moses • COATS Isaac • COLLINS John • COLLINS John • COMFORT Ezra • COMFORT John • CONARROC Thomas Sr. ? • COOKSON Samuel • COOPE Abrah. • COOPER David • COOPER Samuel • COOPER William • COOPER William Jr. • COPLAND Cowperthawaite • COWGILL Eze. • COWGILL Henry • COWGILL John • CRESSON James • CRESSON Joshua • CUMMING David

• DARNEL Edward • DARNEL Lewis • DARNEL Samuel • DAVIES Joseph • DAWES Abijah • DAWES Jonathan • DAWES Rumford • DAWSON Daniel • DAY Jacob • DENNIS Philip • DICKENSON Daniel • DILLWYNE Geo. ? • DIMOCK Joshua ? • DINGCE/DINGEE Christopher ? • DINGEE Chas. • DIXON William • DORSEY Benedict • DOUGHTY William • DOWNING Silas • DOWNING William • DOWNLIE Geo. ? • DRINKER Danl. • DRINKER Henry • DRINKER John

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• DUNCAN John

• ELLIOTT John Jr. • ELLIS John • ELLIS Peter • ELLIS Wm. • ELY Hugh ? • EMLER/EMLEN James ? • EVANS David • EVANS Enoch • EVANS Evan • EVANS George • EVANS John • EVANS Robert • EVANS Thomas • EVANS Thos. • EVES John

• FALK William ? • FARQUHAR Allen • FARQUHAR Thomas • FEARNBY/FEARNLEY Thomas ? • FERRCE/FERREE John ? • FIELD Elijah • FIELDS John • FISHER Mi ? • FISHER Thomas • FISHER Thomas • FLOWER ? • FOLLETT Thomas • FOLWELL William • FORMAN John • FORSYTHE John • FOULKE Caleb • FRANKLIN John • FRANKLIN Thos. • FRENCH Robert • FURMAN Josiah • FURMAN/TRUMAN Morris ?

• GARRETT Nathan • GARRIGUES Saml. • GARRIGUIS Edward • GARRIGUIS William • GENNONERE Sam ? • GEORGE Thomas • GIBBONS Ia ? • GIBBS Jonathan • GIBBS Joshua • GIBBS Lucas • GILBERT John • GILLINGHAM Yeamans • GODINGS William • GOODWIN Richard

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• GRACY John • GRAY Enoch • GRIEST/GUEST John • GRIFFITH Abrm ? • GRIFFITTS James • GRISEGER William ?

• HAINA Job • HAINES Caleb • HAINES Jesse • HAINES Samuel • HALL David • HALL Thomas • HALLOWELL Thos. • HALLOWELL Wm. Jr. • HAMPTON Samuel • HAMTON Benja. • HARLAN Caleb • HARRISON Thomas • HARTSHORNE William • HARVEY Amos • HARVEY William • HATTON Peter • HAVILAND Daniel • HAWLEY Joseph • HAWORTH George • HAWORTH John • HAYDOCK John • HAYES Henry • HEDGER Samuel • HIBBERD Abraham • HICKS Samuel • HILLIAR John ? • HOLLINGSHEAD Edmund • HOLLINGSWORTH Christopher • HOLLINGSWORTH John • HOOPER/HOOPES William • HOOPES David • HOOPES Thos Jr. ? • HOPKINS Johns • HOPKINS Saml. • HORNE John • HORNOR Benj. • HOSKINS John • HOSKINS Raper • HOUGH Benjamin • HOUGH John • HOUGH Thomas • HOWELL Arthur • HOWELL John • HOWELL Joshua • HOWELL Sam. • HUGHES Owen • HUMPHREYS Benjamin Jr. ?

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• HUMPHREYS John • HUMPHREYS Richard • HUNT John • HUNT John Jr. • HUNT Joshua • HUTTON John • HUTTON Samuel

• JACKSON John • JACKSON Wm. Jr. • JACOBS Isaac • JAMES Abel Jr. • JAMES Isaac • JAMES John • JAMES Joseph • JANNEY Bleackston • JANNEY Joseph • JANNEY Mahlon • JEFFERIES Wm. • JEFFERIS Cheyney • JENKINS Joseph • JESS Zachariah • JOHN Griffith • JOHN Joshua • JONES Cadwalader ? • JONES Edward • JONES Edward • JONES James Jr. • JONES Nathan • JONES Norris • JONES Owen • JONES Richard

• KAMBIN/KAMBER Caleb ? • KERSEY William • KIRK Caleb • KIRK Elisha • KIRKBRIDGE/KIRKBRIDE Robert ? • KIRKLAND/KIRKBRIDE Jonathan ? • KITE Benjamin • KNIGHT Giles Jr.

• LAING John • LAMB Daniel • LAMB Joshua • LAMB Pierce • LANCASTER Aaron • LANE Isaac • LARKIN Isaac • LEE Mordecai • LEEDS Daniel • LETCHWORTH William ? • LETTLERS/LITTLERS Nathan ? • LEWDEN John

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• LEWDEN John • LEWIS Evan • LEWIS Nathan • LEWIS Robt. • LEWIS/LORDS Vincent ? • LIGHTFOOT Thomas • LINDLEY Jacob • LINTON Benjamin • LINTON W. • LIPPINCOTT William • LITCHWORTH John • LONGSTRETH Daniel • LORD Constantine • LORD Constantine • LOWNES Caleb • LOWNES William • LUKENS Joseph • LUNDY Jacob Jr. • LYNN John • LYSSTON John

• MARILE Jacob • MARILE John ? • MARIS Caleb • MAROT Davenport • MAROT Phillip • MARSHALL Henry • MARTIN George • MASON Benjamin ? • MASSEY Thomas Jr. • MATHIS Bartho. • MATTHEWS Thomas • MAULE Ebenezer • MAXEY Isaac • McRAE Andw. ? • MIDDLETON Gideon • MIDDLETON Saml. • MIFFLIN Daniel • MIFFLIN Warner • MILHOUS Jesse • MILHOUS John • MILHOUSE Thomas • MILLER Mark • MILLER Samuel • MILLER Solomon • MILLER William • MINSHALL Griffith ? • MOON James • MOON Moses • MOORE David • MOORE Edward • MOORE George • MOORE Joseph • MOORE Mord.

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• MOORE Robert • MORRIS John Jr. • MORRIS Joshua • MORTON John

• NEWBOLD Clayton

• OAKFORD Aaron • OFFEY/RIPPLEY Danl. ? • OLDDEN John • OTTEY William

• PAINTER James • PARKE Jacob • PARKER John • PARKER Thomas • PARRISH John • PARRY John • PASASON/PAXON Oliver ? • PAXON Ephraim ? • PAXON Thomas • PAXSON Aaron • PAXSON Isaac • PAYNTER Richard • PEARSON Thomas • PEIRCE John • PEMBERTON Saml. • PENNELL Dell • PENROSE Joseph ? • PENROSE William ? • PICKERING Isaac • PICKERING Jona. • PICKERING Jos. ? • PIERCE/PEIRCE Joseph • PLEASANT Saml. • POTTS Jonas • POTTS Joseph • POULTNEY Anthony • PRICE John Jr. • PRICE Philip Jr. • PRICE Philipe • PRICE Richard • PRIOR Edmund • PUGH James • PUGH John

• REDMAN Thomas • REEVE Mark • RENNICK/PENNICK Caleb ? • RENNOCK/PENNOCK Joseph ? • REYNELL John • REYNOLDS Henry • RHOADS Samuel • RICHARDS Saml.

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• RICHARDSON Joseph • RICHARDSON Joseph Jr. • RICHARDSON William • RIDGE Zachary • RIDGWAY David • RIDGWAY J. • RIDGWAY William • RING Elias • RISELY John • ROBBINS Nathan • ROBERTS Hugh • ROBERTS Israel • ROBERTS John • ROBERTS John • ROBERTS Joseph • ROBERTS Willism • ROBESON John • ROBINSON Ebenezer • ROGERS Abner • ROGERS Robert • ROGERS Thomas • ROGERS Thomas Jr. • ROGERS Thomas Jr. • ROGERS William • ROSE Thos. • RUSSELL Tos.

• SANSOM William • SATTERTHWAIT John • SAVERY William • SAVERY William Jr. • SAY Thos. ? • SCARLET John • SEAL Caleb • SHARPLES Joel • SHARPLES Joshua • SHARPLES Thomas • SHARPLESS Daniel ? • SHARPLESS Jos. • SHARPLESS Nathan • SHATWELL/SHOTWELL Jos. Jr. • SHAW Henry • SHESHIR/CHESSHIR Joel ? • SHINN Sam. ? • SHOEMAKER Jacob • SHOEMAKER Jacob Jr. • SHOEMAKER Jonathan • SHOEMAKER Thomas • SIM/PIM Thomas ? • SIMPSON John • SIMPSON Saml. • SMEDLEY Jeffrey • SMEDLEY Thomas Jr. • SMITH Aaron

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• SMITH James • SMITH James Jr. • SMITH John • SMITH Samuel • SMITH William • SPEAKMAN Thomas ? • STABLERS Edward ? • STACKHOUSE Joseph • STAPLER Jno. • STAPLER John Jr. ? • STAPLER Thomas • STARR Jacob • STARR James • STARR James • STARR saml. • STARR William • STEVENSON Cornell • STEVENSON William • STOKES Thomas • STRODE Richard • SUGAR Thos. • SWAIN Benjamin ? • SWAYNE Jacob • SWAYNE Tho. • SWETT Benj. • SWIFFT John ?

• TALBOT John • TALBOT Joseph • TATUM John • TAYLOR Amos • TAYLOR Bernard • TAYLOR Samuel • TEST Benjamin • THOMAS Isaac • THOMAS Robert • THOMAS Townsend • THOMPSON Daniel • THOMPSON Israel • THORNTON James • THORNTON James Jr. • TODD John • TODD John Jr. • TODDINGS James ? • TOMKINS Jacob • TOWNSEND John • TOWNSEND Joseph • TRIMBLE Samuel • TROTTER Saml. • TROTTER Thomas • TURK Isaiah ? • TYSON James

• UPDEGARD Saml. ?

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• UPDEGRAFF Harman ?

• VANLAW Joseph • VERRCE Robert

• WALKER Abel • WALMSLEY Silas • WARING W. • WARRINGTON Joseph • WATERMAN Jesse ? • WATHERILE Saml. ? • WATSON Thos. • WAY Joshua • WEBB John • WEBSTER Hugh • WEBSTER Isaac • WEBSTER William • WELLS Richard • WEST Charles • WEST Charles Jr. • WEST Joseph • WHARTON Isaac • WHELALL James Jr. ? • WHITALL Job • WHITE Robert • WHITE Samuel • WHITSALL James • WHITSON Thomas ? • WIBLES/HIBLES David ? • WILKES/WEEKS Resine ? • WILKINSON Francis • WILKONSHAM Enoch • WILLETS Amos • WILLIAMS George • WILLIAMS Nathan • WILLS Aaron • WILLSON Gabriel • WILSON Isaac • WILSON William • WOLMSLEY Thomas ? • WOOD Robt. • WORINTON Abraham • WORLEY Jacob Jr. • WORRILL Jonathan • WORSTALL/ James ? • WRIGHT Isaac • WRIGHT John • WRIGHT Jon. • WRIGHT Jonathan • WRIGHT Nathan

• YARNALL Amos • YARNALL Eli • YARNALL Ellis

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• YARNALL Joshua • YARNALL Peter Here is the Silhouette of one of the Philadelphia Quakers who signed the above petition against the international slave trade, Friend John Parrish, who lived from 1730 to 1807:

Incidentally, the above petition is often described as an antislavery petition. It is not that. It does not ask the federal government either to proscribe slavery in the United States, or to prohibit the domestic trade in slaves, and it does not ask that any slaves be freed. It is solely a petition against an international business operation.

Costumes of Philadelphia Quakers

Maryland prohibited the importation of any fresh slaves, whether negro, mulatto, or otherwise. “An Act to prohibit the bringing slaves into this state.” “ ... it shall not be lawful, after the passing this act, to import or bring into this state, by land or water, any negro, mulatto, or other slave, for sale, or to reside within this state; and any person brought into this state as a slave contrary to this act, if a slave before, shall thereupon immediately

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cease to be a slave, and shall be free; provided that this act shall not prohibit any person, being a citizen of some one of the United States, coming into this state, with a bona fide intention of settling therein, and who shall actually reside within this state for one year at least, ... to import or bring in any slave or slaves which before belonged to such person, and which slave or slaves had been an inhabitant of some one of the United States, for the space of three whole years next preceding such importation,” etc. LAWS OF MARYLAND SINCE 1763: 1783, sess. April — June, ch. xxiii. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Francis Faulkner represented the town of Acton in the Massachusetts Legislature.

As many as 32,000 Loyalists may have fled the United States of America by this date, about a third of them from New York. It was payoff time, and the qualifications of veterans of the Revolution for the acquisition of lands in the New Military Tract were established. The concessions ranged from 500 acres (for a private) to 5,500 acres (for a major general).

Their property forfeit to the revolutionary Freedom Fighters, everything including their numerous slaves (slavery would continue in New York State until 1828) now belonging to somebody else, the previously wealthy Loyalist family of Frederick Philipse III fled from New York to England. For some years Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow would be owned by a Beekman family and then it would be purchased by the actress Elsie Janis. The property would be in receivership in 1940 when purchased by John D. Rockefeller, who would open it to the public in 1943. (Of course, in showing the property to the American public, there would be no mention that this had been a slave plantation.)

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A slave named Quaco sued for his freedom in the Massachusetts courts under the 1780 constitution, and apparently won on the basis of some technicality. At the census of 1790, Massachusetts would be the sole state to allege that its citizens held no slaves. This was the final Quock Walker case, in which this Worcester County slave managed to persuade the Massachusetts Supreme Court to examine its Constitution of Government document. It was at this point opinioned that the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 had effectively outlawed slavery in Massachusetts, Chief Justice William Cushing himself issuing the court’s determination that, at least within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature.” You’d suppose that put an end to the issue — wouldn’t you? However Zilversmit’s THE FIRST EMANCIPATION: THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE NORTH (Chicago IL: U of Chicago P, 1967, pages 112-116) makes a case that the Massachusetts courts had exceeded the original intent of the 1780 Constitution, and that therefore this was not in fact the end of the controversy over slavery in Massachusetts. How could it be considered “over,” while there still existed actual enslaved persons in the state? No, as the saying goes, it ain’t over ’till it’s over!

— The same phenomenon would occur in New Hampshire, with the lives of fewer slaves in issue, where courts would opinion that slavery violated the 1783 New Hampshire Constitution despite the fact that it was not at all clear that any of the delegates to New Hampshire’s Constitutional Convention had intended any such thing.

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Inflation was so severe in the former American colonies of England, due to the debts of the war, that George Washington commented, with only a fair degree of exaggeration, that it took a wagonload of paper money going into town, to obtain a wagonload of supplies to take back to the plantation. The expression “not worth a Continental” began to be used.

In the midst of this inflation crisis, the Marquis de Lafayette wrote to Washington to suggest that they join together and “try the experiment to free the Negroes.” The French leader pointed out, sucking up, that “such an example as yours might render it a general practice.” The American leader responded the two men would be meeting again in person and would be able to chat about this proposal (when they would meet and chat in the following year, Washington’s answer would of course be no). SLAVERY EMANCIPATION

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March 6: In Guildhall in London, the court case Gregson v. Gilbert revealed that during the Middle Passage of the negrero Zong, 133 ill slaves had been thrown overboard alive in order to collect on cargo life insurance. 1st Mate James Kelsal, who had objected to the captain’s action and had been overruled at sea, pointed out to the court that on December 1st there had just been a heavy rain during which six casks of water had been collected, an amount sufficient for 11 days at full water rations or 23 days at half water rations, but that nevertheless later during that day the white crew had been required by Captain Luke Collingwood to pitch an additional 36 living persons into the sea. Although this case would not result in a change in the law, and of course no-one would be prosecuted for manslaughter, it would become famously useful to the abolitionist cause.

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April: Benjamin West was in the process of preparing a commemorative painting for the Treaty of Paris, and had worked up the figures of the American negotiators, John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin, when the British commissioners refused to pose. The painting would never be completed:

READ THE FULL TEXT During the peace negotiations between the United States and Great Britain, Jay would propose that “the subjects of his Britannic Majesty shall not have any right or claim under the convention, to carry or import, into the said States any slaves from any part of the world; it being the intention of the said States entirely to prohibit the importation thereof.” The response of the British negotiator, Fox, would be to point out that “If that be their policy, it never can be competent to us to dispute with them their own regulations.” No such proviso would appear in the final treaty, presumably because it was considered unnecessary. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: During the peace negotiations between the United States and Great Britain in 1783, it was proposed by Jay, in June, that there be a proviso inserted as follows: “Provided that the subjects of his Britannic Majesty shall not have any right or claim under the convention, to carry or import, into the said States any slaves from any part of the world; it being the intention of the said States entirely to prohibit the importation thereof.”107 Fox promptly replied: “If that be their policy, it never can be competent to us to dispute with them their own regulations.”108 No mention of this was, however, made in the final treaty, probably because it was thought unnecessary. In the proposed treaty of 1806, signed at London December 31, Article 24 provided that “The high contracting parties engage to communicate to each other, without delay, all such laws as have been or shall be hereafter enacted by their respective Legislatures, as also all measures which shall have been taken for the abolition or limitation of the African slave trade; and

107. Sparks, DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE, X. 154. 108. Fox to Hartley, June 10, 1783, as quoted in Bancroft, HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, I. 61. Cf. Sparks, DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE, X. 154, June 1783. 714 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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they further agree to use their best endeavors to procure the co-operation of other Powers for the final and complete abolition of a trade so repugnant to the principles of justice and humanity.”109 This marks the beginning of a long series of treaties between England and other powers looking toward the prohibition of the traffic by international agreement. During the years 1810-1814 she signed treaties relating to the subject with Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden.110 May 30, 1814, an additional article to the Treaty of Paris, between France and Great Britain, engaged these powers to endeavor to induce the approaching Congress at Vienna “to decree the abolition of the Slave Trade, so that the said Trade shall cease universally, as it shall cease definitively, under any circumstances, on the part of the French Government, in the course of 5 years; and that during the said period no Slave Merchant shall import or sell Slaves, except in the Colonies of the State of which he is a Subject.”111 In addition to this, the next day a circular letter was despatched by Castlereagh to Austria, Russia, and Prussia, expressing the hope “that the Powers of Europe, when restoring Peace to Europe, with one common interest, will crown this great work by interposing their benign offices in favour of those Regions of the Globe, which yet continue to be desolated by this unnatural and inhuman traffic.”112 Meantime additional treaties were secured: in 1814 by royal decree Netherlands agreed to abolish the trade;113 Spain was induced by her necessities to restrain her trade to her own colonies, and to endeavor to prevent the fraudulent use of her flag by foreigners;114 and in 1815 Portugal agreed to abolish the slave-trade north of the equator.115

109. AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, FOREIGN, III. No. 214, page 151. 110. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 886, 937 (quotation). 111. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 890-1. 112. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, page 887. Russia, Austria, and Prussia returned favorable replies: BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 887-8. 113. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, page 889. 114. She desired a loan, which England made on this condition: BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 921-2. 115. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 937-9. Certain financial arrangements secured this concession. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 715 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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24th day 7th month: In South Kingstown, Rhode Island, [Bathsheba? Barshebe?] Knowles, Robert Knowles, Joseph Knowles, Jr., John Congdon, Charles Congdon, and Hannah Knowles manumitted an enslaved Mustee or Molatto Man known by the name of Cuff Otherwife Cuff Knowles.

August 13: Oreste, a dramma per musica by Domenico Cimarosa to words of Serio, was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro San Carlo of Naples.

Charles Town was incorporated as Charleston. South Carolina began to collect duties of £3 and £20 per head on the importation of slaves. “An Act for levying and collecting certain duties and imposts therein mentioned, in aid of the public revenue.” Cooper, STATUTES, IV. 576.

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August 26: America had won its struggle for liberty and it was time to get back to business as usual. In Providence, Rhode Island, John Innes Clarke and Joseph Nightingale of the firm of Clarke & Nightingale were fitting out 116 yet another negrero, the Providence2, for a voyage to the coast of Africa. Hearing of this, Friend Moses Brown visited them and received their reassurances.

MOSES BROWN Yes, they were indeed fitting out a vessel for a trading voyage to the coast of Africa, but they would be trading their cargo of New England’s triple-distilled rum brandy not for slaves but merely for ivory, for beeswax, and for gold dust. The international slave trade? –No, Heaven forbid!

Actually it was as obvious as a wart on the tip of your nose the size and color of a small cherry, what was going on here: He learned soon after that Clarke had misled him; that the ship fitting for Africa was in fact a slaver. Moses promptly sat down and wrote a lengthy plea to Clarke and Nightengale [sic], asking that they “give orders to the captain not to suffer any negroes to be brought on board.” Where his other tracts against slavery, addressed to legislators and to the public, stressed the iniquities of the trade and the ordeal of the slaves, in this letter Moses was more personal, asking his merchant friends to consider their own consciences, to save their own souls. Moses said that his own decision, years before, to engage in the trade despite “averse convictions,” had led to “the most uneasiness, and has left the greatest impression and stain upon my mind of any if not all my other conduct in life.” His remorse was especially acute, Moses wrote, when he paused to think how his conduct might appear in judgment before God. Moses felt moved, then, by “some engagement for your preservation from so great an evil as I have found the trade to be.” He implored them to reconsider, “that you may avoid the unhappy reflections which I have had.” If that was not prodding enough, Moses added an audacious dig to jar the merchants’ sensibilities close to home. One of their own bondsmen had approached him some time ago, Moses confided, seeking release from “the burden of slavery.” Moses said he counseled the slave to be patient, but he asked the merchants to consider, if a slave sought relief from their own kind treatment, how much worse must be the anguish of those slaves

116. Note well that this particular vessel named Providence, being merely a negrero like the original Katy, does not fit well into our normative sequence of the Godly warlike national vessels USS Providence1, USS Providence3, USS Providence4, and USS Providence5, which had begun with the previous Rhode Island negrero Katy. (The reasons why it does not fit well is that we like our history to be served to us Whiggish style, with noticeable progress toward perfection between the generations. –We tend not to appreciate the sort of historical tale that is, more realistically merely stupid thing after stupid thing endlessly perpetuated!) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 717 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sold to a life of toil in the tropics.

October 1: This being the year in which Moses Brown, a brother to the wealthy Providence businessmen Nicholas Brown and John Brown who engaged in the international slave trade but a convert to Quakerism, was becoming an elder in his monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and beginning his campaign to end Rhode Island’s involvement in human slavery,117 one might be tempted to leap to the presumption that

MOSES BROWN such a campaign must obviously have been a righteous Quakerly protest against lay racism, motivated by religious egalitarianism — but before we leap to such a conclusion we must consider something which happened on this particular day of the year: In the case of Abigail Franks, the young woman of mixed race who had applied for membership in the Religious Society of Friends, the Yearly Meeting decided that: The request of Chester Quarter last year respecting the application of a woman to Concord Monthly Meeting to be received into membership, and which was referred for further consideration to this or a future meeting being now revived, the subject opening with weight, it is the sense and judgment of the meeting that Concord Monthly Meeting may safely consider the application of the person on the same ground in common with other applications for admission into membership. Although these minutes testify only to “weighty and edifying deliberations and a spirit of condescension,” “a weighty exercise,” and “diverse just observations,” mentioning no doubt or objection, it is clear that there had been such — because there is on record a personal letter from a friend of the applicant who afterward commented “the mountains of opposition are leveled before her.”118

No way was this going to be easy! There was still a great spirit of racism to be overcome!

117. There were five slaves in the Brown family mansion on College Hill in Providence, and Moses Brown helped them work up the courage to steal themselves away. 118. The data elements for this series on the acceptability of persons of mixed race as Quakers are from Henry Cadbury’s “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends” in The Journal of Negro History, Volume 21 (1936), pages 151-213. 718 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 3, Tuesday: A deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends came before the Continental Congress and asked leave to present a petition. CONTINETAL CONGRESS

Although we lack the government’s side of this story, what the Quakers would take back home with them would be a story that their petition against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons of fellow- men, which is to say, in opposition at least to the international slave trade and perhaps even to human enslavement as such, had met with the transparent excuse that this body was unable to accommodate them — being not yet “vested with the powers of legislation.” W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The slave-trade was hardly touched upon in the Congress of the Confederation, except in the ordinance respecting the capture of slaves, and on the occasion of the Quaker petition against the trade, although, during the debate on the Articles of Confederation, the counting of slaves as well as of freemen in the apportionment of taxes was urged as a measure that would check further importation of Negroes. “It is our duty,” said Wilson of Pennsylvania, “to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves; but this amendment [i.e., to count two slaves as one freeman] would give the jus trium liberorum to him who would import slaves.”119 The matter was finally compromised by apportioning requisitions according to the value of land and buildings. After the Articles went into operation, an ordinance in regard to the recapture of fugitive slaves provided that, if the capture was made on the sea below high-water mark, and the Negro was not claimed, he should be freed. Matthews of South Carolina demanded the yeas and nays on this proposition, with the result that only the vote of his State was recorded against it.120 On Tuesday, October 3, 1783, a deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a petition. Leave was granted the following day,121 but no further minute appears. According to the report of the Friends, the petition was against the slave-trade; and “though the Christian rectitude of the concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons of fellow-men.”122 The only legislative activity in regard to the trade during the Confederation was taken by the individual States.123 Before 1778 Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia had by law stopped the further importation of slaves, and importation had practically ceased in all the New England and Middle States, including Maryland. In consequence of the revival of the slave-trade after the War, there was then a lull in State activity until 1786, when North Carolina laid a prohibitive duty, and South Carolina, a year later, began her series of temporary prohibitions. In 1787-1788 the New England States 119. Elliot, DEBATES (1861), I. 72-3. Cf. Article 8 of the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. 120. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, 1781, June 25; July 18; Sept. 21, 27; November 8, 13, 30; December 4. 121. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, 1782-3, pages 418-9, 425. 122. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress 2d session, page 1183. 123. Cf. above, Chapters ii., iii., iv. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 719 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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forbade the participation of their citizens in the traffic. It was this wave of legislation against the traffic which did so much to blind the nation as to the strong hold which slavery still had on the country.

November: The British vessel Peggy sailed out of Staten Island, New York for Nova Scotia, with many former American slaves, freed in recognition of their labor services to the British army and in fulfilment of manumission promises made, aboard. GOODBYE, COLUMBUS by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker, issue of 2006-05-08)

When America won its independence, what became of the slaves who fled for theirs?

What with the noise, the heat, and the danger of being forced back into slavery, sometimes it’s good to get out of the city. Such, at least, was the assessment of Harry Washington, who, in July of 1783, made his way to the salty, sunbaked docks along New York’s East River and boarded the British ship L’Abondance, bound for Nova Scotia. A clerk dutifully noted his departure in the “Book of Negroes,” a handwritten ledger listing the three thousand runaway slaves and free blacks who evacuated New York with the British that summer: “Harry Washington, 43, fine fellow. Formerly the property of General Washington; left him 7 years ago.” Born on the Gambia River around 1740, not far from where he would one day die, Harry Washington was sold into slavery sometime before 1763. Twelve years later, in November, 1775, he was grooming his master’s horses in the stables at Mount Vernon when the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to any slaves who would join His Majesty’s troops in suppressing the American rebellion. That December, George Washington, commanding the Continental Army in Cambridge, received a report that Dunmore’s proclamation had stirred the passions of his own slaves. “There is not a man of them but would leave us if they believed they could make their escape,” a cousin of Washington’s wrote from Mount Vernon, adding bitterly, “Liberty is sweet.” In August of 1776, just a month after delegates to the Continental Congress determined that in the course of human events it sometimes becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bands that have connected them with another, Harry Washington declared his own independence by running away to fight with Dunmore’s all-black British regiment, wearing a uniform embroidered with the motto “Liberty to Slaves.” Liberty may not have been as sweet as he’d hoped. For most of the war, he belonged to an unarmed company known as the Black Pioneers, who were more or less garbagemen, ordered to “Assist in Cleaning the Streets & Removing all Nuisances being thrown into the Streets.” The Black Pioneers followed British troops under the

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command of Henry Clinton as they moved from New York to Philadelphia to Charleston, and, after the fall of Charleston, back to New York again, which is how Harry Washington came to be in the city in 1783, and keen to leave before General Washington repossessed it, and him. No one knows how many former slaves had fled the United States by the end of the American Revolution. Not as many as wanted to, anyway. During the war, between eighty thousand and a hundred thousand (nearly one in five) left their homes, running from slavery to the freedom promised by the British, and betting on a British victory. They lost that bet. They died in battle, they died of disease, they ended up someplace else, they ended up back where they started, and worse off. (A fifteen-year-old girl captured while heading for Dunmore’s regiment was greeted by her master with a whipping of eighty lashes, after which he poured hot embers into her wounds.) When the British evacuated, fifteen thousand blacks went with them, though not necessarily to someplace better. From the moment that Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, in 1781, American allies reported seeing “herds of Negroes” fleeing through Virginia’s swamps of pine and cypress. A few made it to a warship that Washington, under the terms of the British surrender, had allowed to sail to New York. Some ran to the French, on the not unreasonable supposition that earning wages polishing shoes in Paris had to be better than planting tobacco in Virginia for nothing but floggings. “We gained a veritable harvest of domestics,” one surprised French officer wrote. Hundreds of Cornwallis’s soldiers and their families were captured by their former owners, including five of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves and two women owned by George Washington. Those who escaped raced to make it behind British lines before the slave catchers caught up with them. Pregnant women had to hurry, too, but not so fast as to bring on labor, lest their newborns miss their chance for a coveted “BB” certificate: “Born Free Behind British Lines.” As runaways flocked to New York, or Charleston, or Savannah, cities from which the British disembarked, their owners followed them. Boston King, an escaped slave from South Carolina, saw American slave owners “seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their beds.” A Hessian officer reported, “Almost five thousand persons have come into this city to take possession again of their former property.” (It was at Washington’s insistence that the names of those who boarded British ships were recorded in the “Book of Negroes,” so that owners might later file claims for compensation.) In Charleston, after the ships were full, British soldiers patrolled the wharves to keep back the black men, women, and children who were frantic to leave the country. A small number managed to duck under the redcoats’ raised bayonets, jump off the wharves, and swim out to the last longboats ferrying passengers to the British fleet, whose crowded ships included the aptly named Free Briton. Clinging to the sides of the longboats, they were not allowed on board, but neither would they let go; in the end, their fingers were chopped off.

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But those who did leave America also left American history. Or, rather, they have been left out of it. Theirs is not an undocumented story (the “Book of Negroes” runs to three volumes); it’s just one that has rarely been told, for a raft of interesting, if opposing, reasons. A major one is that nineteenth-century African-American abolitionists decided that they would do better by telling the story of the many blacks who fought on the patriot side during the Revolution, and had therefore earned for their race the right to freedom and full citizenship and an end to Jim Crow. “Not a few of our fathers suffered and bled” in the cause of American independence, Peter Williams, Jr., declared in a Fourth of July oration in New York in 1830. (Williams’s own father, who had joined American troops in defiance of his Loyalist master, later managed to purchase his freedom and went on to help found the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.) When the Boston abolitionist William Cooper Nell published “The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution,” in 1855, Harriet Beecher Stowe supplied an introduction: The colored race have been generally considered by their enemies, and sometimes even by their friends, as deficient in energy and courage. Their virtues have been supposed to be principally negative ones. This little collection of interesting incidents, made by a colored man, will redeem the character of the race from this misconception. Best not to mention those who fled to the British. Having abandoned the United States, they not only were of no use in redeeming “the character of the race”; they had failed to earn the “passport” to citizenship that Nell believed patriot service conferred. They were also too shockingly unfree to be included in grand nineteenth-century narratives of the Revolution as a triumph for liberty. As the historian Gary Nash observes in “The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution” (Harvard; $19.95), slavery is so entirely missing from those histories that “it would appear that the British and the Americans fought for seven years as if half a million African Americans had been magically whisked off the continent.” In 1891, the Harvard scholar John Fiske took notice of Dunmore’s proclamation in his two-volume “American Revolution,” only to dismiss it. “The relations between master and slave in Virginia were so pleasant,” Fiske wrote, that Britain’s “offer of freedom fell upon dull uninterested ears.” It wasn’t until Benjamin Quarles’s landmark “The Negro in the American Revolution,” in 1961, that what Harry Washington might have had to say about that became clear: Liberty is sweet. Many fine scholars have followed in Quarles’s wake, but it would be fair to say that their work has yet to challenge what most Americans think about the times that tried men’s souls. With no place in any national historical narrative, black refugees of the American Revolution have been set adrift. Perhaps, then, it is hardly surprising that they have been taken

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up recently not by American historians but by historians of the places they went to. Two new histories of their travels, the most ambitious yet, have just been published, one written by an Englishman, the other by an Australian. The British historian Simon Schama’s “Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution” (Ecco; $29.95) follows the exiles to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone but keeps London, and English antislavery activists, at its center; Cassandra Pybus’s “Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty” (Beacon; $26.95) follows them everywhere, including to the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay; she teaches at the University of Sydney. Schama writes like no one so much as Dickens. Here is how he introduces the founder of England’s antislavery movement, leaving his brother’s house on Mincing Lane, “neither the worst nor the best address in the City of London,” in 1765: The door opened and out stepped an angular man looking older than his thirty years. His tall but meagre frame, hollow cheeks, lantern jaw and short curled wig gave him the air of either an underpaid clerk or an unworldly cleric; the truth is that Granville Sharp was something of both. Schama’s book is divided into two parts. The first part chronicles Sharp’s career. With close colleagues, including the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson and the former slave Olaudah Equiano, Sharp led Britain’s extraordinary campaign to put an end to what he called the “Accursed Thing”: human bondage. It took years, but they succeeded. England took a dramatic step toward abolishing slavery on its soil in 1772, in a landmark case in which a man named James Somerset won his freedom. In 1807, the British Parliament outlawed the slave trade. The following year, the U.S. Congress did the same. In other words, England banned domestic slavery decades before making it illegal for British merchants and ships’ captains to buy and sell slaves. The United States did the reverse, outlawing the overseas slave trade in 1808 but not declaring an end to slavery until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, in 1863. Schama points out that news of the Somerset case, as much as Dunmore’s proclamation, is what led so many American slaves to flee to British lines during the American Revolution. They wrongly believed that the Somerset judgment’s nuanced and limited ruling meant that “as soon as any slave sets his foot on English ground he becomes free.” For one American refugee, the link between England and liberty was so close that he renamed himself British Freedom. Or consider “Yankee Doodle, or, The Negroes Farewell to America,” a minstrel song popular in London in the seventeen-eighties: Now farewell my Massa my Missey adieu More blows or more stripes will me e’er take from you... Den Hey! for old Englan’ where Liberty reigns Where Negroe no beaten or loaded with chains

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But, more often than not, the price of British freedom was poverty. “I am Thirty Nine Years of Age & am ready & willing to serve His Britinack Majesty,” Peter Anderson told a relief commission in London. “But I am realy starvin about the Streets.” At the beginning of the war, Anderson had left behind his wife and three children in Virginia to join Dunmore’s regiment. He was wounded, captured, and sentenced to be hanged. After six months as a prisoner, he escaped and foraged in the woods until he found his way back to the British Army. All this he endured only to land in London, reduced to begging. The commissioners were not sympathetic. “Instead of being sufferers of the wars,” they concluded, black veterans had benefitted from it. Penniless they might be, but they had “gained their liberty and therefore come with a very ill-grace to ask for the bounty of government.” Not everyone who evacuated with the British sailed to England. Like thousands of white Loyalists, black Loyalists were relocated to Britain’s northern colonies: mostly to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Some fifteen hundred settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, making it the largest free black community in North America. It was also a disaster. By the time Harry Washington arrived there, in August of 1783, there was nothing to eat, it was too late to plant, and the topsoil was too thin for anything much to grow. In 1789, the settlers were still starving. Boston King reported, “Many of the poor people were compelled to sell their best gowns for five pounds of flour, in order to support life. When they had parted with all their clothes, even to their blankets, several of them fell down dead in the streets, thro’ hunger. Some killed and ate their dogs and cats.” Meanwhile, in London, Granville Sharp and his colleagues on the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor began making plans to send England’s beleaguered blacks to Africa. This seems now, as it did to many people then, a preposterous plan, as if the slave trade could somehow be undone by this reverse voyage, settling freed slaves just a stone’s throw from British slave- trading forts. While the emigrants waited on board ships in Portsmouth Harbor, the African-born writer and former slave Quobna Ottobah Cugoano warned that they “had better swim to shore, if they can, to preserve their lives and liberties in Britain, than to hazard themselves at sea ... and the peril of settling at Sierra Leone.” But sail they did. In May of 1787, nearly four hundred reached Sierra Leone, where they settled at a place they named Granville Town, and elected as their governor a runaway slave and Revolutionary War veteran from Philadelphia named Richard Weaver. Within five months, plagued by disease and famine, a hundred and twenty-two of the settlers were dead. And, just as Cugoano had predicted, some were kidnapped and sold into slavery all over again. In 1790, a local ruler burned Granville Town to the ground. That was not to be the end of it. In the second part of “Rough Crossings,” Schama turns to the journey of John Clarkson (“the ‘other’ Clarkson-second born, perfectly affable, sweet-tempered Johnny”), chosen by Sharp and the elder Clarkson to head a second

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attempt to settle Sierra Leone, this time with the “poor blacks” who had settled in Nova Scotia. In January, 1792, nearly twelve hundred black men, women, and children found berths on fifteen ships in Halifax Harbor. Among them were British Freedom and Harry Washington. Before the convoy left the harbor, Clarkson rowed from ship to ship, handing to each family a certificate “indicating the plot of land ‘free of expence’ they were to be given ‘upon arrival in Africa.’” The colony’s new capital, on the Sierra Leone peninsula, was called the Province of Freedom; it did not live up to its name. There was death: along with dozens of others, Boston King’s wife, Violet, died of “putrid fever” within weeks of arrival. There was intrigue: in 1792, Clarkson took what he thought would be a brief trip to England, but the colony’s directors, dissatisfied with his failure to turn a profit from plantation crops, never sent him back. And there was avarice: despite the promise of free land, Clarkson’s successors demanded exorbitant rents. “We wance did call it Free Town,” some weary settlers wrote to Clarkson in 1795, “but since your absence we have a reason to call it a town of slavery.” By 1799, Sierra Leone’s settlers had grown so discontented, so revolutionary in their rejection of the colony’s tyrannical government, that they were, in the words of one London abolitionist, “as thorough Jacobins as if they had been trained and educated in Paris.” The next year, a group of rebels declared independence. They were crushed. Tried by a military tribunal, they were banished from Freetown to the other side of the Sierra Leone River. In their exile, they elected Harry Washington as their leader, just months after George Washington died at Mount Vernon, having freed his slaves in his will. Cassandra Pybus wants to rescue Harry Washington from the “callous indifference of history,” to call attention to what he shared with the first President of the United States: “a commitment to the transforming ideals of liberty and self- determination.” Schama is more interested in one of Harry Washington’s fellow-rebels. “Rough Crossings” begins by imagining British Freedom “scratching a living from the stingy soil” of Nova Scotia and ends with his exile outside the Province of Freedom: We can picture him surviving . . . on a few acres, or more likely finding a way to do business with the local chiefs. And if he did indeed cling to that name, he could only do so by not crossing the river to Freetown. For he must have understood that he had had his day. Over there, no one had much use for British freedom any more. Over there was something different. Over there was the British Empire. But picturing British Freedom is about all that we can do; apart from his name, we know almost nothing about him. (Because Freedom renamed himself, he can’t be traced in records like the “Book of Negroes.”) “British Freedom’s name said something important: that he was no longer negotiable property,” Schama writes. Names count-they mattered to the parents who named their

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BB-certified daughter Patience Freeman-but sometimes names aren’t enough. Among Schama’s many enviable talents as a historian and as a stylist is his ability to turn a name into a meditation on liberty and empire. But the asymmetry, borne of the asymmetry of the evidence, is not without consequences: the black expatriates in “Rough Crossings” have names and ages and imagined motives, while the lantern-jawed architect of their freedom, Granville Sharp, is rendered in all his Dickensian detail. Sharp is focussed; the settlers are a bit of a blur. Pybus uses a different lens. She pays scant attention to the likes of Granville Sharp. Instead, she trails the fugitives relentlessly, including the unlucky few who, convicted of petty crimes in London, were shipped thirteen thousand miles away, to Botany Bay, a place whose staggering deprivations made it worse than London, worse than Birchtown, worse than Granville Town, worse than the Province of Freedom. Here’s a hint: in 1790, the punishment for stealing food was increased from a thousand to two thousand lashes. What Pybus offers is a collective biography, made possible through her painstaking-breathtaking-examination of tax lists, muster rolls, property deeds, court dockets, parish records, and unwieldy uncatalogued manuscripts like the papers of General Henry Clinton. It allows her to rattle off details like this: in Botany Bay in 1788, “John Randall, the black ex-soldier from Connecticut convicted of stealing a watch chain in Manchester, was married to Esther Howard, a white London oyster seller, convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a watch.” In case it escaped your notice, that’s months of eye-straining archival research on three continents in just thirty-four words. (She later, and still more casually, throws out that Randall eventually found work as a kangaroo-hunter; that by 1792 he had received a land grant of sixty acres; and that, widowed twice, he married three times and had nine children before his death, in 1822.) Men like Randall, Pybus argues, “carried to the far corners of the globe the animating principles of the revolution that had so emphatically excluded them.” Maybe. But, at journey’s end, it’s hard to know what to make of the travails of British Freedom or Harry Washington or John Randall. To follow them is, still, to leave American history behind. The story of the British abolition movement has been elegantly told by Adam Hochschild, in “Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves” (Houghton Mifflin; $26.95). It is also at the heart of an excellent new biography by Vincent Carretta, “Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man” (University of Georgia Press; $29.95). These, like Schama’s and Pybus’s, are rich and wonderful books. All the same, with their praise of prophets and rebels and self- made men on a global quest for liberty, some readers might conclude that English abolitionists and American runaways ought to serve as honorary Founding Fathers, as though the likes of Washington and Jefferson will no longer do. (Damn those slaveowning sons of liberty!) In the midst of this, it’s easy to forget that many eighteenth- century Americans considered the British hypocritical about

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slavery. After the Somerset decision, Benjamin Franklin complained: Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity! Moreover, it was far easier for Britain, where there were few slaves to begin with, to free its slaves than it was for the American colonies, where there was considerable support for ending the slave trade, something many patriots had come to see as having been imposed on them by a tyrannical king, to Britain’s profit and not their own. In Thomas Jefferson’s mind, promising freedom to the very people whom British slave traders had enslaved constituted George III’s last, and most unforgivable, act of treachery. In a breathless paragraph at the end of his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson blamed the King for the slave trade (“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery”); for his vetoes of the colonists’ efforts to abolish it (“Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce”); and for Dunmore’s proclamation (“He is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them”). It was the Declaration’s last, longest, and angriest grievance. The other delegates could not abide it: they struck it out almost entirely. To some, it went too far; to others, it didn’t go far enough. And, as everyone knew, it was they, and not the British, who were by now most vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. (As Samuel Johnson had wryly inquired in 1775, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”) Best, then, to leave slavery out altogether. Historians have hardly known what to make of Jefferson’s rant. Nash deems it “patently false.” Schama calls it a “tour de force of disingenuousness.” But at least part of what Jefferson meant was that it was the Revolution itself that derailed the American antislavery movement. In the seventeen-sixties and early seventeen-seventies, the colonists were arguably more ardent opponents of slavery than the British were. In 1764, the patriot James Otis, Jr., declared that nothing could be said “in favor of a trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the inestimable value of liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant.” Not long after the Boston Massacre, in 1770, John Hancock’s uncle preached a sermon urging the provincial legislature of Massachusetts to support the abolition of

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slavery, warning, “When God ariseth, and when he visiteth, what shall we answer!” In April, 1775, just five days before a shot was heard round the world, Philadelphians founded the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. By no means did everyone in the colonies oppose the slave trade, and even fewer could imagine emancipation. Still, if the patriots hadn’t needed to forge a union to protect their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they might have come to some agreement on ending slavery. But uniting the colonies in their opposition to the King and Parliament meant, by 1776, putting slavery to one side. It meant editing the Declaration of Independence. It also meant that Harry Washington, and John Randall, and British Freedom, and thousands more, decided to leave. They did not fare well.

November 7: Richard Mumford disposed of a slave, Cato Mumford, whom he had inherited from his father in Providence, Rhode Island, by renting Cato out for two years of service to Colonel Joseph Nightingale, a local merchant, in consideration of $45 and the settlement of an outstanding bill, with the explicit understanding that after these two years of faithful service had been satisfactorily completed, said Cato would be granted his manumission papers. (We are allowed in this town record to see that indeed Cato and Joseph would live up to the bargain. :-)

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29th day 12th month: Friend John Congdon of South Kingstown, Rhode Island manumitted a Negro Lad Named Dick about 14 years of age and pledged that for the meanwhile he would provide for instruct and direct him. “During his Infancy,” until the age of 21, Dick the former slave was to play the role of apprentice.

1784

A Rhode Island slave, Amy Allen, petitioned the state legislature for relief from her condition of enslavement on the grounds that she had been miscategorized, from birth, as a person of color, when in actuality she was a white woman. Despite her history, she suggested, she had a natural right to freedom — merely on the basis of her appearance. The legislature “voted and resolved” that as a white person “of course she was born free” despite whatever unfortunate circumstances had led to said persistent miscategorization as a mere slave. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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In this year or in the following one, at the age of 14 or 15, Robert Voorhis was apprenticed by his owner John Voorhis to a shoemaker. His progress at this art would be found unsatisfactory, and he would be returned to the plantation at Georgetown. SLAVERY HERMITS

Connecticut began to abolish slavery. Gradually, of course, so no-one would be hurt. SLAVERY

William Wilberforce was converted to the evangelical branch of Anglican Church and became a member of the Clapham Set, a group of evangelicals centering around John Venn, the rector of Clapham Church in London. This movement was involved in social reform, and eventually he would be approached by Lady Middleton and persuaded to use his position as a MP to attempt to bring an end to the international slave trade. The Religious Society of Friends in Britain had presented petitions to Parliament in 1783 and in 1787 to end this international slave trade, and its members had been active in the formation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the dozen persons on this committee, nine were Quakers.In New Hampshire in this year,

SLAVERY

importation of slaves was being declared to be contrary to the state’s new Constitution (although it would appear that this state never did forbid participation by its citizens in the trade). W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The statistics of slavery in New Hampshire show how weak an institution it always was in that colony.124 Consequently, when the usual instructions were sent to Governor Wentworth as to the encouragement he must give to 124. The number of slaves in New Hampshire has been estimated as follows: In 1730, 200. NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLL., I. 229. “ 1767, 633. Granite Monthly, IV. 108. “ 1773, 681. Granite Monthly, IV. 108. “ 1773, 674. NEW HAMPSHIRE PROVINCE PAPERS, X. 636. “ 1775, 479. Granite Monthly, IV. 108. “ 1790, 158. Granite Monthly, IV. 108. 730 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the slave-trade, the House replied: “We have considered his Majties Instruction relating to an Impost on Negroes & Felons, to which this House answers, that there never was any duties laid on either, by this Govermt, and so few bro’t in that it would not be worth the Publick notice, so as to make an act concerning them.”125 This remained true for the whole history of the colony. Importation was never stopped by actual enactment, but was eventually declared contrary to the Constitution of 1784.126 The participation of citizens in the trade appears never to have been forbidden.

January 31, Saturday: At the Providence, Rhode Island town meeting, the vote was 108 over 58 in favor of Friend Moses Brown’s bill for the abolition of slavery.

Bernard Barton was born at Carlisle, England, a “birthright Friend.” After being educated at a Quaker school in Ipswich he would be apprenticed to a shopkeeper in Suffolk. Then he would work nearly all his life as a clerk in a bank at the coastal town of Woodbridge in Suffolk. In his free time he would create ten volumes of poetry, some of his creations becoming hymns with titles such as: • “Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace” • “Walk in the light, so shalt thou know” • “Fear not, Zion’s sons and daughters” • “Hath the invitation ended?” • “See we not beyond the portal?” • “Those who live in love shall know”

February 25: The General Assembly of Rhode Island took up Friend Moses Brown’s bill for the abolition of slavery. Not only would Rhode Island’s slaves be gradually manumitted, beginning with all children born after the 1st

MOSES BROWN of March, but also, no resident of the state might participate in the international slave trade, and every shipowner fitting out his ship for African ports would be required to post bond that slaves would be no part of his ship’s cargo. “An Act authorizing the manumission of negroes, mulattoes, and others, and for the gradual abolition of slavery.” Persons born after March, 1784, to be free. Bill framed pursuant to a petition of Quakers. COLONIAL RECORDS, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, 125. NEW HAMPSHIRE PROVINCE PAPERS, IV. 617. 126. Granite Monthly, VI. 377; Poore, FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTIONS, pages 1280-1. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 731 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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II. 503. The statute included a provision releasing slavemasters who manumitted slaves born prior to 1784 between 21 and 30 years of age (for a male) or 18 and 30 (for a female) from further obligation to financially support the freed slaves, but only when their town council was confident that the freed slave was healthy enough not to become dependent on town aid.

His brother John Brown was opposed, pointing out that if white people were not charitable enough to buy these black victims along the coast of Africa, very often the black victims of African wars would simply be offed. One Benson, a veteran of the trade, supplied the assembly with supporting anecdotes. The Middle Passage was portrayed as a rescue.

Esek Hopkins pointed out that these Quakers who opposed slavery were mere hypocrites, who readily participated in the rum industry, the sugar industry, the indigo industry, and other segments of the economy that relied heavily upon slave labor. These self-righteous posturers were as implicated as anybody else.

A more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon has come to us recently from Professor Joanne Pope Melish: The support provisions of the 1784 emancipation law allowed slave owners to escape any further financial responsibility for slaves under forty years of age whom they manumitted, which threatened to leave too many “old” slaves in their thirties to the support of the towns. A 1785 revision [“An Act repealing Part of the Act respecting the Manumission of Slaves,” RI General Assembly, October 1785], reiterated in 1798 [“An Act relative to Slaves, and to their Manumission and Support: part of the revision of the Public Laws of the State of Rhode-island 732 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and Providence Plantations,” RI General Assembly, January 1798], lowered the age of eligibility for unencumbered emancipation to thirty. Apparently some town councils, faced with rising costs for pauper support, refused to allow slave owners to manumit even eligible slaves, leading to the passage of an 1804 act providing for an appeal procedure by slave owners “aggrieved” by recalcitrant councils [“An Act in Amendment of the Act, entitled, ‘An Act relative to Slaves, and their Manumission and Support,’” RI General Assembly, March 1804]. In other words, an aging slave population that would not be replenished either by birth into slavery or by importation, which had been outlawed in Rhode Island in 1774, presented an increasing financial liability, and many slave owners sought to manumit their slaves before they would be obligated to support them in their old age. The large number of manumissions may have led the slaves themselves to interpret these provisions as the “General Emancipation” act that Brown describes. Undoubtedly most slaves saw freedom under any circumstances as good news — though not all did, as Brown wryly observes, noting that a few “declared their masters had been eating their flesh and now they were going to stick to them and suck their bones.” At the first federal census in 1790, there were 427 free people of color and 48 slaves living in the city of Providence, a city of about 6,400. By 1810, four years before William Brown was born, the number of free people of color had risen to 865, just about 8.6 percent of the population of about 10,000, and the number of slaves had fallen to 6. Yet there were still 5 slaves in Rhode Island and 1 in the city of Providence in 1840, according to the Fifth Federal Census, and it was only the new state Constitution of November 1842 that finally abolished slavery entirely in Rhode Island.

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March 1, Monday: REPORT ON GOVERNMENT FOR WESTERN TERRITORY. READ THE FULL TEXT

The Quakers were being largely held in contempt for their opposition to the recent struggle between the American colonials and the mother country. The Rhode Island General Assembly had voted down Friend Moses Brown’s bill for the abolition of the international slave trade, by a resounding margin of 2 to 1, and his bill for the abolition of slavery, by instead creating a plan for gradual nominal post nati emancipation of Rhode Island’s persons of color. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

MOSES BROWN

“Emancipation in the ... Indies....”: All the great geniuses of the British senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, Grey, Canning, ranged themselves on its side; the poet Cowper wrote for it: Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, in this country, all recorded their votes.

One nice thing that was accomplished in the General Assembly of Rhode Island was that previously, although technically it had been illicit to bring new slaves from Africa onto Rhode Island soil, the captains of the Rhode Island negreros had been being allowed to keep their cargos of new slaves from Africa on Rhode Island soil for up to one year — so long as they promised that before the end of that year this cargo would be disposed of in the West Indies. This up-to-one-year permission was removed and from this point forward, the Rhode Island negreros would not be allowed to bring any of the new slaves back home with them, even for a short period.

Under Rhode Island’s new Negro Emancipation Act, effective on this day, newborn children of slaves were to be designated as apprentices rather than as slaves, and were to be released from said indentureships when the

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females reached the age of 18 and the males reached the age of 21 (without however ever having had any of the protections awarded to white apprentices, and without their parents ever becoming themselves free). The idea was that by the time these newborns had reached an age to be released from this “apprenticeship,” they would have paid off the debt they obviously owed to the slavemaster who still owned their mother — for the lost labors of their mother while she was paying attention to her own child rather than to the needs of her master or mistress. INDENTURE When Rhode Island legislators began the gradual statutory abolition of slavery in their state in 1784, they declared in a preamble that slavery “had gradually obtained by unrestrained custom and the permission of the laws.” — William W. Wiecek, “The Statutory Law of Slavery and Race in the Thirteen Mainland Colonies of British North America” Slavery was not established by law in any American colony, but its development by custom was later recognized by legislation. — William E. Moore, “Slave Law and the Social Structure” MANUMISSION

(Separately, such a law was becoming effective also in the neighboring state of Connecticut. Rhode Island would, however, later repeal its law as “burthensome” to its white slavemasters — since the plantations of “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” were where more than half of the entire amount of New England’s black slaves were situated.)

“Emancipation in the ... Indies....”: On the other part, appeared the reign of pounds and shillings, and all manner of rage and stupidity; a resistance which drew from Mr. Huddlestone in Parliament the observation, “That a curse attended this trade even in the mode of defending it. By a certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought forward, which corrupted the very persons who used them. Every one of these was built on the narrow ground of interest, of pecuniary profit, of sordid gain, in opposition to every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion, or to that great principle which comprehended them all.”

March 26, Friday: South Carolina levied a tariff of £3 on the importation of some slaves and £5 on the importation of other slaves (Cooper, STATUTES, IV. 607). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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29th 3d month: Friend William Congdon of South Kingstown, Rhode Island manumitted his slave Negro man named Jack. He also freed toddler Negro girls named Luce and Fan (until the age of 18, the girls were to be considered as apprentices).

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April 17: In Concord, Samuel Heald’s house burnt and as a result he, his son, and his grandson would perish.127

Per volume 19 page 449 of the town property transactions of Providence, Rhode Island, in accordance with “An Act Authorizing the Manumifsion of Negroes and for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” pafsed at the previous Sefsion of the General Assembly whereby it had become Lawful to emancipate and render Slaves entitled to all Rights and Privileges as though born of Free Parents, Amarziah Waterman did on this date Emancipate manumit and abfolutely set free the five Negro slaves who had been born and Educated in his Waterman Family, to wit Eve, about 30 years of age, Phillis, about 25 years of age, and Violet, about 18 years of age, along with Eve’s not-quite-6 son Prince and not-quite-2 daughter Sarah:

gÉ tÄÄcxÉÑÄx uxyÉÜx ã{ÉÅ à{xyxcÜxáxÇàá á{tÄÄ vÉÅx \TÅtÜé|t{jtàxÜÅtÇ ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x vÉâÇàç ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{xfàtàx Éye{Éwx\áÄtÇw tÇwcÜÉä|wxÇvxcÄtÇàtà|ÉÇáfxÇw ZÜxxà|ÇzA ^ÇÉãlx à{tà ã{xÜxtá tà à{x Ätyàfxyá|ÉÇ Éy à{xZxÇxÜtÄTááxÅuÄç Éy át|wfàtàx {xÄw tà cÜÉä|wxÇvx tÇTvà ãtá Ñtyáxw |ÇàÉ t_tã |Çà|àÄxw ÂTÇTvàTâà{ÉÜ|é|Çz à{x`tÇâÅ|yá|ÉÇ ÉyaxzÜÉxá tÇw yÉÜ à{xZÜtwâtÄTuÉÄ|à|ÉÇ ÉyfÄtäxÜçÊ ã{xÜxuç |à ãtáXÇtvàxw tÇwWxvÄtÜxw à{tà |à á{tÄÄ tÇw Åtç ux_tãyâÄ yÉÜ tÇç ÑxÜyÉÇ uç\ÇyàÜâÅxÇà |ÇjÜ|à|Çz âÇwxÜ {|á ÉÜ[xÜ[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ tÇw wâàç tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw àÉ xÅtÇv| Ñtàx tÇwfxà yÜxx {|á ÉÜ {xÜfÄtäx ã{É á{tÄÄ à{xÜxâÑÉÇ ux xÇà|àÄxw àÉ tÄÄ à{xe|z{àá tÇwcÜ|ä|Äxzxá tá à{Éâz{ uÉÜÇ ÉyYÜxxctÜxÇàáA TÇwj{xÜxtá\ {täx {tw uÉÜÇ tÇwXwâvtàxw |Ç ÅçYtÅ|Äç à{xg{ÜxxaxzÜÉjÉÅxÇ tÇw à{xaxzÜÉUÉç tÇwaxzÜÉZ|ÜÄ {xÜxtyàxÜ ÇtÅxw tÇw ux|Çz vÉÇä|Çvxwext@ áÉÇtuÄxÇxyá tÇw]âáà|vx Éy à{xXÅtÇv|Ñtà|ÉÇq tÇw yÜxxwÉÅÉy à{xaxzÜÉxá tá tctÜà Éy à{x[âÅtÇfÑxv|xá tÇw |Çà|àÄxw àÉ_|yx _|uxÜàç tÇw à{x ÑâÜyâ|à Éy[tÑÑ|Çxáá |Ç à{xTvÖâ|á|à|ÉÇ ÉycÜÉÑxÜàç Éy à{x|Ü ÉãÇ tÇw |Ç {ÉÑxá tÇwXåÑxvàtà|ÉÇ à{tà tá à{xç tÜx tÄÄ ãxÄÄ |Ç[xtÄà{ tÇw |Ç à{xcÜ|Åx Éy_|yx à{xç ã|ÄÄ uç à{x|Ü ÑÜâwxÇà tÇwi|ÜàâÉâáVÉÇwâvà fxvâÜx à{xZÉÉwbÑ|Ç|ÉÇ tÇw tÑÑÜÉutà|ÉÇ Éy à{Éyx ã|à{ ã{ÉÅ à{xç Åtç_|äx tÇw à{xÜxuç ux xÇtuÄxw àÉ Éuàt|Ç[tÑÑ|Çxyá yÜÉÅ à{x|ÜYÜxxwÉÅ tÇw tVÉÅyÉÜàtuÄxfâuy|yàtÇvx |Ç à{xjÉÜÄw tÇw |ÇXåÑxvàtà|ÉÇ à{tà `çáxÄy tÇw Åç[x|Üá ã|ÄÄ uxW|yv{tÜzxw Éy tÄÄXåÑxÇvxá yÉÜ à{x|Ü yâàâÜxfâÑÑÉÜà tÇw`t|Çàt|ÇtÇvx \ Wb à{xÜxyÉÜx uç à{xyxcÜxyxÇàá yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç[x|ÜáXåxvâàÉÜ tÇwTwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá tÇw ã|à{ à{xVÉÇyxÇà tÇw TÑÑÜÉutà|ÉÇ Éy à{xgÉãÇVÉâÇv|Ä Éy át|wcÜÉä|wxÇvx táXÇàxÜxw tÇwexvÉÜwxw |Ç à{x]ÉâÜÇtÄá Éy à{x|ÜcÜÉvxxw|Çz ÉÇ à{xY|yà{Wtç ÉyTÑÜ|Ä\ÇyàtÇàXÅtÇv|Ñtàx`tÇâÅ|à tÇw tuyÉÄâàxÄç áxà yÜxx à{x át|wg{ÜxxaxzÜÉ jÉÅxÇ tÇwaxzÜÉUÉç tÇwaxzÜÉZ|ÜÄi|éXäx tuÉâàg{|ÜàçlxtÜá ÉyTzxc{|ÄÄ|á tuÉâàgãxÇàç Y|äxlxtÜá ÉyTzxi|ÉÄxà tuÉâàX|z{àxxÇlxtÜá ÉyTzx tÇw à{x át|waxzÜÉUÉç vtÄÄxwcÜ|Çvx áÉÇ Éy à{x át|wXäxf|ålxtÜá ÉÄw |Ç]âÇx Çxåà à{xf|åà{Wtç tÇw à{x át|waxzÜÉZ|ÜÄ vtÄÄxwftÜt{ Wtâz{àxÜ Éy át|wXäx tzxwgãÉlxtÜá à{xEKà{Wtç Éy]âÄç Çxåà àÉ ux {xÇvxyÉÜà{ tá xÇà|ÜxÄç tÇw át|wTÅtÜé|t{jtàxÜÅtÇ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç[tÇw tÇwfxtÄ à{|áY|yàxxÇà{Wtç ÉyTÑÜ|Ä |Ç à{x lxtÜ Éy ÉâÜ_beW bÇxg{ÉâytÇwfxäxÇ[âÇwÜxw tÇwX|z{àçYÉâÜ f|zÇxw fxtÄxw tÇw WxÄ|äxÜxw |Ç ÑÜxyxÇvvx Éy âá g{xjÉÜwáTÇwaxzÜÉZ|ÜÄ ux|Çz y|Üyàgã|vx |ÇàxÜÄ|Çxw {|á ]tÅxáZÜxxÇx TÅtÜé|t{jtàxÜÅtÇ ÅtÜ~ g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ } atà{tÇjtàxÜÅtÇ cÜÉä|wxÇvx çx tàcÜÉä|wxÇvxTÑÜ|ÄDJà{?DJKGAg{xÇ`ÜATÅtÜé|t{jtàxÜxÅtÇ tuÉäx ÇtÅxw ÑxÜyÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw tÇw tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw à{x uxyÉÜx ãÜ|àà|Çz\ÇyàÜâÅxÇà àÉ ux {|á yÜxx tÇwiÉÄâÇàtÜçTvà tÇwWxxw UxyÉÜx `x g{xÉwÉÜx YÉáàxÜ ]âáA cxtvx exvÉÜwxw à{|áEHà{Wtç Éy`tçTWDJKG [squiggle]g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜgÉãÇVÄxÜ~}

127. Samuel Heald, born May 4, 1705 at Concord to John and Mary (Chandler) Heald, died April 18, 1785 at Concord. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 737 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 25: Per volume 19, page 447 of the town property transactions of Providence, Rhode Island, from this Day and forever after Plato a Negro Man was set Free and at Liberty from Joseph Mcclellan and all under him. YtÄÅÉâà{`tçIà{ADJJJ g{xáx ÅtçVxÜà|yç à{tàcÄtàÉ ÅçaxzÜÉ`tÇ |áYÜxx tÇw tà_|uxÜàç yÜÉÅ`x tÇw tÄÄ âÇwxÜ`x yÜÉÅ à{|áWtç tÇw yÉÜxäxÜ tyàxÜAAAA j|àÇxyá Åç[tÇw exvÉÜwxw à{|áEHà{Wtç Éy`tçTWDJKG ‰ ]ÉáxÑ{ `vvÄxÄÄtÇA ‰ [squiggle]g{xÉwÉÜx YÉáàxÜ gÉãÇVÄxÜ~ }

MANUMISSION SLAVERY

October 13: In Providence, Rhode Island, a servant named Cato or Caesar was determined on the basis of faithful service to be worthy to be manumitted.

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j|àÇxyáxáXÇÉá[|àv{vÉv~ ((L.S.)) j|ÄÄ|tÅcÄâÅu} `tÜçfà|Äxá exvÉÜwxw`tçDEà{TWDJKI } g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~ SLAVERY

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December 18: At Providence, Rhode Island, a black man named Prince who was defirous of obtaining his freedom was purchafed for what was considered a large sum of Money from Jabez Bowen, and his Liberty and Freedom was Reftored to him in the fullest and moft ample Manner, on condition that he go to Georgia and faithfully be a servant there for the following Three full Years: fàtàx Éye{Éwx\áÄtÇw9vj{xÜxtácÜ|Çvx t uÄtv~ ÅtÇ |á wxy|ÜÉâá Éy Éuàt|Ç|Çz {|á yÜxxwÉÅ tÇw {x ux|Çz ÑâÜv{tyxw yÉÜ t ÄtÜzx áâÅ Éy`ÉÇxç uç ÅçUÜÉà{xÜbÄ|äxÜUÉãxÇ tÇw uç {|Å áÉÄw àÉ`x tÇw\ ux|Çz ã|ÄÄ|Çz àÉ zÜtÇà {|Å ã{tà {x wxy|ÜxáWÉ {xÜxuçexyàÉÜx àÉ {|Å {|á_|uxÜàç tÇwYÜxxwÉÅ |Ç à{x yâÄÄxáà tÇw ÅÉyà tÅÑÄx`tÇÇxÜ ÉÇ vÉÇw|à|ÉÇ à{tà {x zÉxá àÉZxÉÜz|t tÇw yt|à{yâÄÄç áxÜäxá Åç át|wUÜÉà{xÜbÄ|äxÜUÉãxÇ tá t áxÜätÇà yÉÜ à{x áÑtvx Éyg{Üxx yâÄÄlxtÜá uxz|ÇÇ|Çz à{x át|wgxÜÅ tà à{xg|Åx {x á{tÄÄ tÜÜ|äx tà à{x át|wbÄ|äxÜ |Ç ZxÉÜz|t [x à{x át|wbÄ|äxÜUÉãxÇ àÉ y|Çw {|Å zÉÉw tÇw áâyy|v|xÇài|vàâtÄá tÇwVÄÉtà{|Çz yÉÜ à{x át|wgxÜÅ tÇw |Ç vtyx à{x át|wbÄ|äxÜUÉãxÇ á{ÉâÄwWxvxtyx uxyÉÜx à{xgxÜÅ xåÑ|Üxá à{xÇ à{x át|wcÜ|Çvx |á àÉexàâÜÇ àÉ`x àÉ áxÜäx à{xexÅt|ÇwxÜ Éy à{x át|wgxÜÅ Éyg{ÜxxlxtÜá\Çj|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç[tÇw tÇw tyy|åxw Åç áxtÄ àÉWâÑÄ|vtàx Éy à{|á\ÇwxÇàâÜx à{|áDKà{ Éy WxvxÅuxÜTWDJKG f|zÇxw fxtÄxw |Ç ÑÜxyxÇvx Éy âá

ftÜt{ UÉãxÇ ]tuxéUÉãxÇ bÄ|äxÜ]tuxé UÉãxÇ UÉãxÇ ]âÇ ]âÇ } cÜÉä|wxÇvx çxcxÜyÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw]tuxéUÉãxÇXáÖ à{x á|zÇxÜ àÉ à{x tuÉäx\ÇyàÜâÅxÇà tÇw tv~ÇÉãÄxwzx à{x átÅx àÉ ux {|á yÜxx Tvà tÇw Wxxw à{x Wtç tÇw lxtÜ tuÉäx ãÜ|ààxÇ UxyÉÜx ftÅV{tvx ]âáA cxtvx exvÉÜwxw à{|á fxvÉÇw Wtç Éy YxuÜâtÜç TW DJKH 9v g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~ } SLAVERY MANUMISSION

1785

In 1774 there had been sixteen native Americans still alive in Bristol, Rhode Island. By this point the group had dwindled to two survivors.

During this year, according to the 1822 revision to the PUBLIC LAWS OF RHODE ISLAND, page 441, the legislature of Rhode Island enacted some sort of restrictive measure either in regard to slavery or in regard to the international slave trade. Unfortunately, neither the title nor the text of this enactment have so far been located. What we do know is that in this year William Ellery joined the abolitionist movement. This son of an international slave trader would become one of the leading advocates of the abolition of slavery.

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John Jay and Alexander Hamilton organized the New-York Manumission Society.

Jean-Antoine Houdon, commissioned by the legislature to execute a statue of George Washington, arrived at Mount Vernon; he made a life mask and painstaking measurements of Washington.

As you inspect the above piece of plaster, bear in mind please that it was probably in about this year that the mulatto slave West Ford was being born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Some speculate that he was the son of Washington with Venus, a daughter of a slave who had been one of George’s childhood playmates. The story is that during a visit by Washington to the plantation on which Venus was a slave during the previous year, this girl had been asked to serve as his bed companion. (Refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/ home.htm.)

Late in this year, Elkanah Watson purchasing a plantation in Edenton, North Carolina and four slaves, and engaged for a 2d time in a commercial enterprise with a merchant of Nantes, François Cossoul, who resided on the island of Haiti.

We who are accustomed to the present “one-drop rule” convention, whereby anyone with any black ancestry at all is categorized as “a black,” need to remind ourselves that in colonial Virginia the conventional distinction between black and white had been considered to be 1/8th black ancestry. In this year that social and legal convention was altered from 1/8th to 1/4th, which meant that in the state of Virginia in this year there would have been some enslaved individuals who were to be considered white, and over and above that there would have been free white citizens who nevertheless had noticeable African heritage. After Nat Turner’s insurrection, there would be legislation in Virginia to allow “white” citizens who had some African ancestry, if they were free (which wasn’t necessarily the case, as it was quite all right under Virginia statutes for a white person to be a slave of someone else), to obtain a document from a county court, certifying to the fact that whatever they looked like they were “not a negro.” By Thomas Jefferson’s own explication of this convention, it appears ambiguous whether he considered his sex slave Sally Hemings to be black or to be white, although, black or white, she would be nevertheless for life his slave (he would not release her from slavery, although he did honor the bargain he had made with her that some of their children would in his will be granted manumission documents).“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a RACISM

sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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April 12: Along the way, as the New York legislature dealt with such important matters as the granting of “a bounty on hemp to be raised within this State,” they also laid out an agenda for gradual elimination of the local slavery system, through discontinuance of supply and emancipation of the remaining slaves: “ ... And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any negro or other person to be imported or brought into this State from any of the United States or from any other place or country after the first day of June next, shall be sold as a slave or slaves within this State, the seller or his or her factor or agent, shall be deemed guilty of a public offence, and shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds lawful money of New York, to be recovered by any person,” etc. “And be it further enacted ... That every such person imported or brought into this State and sold contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act shall be freed.” LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785- 88 (edition of 1886), pages 120-21. MANUMISSION INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The early ordinances of the Dutch, laying duties, generally of ten per cent, on slaves, probably proved burdensome to the trade, although this was not intentional.128 The Biblical prohibition of slavery and the slave-trade, copied from New England codes into the Duke of York’s Laws, had no practical application,129 and the trade continued to be encouraged in the governors’ instructions. In 1709 a duty of £3 was laid on Negroes from elsewhere than Africa.130 This was aimed at West India slaves, and was prohibitive. By 1716 the duty on all slaves was £1 12½s., which was probably a mere revenue figure.131 In 1728 a duty of 40s. was laid, to be continued until 1737.132 It proved restrictive, however, and on the “humble petition of the Merchants and Traders of the City of Bristol” was disallowed in 1735, as “greatly prejudicial to the Trade and Navigation of this Kingdom.”133 Governor Cosby was also reminded that no duties on slaves payable by the importer were to be laid. Later, in 1753, the 40s. duty was restored, but under the increased trade of those days was not felt.134 No further restrictions seem to have been 128. O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1638-74, pages 31, 348, etc. The colonists themselves were encouraged to trade, but the terms were not favorable enough: DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, I. 246; LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, pages 81-2, note, 127. The colonists declared “that they are inclined to a foreign Trade, and especially to the Coast of Africa, ... in order to fetch thence Slaves”: O’Callaghan, VOYAGES OF THE SLAVERS, etc., page 172. 129. CHARTER TO WILLIAM PENN, etc. (1879), page 12. First published on Long Island in 1664. Possibly Negro slaves were explicitly excepted. Cf. MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY, XI. 411, and N.Y. HIST. SOC. COLL., I. 322. 130. ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, 1691-1718, pages 97, 125, 134; DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 178, 185, 293. 131. The Assembly attempted to raise the slave duty in 1711, but the Council objected (DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 292 ff.), although, as it seems, not on account of the slave duty in particular. Another act was passed between 1711 and 1716, but its contents are not known (cf. title of the Act of 1716). For the Act of 1716, see ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, 1691-1718, page 224. 132. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 37, 38. 133. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 32-4. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 741 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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attempted until 1785, when the sale of slaves in the State was forbidden.135 The chief element of restriction in this colony appears to have been the shrewd business sense of the traders, who never flooded the slave market, but kept a supply sufficient for the slowly growing demand. Between 1701 and 1726 only about 2,375 slaves were imported, and in 1774 the total slave population amounted to 21,149.136 No restriction was ever put by New York on participation in the trade outside the colony, and in spite of national laws New York merchants continued to be engaged in this traffic even down to the Civil War.137 Vermont, who withdrew from New York in 1777, in her first Constitution138 declared slavery illegal, and in 1786 stopped by law the sale and transportation of slaves within her boundaries.139

September 28: David Walker was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, as luck would have it to a slave father and a free mother rather than vice versa.140 His innate hatred to slavery was very early developed. When yet a boy, he declared that the slaveholding South was not the place for him. His soul became so indignant at the wrongs which his father and his kindred bore, that he determined to find some portion of his country where he would see less to harrow up his soul. Said he, “If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long. As true as God reigns, I will be avenged for the sorrow which my people have suffered. This is not the place for me — no, no. I must leave this part of the country. It will be a great trial for me to live on the same soil where so many men are in slavery; certainly I cannot remain where I must hear their

134. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VII. 907. This act was annually renewed. The slave duty remained a chief source of revenue down to 1774. Cf. REPORT OF GOVERNOR TRYON, in DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VIII. 452. 135. LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785-88 (ed. 1886), ch. 68, page 121. Substantially the same act reappears in the revision of the laws of 1788: LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785-88 (ed. 1886), ch. 40, page 676. 136. The slave population of New York has been estimated as follows: — In 1698, 2,170. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, IV. 420. In 1703, 2,258. N.Y. COL. MSS., XLVIII.; cited in Hough, N.Y. CENSUS, 1855, Introd. In 1712, 2,425. N.Y. CENSUS, 1855, LVII., LIX. (a partial census). In 1723, 6,171. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 702. In 1731, 7,743. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, V. 929. In 1737, 8,941. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 133. In 1746, 9,107. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 392. In 1749, 10,692. DOC. REL. COL. HIST. NEW YORK, VI. 550. In 1756, 13,548. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 123; cited in Hough, as above. In 1771, 19,863. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 144; cited in Hough, as above. In 1774, 21,149. LONDON DOC., XLIV. 144; cited in Hough, as above. In 1786, 18,889. DEEDS IN OFFICE SEC. OF STATE, XXII. 35. Total number of Africans imported from 1701 to 1726, 2,375, of whom 802 were from Africa: O’Callaghan, DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I. 482. 137. Cf. below, Chapter XI.

138. VERMONT STATE PAPERS, 1779-86, page 244. The return of sixteen slaves in Vermont, by the first census, was an error: NEW ENGLAND RECORD, XXIX. 249. 139. VERMONT STATE PAPERS, page 505. 140. By North Carolina law, in all cases of slavery, in order most effectively to protect white slavemasters who provided their own stud service, the child’s status was the status of the mother regardless of the status of the father. In this situation little David Walker was born free and it was legally possible for him to obtain education. 742 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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chains continually, and where I must encounter the insults of their hypocritical enslaver. Go, I must.” The youthful Walker embraced his mother, and received a mother’s blessings, and turned his back upon North Carolina. His father died a few months before his birth; and it is a remarkable coincidence, that the son of the subject of this Memoir, was a posthumous child. After leaving home, David Walker travelled rapidly towards the North, shaking off the dust of his feet, and breathing curses upon the system of human slavery, America’s darling institution. As might be expected, he met with trials during his journey; and at last he reached Boston, Mass., where he took up his permanent residence. There he applied himself to study, and soon learned to read and write, in order that he might contribute something to the cause of humanity. Mr. Walker, like most of reformers, was a poor man — he lived poor, and died poor. In 1827 be entered into the clothing business in Brattle street, in which he prospered; and had it not been for his great liberality and hospitality, he would have become wealthy. In 1828, he married Miss Eliza ————. He was emphatically a self- made man, and he spent all his leisure moments in the cultivation of his mind. Before the Anti-Slavery Reformation had assumed a form, he was ardently engaged in the work. His hands were always open to contribute to the wants of the fugitive. His house was the shelter and the home of the poor and needy. Mr. Walker is known principally by his “Appeal,” but it was in his private walks, and by his unceasing labors in the cause of freedom, that he has made his memory sacred. With an overflowing heart, he published his “Appeal” in 1829. This little book produced more commotion among slaveholders than any volume of its size that was ever issued from an American press. They saw that it was a bold attack upon their idolatry, and that too by a black man who once lived among them. It was merely a smooth stone which this David took up, yet it terrified a host of Goliaths. When the fame of this book reached the South, the poor, cowardly, pusillanimous tyrants, grew pale behind their cotton bags, and armed themselves to the teeth. They set watches to look after their happy and contented slaves. The Governor of Georgia wrote to the Hon. Harrison Grey Otis, the Mayor of Boston, requesting him to suppress the Appeal. His Honor replied to the Southern Censor, that he had no power nor disposition to hinder Mr. Walker from pursuing a lawful course in the utterance of his thoughts. A company of Georgia men then bound themselves by an oath, that they would eat as little as possible until they had killed the youthful author. They also offered a reward of a thousand dollars for his head, and ten times as much for the live Walker. His consort, with the solicitude of an affectionate wife, together with some friends, advised him to go to Canada, lest he should be abducted. Walker said that he had nothing to fear from such a pack of coward blood-hounds; but if he did go, he would hurl back such thunder across the great lakes, that would cause them to tremble in their strong holds. Said he, “I will stand my ground. Somebody must die in this cause. I may be doomed to the stake and the fire,

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or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation.” He did not leave the country, but was soon laid in the grave. It was the opinion of many that he was hurried out of life by the means of poison, but whether this was the case or not, the writer is not prepared to affirm. He had many enemies, and not a few were his brethren whose cause he espoused. They said that he went too far, and was making trouble. So the Jews spoke of Moses. They valued the flesh-pots of Egypt more than the milk and honey of Canaan. He died 1830 in Bridge street, at the hopeful and enthusiastic age of 34 years. His ruling passion blazed up in the hour of death, and threw an indescribable grandeur over the last dark scene. The heroic young man passed away without a struggle, and a few weeping friends

“Saw in death his eyelids close, Calmly, as to a night’s repose, Like flowers at set of sun.”

The personal appearance of Mr. Walker was prepossessing, being six feet in height, slender and well proportioned. His hair was loose, and his complexion was dark. His son, the only child he left, is now 18 years of age, and is said to resemble his father; he now resides at Charlestown, Mass., with his mother, Mrs. Dewson. Mr. Walker was a faithful member of the Methodist Church at Boston, whose pastor is the venerable father Snowden.141

141. Preface to David Walker’s 1829 AN APPEAL … TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD..., the 2d and 3d 1830 printings of which were republished in 1848 in New-York by the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet. 744 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 31: A paid advertisement in The Connecticut Courant averred that Thomas Denny’s Negro Man JACK, aged about 24 years, described as bearing a large gash or cross on each cheek, and as having part of his fcalp taken off the back part of his head, and as unable to ftraiten his right little finger, had run away from his conditions of service. Whoever assists Mr. Denny of Wethersfield, Connecticut in recovering his human property would have all neceffary charges paid and in addition be handfomely rewarded.

Did Man Jack succeed in freeing himself? Or, did some righteous New England citizen enable Mr. Denny to recover the use of his human property? SLAVERY RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

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1786

In about this year Moses Grandy was born a slave in Camden County, North Carolina.

“Whereas the importation of slaves into this state is productive of evil consequences, and highly impolitic,” North Carolina enacted a prohibitive duty on the importation of slaves either by land or water. § 6. Slaves introduced from States which have passed emancipation acts are to be returned in three months; if not, a bond of £50 is to be forfeited, and a fine of £100 imposed. § 8. Act to take effect next Feb. 1; repealed by Act of 1790, ch. 18. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY,

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I. 413, 492. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In early times there were few slaves in North Carolina;142 this fact, together with the troubled and turbulent state of affairs during the early colonial period, did not necessitate the adoption of any settled policy toward slavery or the slave-trade. Later the slave-trade to the colony increased; but there is no evidence of any effort to restrict or in any way regulate it before 1786, when it was declared that “the importation of slaves into this State is productive of evil consequences and highly impolitic,”143 and a prohibitive duty was laid on them.

Richard Allen moved back to Philadelphia.

AN ESSAY ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, PARTICULARLY THE AFRICAN, TRANSLATED FROM A LATIN DISSERTATION, WHICH WAS HONOURED WITH THE FIRST PRIZE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, FOR THE YEAR 1785, WITH ADDITIONS; [One line from Livy] London: reprinted by Joseph Crukshank, in Market-Street, between Second and Third-Streets, Philadelphia, MDCCLXXXVI.

142. Cf. N.C. COL. REC., IV. 172. 143. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, I. 413, 492. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 747 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The English founded Penang, later to become a major eastern pepper port. SPICE

Franz Karl Achard of Berlin, in growing different varieties of beets, discovered a variety that seemed especially sweet. He went “Yummm...” and then “Hmmm....” It would turn out that the sugar content of this root might by careful selective breeding be raised from 8% to more than 20%. Might it be possible for civilized people to obtain the sweetness they felt they needed in their lives from sugar beets rather than from subtropical sugar cane grown by the application of human slavery? Achard would develop the “White Silesian,” ancestor to today’s varieties of sugar beet.

SWEETS WITHOUT SLAVERY

A Virginia bill drafted by Thomas Jefferson revised colonial marriage law by omitting reference to ecclesiastical authority but reenacting the following: “A marriage between a person of free condition and a slave, or between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a mulatto, shall be null.”

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

— Dwight David Eisenhower

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Sally Hemings, “Dashing Sally” as she was called in the Monticello plantation house, “mighty near white,” old enough to know better but too young to resist, had been part of the wedding dowry that her white, free half- sister Martha Wayles had brought with her when she got married with Thomas Jefferson. She accompanied Thomas’s two white daughters by her half-sister, her cousins, to visit her slavemaster in Gay Paree. She was officially categorized as the “nurse” of one of these white recognized daughters. She was thirteen or fourteen years of age and her 6 foot 2 inch white slavemaster / lover was thirty years her senior.

Meanwhile, back home in America, the Virginia bill, which had been drafted by this Jefferson, revised colonial marriage law, omitting reference to ecclesiastical authority but reenacting the following:

A marriage between a person of free condition and a slave, or between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a mulatto, shall be null.

Obviously, whatever erotics developed between this white master and his mulatto slave girl, by definition sexually available to him — marriage wasn’t ever gonna be one of the possibilities! Our guy had already seen to that, firmly closing the door upon any such temptation to decency.

This was the year of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. It is to be noted that not only would the Commonwealth of Virginia not live up to this ideal, but even Jefferson himself would not live up to this ideal. This Statute provided for a strict separation of church and state, by declaring that “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.” It denounced as a violation of “natural right” any measure that linked public office to religious profession or that diminished or enlarged people’s civil capacities because of their religious beliefs. [T]o compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing of him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness.... Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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March 2: New Jersey enacted “An Act to prevent the Importation of Slaves into the State of New Jersey, and to authorize the Manumission of them under certain Restrictions, and to prevent the Abuse of Slaves,” providing for regular manumission of slaves (P.L. 1786, chap. 119, p. 239). The law allowed for the freeing of any slave between the ages of 21 and 35 so long as he or she was brought before two overseers of the poor for the township of the slaveowner’s residence and two justices of the peace of that county, and determined by them to be of sound mind and capable of obtaining his or her own support. The law prescribed the format of the manumission document as it was to be recorded by the county clerk. “Whereas the Principles of Justice and Humanity require that the barbarous Custom of bringing the unoffending African from his native Country and Connections into a State of Slavery ought to be discountenanced, and as soon as possible prevented; and sound Policy also requires, in order to afford ample Support to such of the Community as depend upon their Labour for their daily Subsistence, that the Importation of Slaves into this State from any other State or Country whatsoever, ought to be prohibited under certain Restrictions; and that such as are under Servitude in the State ought to be protected by Law from those Exercises of Wanton Cruelty too often practiced upon them; and that every unnecessary Obstruction in the Way of freeing Slaves should be removed; therefore, § 1. “Be it Enacted by the Council and General Assembly of this State, and it is hereby Enacted by the Authority of the same, That from and after the Publication of this Act, it shall not be lawful for any Person or Persons whatsoever to bring into this State, either for Sale or for Servitude, any Negro Slave brought from Africa since the Year Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-six; and every Person offending by bringing into this State any such Negro Slave shall, for each Slave, forfeit and Pay the Sum of Fifty Pounds, to be sued for and recovered with Costs by the Collector of the Township into which such Slave shall be brought, to be applied when recovered to the Use of the State. § 2. “And be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That if any Person shall either bring or procure to be brought into this State, any Negro or Mulatto Slave, who shall not have been born in or brought from Africa since the Year above mentioned, and either sell or buy, or cause such Negro or Mulatto Slave to be sold or remain in this State, for the Space of six Months, every such Person so bringing or procuring to be brought or selling or purchasing such Slave, not born in or brought from Africa since the Year aforesaid, shall for every such Slave, forfeit and pay the Sum of Twenty Pounds, to be sued for and recovered with Costs by the Collector of the Township into which such Slave shall be brought or remain after the Time limited for that Purpose, the Forfeiture to be applied to the Use of the State as aforesaid. § 3. “Provided always, and be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That Nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to prevent any Person who shall remove into the State, to take a settled Residence here, from bringing all his or her Slaves

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without incurring the Penalties aforesaid, excepting such Slaves as shall have been brought from Africa since the Year first above mentioned, or to prevent any Foreigners or others having only a temporary Residence in this State, for the Purpose of transacting any particular Business, or on their Travels, from bringing and employing such Slaves as Servants, during the Time of his or her Stay here, provided such Slaves shall not be sold or disposed of in this State.” ACTS OF THE TENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY (Tower Collection of Laws). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Although the freeholders of West New Jersey declared, in 1676, that “all and every Person and Persons Inhabiting the said Province, shall, as far as in us lies, be free from Oppression and Slavery,”144 yet Negro slaves are early found in the colony.145 The first restrictive measure was passed, after considerable friction between the Council and the House, in 1713; it laid a duty of £10, currency.146 Governor Hunter explained to the Board of Trade that the bill was “calculated to Encourage the Importation of white Servants for the better Peopeling that Country.”147 How long this act continued does not appear; probably, not long. No further legislation was enacted until 1762 or 1763, when a prohibitive duty was laid on account of “the inconvenience the Province is exposed to in lying open to the free importation of Negros, when the Provinces on each side have laid duties on them.”148 The Board of Trade declared that while they did not object to “the Policy of imposing a reasonable duty,” they could not assent to this, and the act was disallowed.149 The Act of 1769 evaded the technical objection of the Board of Trade, and laid a duty of £15 on the first purchasers of Negroes, because, as the act declared, “Duties on the Importation of Negroes in several of the neighbouring Colonies hath, on Experience, been found beneficial in the Introduction of sober, industrious Foreigners.”150 In 1774 a bill which, according to the report of the Council to Governor Morris, “plainly intended an entire Prohibition of all Slaves being imported from foreign Parts,” was thrown out by the Council.151 Importation was finally prohibited in 1786.152

144. Leaming and Spicer, GRANTS, CONCESSIONS, etc., page 398. Probably this did not refer to Negroes at all. 145. Cf. Vincent, HISTORY OF DELAWARE, I. 159, 381. 146. LAWS AND ACTS OF NEW JERSEY, 1703-17 (ed. 1717), page 43. 147. N.J. ARCHIVES, IV. 196. There was much difficulty in passing the bill: N.J. ARCHIVES, XIII. 516-41. 148. N.J. ARCHIVES, IX. 345-6. The exact provisions of the act I have not found. 149. N.J. ARCHIVES, IX. 383, 447, 458. Chiefly because the duty was laid on the importer. 150. Allinson, ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, pages 315-6. 151. N.J. ARCHIVES, VI. 222. 152. ACTS OF THE 10TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY, May 2, 1786. There are two estimates of the number of slaves in this colony: — In 1738, 3,981. AMERICAN ANNALS, II. 127. In 1754, 4,606. AMERICAN ANNALS, II. 143. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 751 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 13: Per Volume 22, page 109 of the records of Providence, Rhode Island, on this day Jonathan Arnold of Smithfield manumitted a Servant in his Family, a Negro girl Named Lilly, who had arrived to the age of Twenty Five years or thereabouts:

gÉ tÄÄ cxÉÑÄx àÉ ã{ÉÅ à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá á{tÄÄ VÉÅx ^ÇÉã lX à{tà \ ]ÉÇtà{tÇ TÜÇÉÄw Éy fÅ|à{y|xÄw |Ç à{x VÉâÇàç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx tÇw fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw lxÉÅtÇ WÉ {xÜxuç `tÇâÅ|à áxà YÜxx tÇw W|áv{tÜzx t axzÜÉ z|ÜÄ atÅxw _|ÄÄç {xÜxàÉyÉÜx t fxÜätÇà |Ç Åç YtÅ|Äç á{x ux|Çz uç à{|á à|Åx tÜÜ|äxw àÉ à{x tzx Éy gãxÇàç Y|äx çxtÜá ÉÜ à{xÜxtuÉâàá‰‰[xÜxuç exÄ|ÇÖâ|á{|Çz yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç [x|Üá XåxvâàÉÜá tÇw TwÅ|Ç|áàÜtàÉÜá tÄÄ VÄt|Åá ÉÇ WxÅtÇw âÑÉÇ {xÜ ÉÜ {xÜ fxÜä|vxá |Ç yâàâÜxA \Ç gxáà|ÅÉÇç ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç atÅx tÇw tyy|åxw Åç fxtÄ à{|á DFà{ Wtç Éy `tÜv{ |Ç à{x lxtÜ Éy ÉâÜ _beW DJKIA \Ç cÜxáxÇvx Éy? jxÄvÉÅx TÜÇÉÄw } ]ÉÇtà{tÇ TÜÇÉÄw ((L.S.)) exvÉÜwxwe|v{ jtÜw à{|áDKà{Wtç Éy aÉäxÅuxÜTWADJKI‰ } g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜgÉãÇVÄxÜ~

SLAVERY

May 8: Thomas Hancock, founded British rubber industry. May 11: Henry Marie Brackenridge was born, a son of Judge Hugh Henry Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He would be educated by his father and by private tutors, and then attend a French academy at St. Genevieve, Louisiana.

In Rhode Island, Friend Ruth Smith Hopkins, alleging that as a Friend she had “sometime past” set free her Negro Man Servant, so that he would “be entitled to the Privileges of a Freeman which he is and has an undoubted Right to be,” at this point needed to visit the town clerk to register for this Toney Hopkins a written Inftrument of manumission to replace said previous such document, unrecorded, that he said he had lost.

This obviously innocent document of record in obviously honest confirmation of the previous benevolent

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action would appear for all time on pages 35 and 36 of Volume 22 of such Providence records:

gÉ tÄÄ cxÉÑÄx àÉ ã{ÉÅ g{xáx cÜxáxÇàá á{tÄÄ vÉÅx ‰ j{xÜxtá \ áÉÅxà|Åx Ñtáà áxà yÜxx t axzÜÉ `tÇ vtÄÄxw gÉÇxç [ÉÑ~|Çá {xÜxàÉyÉÜx t fxÜvtÇà [Servant??] àÉ `x à{x fâuyvÜ|uxÜ tÇw ztäx {|Å ———page break——— {|Å t ãÜ|ààxÇ \ÇyàÜâÅxÇà xä|wxÇv|Çz à{x ftÅx ã{|v{ ãÜ|à|Çz {x à{x yt|w axzÜÉ@ `tÇ átçá |á ÄÉáà tÇw ux|Çz w|y|ÜÉâá à{tà {x á{ÉâÄw ux xÇà|àÄxw àÉ à{x cÜxä|Äxzxá [Privileges??] Éy t YÜxxÅtÇ ã{|v{ {x |á tÇw {tá tÇ âÇwÉâuàxw e|z{à àÉ ux \ {täx z|äxÇ {|Å à{É [the??] yâÜà{xÜ ãÜ|ààxÇ Xä|wxÇvx à{xÜxÉy {xÜxuç wxvÄtÜ|Çz {|Å à{x át|w gÉÇxç [ÉÑ~|Çá t YÜxx@ÅtÇ tzÜxxtuÄx àÉ à{x wtàx áxà yÉÜ xÇvÉâÜtz|Çz à{x `tÇâÅ|yá|ÉÇ Éy fÄtäxá |Ç à{|á áàtàx {xÜxuç yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy Åç [x|ÜËá [sic??]9 exÇÉâÇv|Çz tÄÄ vÄt|Å àÉ {|Å à{x át|w gÉÇ;x<ç [ÉÑ~|Çá {|á _tuÉâÜ ÉÜ fxÜä|vx \Ç jÜ|à|Çz ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxàÉ áâuyvÜ|uxw Åç atÅx tÇw Ñâà Åç áxtÄ à{|á XÄxäxÇà{ Wtà [Day??] Éy à{x Hà{ `ÉÇà{ DJKI \Ç cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç cÜxyxÇvx Éy ((L.S.)) ———————————————————————————————————————eâà{ [ÉÑ~|Çá exvÉÜwxw à{|á DDà{ Wtç Éy `tç TW DJKI (symbol) g{xÉwÉÜx YÉáàxÜ gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~ MANUMISSION That’s at least what this appears to be, on its surface.

But, is this all as straightforward as it seems? This would presumably be the Ruth Smith Hopkins who was the daughter of the 2d wife of Governor Stephen Hopkins (March 7, 1707-July 13, 1785), Anne Arnold Smith Hopkins, by her previous husband, who had been adopted by Governor Hopkins, and who lived in the red house just down the street from the county house in which this record was being created:

This slave being freed would presumably be Toney, a slave in this household.153 Toney had presumably been the property not of the unmarried adopted daughter but of the stepfather who was recently deceased, and whose estate was presumably at that point still in probate. But, by his will, he had freed all his slaves! Something does not compute. But here’s the rub: Governor Hopkins had been disowned by the Smithfield monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends for having refused to manumit his personal servant, pleading special circumstances. There had apparently never been any such document, as the manumission document which “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 753 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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here she said he said was lost. Toney, however, clearly had not been freed by Governor Hopkins or by what he had written in his will, and this adopted daughter couldn’t free him because she didn’t own him. This was a little white scam. This was the Quaker daughter’s one chance to set right her stepfather’s neglect and clear her family of the taint of enslavement and provide to Toney his chance at freedom. The Quaker lady fibbed. Bully for her!

May 26: On pages 48-51 in Volume 22 of the records of Providence, Rhode Island, appears an indenture of lease (whatever that indicates) for Prime or Prince Cufhing. This “indenture of lease” is listed, in the index to the records, as a manumission, that was granted by Benjamin Cushing:

g{|á \ÇwxÇàâÜx Éy _xtáx Åtwx uç tÇw UxàãxxÇ UxÇ}tÅ|Ç Vâá{|Çz ]âÇAÜ Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x VÉâÇàç Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw tÇw cÜÉä|wxÇvx cÄtÇàtà|ÉÇ \ÇÖâ|Üx ÉÇ à{x bÇx ctÜà tÇw cÜ|Åx t axzÜÉ `tÇ vtÄÄxw vtÄÄxw [sic]cÜ|Çvx Vây{|Çz ÇÉã exy|w|Çz |Ç à{x gÉãÇ VÉâÇàç tÇw fàtàx tuÉäx yt|w [tààxÜ ÉÇ à{x bà{xÜ ctÜà j|àÇxyxà{ à{tà à{x át|w UxÇ}tÅ|Ç Vâá{|Çz ]âÇAÜ YÉÜ tÇw |Ç VÉÇy|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{x át|w cÜ|Çvx {tä|Çz {xÜxàÉyÉÜx Ä|äxw |Ç à{x YtÅ|Äç ã|à{ `x tá t fxÜätÇà tÇw fxÜäxw yt|à{yâÄÄç ———page break——— fxà Çç [tÇw9fxtÄ à{|á gãxÇàç f|åà{ Wtç Éy `tç TW DJKI f|zÇxw9fxtÄxw |ÇcÜxyxÇvx Éy ÑxÜ TtÜÉÇ `táÉÇ } ftÜt{+YâÄÄxÜ ((L.S.)) ]ÉáxÑ{ `táÉÇ `tÜ~ fàtàx Éye{Éwx\áÄtÇwcÜÉä|wxÇvx`tçEIà{DJKI g{xÇ à{x ã|à{|Ç ÇtÅxw ftÜt{YâÄÄxÜ ÑxÜyÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw tÇw tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw à{x ã|à{|Ç\ÇyÜâÅxÇà àÉ ux {xÜ YÜxx tÇw äÉÄâÇàtÜçTvà tÇwWxxw UxyÉÜx Åx WtÇ|xÄbãxÇWxÑàZÉäAÜ exvÉÜwxw à{|áECà{Wtç Éy]âÇxTWDJKI }g{xÉwÉÜxYÉáàxÜgÉãÇVÄxÜ~

SLAVERY

153. Charles Rappleye, in his recent SONS OF PROVIDENCE: THE BROWN BROTHERS, THE SLAVE TRADE, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, page 142), instances that the 1774 census had recorded six slaves as living in the Hopkins household in Providence, Rhode Island. He also references “‘a Negroe woman,” as recorded in the minutes of the Smithfield Monthly Meeting.” I wonder if he has actually looked at these holographic minutes at the Rhode Island Historical Society on Hope Street in Providence, Rhode Island, for I am unable myself in them to make out this phrase he has alleged, “a Negroe woman.”

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24th day 8th month: Friend William Peckham of South Kingstown, Rhode Island manumitted his enslaved almost-15- year-old Negro Girl Named Rofe and 12-year-old Negro Boy Named Job. Rofe would serve as an apprentice until age 18, and Job until age 21.

October 30: Vermont imposed a £100 fine on the sale and transportation of Negroes and Molattoes out of the state. “An act to prevent the sale and transportation of Negroes and Molattoes out of this State.” £100 penalty. STATUTES OF VERMONT (ed. 1787), p. 105. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY

1787

Noah Webster, Jr.’s “Examination” attempted to counter certain Quaker scruples upon the fact that human enslavement had just been enshrined in the current draft version of the federal Constitution: But, say the enemies of slavery, negroes may be imported for twenty-one years. This exception is addressed to the quakers, and a very pitiful exception it is. The truth is, Congress cannot prohibit the importation of slaves during that period; but the laws against the importation into particular states, stand unrepealed. An immediate abolition of slavery would bring ruin upon the whites, and misery upon the blacks, in the southern states. The constitution has therefore wisely left each state

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to pursue its own measures, with respect to this article of legislation, during the period of twenty-one years. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Organization was begun following a paper given by Dr. Benjamin Rush at the home of Benjamin Franklin, entitled, “An Inquiry into the Effects of public punishment upon criminals and upon society.” Although the Quakers have always had a deep influence in Philadelphia, the organization would by no means be limited to Quakers. Dr. Rush for instance was a Unitarian, and Franklin wasn’t much of any religion. The President of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons for its first 40 years would be an Episcopal Bishop, William White.154

Since Franklin might be termed the grandfather of electroshock therapy on the basis of his early suggestion that persons suffering from insanity be shocked into sanity by the application of electricity, I will insert the following item here: in this year Dr. John Birch made the experiment of administering electroshock to a popular singer who was suffering from melancholia — after daily treatments for a month, he recorded, the singer was able to fulfil his engagements that summer “with his usual applause.”

154. For those who wish to read more, there are two books by Dr. Negley Teeters of Temple University: THEY WERE IN PRISON, a history of the PA Prison Society, and THE CRADLE OF THE PENITENTIARY. Prior to this point, prison as punishment was not known. The motivation of the experiment was to create a substitute for corporal and capital punishment. This group promotes correctional reform and social justice to this day, although now it deems itself the Pennsylvania Prison Society. 756 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dr. Benjamin Rush was a member of the “Convention of Pennsylvania for the Adoption of the Federal Constitution.”

Franklin was again reelected President of Pennsylvania and went as delegate to the Philadelphia convention for the framing of a Federal Constitution. Here is an indication of the lifestyles of the people who attended this convention. Note that George Mason of Virginia, J. Rutledge of South Carolina, and George Washington of Virginia were three of the largest slaveholders in North America, and that in all, 17 delegates to this convention owned the lives of some 1,400 human beings:

Franklin, who owned slaves and acted as a slave-trader in Philadelphia out of his print-shop, went to the constitutional convention in part as the official representative of the anti-slavery cause — and never once raised this vital issue. Fifty years later, when the sealed proceedings would be disclosed to the American public and it would be revealed that he had betrayed us in this fundamental respect, there would be the greatest outrage at his conduct, and a debate would begin which would be germane to the origin of our civil warfare, a debate as to whether the federal Constitution was a pact with Satan which ought to be dissolved. That is to say, the activities (or lack of activities, for he was possibly already on opium at the time) of Franklin at the constitutional convention would lead directly to the foundation of the Northern Disunionist faction. But he spent his valuable time at this important convention arguing for banal nonce items such as having several executives rather than one and one legislature rather than several. The more important stuff, that he was supposed to be talking about, was precisely what the guy wasn’t talking about. As a practical Pennsylvania “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 757 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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politician he had found it was sometimes useful to ally with the local Quakers, if this helped him neutralize the Brit influence, and we may observe in the following quotation from his AUTOBIOGRAPHY not only this government’s general attitude toward people who have been pacified but also this “antislavery delegate” Franklin’s attitude toward people who have been negrofied: Ben Franklin’s “Autobiography”

One afternoon, in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. “Franklin,” says he, “you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like;” and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir’d the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn’d Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.” “The governor,” says I, “has not yet blacked them enough.” He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip’d off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and plac’d it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir’d of the contest, and quitted the government.

We can get a glimpse, in the above, of how it would come to be that Dr. Franklin could go off to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as the designated representative of the civil rights people of his day — and then, precisely 50 years later, when the articles of secrecy the delegates had sworn to had expired, it would be discovered that this politician had betrayed the people he was supposed to be representing by uttering not one single word at any time during that convention in opposition to the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery.155 James Madison took very detailed minutes throughout the Convention, but they were subject to a secrecy READ MADISON’S NOTES

conspiracy to keep the electorate in the dark, with a sworn duration period of precisely 50 years, which was adhered to by all participants. Madison had turned over his notes on the Convention to George Washington, who kept them at Mt. Vernon, and Madison’s notes would not see the light of day until 1845. No member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would publish any account of the Convention’s important deliberations until two years after the death the last member of the Constitutional Convention, Madison, when the notes of Luther Martin of Maryland and of Robert Yates of New York would be published in 1838 as SECRET

155. Yes, children, it was our trusted and revered Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, as much as any single American, who caused the bloodletting of our Civil War. Was the guy on drugs during this convention? —No, we don’t know for certain sure that he began his heavy use of opium before the year after this one. The only drug we can be quite certain he was on at this point, besides fatheadedness, was racism.

Son of so-and-so and so-and-so, this so-and-so helped us to gain our independence, instructed us in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.

Incidentally, in using the trope “peculiar institution” today we tend to make an implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not in any way to attack it but rather 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. 758 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1787. NOTES OF ROBERT YATES When Madison’s records were opened on schedule, there was the greatest outrage. We felt totally betrayed. A Northern disunion party of sorts originated, and would constitute one of the causes of the frictions leading eventually to the US Civil War. We found out, belatedly, suddenly, that our Franklin had gone to the convention in part as the representative of the anti-slavery position, and –old, terminally ill, possibly already under the influence of opium, desiring some peace in his time– he had simply sold us out. Our guy hadn’t even so much as raised the central issue of American slavery for discussion. We were so surprised, here we’ve got this slavemaster guy who used to keep the unwanted surplus slaves of his friends and business associates in a pen behind his print shop in Philadelphia, offering their bodies for sale to the highest bidder, and we trust him and we go and send him off to our constitutional convention to be our spokesperson against slavery — and we’re so surprised and we feel so betrayed fifty years after the fact! There’s now a book out that alleges that Ben more than any other human being was responsible for the American Revolutionary War. Per the book this was allegedly based upon his resentment at having been being fired as the colonial postmaster general, and publicly humiliated and scorned in Whitehall, on irrefutable charges having to do with the stealing of other people’s correspondence. Well, I don’t know about that issue — but, if I had to select out one American citizen who, more than any other, was responsible for the bloodshed of the US Civil War, I think I’d nominate Founding Father Benjamin Franklin for the honor. Well, maybe not. Anybody want to attempt to make a case for Nat Turner? Roger Taney?

Slavery is never directly mentioned in the US Constitution, although the document explicitly regard people coming into the nation from Africa to constitute cargo rather than to constitute prospective citizens. Also, Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. (Art. I, Sec. 2) This is usually telegraphed by some comment such as “Our founding fathers believed that black people were 3 subhuman, and evaluated them as /5ths of a human being.” That would have been bad enough, but this section is open to another, more accurate, and more pejorist, interpretation. Consider the key words here, “Representatives ... shall be apportioned” in the light of the end of this paragraph, which assigns the number of representatives each state would have until the first census could be taken, and ask yourself the question “So, how many representatives does each state initially get in the US Congress? The formula that was used is that representation was proportional to population, except that only 60% of the slaves were counted. Representatives represent those who elect and re-elect them. Blacks, free white children, and free white women were not allowed to cast ballots. The proper critical question to ask of this passage would not be, Why 3 were slaves counted at only /5ths, when free white children and free white women were counted as whole units? The question would be, Why were they counted at all? Their inclusion in the census only served to inflate the representation of the free citizens of the slave-holding states. It certainly did nothing to promote the representation of the slaves in Congress. It could easily be demonstrated that the political interests of the free white men who were casting ballots had a significant amount of overlap in that period with the political interests of free white children and free white women, but it would be significantly harder to demonstrate a significant amount of overlap between the interests of slaveholders and the interests of their slaves. Of the actual voters in slave-holding states, how many held the same political opinions as the slaves? It might be a good guess that the answer is, close to zero. So why were these voters allowed extra representation, as if they could speak for 60% of the slaves? If we want to make a slogan of it, we shouldn’t

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3 be saying that the founding fathers considered a slave to be /5ths of a person. We should be saying that they considered a slave a nonperson who increased someone else’s, the possessor’s, political worth by 60%. Bear in mind that what we are considering here is an era in which voting rights and property rights were still conceptually entangled — simply because in any event only men of property were entitled to cast a ballot.

3 3 Why /5ths? –Because on an average you can only get about /5ths as much work out of a slave, through a motivational system primarily consisting of punishments and the threat of punishment, that you can get out of a free person, through a motivational system primarily consisting of rewards and the prospect of rewards! 3 (Also, very practically, because both the North and the South were willing to compromise at /5ths whereas 5 the northern colonies would never have entered the Union had Southern slaves been weighed at /5ths and the 0 southern colonies would never have entered the Union had their slave property been weighed at /5ths.)

On the popular but quite incorrect interpretation of Art. 1 Sec. 2 of the US Constitution, whatever benefit 3 a population received from being counted, the slave population was to receive but /5ths of that benefit. On a more accurate interpretation, the slave population was to receive no positive benefit at all, or was to receive a negative benefit, from being thus counted, for you will notice that the benefit that accrues from 3 counting /5ths of the slave population is a benefit which is assigned to the free voting population of the same state, which is thus even more powerful — and even more capable of abusing those being held in captivity.

In a November 9, 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “The Electoral College, Unfair from Day One,” Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar would argue that intent of the Founding Fathers in creating the electoral college which was so perplexing us during the Bush/Gore presidential election, like their intent in creating the 3 /5ths rule, had been to protect America’s southern white men from the vicissitudes of majority rule: In 1787, as the Constitution was being drafted in Philadelphia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed direct election of the president. But James Madison of Virginia worried that such a system would hurt the South, which would have been outnumbered by the North in a direct election system. The creation of the Electoral College got around that: it was part of the deal that Southern states, in computing their share of electoral votes, could count slaves (albeit with a two-fifths discount), who of course were given none of the privileges of citizenship. Virginia emerged as the big winner, with more than a quarter of the electors needed to elect a president. A free state like Pennsylvania got fewer electoral votes even though it had approximately the same free population. The Constitution’s pro-Southern bias quickly became obvious. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800 against John Adams from Massachusetts in a race where the slavery skew of the Electoral College was the decisive margin of victory. The system’s gender bias was also obvious. In a direct presidential election, any state that chose to enfranchise its women would have automatically doubled its clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no special incentive to expand suffrage — each got a fixed number of electoral votes, regardless of how many citizens were allowed to vote.

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With the assistance of abolitionist Quakers, in this year the newly freed slaves of the city of Philadelphia formed a Free African Society. The society was intended to enable mutual aid and nourish the development of a cadre of black leaders. The immediate cause of organization of this Free African Society was that in this year the St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia had segregated its colored members from its white communicants. Blacks to the back: African worshipers were sent to the church’s gallery. One Sunday as the African members knelt to pray outside of their segregated area they were actually tugged from their knees, so they understood that they needed to form this new society — and out of this came an Episcopalian group and a Methodist one. The leader of the Methodist group was Richard Allen, and from his group would derive in 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal denomination.

Pennsylvania enacted a gradual emancipation act providing that no child born in Pennsylvania after March 1, 1780 should be a slave. (It would still be possible to purchase and sell slaves in Pennsylvania after the passage of this act, and in fact we can find frequent sale ads in Pennsylvania newspapers as late as 1820. Pennsylvania slaves could not, however, any longer be legally sold out of the state. Anyone who was a slave prior to the passage of this Gradual Emancipation Act was still a slave for life, even if he or she had been a mere newborn infant as of February 1780. Slaveholders could still sell the time of young people born to slave mothers after 1780, subject to the ban on out-of-state sales, until they reached the manumission age of 28. Therefore, as late as the 1830 census, Pennsylvania still sported some 400 slaves. There were many conflicts over enforcing the law, including with slaveholders who attempted to transport pregnant slaves to Maryland so that a child would be born a slave rather than born merely a servant until the age of 28. Slaveholders initiated arguments about whether the grandchildren as well as the children of slaves would be bound to serve until age 28. “Sojourning” slaveholders from other states would raise issues of the status of slaves brought into Pennsylvania. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 761 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In this year Delaware very nearly banned the out-of-state sale of slaves, with some loopholes. This state would become the one slave state in which slavery would gradually diminish. By the 1850s there would be only two or three thousand Americans enslaved there.

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In this year, at the age of 40, Thomas Dugan ran away from a white man named either “Whittaker” or “Solomon Ward,” on the James River, a man who evidently was still supposing that human beings 156 could own other human beings. Here is a “PRAYER for a Negroe”:

O Thou great God, the Maker and Lord of all creatures, I, a poor sinner, black in body, and still blacker in sin, would humbly try to worship thee, and glorify thy name, that I am allowed to pray to thee.... Lord give me grace to love thee, and thy dear Son, and thy blessed ways, and thy holy law, and to love all that love God, and make the land of my slavery, the place of my true freedom. Lord, pity poor Negroes, that are living without God in the world, and turn and convert them to thee. Bless my master, and all that are his. Make me a faithful servant; and teach me to remember, that what good thing soever any man doth; the same shall he receive of the lord, whether he be bound or free....

Amen.

SLAVERY This fugitive from human possessiveness would eventually wind up in the vicinity of Walden Pond, where in this year John Wyman or Wayman was building a home and pottery manufactory just where there is now the regraded entrance to the State Reservation parking lot. This land at the northeast end of the pond was at the time owned by Dr. Abel Prescott, so very clearly he would have been “squatting with permission.” Henry Thoreau eventually would be talking to this man’s son Tommy the potter (Thomas Wyman, see journal entry for June 16, 1853)

WALDEN: An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the PEOPLE OF Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the WALDEN bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared.

JOHN WYMAN

156. Pattillo, Henry. THE PLANTER’S FAMILY ASSISTANT ... ADDRESS TO HUSBANDS AND WIVES, CHILDREN AND SLAVES ... Wilmington NC, 1787. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 763 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 3: Delaware prohibited the exportation of slaves. “An Act to prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other purposes.” LAWS OF DELAWARE (ed. 1797), p. 884, ch. 145 b. SLAVERY

March 28: South Carolina prohibited the importation of negroes. “An Act to regulate the recovery and payment of debts and for prohibiting the importation of negroes for the time therein mentioned.” Title only given. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, p. lxviii, No. 1485. “An Ordinance to impose a Penalty on any person who shall import into this State any Negroes, contrary to the Instalment Act.” 1. “Be it ordained, by the honorable the Senate and House of Representatives, met in General Assembly, and by the authority of the same, That any person importing or bringing into this State a negro slave, contrary to the Act to regulate the recovery of debts and prohibiting the importation of negroes, shall, besides the forfeiture of such negro or slave, be liable to a penalty of one hundred pounds, to the use of the State, for every such negro or slave so imported and brought in, in addition to the forfeiture in and by the said Act prescribed.” Cooper, STATUTES, VII. 430. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY

July 17: The Northwest Ordinance was completed in order to provide for government of a still-unorganized national domain. The Reverend Manasseh Cutler, a botanist, and Nathan Dane, an Ohio Company land speculator, had been responsible for the bulk of the work of the creation of this Northwest Ordinance, including its prohibition of slavery:

Article VI: There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.157

In claiming the area now known as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, the United 157. Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair would create a “grandfathering” ruling to the effect that, since this prohibition could not be an ex post facto one, any slaves already held in the territory could be held in continuing slavery. The ordinance did not emancipate them. Also, white settlers coming into the territory subsequently could easily evade the ordinance by converting their slaves on paper into their perpetual “apprentices.” 764 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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States of America pledged that:

The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians.

Further,

Their lands and property shall neer [sic] be taken from them without their consent.158

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Caleb Strong was selected to represent Northampton at the federal Constitutional Convention.

At that Convention, Elbridge Gerry was one of the most vocal delegates, presiding as chair of the committee that produced the Great Compromise but himself disliking this compromise. Ultimately he would refuse to sign the Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights and because it seemed a threat to republicanism, leading a drive against ratification in Massachusetts and denouncing the document as “full of vices” such as inadequate representation of the people, dangerously ambiguous legislative powers, the blending of the executive and the legislative, and the prospects for an oppressive judiciary. Gerry did consider that such flaws might be remedied through a gradual process of amendment.

One concession that had been made to the slave power was that the new Constitution explicitly stipulated, that no matter how the new federal congress wanted to vote to regulate the international slave trade, it would lack the authority to do anything whatever to regulate this international slave trade, until at least the year 1808. Note that there is no promise, and no implication, that as of 1808 the international slave trade was to be anathema. Not at all!

August 6: Professor Susan Petrovski now has in her possession an old poster from Savannah, Georgia, of this date. Along with this old poster comes a note that reads “Friday was sold the 25th March and he would not stay sold but ran away”: 24 dollars Reward Friday ran away in two months. Ran away from the subscriber, on Friday the 3rd instant, about 12 o’clock in the day, FRIDAY, a very stout likely Negro Man, about 23 years of age, 5 feet 9 or 10 inches high, marked with African marks on his cheeks, and small eyes; he had on when he went away an oznabrig shirt and trowsers, but has a number of other clothes, will probably soon change his dress; he was lately the property of Col. Pannell, of Wilkes county, and it is believed he is now gone to Washington.

Sue’s comment is “Blessings upon this man who would not stay sold but ran away.” SLAVERY

At the Federal Convention, the Committee of Detail (Rutledge, Randolf, Gorham, Ellsworth, and Wilson) reported a draft of the federal Constitution. The new federal government was to be deprived of any capability to tax or prohibit the importation of new slaves from Africa: W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Slavery occupied no prominent place in the Convention called to remedy the glaring defects of the Confederation, for the obvious reason that few of the delegates thought it expedient to touch a delicate subject which, if let alone, bade fair to settle itself in a manner satisfactory to all. Consequently, neither slavery nor the slave-trade is specifically mentioned in the delegates’ credentials of any of the States, nor in Randolph’s, Pinckney’s, or Hamilton’s plans, nor in Paterson’s propositions. Indeed, the debate from May 14 to June 19, when the Committee of the Whole reported, touched the subject only in the matter of the ratio of representation of slaves. With this same exception, the report of the Committee of the Whole contained no reference to slavery or the slave- 158. In all fairness even our critics will be forced to admit that the United States of America has never in the course of its long history dishonored any treaty which it had entered into with a native tribe until it became possible to do so. 766 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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trade, and the twenty-three resolutions of the Convention referred to the Committee of Detail, July 23 and 26, maintain the same silence. The latter committee, consisting of Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham, Ellsworth, and Wilson, reported a draft of the Constitution August 6, 1787. The committee had, in its deliberations, probably made use of a draft of a national Constitution made by Edmund Randolph.159 One clause of this provided that “no State shall lay a duty on imports;” and, also, “1. No duty on exports. 2. No prohibition on such inhabitants as the United States think proper to admit. 3. No duties by way of such prohibition.” It does not appear that any reference to Negroes was here intended. In the extant copy, however, notes in Edward Rutledge’s handwriting change the second clause to “No prohibition on such inhabitants or people as the several States think proper to admit.”160 In the report, August 6, these clauses take the following form: — “Article VII. Section 4. No tax or duty shall be laid by the legislature on articles exported from any state; nor on the migration or importation of such persons as the several states shall think proper to admit; nor shall such migration or importation be prohibited.”161 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

October 6, Saturday: An article by “Crito” in opposition to slavery appeared in a Providence, Rhode Island one-page gazette, the Gazette and Country Journal. “Crito” was Moses Brown and Mary Olney Brown, or perhaps was the Reverend Samuel Hopkins. ANTISLAVERY

October 31, Wednesday: Friend Moses Brown and four other Quakers prevailed at a meeting of the General Assembly in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. By a vote of 44 over 4 their long-sought ban on participation in the international slave trade was enacted. Governor John Collins and his ten assistants quickly signed this into effect. “An act to prevent the slave trade and to encourage the abolition of slavery.” This act prohibited and censured trade under penalty of £100 for each person and £1,000 for each vessel. Bartlett, INDEX TO THE PRINTED ACTS AND RESOLVES, p. 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. ANTISLAVERY 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 159. Conway, LIFE AND PAPERS OF EDMUND RANDOLPH, Chapter ix. 160. Conway, LIFE AND PAPERS OF EDMUND RANDOLPH, page 78. 161. Elliot, DEBATES, I. 227. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 767 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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.”162 This law was for a time enforced,163 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.164 This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.165 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.166 They took 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.167 “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.”168 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.”169 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.170 The Act of 1715, however, favored the trade by admitting African Negroes free of 162. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240. 163. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240. 164. 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. 165. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225. 166. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60. 167. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80. 168. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615. 169. Preamble of the Act of 1712. 170. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3. 768 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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 1732.171 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.172 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.173 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 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.”174 In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was passed,175 and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.176 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.177

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1788

Friend Anthony Benezet’s SOME HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF G U I N E A, ITS SITUATION, PRODUCE, AND THE GENERAL DISPOSITION OF ITS INHABITANTS. WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE S L A V E T R A D E, ITS NATURE, AND LAMENTABLE EFFECTS (London: J. Phillips, George Yard, Lombard- ftreet.)178

July: In North Reading, Massachusetts, Mayo Greenleaf Patch, age 22, got married with the pregnant Abigail McIntire, age 17 — a descendant of a transported Scot prisoner of war sold here as a white slave per the clemency of Oliver Cromwell.179

177. 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. 178. Olaudah Equiano’s detailed account of his early life in Africa, although it is more substantial than what was offered by any similar black writer of the period, is such that it could have been fabricated out of mere borrowings from various published pieces of travel writing, and from white antislavery texts like those by Anthony Benezet. This is not to say that Equiano’s account is a fabrication; it is only to say that there is no detail in it that might be granted any probative weight. If, for instance, a person came into a police station to attempt to confess to a currently unsolved murder, but was able to provide the police only with details of the crime that had already been published in the news media and with no accurate further details (this does rather often happen), although the police would collect such testimony a competent District Attorney would not automatically on such a basis bring a charge of murder or discount other possible explanations. 179. This is the sole case I have been able to learn of, of a Scottish prisoner of war transported to America at the middle of the 17th Century and sold here as a white slave per the clemency of Lord Protector Cromwell who had been unable promptly to mask this sad history and absorb himself and his family into the immigrant population under one or another new American identity. 770 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 3: Dr. John Cuming of Concord died at the age of 60 after being bled over his objections by the physician of neighboring Chelmsford, and was buried in the Old Hill Burying Ground beneath a headstone carved by Thomas Park (this isn’t it).

Dr. Cuming left some clothing and some military equipment to Waldo Emerson’s father, the Reverend William Emerson of Boston. He left £300 pounds sterling to Harvard College, the income from which was to endow a chair of physics (medicine), that would be useful as seed money for the establishment of Harvard Medical School with Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse and Surgeon John Warren as its 1st professors. In addition, he left £150 sterling to benefit the Town School in Concord, and £150 sterling to be distributed among the poor. He also left behind a small sum to ease the anxieties of the Selectmen, with which they could care for Bristo and Jem, his two former slaves, should they ever become a burden upon the town. BRISTER FREEMAN His benevolent and liberal disposition was manifest in the judicious disposition of his estate. Beside many other legacies,

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he bequeathed “for the use of the town of Concord three hundred pounds sterling, one moiety thereof to be equally distributed for the benefit of the private schools in the town of Concord, and to be especially under the direction of the Selectmen for the time being; the other moiety thereof to be annually disposed of among the poor of said town, at the discretion of the minister and Selectmen of the town of Concord for the time being — the use of the above sum of money to be for the above purposes and for no other under any pretence whatever.” He also made it the residuary legatee of one quarter of his real estate undisposed of at the death of his wife. The whole amounted to £500 lawful money or $1,666.66. He gave “to the church of Concord, fifty pounds sterling, to be laid out in silver vessels to furnish the communion table” and also twenty five pound sterling to be forever kept as a fund to be disposed of by the minister and deacons for the benefit “of the poor communicants”; and also £20 to the Rev. Dr. Ripley. He bequeathed “to the University in Cambridge three hundred pounds sterling, the income of the same to be appropriated for a professor of physic” and also made it a residuary legatee in the same manner as he did the town of Concord.180 Another class of donations has been made to the town for the relief of the silent poor, — those individuals who are needy, but do not wish to throw themselves on the town for support. They are as follows; from Peter Wright181 $277.42 Abel Barrett182 $500.00 John Cuming 833.33 Jonathan Wheeler183 500.00 The town of Concord has also a fund of $833.33 given by John Cuming, Esq., for the benefit of the “private schools,” in the language of his Will, which has been distributed in all the districts but the centre one. Another donation now amounting to $744.92 was given by John Beaton, Esq.,184 for the support of schools and the poor.185

180. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835

181. PETER WRIGHT was a weaver, son of Captain Edward Wright, and died January 15, 1718, aged 53. He bequeathed all his real estate, after the death of his wife and Cousin Elizabeth Hartwell, to the poor of Concord, to be under the direction of the selectmen, and of the minister, who is “to have a double vote to any of the selectmen.” What belonged to the town was sold, in 1731, for £500 currency. 182. ABEL BARRETT was brother to Humphrey Barrett just mentioned. He commenced the mercantile business in Concord, but afterwards removed to Boston. He died in Liverpool, England, January 12, 1803. 183. JONATHAN WHEELER was the son of Ephraim Wheeler, and was successively a merchant in Concord, Boston, Baltimore, and England. He died, September 4, 1811, in the city of New York, ten days after his arrival from Europe. 184. JOHN BEATON, Esq. was a native of Scotland, and emigrated to this town, where he acquired a respectable estate as a merchant. He was remarkable for his honesty, integrity, and Christian virtues, and had the unlimited confidence of his fellow citizens. “As honest as John Beaton,” was long a current saying, expressive of the character of a strictly honest man. He was Town Treasurer 17 years from 1754, and appointed justice of the peace by the crown, June 6, 1765. He died without issue, June 9, 1776, aged 47. 185. Ibid. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 773 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived PEOPLE OF Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once, –there where grow still the apple-trees which Brister planted and WALDEN tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord, –where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”– Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called, –“a man of color,” as if he were discolored. It also told me, with startling emphasis, when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly, –large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.

BRISTO FREEMAN BRISTER FREEMAN

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(Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, a Quaker, would later be dismissed as a Professor at the Harvard Medical School on account of his principled opposition to war (the Quaker Peace Testimony) and because he persisted in administering inoculations against the small pox.

However, below, in a depiction dating to 1783, is the righteous surviving professor, Surgeon John Warren, no deluded Quaker, who righteously did believe in war and righteously did not believe in vaccination — and was therefore entitled to teach Harvard men to become physicians.)

Andrew Jackson followed the Cumberland Road to the rude frontier settlement of Nashville, carrying with him his appointment papers as a public prosecutor for this transmountain “western district of North Carolina.”

The curate John Newton’s THOUGHTS UPON THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 775 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With our ships, the great object is, to be full. When the ship is there, it is thought desirable she should take as many as possible. The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves. Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the boys, and the women), besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf. I have known them so close that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more. And I have known a white man sent down, among the men, to lay them in these rows to the greatest advantage, so that as little space as possible might be lost. Let it be observed, that the poor creatures, thus cramped for want of room, are likewise in irons, for the most part both hands and feet, and two together, which makes it difficult for them to turn or move, to attempt either to rise or to lie down, without hurting themselves, or each other. Nor is the motion of the ship, especially her heeling, or stoop on one side, when under sail, to be omitted; for this, as they lie athwart, or cross the ship, adds to the uncomfortableness of their lodging, especially to those who lie on the leeward or leaning side of the vessel. Dire is the tossing, deep the groans. — The heat and smell of these rooms, when the weather will not admit of the slaves being brought upon deck, and of having their rooms cleaned every day, would be almost insupportable to a person not accustomed to them. If the slaves and their rooms can be constantly aired, and they are not detained too long on board, perhaps there are not many who die; but the contrary is often their lot. They are kept down, by the weather, to breathe a hot and corrupted air, sometimes for a week: this added to the galling of their irons, and the despondency which seizes their spirits when thus confined, soon becomes fatal. And every morning, perhaps, more instances than one are found, of the living and the dead, like the captives of Mezentius, fastened together. Epidemical fevers and fluxes, which fill the ship with noisome and noxious effluvia, often break out, and infect the seamen likewise, and thus the oppressors, and the oppressed, fall by the same stroke. I believe, nearly one-half of the slaves on board, have, sometimes, died; and that the loss of a third part, in these circumstances, is not unusual. The ship, in which I was mate, left the coast with two hundred and eighteen slaves on board; and though we were not much affected by epidemical disorders, I find by my journal of that voyage (now before me), that we buried sixty-two on our passage to South Carolina, exclusive of those which died before we left the coast, of which I have no account. I believe, upon an average between the more healthy, and the more sickly voyages, and including all contingencies, one fourth of the whole purchase may be allotted to the article of mortality: that is, if the English ships purchase sixty thousand

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slaves annually, upon the whole extent of the coast, the annual loss of lives cannot be much less than fifteen thousand.

William Cowper’s “The Negro’s Complaint” — an attempt, necessarily unsatisfactory, to grasp how life must seen when experienced from the perspective of the “ultimate other,” one’s victim and servant: Forc’d from home and all its pleasures, Afric’s coast I left forlorn; To increase a stranger’s treasures, O’er the raging billows borne; Men from England bought and sold me, Paid my price in paltry gold; But though theirs they have enroll’d me Minds are never to be sold. Still in thought as free as ever, What are England’s rights, I ask, Me from my delights to sever, Me to torture, me to task? Fleecy locks and black complexion Cannot forfeit nature’s claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same. Why did all-creating Nature Make the plant for which we toil? Sighs must fan it, tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Think, ye masters iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial boards; Think, how many backs have smarted For the sweets your cane affords. Is there, as ye sometimes tell us, Is there one who reigns on high? Has he bid you buy and sell us, Speaking from his throne, the sky? Ask him, if your knotted scourges, Fetters, blood-extorting screws, Are the means that duty urges Agents of his will to use? Strewing yonder sea with wrecks, Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, Are the voice with which he speaks. He, foreseeing what vexations Afric’s sons should undergo, Fix’d their tyrants’ habitations Where his whirlwinds answer — No. By our blood in Afric wasted, Ere our necks receiv’d the chain; By the mis’ries which we tasted, Crossing in your barks the main; By our suff’rings since ye brought us To the man-degrading mart; All sustain’d by patience, taught us Only by a broken heart: Deem our nation brutes no longer Till some reason ye shall find Worthier of regard and stronger Than the colour of our kind. Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings Tarnish all your boasted pow’rs, Prove that you have human feelings, Ere you proudly question ours.

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You’ve presumably gathered from the above ruminations that the poet Cowper was generally opposed to human slavery. –But the devil is, as always, in the details.

Which is worse, enslavement to another human being by virtue of leg irons and handcuffs, or enslavement to Satan through an attachment to sin? For this British poet, in his poem “Charity,” clearly it would be the latter rather than the former which would constitute far the worse condition, and the conclusion to this comparison, Whitey, is as plain as the nose on your face: although it would be horrific for a black African to be enslaved to some cruel and un-Christian master who would lead him into sin and temptation, it might be on the other hand beatific, a true freeing, for that black African to be enslaved instead to some gentle and tolerant white Christian master who would only by example and by teaching be raising up that African into a true appreciation of the glories of our Christ Jesus. In fact if the black man is enslaved to a true Christian, then “one flash of heav’nly day” will “heal his heart and melt his chains away”! See, the thing is, “slaves by truth enlarg’d are doubly freed.” His service to you would be something done out not out of fear and obligation, but out of “gratitude and love,” and it would be “sweet” to him, and he would be “submissive at thy feet” out of this sweet gratitude and sweet love! For you the provident white slavemaster had delivered him “out of hopeless night.” You had bought his body — but only to give his soul light. He had previously been held fast by chains of sin and ignorance, and now you were merely binding him with chains and shackles of iron while your lips might have the opportunity to “shed instruction as the dew” and teach him “what path to shun, and what pursue.” Truly, in service to a benefactor such as you, although nominally enslaved he would be truly freed, and while not torn away from such a master, he would consider himself to be at his “best home”!

Here is a plan of each deck and the allowable “tight packing” aboard the slaver Brookes engaging quite properly and legally in the international slave trade under improved conditions dictated by the parliamentary Act of this year.

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: In 1788, the House of Commons voted Parliamentary inquiry. In 1791, a bill to abolish the trade was brought in by Wilberforce, and supported by him, and by Fox, and Burke, and Pitt, with the utmost ability and faithfulness; resisted by the planters, and the whole West Indian interest, and lost. During the next sixteen years, ten times, year after year, the attempt was renewed by Mr. Wilberforce, and ten times defeated by the planters. The king, and all the royal family but one, were against it. These debates are instructive, as they show on what grounds the trade was assailed and defended. Every thing generous, wise, and sprightly is sure to come to the attack. On the other part, are found cold prudence, barefaced selfishness, and silent votes. But the nation was aroused to enthusiasm. Every horrid fact became known.

Under the new limitations, the Brookes would be allowed to carry on its cross-Atlantic voyages only up to 454 slaves as depicted on the following screen (in the broadside collection of the Rare Book Room, Library of Congress, Portfolio 282-43, Lot 4422A; LC-US Z 62-44000).186

The image “an African in Chains in a Supplicating Posture” bearing the “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” motto was used on the cover of a London pamphlet addressed to Parliament, and on the cover of a publication

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about a voyage to Guinea.

In about this year, according to William Chauncey Fowler’s LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED; AND THE HISTORICAL STATUS OF THE NEGRO, IN CONNECTICUT, ETC. (Albany, 1872, and New Haven, 1875, page 125), “one or two” negrero vessels were being fitted out in Connecticut.

The Underground Railroad and the Manumission and Colonization Society of North Carolina were both tools of the Guilford County Quakers. At Wells Meeting in Perquimans County, the Quaker yearly meeting was held with representatives from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and a minute was made of their progress or lack of progress against their previously agreed goal of cleaning all Quaker hands of slave holding:

As it appears that all Friends have not yet cleansed their hands of slave holding this meeting directs the inferior meetings to put the former advices of our yearly meeting in practice such who continue to hold them as slaves and hand up a report of their service to next yearly meeting to be held at Centre Meeting in Guilford County for further trial with which this meeting concurs.

The old committee was discharged and a new committee appointed made up of 24 prestigious North Carolina Friends — a lifetime commitment for each and every of them:

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• Zacharias Dick • David Vestal • Jeremiah Reynolds • Thomas Winslow • John Talbot •Obediah Harris •Jesse Coffin • Strangeman Stanley • John Carter • Joseph Cloud • John Beals • Samuel Millikan • Hezekiah Sanders • Tristain Barnard • William Coffin, Jr. • John Hackett • John Davis • Samuel Chambers • Issac Beeson • Benjamin Coffin • John Sanders •Seth Coffin • Thomas Thornbourgh • William Tomlinson

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The slave-trade was hardly touched upon in the Congress of the Confederation, except in the ordinance respecting the capture of slaves, and on the occasion of the Quaker petition against the trade, although, during the debate on the Articles of Confederation, the counting of slaves as well as of freemen in the apportionment of taxes was urged as a measure that would check further importation of Negroes. “It is our duty,” said Wilson of Pennsylvania, “to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves; but this amendment [i.e., to count two slaves as one freeman] would give the jus trium liberorum to him who would import slaves.”187 The matter was finally compromised by apportioning requisitions according to the value of land and buildings. After the Articles went into operation, an ordinance in regard to the recapture of fugitive slaves provided that, if the capture was made on the sea below high-water mark, and the Negro was not claimed, he should be freed. Matthews of South Carolina demanded the yeas and nays on this proposition, with the result that only the vote of his State was recorded against it.188 On Tuesday, October 3, 1783, a deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a petition. Leave was granted the following day,189 but no further minute appears. According to the report of the Friends, the petition was against the slave-trade; 187. Elliot, DEBATES (1861), I. 72-3. Cf. Article 8 of the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. 188. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, 1781, June 25; July 18; Sept. 21, 27; November 8, 13, 30; December 4. 189. JOURNALS OF CONGRESS, 1782-3, pages 418-9, 425. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 781 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and “though the Christian rectitude of the concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons of fellow-men.”190 The only legislative activity in regard to the trade during the Confederation was taken by the individual States.191 Before 1778 Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia had by law stopped the further importation of slaves, and importation had practically ceased in all the New England and Middle States, including Maryland. In consequence of the revival of the slave-trade after the War, there was then a lull in State activity until 1786, when North Carolina laid a prohibitive duty, and South Carolina, a year later, began her series of temporary prohibitions. In 1787-1788 the New England States forbade the participation of their citizens in the traffic. It was this wave of legislation against the traffic which did so much to blind the nation as to the strong hold which slavery still had on the country.

February: The Massachusetts Constitution and Form of Government recognized the existence of slavery within the state and excluded blacks, Native Americans, and all mulattoes from rights of citizenship. It did, however, prohibit Massachusetts participation in the slave trade. Immediately the legislature would enact legislation making skin color a virtual crime, by requiring the removal from the state of any person of Afro-American ancestry who could not prove US citizenship. This was done not only to assure public order but also to ensure that indigent blacks could not become public charges. (This law would disgrace Massachusetts until 1834.) THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY 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.”192 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.”193 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 190. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress 2d session, page 1183. 191. Cf. above, Chapters ii., iii., iv. 192. Cf. THE BODY OF LIBERTIES, § 91, in Whitmore, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LAWS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY, published at Boston in 1890. 193. MASSACHUSETTS COLONIAL RECORD, II. 168, 176; III. 46, 49, 84. 782 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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negroes, like any other merchandise demanded by their correspondents.”194 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.195 One provision of this act plainly illustrates 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 £100.196 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.197 In 1771 the struggle was renewed. A similar bill passed, but was vetoed by Governor Hutchinson.198 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.199 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 194. Weeden, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND, II. 456. 195. MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCE LAWS, 1705-6, ch. 10. 196. MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCE LAWS, 1728-9, ch. 16; 1738-9, ch. 27. 197. 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. 198. HOUSE JOURNAL, 1771, pages 211, 215, 219, 228, 234, 236, 240, 242-3; Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 131-2. 199. 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. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 783 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Negroes.200 Committees on the slavery question were appointed in 1776 and 1777,201 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.202 The first step 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.203 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.204

200. 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. 201. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, pages 148-9, 181-5. 202. Washburn, EXTINCTION OF SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS; Haynes, STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS; La Rochefoucauld, TRAVELS THROUGH THE UNITED STATES, II. 166. 203. Moore, SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, page 225. 204. 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 51 784 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 22: Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland. He would become so famous that, one day, he would serve as a refrigerator magnet:

New York prohibited all trade in slaves. “An Act concerning slaves.” “Whereas in consequence of the act directing a revision of the laws of this State, it is expedient that the several existing laws relative to slaves, should be revised, and comprized in one. Therefore, Be it enacted,” etc. “And to prevent the further importation of slaves into this State, Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any person shall sell as a slave within this State any negro, or other person, who has been imported or brought into this State, after” June 1, 1785, “such seller, or his or her factor or agent, making such sale, shall be deemed guilty of a public offence, and shall for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds.... And further, That every person so imported ... shall be free.” The purchase of slaves for removal to another State is prohibited under penalty of £100. LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1785-88 (ed. 1886), pages 675-6. THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.

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March 8: Abraham Redwood died on the island of Aquidneck. His body would be buried in the Coggeshall family plot on Coggeshall Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, next door to the stables of the Preservation Society. In the latter stages of his life, Friend Abraham had been labored with unsuccessfully by his fellow Quakers, to persuade him to renounce his reliance upon human slavery.205 The will of this Quaker slavemaster and philanthropist provided £500 to be used toward the establishment of a Friends’ School and £500 to be used toward the establishment of a College of Rhode Island, provided that said college would be located in his home town of Newport. Did his money have blood on it? No, the wonderful thing about money (like the wonderful thing about a dirty little boy) is that it’s infinitely washable. MOSES BROWN SCHOOL BROWN UNIVERSITY

March 25: In Massachusetts, participation in the slave-trade was prohibited. “An Act to prevent the Slave-Trade, and for granting Relief to the Families of such unhappy Persons as may be kidnapped or decoyed away from this Commonwealth.” “Whereas by the African trade for slaves, the lives and liberties of many innocent persons have been from time to time sacrificed to the lust of gain: And whereas some persons residing in this Commonwealth may be so regardless of the rights of human kind, as to be concerned in that unrighteous commerce: § 1. “Be it therefore enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That no citizen of this Commonwealth, or other person residing within the same, shall for himself, or any other person whatsoever, either as master, factor, supercargo, owner or hirer, in whole or in part, of any vessel, directly or indirectly, import or transport, or buy or sell, or receive on board, his or their vessel, with intent to cause to be imported or transported, any of the inhabitants of any State or Kingdom, in that part of the world called Africa, as slaves, or as servants for term of years.” Any person convicted of doing this shall forfeit and pay the sum of £50 for every person received on board, and the sum of £200 for every vessel fitted out for the trade, “to be recovered by action of debt, in any Court within this Commonwealth, proper to try the same; the one moiety thereof to the use of this Commonwealth, and the other moiety to the person who shall prosecute for and recover the same.” § 2. All insurance on said vessels and cargo shall be null and void; “and this act may be given in evidence under the general issue, in any suit or action commenced for the recovery of insurance so made,” etc. § 4. “Provided ... That this act do not extend to vessels which have already sailed, their owners, factors, or commanders, for and during their present voyage, or to any insurance that shall have been made, previous to the passing of the same.” PERPETUAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-89 (edition of 1789), page 235. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE 205. Eventually the Rhode Island Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends disowned him — but their record, now at the Rhode Island Historical Society, neglects to state the reason why this action was taken. 786 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In the Eastern States, where slavery as an institution was already nearly defunct, action was aimed toward stopping the notorious participation of citizens in the slave-trade outside the State. The prime movers were the Rhode Island Quakers. Having early secured a law against the traffic in their own State, they turned their attention to others. Through their remonstrances Connecticut, in 1788,206 prohibited participation in the trade by a fine of £500 on the vessel, £50 on each slave, and loss of insurance; this act was strengthened in 1792,207 the year after the Haytian revolt. Massachusetts, after many fruitless attempts, finally took advantage of an unusually bold case of kidnapping, and passed a similar act in 1788.208 “This,” says Belknap, “was the utmost which could be done by our legislatures; we still have to regret the impossibility of making a law here, which shall restrain our citizens from carrying on this trade in foreign bottoms, and from committing the crimes which this act prohibits, in foreign countries, as it is said some of them have done since the enacting of these laws.”209 Thus it is seen how, spurred by the tragedy in the West Indies, the United States succeeded by State action in prohibiting the slave-trade from 1798 to 1803, in furthering the cause of abolition, and in preventing the fitting out of slave-trade expeditions in United States ports. The country had good cause to congratulate itself. The national government hastened to supplement State action as far as possible, and the prophecies of the more sanguine Revolutionary fathers seemed about to be realized, when the ill-considered act of South Carolina showed the weakness of the constitutional compromise.

March 29: Four days earlier Massachusetts had prohibited its citizens to participate in the slave-trade. On this day Pennsylvania did the same. An Act to explain and amend an act, entituled, “An Act for the gradual abolition of slavery.” § 2. Slaves brought in by persons intending to settle shall be free. § 3. “... no negro or mulatto slave, or servant for term of years,” except servants of congressmen, consuls, etc., “shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed, or with the design and intention that such slave or servant, if a female, and pregnant, shall be detained and kept out of this state till her delivery of the child of which she is or shall be pregnant, or with the design and intention that such slave or servant shall be brought again into this state, after the expiration of six months from the time of such slave or servant having been first brought into 206. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (ed. 1784), pages 368, 369, 388. 207. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT, page 412. 208. PERPETUAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-89, pages 235-6. 209. QUERIES RESPECTING SLAVERY, etc., in MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS, 1st Series, IV. 205. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 787 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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this state, without his or her consent, if of full age, testified upon a private examination, before two Justices of the peace of the city or county in which he or she shall reside, or, being under the age of twenty-one years, without his or her consent, testified in manner aforesaid, and also without the consent of his or her parents,” etc. Penalty for every such offence, £75. § 5. “... if any person or persons shall build, fit, equip, man, or otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, within any port of this state, or shall cause any ship or other vessel to sail from any port of this state, for the purpose of carrying on a trade or traffic in slaves, to, from, or between Europe, Asia, Africa or America, or any places or countries whatever, or of transporting slaves to or from one port or place to another, in any part or parts of the world, such ship or vessel, her tackle, furniture, apparel, and other appurtenances, shall be forfeited to the commonwealth.... And, moreover, all and every person and persons so building, fitting out,” etc., shall forfeit £1,000. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 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?”210 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.”211 Eventually, however, in 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised “That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more Negroes.”212 This advice was repeated in stronger terms for a quarter-century,213 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.214 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.”215 Further, manumission was recommended, and 210. 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. 211. From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880. 212. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM. (1864), I. 383. 213. Cf. Bettle, NOTICES OF NEGRO SLAVERY, PASSIM. 214. Janney, HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 315-7. 788 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in 1776 made compulsory.216 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 Pennsylvania. One of the first duty acts (1710) laid a restrictive duty of 40s. on slaves, and was eventually disallowed.217 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,”218 — 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,”219 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.”220 The Assembly repealed these laws, but in 1715 passed another laying a duty of £5, which was also eventually disallowed.221 Other acts, the provisions of which are not clear, were passed in 1720 and 1722,222 and in 1725-1726 the duty on Negroes was raised to the restrictive figure of £10.223 This duty, for some reason not apparent, was lowered to £2 in 1729,224 but restored again in 1761.225 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.226 The law, nevertheless, after 215. HISTORY OF THE FRIENDS, III. 317. 216. Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 395. 217. PENN. COL. REC. (1852), II. 530; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 415. 218. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLECTED, etc., 1714, page 165; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 387. 219. See preamble of the act. 220. 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. 221. 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. 222. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 165; PENN. COL. REC., III. 171; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 389, note. 223. Carey and Bioren, LAWS, I. 214; Bettle, in PENN. HIST. SOC. MEM., I. 388. Possibly there were two acts this year. 224. LAWS OF PENNSYLVANIA (ed. 1742), page 354, ch. 287. Possibly some change in the currency made this change appear greater than it was. 225. 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. 226. PENN. COL. REC., VIII. 576. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 789 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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 prohibitive duty of £20 and make it perpetual.227 After the Revolution unpaid duties on slaves were collected and the slaves registered,228 and in 1780 an “Act for the gradual Abolition of Slavery” was passed.229 As there were probably at no time before the war more than 11,000 slaves in Pennsylvania,230 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 1788.231 It seems probable that in the original Swedish settlements along the Delaware slavery was prohibited.232 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.233 Finally, in 1776 by the Constitution, and in 1787 by law, importation and exportation were both prohibited.234 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Border States, Virginia and Maryland, strengthened their non-importation laws, Virginia freeing illegally imported Negroes,235 and Maryland prohibiting even the interstate trade.236 The Middle States took action chiefly in the final abolition of slavery within their borders, and the prevention of the fitting out of slaving vessels in their ports. Delaware declared, in her Act of 1789, that “it is inconsistent with that spirit of general liberty which pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels should be fitted out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the purpose of receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places where they are held in slavery,”237 and forbade such a practice under penalty of £500 for each person so engaged. The Pennsylvania Act of 1788238 had similar provisions, with a

227. 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. 228. Dallas, LAWS, I. 782, ch. 810. 229. LAWS, I. 838, ch. 881. 230. 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. 231. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 232. 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. 233. Force, AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 4th Ser., II. 128-9. 234. AMERICAN ARCHIVES, 5th Ser., I. 1178; LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 884, ch. 145 b. 235. Virginia codified her whole slave legislation in 1792 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, New Series, I. 122), and amended her laws in 1798 and 1806 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 251). 236. Dorsey, LAWS OF MARYLAND, 1796, I. 334. 237. LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 942, Chapter 194 b. 238. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 790 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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penalty of £1000; and New Jersey followed with an act in 1798.239

Spring: While Friend Moses Brown was in Boston, agitating for Massachusetts to ban the international slave trade, a free American black was kidnapped to be sold into slavery. There was considerable publicity and public outrage. With the help of the Boston Association of Ministers, the abolitionist bill came before the assembly and was enacted. The Massachusetts fines and penalties for violation of this new law would be, however, considerably lower than the fines and penalties that were prescribed in Rhode Island. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.

May 1: Joshua Pearce wrote to Sinnuckson Tuft of Savannah, Georgia, a dealer in slaves, providing instructions to purchase slaves in northern states, and then to sneak these northern slaves down to the southern states.

239. Paterson, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF NEW JERSEY (1800), pages 307-13. In 1804 New Jersey passed an act gradually to abolish slavery. The legislation of New York at this period was confined to regulating the exportation of slave criminals (1790), and to passing an act gradually abolishing slavery (1799). In 1801 she codified all her acts. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 791 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 17: The British Parliament’s Dolben Act restricted the number of slaves that could be carried on a ship in accordance with the ship’s tonnage. The Act, introduced by William Dolben, abolitionist and MP for Oxford University, attempted to legislate an amelioration in the travel conditions of a cargo of slaves by restricting the number of slaves that could legally be carried according to a ship’s total weight in tons. To comply with the Act, Bristol’s biggest slave trader, James Jones, would need to reduce the cargos carried by his nine slave ships by nearly a quarter on average. This plan of the negrero Brookes was made to illustrate a leaflet that was immediately published by the Plymouth Committee of Abolitionists. The plan indicates how, to comply with this new regulation, black slaves were henceforth to be benevolently stowed into the ship’s hold. Since the Brookes was a 295-ton vessel, the slaves are here being legally “stowed in the proportion of not quite One to a Ton.” (On a previous voyage the Brookes was known to have transported a cargo of 609 human beings, which

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is to say, something more than twice as densely packed as depicted on the following screen.)240 THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

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240. There are more images of this sort available at . 794 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During this year French abolitionists were founding the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of Blacks).

July 23: Prideaux John Selby was born into the “Beal and Twizell House, Northumberland” branch of the Selby family at Alnwick, near Alnwick Castle in Northumberland (think Harry Potter), near the coast of the North Sea.

(This scion would be educated not at Hogwarts but at University College, Oxford.)

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On this day an acknowledgement document was being crafted in Cambridge, Massachusetts, testifying to the transfer of ownership of Bob and Patience, who had been the Negro slaves of John Manning, to Sinnickson Tuft, a dealer in slaves: Cambridge 23rd July 1788 Paid of Sinnickson Tuft his note of hand conditionally for sixty pounds dollars at seven shillings and six pence each payable in nine months from the date hereof, for the Negroes SOLD HIM known by the names of Bob and Patience, which Negroes I warrant to be in good health and perfectly sound and warrant Bob does not exceed forty three years of age and further warrant and defend them from any person or persons claiming or pretending to claim whatsoever. Witness James C. Bryan Signed John Manning

August 10: An acknowledgement document was created in Cambridge, Massachusetts, testifying to the sale of Moses, young Negro slave of John Manning, and two horses, to Sinnickson Tuft, a slave dealer: Cambridge 10th August Recd of S. Tuft the sum of fifty seven pounds on acct of a Negro Boy Moses and his two sound horses for which there is a balance due me of 26 pounds ,, 10 signed John Manning

October: In March, first Massachusetts and then Pennsylvania had forbidden their citizens to participate in any way in the slave-trade. In this month Connecticut did the same. “An Act to prevent the Slave-Trade.” “Be it enacted by the Governor, Council and Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That no Citizen or Inhabitant of this State, shall for himself, or any other Person, either as Master, Factor, Supercargo, Owner or Hirer, in Whole, or in Part, of any Vessel, directly or indirectly, import or transport, or buy or sell, or receive on board his or her Vessel, with Intent to cause to be imported or transported, any of the Inhabitants of any Country in Africa, as Slaves or Servants, for Term of Years; upon Penalty of Fifty Pounds, for every Person so received on board, as aforesaid; and of FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS for every such Vessel employed in the Importation or Transportation aforesaid; to be recovered by Action, Bill, Plaint or Information; the one Half to the Plaintiff, and the other Half to the Use of this State.” And all insurance on vessels and slaves shall be void. This act to be given as evidence under general issue, in any suit commenced for recovery of such insurance. “... if any Person shall kidnap ... any free Negro,” etc., inhabitant of this State, he shall forfeit £100. Every vessel clearing for the coast of Africa or any other part of the world, and suspected to be in the slave-trade, must give bond in £1,000.

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Slightly amended in 1789. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (edition of 1784), pages 368-9, 388.

Connecticut’s plan was to accomplish this great thing very gradually, without rushing so much as to interfere with anyone’s agenda. Children born to slaves after 1792 would be free and all existing slave children would be emancipated when they reached the age of 25. This might indicate, to the unwary, that by the time that the captives of the La Amistad would arrive in that state’s prison system, slavery there would have been a thing of the past. However, Connecticut’s approach would be so utterly gradualistic that it would never emancipate any females who had been, at the time of the enactment of this legislation, over 21 years of age, or any males who had been over 25 years of age! (There still would be, according to the US Census, even in 1840, a small number of slaves in Connecticut. This New England state actually would not be clear of human enslavement until, “free at last,” Death would come to collect its oldest surviving slave — in the Year of Our Lord 1848!) “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

How could Connecticut’s elimination of slavery have possibly been made more gradual? For instance, in this year, because Rhode Island would no longer register a vessel for an enslaving voyage, Cyprian Sterry of Providence simply got aboard his vessel and went with it down the bay and down the sound to a port with a customshouse along the Connecticut shore — and there obtained clearance papers for the projected voyage to the coast of Africa! W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Connecticut, in common with the other colonies of this section, had a trade for many years with the West Indian slave markets; and though this trade was much smaller than that of the neighboring colonies, yet many of her citizens were engaged in it. A map of Middletown at the time of the Revolution gives, among one hundred families, three slave captains and “three notables” designated as “slave-dealers.”241 The actual importation was small,242 and almost entirely unrestricted before the Revolution, save by a few light, general duty acts. In 1774 the further importation of slaves was prohibited, because “the increase of slaves in this Colony is injurious to the poor and inconvenient.” The law prohibited importation under any pretext by a penalty of £100 per slave.243 This was re-enacted in 1784, and provisions were made for the 241. Fowler, LOCAL LAW, etc., page 124. 242. The number of slaves in Connecticut has been estimated as follows: — In 1680, 30. CONNECTICUT COLONIAL RECORD, III. 298. In 1730, 700. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 259. In 1756, 3,636. Fowler, LOCAL LAW, etc., page 140. In 1762, 4,590. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 260. In 1774, 6,562. Fowler, LOCAL LAW, etc., page 140. In 1782, 6,281. Fowler, LOCAL LAW, etc., page 140. In 1800, 5,281. Fowler, LOCAL LAW, etc., page 141. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 797 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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abolition of slavery.244 In 1788 participation in the trade was forbidden, and the penalty placed at £50 for each slave and £500 for each ship engaged.245 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In the Eastern States, where slavery as an institution was already nearly defunct, action was aimed toward stopping the notorious participation of citizens in the slave-trade outside the State. The prime movers were the Rhode Island Quakers. Having early secured a law against the traffic in their own State, they turned their attention to others. Through their remonstrances Connecticut, in 1788,246 prohibited participation in the trade by a fine of £500 on the vessel, £50 on each slave, and loss of insurance; this act was strengthened in 1792,247 the year after the Haytian revolt. Massachusetts, after many fruitless attempts, finally took advantage of an unusually bold case of kidnapping, and passed a similar act in 1788.248 “This,” says Belknap, “was the utmost which could be done by our legislatures; we still have to regret the impossibility of making a law here, which shall restrain our citizens from carrying on this trade in foreign bottoms, and from committing the crimes which this act prohibits, in foreign countries, as it is said some of them have done since the enacting of these laws.”249 Thus it is seen how, spurred by the tragedy in the West Indies, the United States succeeded by State action in prohibiting the slave-trade from 1798 to 1803, in furthering the cause of abolition, and in preventing the fitting out of slave-trade expeditions in United States ports. The country had good cause to congratulate itself. The national government hastened to supplement State action as far as possible, and the prophecies of the more sanguine Revolutionary fathers seemed about to be realized, when the ill-considered act of South Carolina showed the weakness of the constitutional compromise.

November 4: South Carolina interdicted the importation of Negroes, for the time being. “An Act to regulate the Payment and Recovery of Debts, and to prohibit the Importation of Negroes, for the Time therein limited.” § 16. “No negro or other slave shall be imported or brought into this State either by land or water on or before the first of January, 1793, under the penalty of forfeiting every such slave or slaves to any person who will sue or inform for the same; and under further penalty of paying £100 to the use of the State for every such negro or slave so imported or brought in: Provided, 243. CONNECTICUT COLONIAL RECORD, XIV 329. Fowler (pages 125-6) says that the law was passed in 1769, as does Sanford (page 252). I find no proof of this. There was in Connecticut the same Biblical legislation on the trade as in Massachusetts. Cf. LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (repr. 1865), page 9; also COLONIAL RECORD, I. 77. For general duty acts, see COLONIAL RECORD, V 405; VIII. 22; IX. 283; XIII. 72, 125. 244. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (ed. 1784), pages 233-4. 245. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (ed. 1784), pages 368, 369, 388. 246. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (ed. 1784), pages 368, 369, 388. 247. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT, page 412. 248. PERPETUAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-89, pages 235-6. 249. QUERIES RESPECTING SLAVERY, etc., in MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS, 1st Series, IV. 205. 798 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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That nothing in this prohibition contained shall extend to such slaves as are now the property of citizens of the United States, and at the time of passing this act shall be within the limits of the said United States. § 17. “All former instalment laws, and an ordinance imposing a penalty on persons importing negroes into this State, passed the 28th day of March 1787, are hereby repealed.” Grimké, PUBLIC L AWS, page 466. SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

November 18: From an affidavit witnessed by Christopher Leffingwell, justice of the peace and naval officer, Port of Norwich, Connecticut. I, Aaron Cleveland, a citizen of Norwich in the State of Connecticut, declare on oath that upon good evidence I vehemently suspect that the brig Narcissa, late the brig Nancy ... and the Sloop Lively from Boston ... are both destined for the coast of Africa for the purpose of bringing slaves contrary to the law of this state in such case made and provided, and therefore I pray the necessary steps may be taken by authority to prevent so iniquitous a traffic as the Laws of this State are calculated to prevent. TRIANGULAR TRADE

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

Winter: Friends Moses Brown and Samuel Emlin (a traveling public Friend visiting from Philadelphia) went to the Providence, Rhode Island home of the premier slavetrader, Cyprian Sterry, were invited to enter, and had there an extended conversation with that businessman. Some 6 negrero vessels were leaving the Narragansett Bay during that season bound for the shores of Africa, and in the harbor at Newport, Sterry was in the process of fitting out one of these six. The Quakers warned Sterry that if he violated the new law about the engagement of Rhode Islanders in the international slave trade, they would see to it that he was prosecuted. Sterry took refuge in the standard lie — he was sending, he averred, his ship to Africa after ivory and gold rather than, Heaven forbid, after black slaves.

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1789

At the age of 19, Robert Voorhis became emotionally attached to “an agreeable young female (an orphan) by the name of ALLEY PENNINGTON, a native of Cecil county, (Maryland)—she first expressed her attachment to me, and a willingness to become my partner for life, provided I could obtain my freedom, nor can I say that I felt less attachment for one with whom I was confident I could spend my life agreeably—she was indeed the object of my first love, a love which can only be extinguished with my existence; and never at any period previous was the yoke of bondage more goading, or did I feel so sensibly the want of that freedom, the deprivation of which, was now the only barrier to my much wished for union with one I so sincerely and tenderly loved. As my master had uniformly expressed an unwillingness to grant me my freedom, on any other terms than receiving a suitable compensation therefor, my only alternative now to obtain it, was to apply to one with whom I was most intimately acquainted, and to whom I thought I could safely communicate my desires, as he had in more than one instance, expressed much regard for me, and a willingness to serve me— to him I proposed that he should pay to my master the stipulated sum (Fifty Pounds.) demanded for my freedom, and that the bill of sale should remain in his hands, until such time as I should be enabled by the fruits of my industry to repay him, principal and interest, and allow him suitable compensation therefor for his trouble—to this proposal he readily assented, and not only expressed his willingness but his approbation of my much desired union with my beloved ALLEY. My request was immediately complied with, the Fifty Pounds were paid by my good friend (as I then supposed him,) to whom I was by bond transfered as his lawful property, and by whom I was given to understand that I might then seek business for myself, and turn my attention to any that I should conceive the most profitable, and consider myself under no other bondage than as a debtor, to the amount paid for my freedom. The name of one who had manifested so much what I supposed real and disinterested friendship for me, but who finally proved the author of almost all the wretchedness, which I have since endured, ought not to be concealed—it was JAMES BEVENS.” Robert and Alley would marry and over the next few years would have two children, while James was busy earning the £50 that, it had been promised, would gain him his precious manumission papers. He would of course be cheated by the white man he had trusted. HERMITS SLAVERY

Planters in Saint Domingue on Hispaniola sent delegates to Paris and demand freedom to deal with local matters, slavery, without interference. Paris was not sympathetic to their demands. Hispaniola had 480,000 slaves. SLAVERY

In this year Jamaica had 211,000 slaves. SLAVERY

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2 By this point nearly /3ds of the entire foreign investment of the European nation of France was tied up in its Saint-Domingue colony, the location now known to us as Haiti. Some 700 oceangoing vessels were sailing into and out of this large natural harbor each year. Of the population of 556,000, some 500,000 non-whites were enslaved to some 32,000 whites.250

“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

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From this point into 1792, the Reverend William Paley would be actively opposing the international slave trade.

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: It is a creditable incident in the history, that when, in 1789, the first privy-council report of evidence on the trade, a bulky folio, (embodying all the facts which the London Committee had been engaged for years in collecting, and all the examinations before the council,) was presented to the House of Commons, a late day being named for the discussion, in order to give members time, — Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the prime minister, and other gentlemen, took advantage of the postponement, to retire into the country, to read the report. For months and years the bill was debated, with some consciousness of the extent of its relations by the first citizens of England, the foremost men of the earth; every argument was weighed, every particle of evidence was sifted, and laid in the scale; and, at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. I know that England has the advantage of trying the question at a wide distance from the spot where the nuisance exists: the planters are not, excepting in rare examples, members of the legislature. The extent of the empire, and the magnitude and number of other questions crowding into court, keep this one in balance, and prevent it from obtaining that ascendency, and being urged with that intemperance, which a question of property tends to acquire. There are causes in the composition of the British legislature, and the relation of its leaders to the country and to Europe, which exclude much that is pitiful and injurious in other legislative assemblies. From these reasons, the question was discussed with a rare independence and magnanimity. It was not narrowed down to a paltry electioneering trap, and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest tenderness for the poor negro, for man suffering these wrongs, combined with the national pride, which refused to give the support of English soil, or the protection of the English flag, to these disgusting violations of nature.

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For several years, the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends had been paying off its slaveholders for the manumission of their slaves (allow us to assist you with the financial burden of this). “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

During this year, 5 black male domestic servants would slip away from the John Brown mansion and its associated workshops, going to Boston and attempting to merge into the free black community. Three of these 5 men, facing destitution, would soon return to slavery in Providence, Rhode Island, promising their slavemaster John Brown that they would “behave better” in the future.

CONSTITUTION OF A SOCIETY FOR ABOLISHING THE SLAVE-TRADE. WITH SEVERAL ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURES OF THE STATES OF MASSACHUSETTS, CONNECTICUT AND RHODE-ISLAND, FOR THAT PURPOSE. Printed by John Carter. Providence, 1789. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

February 3: Delaware prohibited its citizens from participation in some forms of slavetrading, but without either doing away with slavery or interfering with purchases and sales of human beings so long as these were kept local, that is, remained entirely within the state. –Well, half a loaf is better than no bread at all, right? “An additional Supplementary ACT to an act, intituled, An act to prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other purposes.” “Whereas it is inconsistent with that spirit of general liberty which pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels should be fitted out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the purpose of receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places where they are held in slavery; or that any acts should be deemed lawful, which tend to encourage or promote such iniquitous traffic among us: § 1. “Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of Delaware, That if any owner or owners, master, agent, or factor, shall fit out, equip, man, or otherwise prepare, any ship or vessel within any port or place in this state, or shall cause any ship, or other vessel, to sail from any port or place in this state, for the purpose of carrying on a trade or traffic in slaves, to, from, or between, Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, or any places or countries whatever, or of transporting slaves to, or from, one port or place to another, in any part or parts of the world; such ship or vessel, her tackle,

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furniture, apparel, and other appurtenances, shall be forfeited to this state.... And moreover, all and every person and persons so fitting out ... any ship or vessel ... shall severally forfeit and pay the sum of Five Hundred Pounds;” one-half to the state, and one-half to the informer. § 2. “And whereas it has been found by experience, that the act, intituled, An act to prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other purposes, has not produced all the good effects expected therefrom,” any one exporting a slave to Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, or the West Indies, without license, shall forfeit £100 for each slave exported and £20 for each attempt. § 3. Slaves to be tried by jury for capital offences. LAWS OF DELAWARE (edition of 1797), page 942, Chapter 194 b. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Border States, Virginia and Maryland, strengthened their non-importation laws, Virginia freeing illegally imported Negroes,251 and Maryland prohibiting even the interstate trade.252 The Middle States took action chiefly in the final abolition of slavery within their borders, and the prevention of the fitting out of slaving vessels in their ports. Delaware declared, in her Act of 1789, that “it is inconsistent with that spirit of general liberty which pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels should be fitted out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the purpose of receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places where they are held in slavery,”253 and forbade such a practice under penalty of £500 for each person so engaged. The Pennsylvania Act of 1788254 had similar provisions, with a penalty of £1000; and New Jersey followed with an act in 1798.255

251. Virginia codified her whole slave legislation in 1792 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, New Series, I. 122), and amended her laws in 1798 and 1806 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 251). 252. Dorsey, LAWS OF MARYLAND, 1796, I. 334. 253. LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 942, Chapter 194 b. 254. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 255. Paterson, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF NEW JERSEY (1800), pages 307-13. In 1804 New Jersey passed an act gradually to abolish slavery. The legislation of New York at this period was confined to regulating the exportation of slave criminals (1790), and to passing an act gradually abolishing slavery (1799). In 1801 she codified all her acts. 804 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 20, Friday: At the meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends at the corner of Towne and Meeting Streets in Providence, Rhode Island, the Providence Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade came into being and selected its first officers. David Howell (January 1, 1747-July 21, 1824) would be president, Friend Moses Brown would be treasurer, and Friend Thomas Arnold would be recording secretary. Also involved in the creation of this Society were the Reverend Samuel Hopkins, minister of the 1st Congregational Church at Newport, Friend William Rotch, prominent merchant of New Bedford, etc. The new society would function as a sort of non-official “District Attorney,” or “Special Prosecutor,” dedicated to bringing before the bar of justice any violators of the ban that had been enacted by the General Assembly in 1787 against taking part in the international slave trade. ANTISLAVERY

MOSES BROWN According to Mack Thompson’s MOSES BROWN, RELUCTANT REFORMER (Chapel Hill NC: U of North Carolina P, 1962, pages 195-6): He already had a plan, drawn up in 1786, modeled after similar organizations in America and England. There were many people in the state eager to emulate their friends in New-York and Philadelphia. Meetings were held in Providence during January 1789, and on February 20, in the Friends’ meetinghouse, the Providence Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was officially organized with ex-Congressman David Howell as president, Thomas Arnold, merchant and Friend, as secretary, and Moses Brown as treasurer.256 Samuel Hopkins sent his congratulations but objected to the title given the society as being “too confined. It should, at least, be extended to the whole state. And I think it ought not to be confined to the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It ought to promote the freedom of those now in slavery, and to assist those who are free, as far as may be, to the enjoyment of the privileges of freemen, and the comforts of life....”257

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citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”259 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”260 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

259. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 260. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 806 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: Olaudah Equiano, after buying his freedom, had relocated to England and become a hairdresser, and had then taken part in John Phipps’s expedition to find a northwest passage to India, and had then in 1775 involved himself in a project to set up a new slave plantation on the Caribbean coast of Central America (of course he felt bad for the black slaves and urged them to reconcile themselves to their plight). At this point his autobiographical THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO, OR GUSTAVUS VASSA, 261 THE AFRICAN was published by prior subscription in England.

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The Reverend John Wesley had been one of the subscribers for the publication of said volume and would peruse the materials with great sympathy. Equiano recounted his childhood in Africa until his capture and enslavement, his subsequent sale to European traders, the horrors of the middle passage, his bondage in the United States, and his life on board British merchant vessels from 1758 to 1788 — first as a slave and later for hire.

SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

May 12: William Wilberforce made his initial speech in opposition to the international slave trade, advising the House of Commons that a third of the African slaves landed in the West Indies were dying within a few months of arrival, many by suicide. SLAVERY

May 13: In the federal House of Representatives (where all federal revenue bills must originate) the idea of imposing a federal duty upon the importation of slaves was sent up the flagpole — but nobody saluted (one need not wonder why not). A tax of $10 per head on slaves imported, moved by Parker of Virginia. After debate, withdrawn. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress, 1st session, pages 336-42. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE 261. Olaudah Equiano’s detailed account of his early life in Africa, although it is more substantial than what was offered by any similar black writer of the period, is such that it could have been fabricated out of mere borrowings from various published pieces of travel writing, and from white antislavery texts like those by Anthony Benezet. This is not to say that Equiano’s account is a fabrication; it is only to say that there is no detail in it that might be granted any probative weight. If, for instance, a person came into a police station to attempt to confess to a currently unsolved murder, but was able to provide the police only with details of the crime that had already been published in the news media and with no accurate further details (this does rather often happen), although the police would collect such testimony a competent District Attorney would not automatically on such a basis bring a charge of murder or discount other possible explanations. 808 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The attention of the national government was early directed to slavery and the trade by the rise, in the first Congress, of the question of taxing slaves imported. During the debate on the duty bill introduced by Clymer’s committee, Parker of Virginia moved, May 13, 1789, to lay a tax of ten dollars per capita on slaves imported. He plainly stated that the tax was designed to check the trade, and that he was “sorry that the Constitution prevented Congress from prohibiting the importation altogether.” The proposal was evidently unwelcome, and caused an extended debate.262 Smith of South Carolina wanted to postpone a matter so “big with the most serious consequences to the State he represented.” Roger Sherman of Connecticut “could not reconcile himself to the insertion of human beings as an article of duty, among goods, wares, and merchandise.” Jackson of Georgia argued against any restriction, and thought such States as Virginia “ought to let their neighbors get supplied, before they imposed such a burden upon the importation.” Tucker of South Carolina declared it “unfair to bring in such an important subject at a time when debate was almost precluded,” and denied the right of Congress to “consider whether the importation of slaves is proper or not.” Mr. Parker was evidently somewhat abashed by this onslaught of friend and foe, but he “had ventured to introduce the subject after full deliberation, and did not like to withdraw it.” He desired Congress, “if possible,” to “wipe off the stigma under which America labored.” This brought Jackson of Georgia again to his feet. He believed, in spite of the “fashion of the day,” that the Negroes were better off as slaves than as freedmen, and that, as the tax was partial, “it would be the most odious tax Congress could impose.” Such sentiments were a distinct advance in pro-slavery doctrine, and called for a protest from Madison of Virginia. He thought the discussion proper, denied the partiality of the tax, and declared that, according to the spirit of the Constitution and his own desire, it was to be hoped “that, by expressing a national disapprobation of this trade, we may destroy it, and save ourselves from reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with slaves.” Finally, to Burke of South Carolina, who thought “the gentlemen were contending for nothing,” Madison sharply rejoined, “If we contend for nothing, the gentlemen who are opposed to us do not contend for a great deal.” It now became clear that Congress had been whirled into a discussion of too delicate and lengthy a nature to allow its further prolongation. Compromising councils prevailed; and it was agreed that the present proposition should be withdrawn and a separate bill brought in. This bill was, however, at the next session dexterously postponed “until the next session of Congress.”263

262. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress, 1st Session, pages 336-41. 263. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress, 1st Session, page 903. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 809 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 11: The Marquis de Lafayette presented a draft “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” to the French Assembly.

The Assembly would declare humans to be in possession of “natural and imprescribable rights. These rights are liberty, property, personal security and resistance to oppression....” READ THE FULL TEXT

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August 27, day: The revised “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” document was adopted and the notion of civil rights was unleashed upon the world. READ THE FULL TEXT

However:

The notion of rights, which was launched into the world in 1789, has proved unable, because of its intrinsic inadequacy, to fulfil the role assigned to it.... One cannot imagine St Francis of Assisi talking about rights. —Simone Weil, “Human Personality,” late winter 1942-early spring 1943, in “La Personne et le sacré” in ECRITS DE LONDRES ET DERNIÈRES LETTRES, Paris: Gallimard, 1957.

Although the declaration proclaimed all men as equal, France would wait for five years to abolish slavery by its “Pluviôse, year II” decree (enacted, that is, on February, 4, 1794).

One of the things which the French National Assembly enacted was that “The free communication of thought and opinion is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely.” The French assigned primacy to freedom of speech. In the United States of America, by way of contrast, the Congress had been empowered “to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times, to authors ..., the exclusive right to their respective writings.....” The Americans assigned primacy to ownership of speech. For many years into the future, this latent cultural contradiction between the primacy of general freedom of speech and the primacy of freedom to own specific portions of speech would simmer, more or less unrecognized, in each country.264

September 19: In the federal House of Representatives (where all federal revenue bills must originate) the idea of regulating the importation of slaves prior to the year 1808 was reported out of committee but then immediately got dropped on the floor. This was an idea whose time had not come. A committee under Parker of Virginia reported to the floor “a bill concerning the importation of certain persons prior to the year 1808.” The bill was read once and then postponed until next session. HOUSE JOURNAL (reprint of 1826), 1st Congress, 1st session, I. 37, 114; ANNALS OF C ONGRESS, 1st Congress, 1st session, pages 366, 903. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the 264. Please refer at this point to my own recent proposal for the resolution of this latent longstanding cultural contradiction: 812 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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many.

1790

Although slaves were gradually being manumitted in Rhode Island, they were commonly becoming merely the servants of their previous owners. For instance, when a child was born free in this year to slaves in North Kingstown, on a farm near the “Devil’s Foot Rock,” he would nevertheless be bound under the law as an involuntary servant until the age of 21. He would grow up with his slave mother and two “free” siblings but would retain little memory of his father, a slave on another farm in the neighborhood. By the convention of the time he would take the family name of his mother’s owner, Giles Pearce,265 and would be known as Cato Pearce.266

265. Giles Pearce is not recorded as owning slaves but according to the census his relative Joshua Pearce of North Kingstown held two slaves in 1782, four in 1790, and three in 1800. Presumably the four in 1790 were Cato, his mother, and his two siblings, and the three in 1800 were Cato and his two siblings after his mother had run away — and presumably Joshua, an elderly man, was allowing his younger relative Giles to make use of their services. 266. A BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE LIFE AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF CATO PEARCE, A MAN OF COLOR: TAKEN VERBATIM FROM HIS LIPS AND PUBLISHED FOR HIS BENEFIT (Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1842). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 813 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the age of 17, the enslaved John Jea began to preach the Christian faith. He would soon obtained manumission papers and become both a sailor, upon the Atlantic Ocean, and an itinerant preacher, most closely affiliated with Methodism.

From a “discourse” delivered by the Rev. James Dana of the First Congregational Church in New Haven CT to the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom: ... Wretched as you may suppose their condition was in Africa, the nefarious commerce of foreigners may have been the principle cause of that wretchedness. ... The imaginary expectation that death may transport them to their own country is their chief consolation.... Their cries will sooner or later reach the ears of him to whom vengeance belongeth. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

During this year Sally Hemings, a very light mulatto slave woman of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation, “mighty near white,” bore her first child, at the age of 17, a child which resembled its owner.

It has been established by the historian Dumas Malone that Jefferson was in the vicinity during the period when this child would have been conceived. (The infant would eventually receive the name Thomas Woodson, courtesy of another white man to whom he would be sold.) If there was no unfaithfulness to the marital partner on the part of any of Dashing Sally’s descendants during the following eight or nine generations, then, genetic tests indicate, this child was not Jefferson’s child. If, however, during any one of the eight or nine succeeding generations, there was an incident of marital unfaithfulness which resulted in fecundation, then the genetic tests which we are capable of today simply do no indicate one way or the other, who the father of this child who looked like Tom had been. (This 1st child was named Tom and Jefferson would upon his own death set him free. Not only general scandal, but also Hemings family history, indicate that he was Jefferson’s son. Also, we do know with a very high degree of reliability from the forensic evidence that at least one of slave Sally’s children, Eston, would be sired by her master or perchance by one or another of his male relatives.)

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But why, if Jefferson had been the daddy, had he not treated his child better? —Because that just wasn’t Jeffersonian:

He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to his children. — Madison Hemings

A Father of our Country But why, if Jefferson had been the daddy, had he not married the mommy? —Because this is the Thomas Jefferson who himself had penned the Virginia statute:

A marriage between a person of free condition and a slave, or between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a mulatto, shall be null.

RACE SLAVERY RACE POLITICS

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In a French memoir of this year we find the following benevolently exploitative racial sentiment: It is perhaps not impossible to civilize the Negro, to bring him to principles and make a man out of him: there would be more to gain than to buy and sell him.

At about this time, a French captain of a sailing vessel, in reaction to news from Paris that some supporters of free mulatto slavemasters had organized a Société des Amis des Noirs, proclaimed himself to be “l’Ami des Hommes.” What this captain meant by his self-descriptive phrase we may infer as we peruse his ship’s manifest of cargo: slaves from Africa destined for the cane plantations of the French Caribbean. The man was captain of a negrero engaged in the international slave trade. The events that shook up Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France or in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were “unthinkable” facts in the framework of Western thought. Pierre Bourdieu defines the unthinkable as that for which one has no adequate instruments to conceptualize. He writes: “In the unthinkable of an epoch, there is all that one cannot think for want of ethical or political inclinations that predispose to take it in account or in consideration, but also that which one cannot think for want of instruments of thought such as problematics, concepts, methods, techniques.” The unthinkable is that which one cannot conceive within the range of possible alternatives, that which perverts all answers because it defies the terms under which the questions were phrased. In that sense, the Haitian Revolution was unthinkable in its time: it challenged the very framework within which proponents and opponents had examined race, colonialism, and slavery in the Americas.

Bear in mind that there was a peculiarity in the situation of the USA and of Haiti at this time. As has been commented on a number of times, “Americans had recently been rebels, were noted in the world as such, and knew it.” The USA, a democracy in a world still dominated by blood aristocrats, a republic in an era still ruled by absolute monarchs, was being considered an outlaw nation, a pariah state. Haiti, a nation 90% enslaved, by way of extreme contrast was being considered a model of perfect appropriateness and decorum!

In this year the free men of color in Haiti protested that they were “a class of men born French, but degraded

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by cruel and vile prejudices and laws.”

A Frenchman of this Saint-Domingue colony, where some 90% of the population was enslaved, wrote home to reassure his wife and, perhaps, to reassure himself: “There is no movement among our Negroes.... They don’t even think of it. They are very tranquil and obedient. A revolt among them is impossible.”

This nation’s revolt against French rule gave George Washington a chance to put our own nation’s money where its heart was. The federal administration loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars to the French planters, to help them put down this revolt among their black charges.

Why did we behave in this manner? Well, bear in mind that the officially registered commerce of Haiti with France alone –leaving out of consideration all the trade with all the other countries and leaving out of consideration all smuggling– was equal to the total trade of the USA with all of the world. Haiti was one big deal. The US needed some 500 ships just for its trade with this one island, and that number was on the rise toward 600 and more! Before Thomas Jefferson imposed his embargo against all American shipping to the new black republic, the US had been this island’s most important trading partner. Commerce with this island was foundational to the economic prosperity of the New England and the Middle Atlantic states. This island received at least a tenth of all American exports. Only Great Britain itself received a greater percentage of our foreign commerce.

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A site for our new national capital was selected along the Potomac River:

Virginia’s slave population reached 200,000, up from over 100,000 in 1756. The slave population of Maryland (of which the District of Columbia above was still at this time a part) numbered 97,623, of whom 43,450 were black Americans. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

January 26: When Thomas Allin (1742-1800) of Barrington received his payment for having punished Ceasar, the slave of Nathaniel Smith (1754-1835), as “Allin thought fitt,” the one white man gave the other white man a receipt acknowledging that the transaction between them had been satisfactorily completed. RHODE ISLAND SLAVERY

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March 1: On March 1st in our national capital, New-York, the federal congress enacted a Census Act calling for a census every tenth year effective immediately. Domesday was an idea whose time had come. When conducted, this 1st US census revealed us to be a nation of 3,929,214 persons eligible to be counted. When analyzed, the census data would indicate that our 13 states consisted of roughly 500,000 slaves and 3,500,000 free citizens. About 92% of black Americans, with the Freeman household of Concord, Massachusetts being among the few exceptions, were enslaved.267

The census that would be completed by August 1st would list seven members in this Freeman household on Brister’s Hill, although now we can identify but five: Brister, Fenda, Nancy, Amos, and Charlestown Edes. Whether Edes also had family or whether Brister and Fenda had additional children is unknown. These five persons definitely did not fit in among the enumerated roughly 500,000 American slaves, since they were no longer slaves, but then, again, they did not exactly fit in among the enumerated roughly 3,500,000 free citizens either — since it is quite a stretch to think of them as being treated as citizens.

Squire Duncan Ingraham, owner of the slave Cato Ingraham (or, we might say, “former owner and present master” — since in 1783 slavery had allegedly been done away with entirely in the sovereign state of Massachusetts, and for some seven years there had been “no slaves in Massachusetts at all”), was in about this decade the most prominent citizen of Concord, having made his pile in part, but only in part, in the slave trade. The indications of this census are that more than 90 out of 100 of the persons in the United States at this point SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS

with identifiably French surnames were descended from Huguenot refugees, mainly in the 3d or 4th generation but with a few survivors of the 2d and 3d generation after flight still alive (for instance, Pierre Thoreau had

267. The rise in manumissions in the post-Revolutionary period would increase the proportion of free black Americans to about 13.5% by 1810, where it would remain through 1840. A decline in manumissions in the late antebellum period, combined with the lesser fecundity of free black Americans, would then move the free-to-enslaved proportion back down to about 11% when we reached the point of civil war: Year % in Population

1790 8

1810 13.5

1840 13.5

1861 11

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represented the 1st generation of the Thoreaus, the generation that had fled from the Poitou-Charentes district of France in 1685 to find refuge in St. Hélier on the island of Jersey, the 2d generation had been represented by Philippe Thoreau (1720-1800), the 3d generation had been represented by Jean Thoreau who had come to America in 1773, and in Boston, John Thoreau had just been born as a member of the 4th cohort after the great diaspora that had begun during the 16th Century, and in 1817, Henry Thoreau would be born in Concord as a member of the 5th cohort of this diaspora).

THOREAU LIFESPANS

HENRY’S RELATIVES

This figures out to be a little over 60,000 diaspora persons.

More on our 1st national census:

The population of Massachusetts remained overwhelmingly English in origin through the end of the eighteenth century. The first census, in 1790, reported a total population of 378,556 in the state. of those 373,187 were white and 5,369 “colored” (presumably “Indians” and blacks); to each 100 white inhabitants, there were only 1.4 “colored.” Of the 373,187 white residents, 354,528 (95%) were of English origin; 3.6 percent were Scots and 1 percent Irish, making a total of 99.6 percent from the British Isles. French amounted to only 0.2 percent, Dutch to 0.1 percent. Germans, “Hebrews,” and all other nationalities were represented by less than one tenth of 1 percent.... Boston was growing again after the decline brought about by years of Revolutionary agitation; the 18,038 inhabitants reported in 1790, however, seem a modest increase over the 1743 peak of 16,182, when the town was the largest in British North America. The census reported forty towns in the state with populations in excess of 2,000; those were almost evenly divided between the coast and inland areas. The four of these forty that exceeded 5,000 were, however, all seaports: Boston, Salem (7,921), Gloucester (5,137), and Marblehead (5,061). The situation was about to change radically and rapidly.

March 22: According to the ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 1st Congress, 1st session, pages 82-83, the federal House of Representatives issued on this date a “Declaration of Powers.” REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE.

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That, from the nature of the matters contained in these memorials, they were induced to examine the powers vested in Congress, under the present Constitution, relating to the Abolition of Slavery, and are clearly of opinion, First. That the General Government is expressly restrained from prohibiting the importation of such persons ‘as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, until the year one thousand eight hundred and eight.’ Secondly. That Congress, by a fair construction of the Constitution, are equally restrained from interfering in the emancipation of slaves, who already are, or who may, within the period mentioned, be imported into, or born within, any of the said States. Thirdly. That Congress have no authority to interfere in the internal regulations of particular States, relative to the instructions of slaves in the principles of morality and religion; to their comfortable clothing, accommodations, and subsistence; to the regulation of their marriages, and the prevention of the violation of the rights thereof, or to the separation of children from their parents; to a comfortable provision in cases of sickness, age, or infirmity; or to the seizure, transportation, or sale of free negroes; but have the fullest confidence in the wisdom and humanity of the Legislatures of the several States, that they will revise their laws from time to time, when necessary, and promote the objects mentioned in the memorials, and every other measure that may tend to the happiness of slaves. Fourthly. That, nevertheless, Congress have authority, if they shall think it necessary, to lay at any time a tax or duty, not exceeding ten dollars for each person of any description, the importation of whom shall be by any of the States admitted as aforesaid. Fifthly. That Congress have authority to regulate, or (so far as it is or may be carried on by citizens of the United States, for supplying foreigners), to interdict the African trade, and to make provision for the humane treatment of slaves, in all cases while on their passage to the United States, or to foreign ports, so far as respects the citizens of the United States. Sixthly. That Congress have also authority to prohibit foreigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United States, for transporting persons from Africa to any foreign port. Seventhly. That the memorialists be informed, that in all cases to which the authority of Congress extends, they will exercise it for the humane objects of the memorialists, so far as they can be promoted on the principles of justice, humanity, and good policy. * * * * * REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE.

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First. That the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, cannot be prohibited by Congress, prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight. Secondly. That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulation therein, which humanity and true policy may require. Thirdly. That Congress have authority to restrain the citizens of the United States from carrying on the African trade, for the purpose of supplying foreigners with slaves, and of providing, by proper regulations, for the humane treatment, during their passage, of slaves imported by the said citizens into the States admitting such importation. Fourthly. That Congress have authority to prohibit foreigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United States for transporting persons from Africa to any foreign port.

Meanwhile New York was amending its 1788 “Act concerning slaves” to allow the “selling South” of any slave who had committed any sort of criminal offense. “Whereas many inconveniences have arisen from the prohibiting the exporting of slaves from this State. Therefore Be it enacted ..., That where any slave shall hereafter be convicted of a crime under the degree of a capital offence, in the supreme court, or the court of oyer and terminer, and general gaol delivery, or a court of general sessions of the peace within this State, it shall and may be lawful to and for the master or mistress to cause such slave to be transported out of this State,” etc. LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1789-96 (edition of 1886), page 151. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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July 14: In France this was, of course, the 1st anniversary of Bastille Day. Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Forster were in Paris for the celebration. Humboldt would return to his studies. Forster would join the revolution and, four years later, die in disgrace and misery.

At some point during this year a federal grand jury, in its first session, returned an indictment of murder against James DeWolf (1764-1837) of Bristol, son of Captain Mark Anthony DeWolf (1726-1792), for having thrown

The Family Crest

a woman overboard when she exhibited symptoms of the small pox. The indictment read “James DeWolf, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil ... did feloniously, willfully and of his malice aforethought, with his hands clinch and seize in and upon the body of said Negro woman ... and did push, cast and throw her from out of said vessel into the Sea and waters of the Ocean, whereupon she then and there instantly sank, drowned and died.”

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(The murderous James DeWolf, protected of course by his influential uncle Simeon Potter and other family members, would never be required to answer to this indictment.)

TRIANGULAR TRADER In Providence, Rhode Island, per Volume 22, page 290 of the town records, John T. Clark on behalf of the firm of Clark & Nightingale, distillers engaged in the Triangular Trade, manumitted “Quam a Negro Man late a Servant to us for life”:

^ÇÉã tÄÄ `xÇ àÉ ã{É à{xyx cÜxyxÇàá y{tÄÄ vÉÅx à{tà jx VÄtÜ~x 9a|z{à|ÇztÄx ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{xVÉâÇàç ÉycÜÉä|wxÇvx`xÜv{tÇàá? yÉÜ9 |Ç VÉy|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{x fâÅ Éy Y|yàç fÑtÇ|y{ `|ÄÄxw WÉÄÄtÜá àÉ âá |Ç [tÇw Ñt|w uç dâtÅ t axzÜÉ `tÇ Ätàx t fxÜätÇà àÉ âá yÉÜ Ä|yx 9 yÉÜ w|äxÜá Éà{xÜ zÉÉw VÉÇy|wxÜtà|ÉÇá âá à{xÜxâÇàÉ ÅÉä|Çz? {täx ÅtÇâÅ|ààxw 9 áxà yÜxx? à{x át|w axzÜÉ `tÇ ÇtÅxw dâtÅ {xÜxuç yÉÜ âá 9 ÉâÜ [x|ÜáA exÄ|ÇÖâ|á{|Çz tÄÄ VÄt|Å ÉÜ g|àÄx àÉ à{x yt|w axzÜÉ `tÇ {|á áxÜä|vxá ÉÜ _tuÉâÜ yÉÜxäxÜ {xÜxtyàxÜ \Ç j|àÇxyá ã{xÜxÉy jx {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áâuyáÜ|uxw ÉâÜ atÅxá tá à{x Y|ÜÅ Éy ÉâÜ [Éâyx à{|á yÉâÜàxxÇà{ Wtç Éy ]âÄç? |Ç à{x çxtÜ Éy ÉâÜ _ÉÜw bÇx à{ÉâytÇw fxäxÇ {âÇwÜxw 9 a|Çxàç‰‰ VÄtÜ~9a|z{à|ÇztÄx j|àÇxyá ftÅTÜÇÉÄw

SLAVERY We wonder at the magnificent gentility of these white folks engaged in the Triangular Trade, in setting free this man of color who was their servant for life, and we also wonder — how old might Quam have been at the point at which he was thus made free?

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October 27, Wednesday: In The Pennsylvania Gazette: FOR SALE, A Young Negro Wench, Can cook, wash, iron, and SLAVERY do all kinds of house-work. Enquire of the Printers. FRANKLIN

November: President George Washington and Mistress Martha Washington brought eight of their domestic slaves to work in the President’s House in Philadelphia. Since the slave ledgers they kept at Mount Vernon generally failed to list the births or deaths of slaves, such information being of no particular importance, the ages we have assigned are approximate: • MOLL - 51, single, maid to Martha Washington and probably nanny to her grandchildren. • HERCULES - late 30s, widower with three children (two at Mount Vernon), principal cook, reportedly one of the finest chefs in the country. • RICHMOND - 13, Hercules’ son, scullion (kitchen worker). • AUSTIN - early 30s, married with wife and five children at Mount Vernon, probably waiter for the family meals and part-time stable worker. • ONEY JUDGE - 16, single, half-sister to Austin, maid and body servant to Mrs. Washington. • GILES - early 30s, probably single, stable worker. • PARIS - 18, single, stable worker. • CHRISTOPHER SHEELS - 15, body servant to Washington, nephew of BILLY LEE, Washington’s previous body servant.

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Although George Washington is generally credited with “freeing his slaves in his will,” not one of these eight would ever receive a manumission document. Most of the slaves at Mount Vernon and the Washingtons’ other plantations, and in the President’s House in Philadelphia, actually were “dower” slaves, owned not by the Washingtons but by the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband. She had the use of them during her lifetime, and then, after her death in 1802 –upon her wish since she did not at all sympathize with their known desire to be free, a desire that to her had always been incomprehensible and preposterous– all approximately 150 of these dower slaves would pass into the ownership of her grandchildren. The slaves in the President’s House in Philadelphia slept in three distinct areas. We suppose that Hercules, Richmond, and Christopher slept in a room in the attic of the main house, while Moll and Oney slept with Mrs. Washington’s grandchildren in two rooms over the kitchen and Giles, Paris, and Austin slept in a room Washington had had created between the smokehouse and the stable, behind the kitchen. Within a year, George Washington would decide that Richmond was lazy, and that the teenage Paris had become insubordinate, and that Giles, so seriously injured that he could no longer ride a horse, had become useless, and the three would be sent back to Mount Vernon to labor under supervision. The total number of slaves the Washingtons had in Philadelphia was down from eight to five.

December 4: A petition before Connecticut’s General Assembly: The humble petition of Edward Carter Negro in behalf of self and fellow sufferers Humbly sheweth that insured by an Act of the Legislature of this state and what was ... greater encouragement the hopes of emancipating himself from slavery and his country from the tyranny of Britain did on the seventh day of May in the year 1777 enroll himself in the service of his country in the fourth company and regiment of Connecticut ... and from that period until the peace faithfully served in the Connecticut line in the Continental army ... undergoing the misery and hardships incident to the war ... constantly consoling himself with the prospects of freedom for himself and Country and your petitioner begs leave further to show that at the [end] of the war having a wife and family whose freedom and his own he had gained by the [service]; and being an inhabitant of a ... town where [there] were numbers of his own exemption and whose condition were like his own it seemed absolutely necessary to gain a [subsistence] for his family that he should change his situation and having nothing [wherewith] to purchase lands gained lease of a landholder in the town of Willington in this state to erect a [home] on his lands and your petitioner with considerable expense of labours had on land erected a small building to shelter himself and family from the ... weather. But by authority of said town of Willington has been taken from

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him habitation aforesaid ... deprived of a shelter for himself and family and hath no means whereby to produce one; is suffering in a most deplorable and suffering situation ... [Connecticut Archives, Miscellaneous, Second Series, 1686-1820. I:73, Connecticut State Library] EMANCIPATION

1791

Robert Carter III, master of Nomoni Hall, where there were nearly 500 slaves, on Virginia’s Northern Neck, declared human slavery to be contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and to religion, and began to emancipate his many slaves.268 (The process would be completed after his death in 1804.) Melvin Patrick Ely would review Andrew Levy’s biography of this first emancipator in the Sunday Washington Post for April 24, 2005. Here are excerpts: Breaking the Chains THE FIRST EMANCIPATOR: THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF ROBERT CARTER, THE FOUNDING FATHER WHO FREED HIS SLAVES By Andrew Levy. Random House. In 1791, Robert Carter III, the master of Nomony Hall plantation on Virginia’s Northern Neck, began to emancipate his many slaves. In the years that followed, 500-600 African Americans received their freedom. The Old South would witness other group liberations, but never one so sweeping as this. Now Andrew Levy, who teaches English at Butler University, has taken up two related challenges in his intriguing but flawed new book: to resurrect and explain Carter’s act of emancipation and to discover why this extraordinary liberator is virtually unknown to Americans today. Far from being the “founding father” of the subtitle, Carter emerges as an outsider by nature who nevertheless remained a member of the planter elite. In one run for Virginia’s House of Burgesses, Carter received only seven votes. Yet he was named to the royal governor’s council, and he played chamber music and 268. When William, Duke of Normandy had crossed the English Channel in 1066 to contest for the crown of England, he brought with him a clan of Norman knights known as Cartiers. According to the tapestry which records the Battle of Hastings, when William was in danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed by English soldiers, it was the Cartiers who rushed to his defense. By the time England founded Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, Cartier had become Carter and the family was elite. Around 1612, the Carter business cartel became intrigued at the potential of the emerging tobacco trade. John Carter was born in 1613 at Edmonton in Middlesex, England. He got to the Virginia Colony in 1635 from Essex in England and settled along the Corotoman River, which flows into the Rappahanock River near Chesapeake bay in Lancaster County, Virginia. This was where he founded the Corotoman Plantation. He became a colonel in the militia and helped drive the remaining natives from the region by 1640. With the support of his wealthy relatives and associates in England, he had the resources to outfit negreros. Noticing that Africans of the Ibo culture were excellent subsistence farmers in a semi-tropical environment, he purchased Ibos to provide the agricultural labor force at Corotoman. He produced numerous progeny by five wives, the most significant being Robert “King” Carter by his 2d wife Sarah Ludlow. He died on June 10, 1669 at Corotoman Plantation and was buried in Christ Church Cemetery in Lancaster County, Virginia. By 1700 “King” Carter was the richest white man in the English Colonies of North America, controlling nearly 300,000 acres of tobacco plantation scattered across the Northern neck of Tidewater Virginia with a labor force of about 1,500 slaves. His son Robert Carter Jr. produced in 1728 an heir named Robert Carter III. “King” Carter raised his grandson, who was educated at Cambridge University, inherited 78,000 of these acres scattered around Tidewater Virginia, and established his headquarters at Nomini Hall. 828 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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discussed the world within a rarefied circle in Williamsburg that included the governor and a young Thomas Jefferson. Levy’s careful reading of Carter family papers yields a vivid narrative of the future emancipator’s evolution. Alienated both from the royal government and many of his selfish Virginia peers, Carter nevertheless went through the Revolutionary War without seriously questioning the morality of slavery. In late spring 1777, feverish after a smallpox inoculation, he saw a “most gracious Illumination” and abandoned deism. Carter then “tested every major faith” and wrote “small but passionate defenses of the poor and enslaved.” He shared communion with humble folk both white and black and joined the Baptist church. By 1780, he forbade overseers to whip his enslaved laborers. Still, he was prepared to sell blacks, whether as punishment for escaping or to make good his prodigal son’s debts. Within a few years, he had drifted away from the Baptists and toward the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose faith encompassed numerology and purported conversations with denizens of other planets; Carter “joyously marginalized himself.” In 1791, Carter began the legal process that would emancipate, one small group at a time, the hundreds of black souls he owned, with whom he had come to empathize. Just as significant, he rejected Jefferson’s belief that liberated slaves ought to be moved away from areas of white settlement. Instead, Carter offered to rent parcels of his land to his former slaves, even displacing white tenants to do so. In 1793, he left Virginia for Maryland; there he lived out his life near his wife’s family, whom he preferred to his own Virginia kin. A sometime Baptist preacher to whom Carter delegated the work of liberation continued releasing group after group of Carter slaves well into the 1820s, long after their emancipator’s death. As Carter had hoped, the gradualness of the procedure seems to have tempered, though not eliminated, white neighbors’ misgivings. Levy pays some attention to the role Carter’s slaves played in their own liberation; once freed, they turned down his offers to sign on as employees, which “aggrieved” Carter. But the author also accepts and even amplifies the traditional view of free blacks as virtually helpless — “easy targets for random violence” and harassment by whites. The evidence he himself marshals suggests a much more complicated reality. Local courts, for example, acquitted one free black man suspected of helping a slave escape. They also heard a black woman charge a white man with assault; lodging such a public accusation was hardly the act of one who felt cowed. Levy attributes instances of free-black self-improvement and interracial cooperation on Virginia’s Northern Neck to the example set by Carter’s mass emancipation. (In fact, similar things occurred elsewhere in the Upper South as well.) The author suggests that gradual elimination of slavery was a viable option in old Virginia — and that Americans have willfully ignored Robert Carter’s story because it exposes our failure to follow in his footsteps. Rather than take Carter’s example to heart, Levy writes, white Southerners circled the wagons in defense of slavery while Yankees embraced abolitionism and,

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ultimately, a “great sacred war” of liberation. Levy’s argument — that the Civil War could have been averted if only leaders in both the North and South had behaved more sensibly and generously — had its heyday three generations ago; it is seldom broached today. At times, Levy himself seems not to believe it. He is more persuasive when he suggests that history lost sight of Carter because he differed so markedly from those founding fathers who “conducted a conversation with posterity.” Carter wrote little about his interactions with slaves and “wanted to be forgotten.” His relegation to obscurity may not be as willful as Levy fears. Carter’s mysterious life, then, becomes an inspiring vignette of moral self-redemption. Yet even if Carter had behaved less eccentrically than he did and had applied himself to converting his fellow slaveholders, would many of them have followed his example? I doubt it. Levy also undermines his case for the road not taken when he depicts Carter, inaccurately, as the “only one” in the Virginia elite who “showed no fear of free blacks.” Still, those persistent misgivings about slavery in the Upper South could not overcome the reluctance of many whites to live in a biracial society of free people; nor, for most white citizens, did moral qualms outweigh the tragic convenience of keeping 4 million people in bondage — the count at the beginning of the Civil War. Among those who did seek a way out, Robert Carter remains both an emotional puzzle and the moral exemplar Andrew Levy proclaims him to be. Melvin Patrick Ely is a professor of history and black studies at William and Mary and the author of ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX: A SOUTHERN EXPERIMENT IN BLACK FREEDOM FROM THE 1790S THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR, which won the Bancroft Prize for 2004.

Slaves hired from their masters by L’Enfant begin work on the construction of our presidential residential mansion. “Since much was accomplished very quickly there must have been many; the conditions of their labor from daybreak to dark under the command of tough, hard-drinking James Dermott can only be imagined.” Due to lack of skilled labor in Washington DC, master stonemason Collen Williamson needed to train hired slaves on the spot at the quarry to cut the stone to build the foundation of what would eventually, after several coats of paint to cover up fire damage caused by British troops, come to be regarded as the White House. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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Olaudah Equiano’s THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO OR GUSTAVUS VASSA, THE AFRICAN, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF was published in the United States. A two-volume work, it is considered the first major slave narrative in American literature and would be translated into several European languages and reprinted several times until and throughout the 19th Century. Although Equiano embraced Christianity and Englishness, contemporary critics have questioned the seriousness of his conversion and sometimes have been known to complain that his Christian rhetoric was tongue-in-cheek. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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April 20: When William Wilberforce presented his first bill in the House of Commons to abolish the international slave trade it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88.269

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: In 1791, Mr. Wilberforce announced to the House of Commons, “We have already gained one victory: we have obtained for these poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which, for a time, was most shamefully denied them.” It was the sarcasm of Montesquieu, “it would not do to suppose that negroes were men, lest it should turn out that whites were not;” for, the white has, for ages, done what he could to keep the negro in that hoggish state. His laws have been furies.

The House of Commons has been prejudiced by the slave insurrection at Saint Domingue and by similar revolts in Martinique and Dominica. Most of Wilberforce’s Tory colleagues were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he and Friend Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp had to rely on the support

269. Anna Letitia Barbauld would write a poem entitled “Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade,” which would in this year be published in London by J. Johnson. The bill would succeed in 1807. READ THE FULL TEXT

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of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville, and Henry Peter Brougham.

Publication of a sermon on THE INJUSTICE AND IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND OF THE SLAVERY OF AFRICANS ... A SERMON (New Haven CT: Thomas and Samuel Green, by the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, D.D., in opposition to the continuation of the international slave trade:

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interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.

John Carroll became the 1st Roman Catholic bishop in the USA. (As the Archbishop of Baltimore he would of course own slaves — but as a regular good guy, before his death in 1815 he would have manumitted the last of them.)

As of this period the center of the human population of the USA was a little town just about a day’s travel inland from Baltimore. By the year 1820 this center of population would have relocated some 127 miles, as the result of a general westward expansion almost exactly along the 39th parallel, to an unimpressive glen the woods some 16 miles south of Woodstock VA: more than four miles per year. As of 1860 this center of population would lie in a field 20 miles to the south of Chillicothe OH: about seven miles per year. (Nowadays, of course, we’ve all been coming from one or another center in Missouri.)

William Murdock took out a patent for a process for extracting from coal a composition for painting on boats to prevent barnacles from attaching themselves to hulls. The patent included coal tar dyes, which would not be used practically for another 50 years.

As of this date 85 out of every 100 New Englanders worked a small farm — but this was a statistic which was about to undergo radical change. America was poised to begin its career as a copycat industrializing nation. At this point there were all of 7,500 waterwheel-powered mills in the United States.

(By 1840 there would be 55,000.)

Oliver Evans patented an “automated mill” in which the power that turned the millstones also conveyed the grains (known as grist) to the top of the mill, rather than these sacks being carried up on ladders by slaves.

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February 22: The Reverend John Wesley was being read to before breakfast. He had been one of the subscribers to the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, and the resulting tract was the reading material which was beginning to be read that morning.

February 24: The Reverend John Wesley wrote one last letter, a letter of encouragement to a Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who had been converted under his ministry. Who could resist a deathbed plea like this one? Balam, February 24, 1791 Dear Sir: Unless the divine power has raised you us to be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be fore you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it. Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African [Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa], I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law” in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this? That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, Your affectionate servant, John Wesley SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

May 12: Zephaniah Swift orated against human slavery at the North Meetinghouse in Hartford, Connecticut: ... So many volumes have been written on this subject, that nothing new can be expected; yet the subject ought never to be deemed exhausted, while an individual of the human race is groaning in shackles of servitude.... These victims are sold with less ceremony than the beasts of the field.... Can there

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be a human heart that does not soften with compassion at the cries of anguish and exclamations of sorrow when the ships depart from the coast - when the slaves take a last view of their native climes, to which they have no hopes ever to return - when they bid an eternal adieu to all that is dear to them....

The French National Assembly granted Africans born of free parents in the French West Indies voting rights and the same privileges as all citizens. The 30,000 white citizens of Saint Domingue prepared to secede. Free Africans and mulattos in Saint Domingue revolted. Within a few months 2,000 whites and 10,000 Africans had been killed. Sugar plantation mansions burned but 70,000 tons of cane sugar still were produced. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rôle which the great Negro Toussaint, called L’Ouverture, played in the history of the United States has seldom been fully appreciated. Representing the age of revolution in America, he rose to leadership through a bloody terror, which contrived a Negro “problem” for the Western Hemisphere, intensified and defined the anti-slavery movement, became one of the causes, and probably the prime one, which led Napoleon to sell Louisiana for a song, and finally, through the interworking of all these effects, rendered more certain the final prohibition of the slave-trade by the United States in 1807. From the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, in 1787, anti-slavery sentiment became active. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia had strong organizations, and a national convention was held in 1794. The terrible upheaval in the West Indies, beginning in 1791, furnished this rising movement with an irresistible argument. A wave of horror and fear swept over the South, which even the powerful slave-traders of Georgia did not dare withstand; the Middle States saw their worst dreams realized, and the mercenary trade interests of the East lost control of the New England conscience. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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August 22-24: The freemen of racially mixed ancestry of the northern province of Saint-Domingue launched an uprising against French overlordship –led by a short former coachman named François Dominique Toussaint SWEETS Louverture who himself from time to time owned black slaves– which during the following 13 years would 270 WITHOUT spread throughout the colony, and which would severely impact the lucrative production of cane sugar. But SLAVERY SLAVERY do not suppose that this was initially a slave revolt. According to Lester D. Langley’s THE AMERICAS IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION 1750-1850 (New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1996, page 119), The rebellion began not as a struggle for African freedom but as a conflict between whites and free coloreds over social equality. In the beginning the [African] blacks were observers, then participants, sometimes at the behest of whites or free coloreds but always with a different agenda.... Often forgotten are the early phases. Whites and free coloreds had initiated the carnage.

Two years into the French Revolution the marginalized peoples of the island of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean were somehow getting a message of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the course of their struggle they would defeat, in succession, their local white overlords and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 soldiers, and, finally, in 1803, a French expedition of roughly the same size commanded by a brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte. What specifically did they say

270.Except for the decline in sugar production which was thus occasioned during the years 1791-1803, the island of Haiti being the world’s largest colonial producer, world production of sugar has not suffered more than an occasional hiccup in the course of five centuries. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 837 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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were their nonnegotiable demands? –They said they were fighting in order to obtain the concession of three days off per week to work in their own gardens –in order to be able properly to feed themselves and their families during their labors– and they added that in addition to that, they preferred not to be punished by the use of whips. The eventual result would be the nation of Haiti, famous for an unofficial and sarcastic motto: “We oppress ourselves, quite eliminating the middleman.”

It is important to come to grips with the fact that the world of 1791 was in certain ways now poorly understood quite a big different from the world as it is now. As things now stand, Haiti is a little ruined island where nothing much goes on other than poverty and filth and oppression and political victimization, and Disney factories where local people fabricate cuddly stuffed toys for pennies an hour, whereas the United States of America is the world’s only superpower and the home of the free and the brave. In 1791 Haiti was the richest and best-run, most orderly and arranged society one might imagine, entirely regular and autocratic, with a place for everyone and everyone in their place —a sugar-saturated economy— whereas the USA was an outlaw nation, a backwater violent republic in an era in which monarchy was recognized as the righteous condition. Winthrop Jordan expressed the situation as “Americans had recently been rebels, were noted in the world as such, and knew it.” Then, during this night, the situation began to change. The island of Haiti began a second American revolution much like the one which had occurred a decade or two before on the American mainland. Well, but the white people of the United States of America were able to make a significant distinction between that 1st revolution for freedom, on the mainland, and this 2d revolution for freedom, on the island in the Caribbean, because the fight for freedom in the Caribbean would be an “insurrection of the negroes.” As Jordan would put it, the white people would lack any inclination to “admit the exactness of the parallel” between the one struggle for freedom and the other. And this refusal to see the parallel between the 1st and 2d revolutions would “help ... form an ideology” in the USA that would “differ ... significantly from the humanistic traditions of Western civilization.” White freedom righteous black freedom unrighteous. The revolutionary rhetoric of American patriotism was to be held unavailable. The American president, Thomas Jefferson the strong believer in human liberty, would out of race prejudice become in this circumstance the strongest believer in human illiberty. Although he might well have perceived the revolt in Haiti as representing a heaven-sent opportunity to achieve freedom and justice for all, had he been another sort of person than the person he was, he would not perceive the situation in that way, indeed he would not even become aware that this was an option. He would lock himself and his nation into a knee-jerk hostility. He “grew increasingly silent and depressed about the future of Africans in America” and focused himself upon his “aversion ... to the mixture of color.” Essentially, we proceeded in regard to the island of Haiti in the late 18th Century in the manner in which we would proceed in regard to the island of Cuba at the middle of the 20th Century, by our treating Fidel Castro as if he were a new Toussaint Louverture. As the French general Leclerc resorted to unblinking terrorism (“Since terror is the sole resource left me, I employ it.”), as the French troops imported 1,500 bloodhounds trained to attack any person of black skin and tear him or her to pieces, we stood idly by. We stood idly by in precisely the same manner as white women stood idly by in their finery and watched exhibitions in which blacks were lashed to posts in order to be disemboweled by attack dogs.

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October: Noah Webster, Jr. helped found a Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

It would be a mistake, however, to presume from this that the evil of human enslavement was very high on this dude’s list of Things That Needed To Get Fixed — in 1837 he would instruct a daughter, for instance, one who was being unduly influenced by abolitionists, that “slavery is a great sin and a general calamity – but it is not our sin, though it may prove to be a terrible calamity to us in the north. But we cannot legally interfere with the South on this subject. ... To come north to preach and thus disturb our peace, when we can legally do nothing to effect this object, is, in my view, highly criminal and the preachers of abolitionism deserve the penitentiary.”

Wow, we ought to lock up the Frederick Douglass who had followed the North Star merely to disturb Noah’s daughter’s slumber? –With its support coming from folks like this Noah, abolitionism certainly didn’t require any enemies!

During this month he was publishing, anonymously of course, a PROMPTER similar to Benjamin Franklin’s POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC. Some representative examples of this publication’s Franklinesque wit and wisdom: • Page 21 — “It will do for the present.” This common saying does as much mischief in society, as rum or pestilence. • Page 34 — “Come, we’ll take the t’other sip.” Not only the grog drinker but too many others in various walks of life make the mistake of taking just the other sip. • Page 36 — “Any other time will do as well.” Yes, yes, but are you sure that any other time will arrive?

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October 8: A notice appeared in the American Weekly Mercury, that Andrew Bradford in Philadelphia owned a very likely Negro Woman who was available to be purchased, and that this piece of merchandise was aged about 28 years, and fit for Country or City Business. The notice went on to describe this slave in more detail, as a person able to card, spin, knit, and milk as well as perform any other sort of country work:

A notice also appeared to the effect that Samuel Kirk in the Second Street of Philadelphia had a Negro Woman who was available to be purchased, but added no details in regard to this piece of merchandise other than that she was young:

During this period the yellow fever was rampant in the city. Mortalities in the period from August to November inclusive would total to 4,002.

1792

L’Enfant was laying out the city of Washington DC as the White House was being constructed for a cost of $232,372 on 18 acres of prime downtown real estate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by architect James Hoban. Well, part of the reason for this low cost was that the executive mansion did not then, as it does now, contain 32 indoor bathrooms, 3 elevators, a dental office, a bowling lane, a tennis court, a movie theater, and a jogging track –although very likely then as now it boasted 132 rooms, 29 of them possessing fireplaces–, but the primary reason why it was costing only $232,372 to construct was that most of the labor which went into its construction was being contributed gratis so to speak, not by a grateful citizenry but by slave laborers.271 “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

271. We are told that nowadays the home would be priced in the neighborhood of $63,900,000 were it placed on the open market by Coldwell Banker Residential Affiliates. That would, of course, be exclusive of the military command and control complex in the massive steel and concrete bunkers which lie buried layer upon layer beneath the visible structure. 840 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Although Connecticut had passed, in 1788, a law gradually abolishing slavery there, and although that law had specified that infants born to that state’s slaves after this year were to be free and all others were to be manumitted when they reached the age of 25, and although this might indicate to some unwary readers that slavery would have ended in Connecticut effectively at the very least by 1813, indicating that when the captives of La Amistad arrived in that state’s prison system, they would be arriving in a state that knew nothing of human slavery — such an appreciation would unfortunately be an inaccurate one. In fact Connecticut’s gradualistic approach would never emancipate any females who had been over 21 years of age at the time of its passage, and would never emancipate any males who had been over 25. Thus there still would be, according to the US Census, even in 1840, a small number of slaves in Connecticut. This state actually would not be clear of slavery until death would come to the last of its slaves, “free at last,” in the Year of Our Lord 1848.

Paris sent an army to restore order in Saint Domingue, only to have its military commanders favor and support the rebellious slaves.

Edward Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield expressing his approval of the vote against slavery, but expressed a hope that humanity was the only motive — as he had a fear of wild ideas about the rights and natural equality of man.

Eli Whitney developed an improved cotton gin that was capable of processing the short staple upland cotton that had been being produced in the American South since about 1789. This was the first improvement to the cotton gin in 2,000 years. Cotton would rescue slavery from oblivion by replacing the naval stores and indigo trade lost during the revolution, and advance the inevitable war between the Northern and Southern States by a generation.

The Moses Levy and Moses Seixas families lived together in a mansion at 29 Touro Street, near the Touro Synagogue. Moses Levy, a merchant and trader of New-York and Newport, was one of several Ashkenazi families in the town at that time. Moses Seixas was Cashier of the Bank of Rhode Island. He was also a founding member of the nation’s oldest Jewish Masonic Lodge, King David in Newport, and Grand Master of the Masonic Order of Rhode Island. In this year Moses Levy died, willing his interest in the mansion at 29 Touro Street to Moses Seixas.

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At the age of 22, Robert Voorhis was betrayed by James Bevens, the white man he had trusted, who had loaned him £50 so that this slave could obtain his manumission papers and marry and have a family: “It was late one evening, an evening never to be forgotten by me, while sitting in the midst of my innocent and beloved family, amused with the prattle of my eldest child, and enjoying all the felicity which conjugal love and parental affections are productive of, that this monster in human shape (Bevins) accompanied by another, entered, seized and pinioned me! And gave me to understand that I was intended for a Southern market!! It is impossible for me to describe my feelings or those of my poor distracted wife, at that moment! It was in vain that I intreated, in vain that I represented to Bevins that he had already received a very great proportion of the sum paid for my freedom—to which the ruffian made no other reply, than pronouncing me a liar, dragged me like a felon from my peaceable domicil— from my beloved family—whose shrieks would have pierced the heart of any one but a wretch like himself!” He was shipped to Charleston in irons and there he was sold in the slave auction. HERMITS

January: Riots in Paris over high price of sugar.

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February 15: On September 14, 1796, some four and a half years after the fact, Isaiah Burr of Warren and Newport, Rhode Island appeared before the Town Clerk of Providence to certify that, in consideration of a payment of sixty spanish milled Dollars received, he had on February 15, 1792 sold a piece of the property of his deceased father, to wit a black boy named Jack, to Bacchus Overing to have and to hold for and during the natural Life of Said Jack. This transaction was duly recorded on page 144 in Volume 25 of the town records:

^ÇÉã tÄÄ `xÇ uç à{xáx ÑÜxáxÇàá à{tà \ \át|t{ UâÜÜ Éy jtÜÜxÇ |Ç à{x fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw \Ç~xxÑxÜ [sic] yÉÜ tÇw |Ç VÉÇá|wxÜtà|ÉÇ Éy à{x fâÅ Éy á|åàç áÑtÇ|á{ Å|ÄÄxw WÉÄÄtÜá à{x exvx|Ñà ã{xÜxÉy \ {xÜxuç tv~ÇÉãÄxwzx {täx utÜzt|Çxw zÜtÇàxw 9 áÉÄw tÇw uç à{xáx cÜxáxÇàá wÉ zÜtÇà? utÜzt|Ç tÇw áxÄÄ âÇàÉ Utvv{âá bäxÜ|Çz tÄÄ Åç e|z{à? g|àÄx tÇw \ÇàxÜxáà |Ç tÇw àÉ t uÄtv~ UÉç ÇtÅxw ]tv~ à{x cÜÉÑxÜàç Éy Åç Ytà{xÜ wxvxtáxw? tÇw tÄÄ à{x e|z{à? g|àÄx tÇw \ÇàxÜxáà Éy tÄÄ tÇw tÇç Éà{xÜ cxÜáÉÇ vÄt|Å|Çz âÇwxÜ Åç tyÉÜxát|w Ytà{xÜ àÉ {täx tÇw àÉ {ÉÄw à{x át|w UÉç ]tv~ tá à{x ÑÜÉ@ ÑxÜàç Éy à{x át|w Utvv{âá tÇw {|á XåxvâàÉÜá tÇw tyá|zÇá yÉÜ tÇw wâ@ Ü|Çz à{x ÇtàâÜtÄ _|yx Éy à{x ft|w ]tv~? tÇw \ wÉ {xÜxuç yâÜà{xÜ vÉäxÇtÇà tÇw tzÜxx àÉ tÇw ã|à{ à{x át|w Utvv{âá {|á XåxvâàÉÜá tÇw tyá|zÇá à{tà \ ã|ÄÄ ãtÜÜtÇà tÇw wxyxÇw {|Å |Ç ÑÉyáxyá|ÉÇ Éy à{x át|w UÉç ]tv~ tÇw \ {xÜxuç u|Çw Åç XåxvâàÉÜá tÇw [x|Üá uç à{xáx ÑÜxáxÇàá tzt|Çáà à{x VÄt|Åá ÉÜ WxÅtÇwá Éy tÇç cxÜáÉÇ ã{tàxäxÜA Z|äxÇ âÇwxÜ Åç [tÇw tÇw fxtÄ à{|á y|yàxxÇà{ Wtç Éy YxuÜâtÜç DJLEA fxtÄxw tÇw wxÄ|äxÜxw |Ç à{x ÑÜxáxÇvx Éy eÉu à gA gâv{Åâàç \át|t{ UâÜÜA } ç à{ ‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰ axãÑÉÜà e{Éwx \áÄtÇw Yxu DH DJLEA exv|xäxw [sic] Éy à{x ã|à{|Ç ÇtÅxw Utvv{âá bäxÜ@ |Çz à{x fâÅ Éy á|åàç WÉÄÄtÜá ux|Çz à{x VÉÇá|wx@ Ütà|ÉÇ ã|à{|Ç ÇtÅxwA à \át|t{ UâÜÜA eÉu‰‰‰‰‰‰ ‰gA‰‰‰ ‰gâv{ÅâàçA‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰ } exvÉÜwxw fxÑàxÅuxÜ DG à{TWDJLIA j|àÇxyá ]xÜA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táàgÉãÇ VÄxÜ~ SLAVERY MANUMISSION We note several interesting elements in this record. First, would the delay of some four and a half years have been the period of time during which Bacchus Overing was coming up with the sixty spanish milled Dollars? (I cannot think of any other explanation, offhand.) And we immediately note the utterly strange fact, that within the body of the note the family name of Bacchus Overing was omitted — does this utterly strange fact signal to us that the purchaser Bacchus was himself a man of color? (I cannot think of any other explanation.) Now putting two and two together, –could it be that this Bacchus Overing was the father of this “black Boy named Jack the Property of my Father deceased”, –that he was purchasing his own son, to set his son free?

March 19 to 24: In Providence, Rhode Island, the Reverend John Pitman was noticing that his “old negro Dinah” was infested with lice. Finally he “determined to send her away.” SLAVERY

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May: Connecticut strengthened its Act of 1788. “An Act in addition to an Act, entitled ‘An Act to prevent the Slave Trade.’” This provided that persons directly or indirectly aiding or assisting in slave-trading should be fined £100. All notes, bonds, mortgages, etc., of any kind, made or executed in payment for any slave imported contrary to this act, are declared null and void. Persons removing from the State might carry away their slaves. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (edition of 1784), pages 412-3. SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In the Eastern States, where slavery as an institution was already nearly defunct, action was aimed toward stopping the notorious participation of citizens in the slave-trade outside the State. The prime movers were the Rhode Island Quakers. Having early secured a law against the traffic in their own State, they turned their attention to others. Through their remonstrances Connecticut, in 1788,272 prohibited participation in the trade by a fine of £500 on the vessel, £50 on each slave, and loss of insurance; this act was strengthened in 1792,273 the year after the Haytian revolt. Massachusetts, after many fruitless attempts, finally took advantage of an unusually bold case of kidnapping, and passed a similar act in 1788.274 “This,” says Belknap, “was the utmost which could be done by our legislatures; we still have to regret the impossibility of making a law here, which shall restrain our citizens from carrying on this trade in foreign bottoms, and from committing the crimes which this act prohibits, in foreign countries, as it is said some of them have done since the enacting of these laws.”275 Thus it is seen how, spurred by the tragedy in the West Indies, the United States succeeded by State action in prohibiting the slave-trade from 1798 to 1803, in furthering the cause of abolition, and in preventing the fitting out of slave-trade expeditions in United States ports. The country had good cause to congratulate itself. The national government hastened to supplement State action as far as possible, and the prophecies of the more sanguine Revolutionary fathers seemed about to be realized, when the ill-considered act of South Carolina showed the weakness of the constitutional compromise.

October 13: George Washington was absent when the Masonic ceremony was held for the laying of the cornerstone for the Executive Mansion in the District of Columbia, later to be called the White House (most of the rest of the work of construction there would be done by black slaves).

272. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT (ed. 1784), pages 368, 369, 388. 273. ACTS AND LAWS OF CONNECTICUT, page 412. 274. PERPETUAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-89, pages 235-6. 275. QUERIES RESPECTING SLAVERY, etc., in MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS, 1st Series, IV. 205. 844 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 17: Virginia enacted “An Act to reduce into one, the several acts concerning slaves, free negroes, and mulattoes.” § 1. “Be it enacted ..., That no persons shall henceforth be slaves within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the seventeenth day of October,” 1785, “and the descendants of the females of them.” § 2. “Slaves which shall hereafter be brought into this commonwealth, and kept therein one whole year together, or so long at different times as shall amount to one year, shall be free.” § 4. “Provided, That nothing in this act contained, shall be construed to extend to those who may incline to remove from any of the United States and become citizens of this, if within sixty days after such removal, he or she shall take the following oath before some justice of the peace of this commonwealth: ‘I, A.B., do swear, that my removal into the state of Virginia, was with no intent of evading the laws for preventing the further importation of slaves, nor have I brought with me any slaves, with an intention of selling them, nor have any of the slaves which I have brought with me, been imported from Africa, or any of the West India islands, since the first day of November,’” 1778, etc. § 53. This act to be in force immediately. STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, NEW SERIES, I. 122. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

December 21: South Carolina prohibited, until the turn of the year 1795, any further importation of Slaves from Africa, the West India Islands, or other places beyond sea, and also prohibited the importation or bringing in Slaves, or Negroes, Mulattoes, Indians, Moors or Mestizoes, bound for a term of years, from any of the United States or bordering countries, by land or by water (except for new settlers bringing along with them their slaves). “Whereas, it is deemed inexpedient to increase the number of slaves within this State, in our present circumstances and situation; § 1. “Be it therefore enacted ..., That no slave shall be imported into this State from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea, for and during the term of two years, commencing from the first day of January next, which will be in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety- three.” § 2. No slaves, Negroes, Indians, etc., bound for a term of years, to be brought in from any of the United States or bordering countries. Settlers may bring their slaves. Cooper, STATUTES, VII. 431. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In a few years [after the Haitian revolution began] the growing sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery only from “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 845 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt compelled in 1793276 to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798277 to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although miserably enforced, was never repealed. South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore, between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788278 she had forbidden the trade for five years, and in 1792,279 being peculiarly exposed to the West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it “inexpedient” to allow Negroes “from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea” to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with lessening penalties, until 1803.280 The home demand in view of the probable stoppage of the trade in 1808, the speculative chances of the new Louisiana Territory trade, and the large already existing illicit traffic combined in that year to cause the passage of an act, December 17, reopening the African slave-trade, although still carefully excluding “West India” Negroes.281 This action profoundly stirred the Union, aroused anti-slavery sentiment, led to a concerted movement for a constitutional amendment, and, failing in this, to an irresistible demand for a national prohibitory act at the earliest constitutional moment. North Carolina had repealed her prohibitory duty act in 1790,282 but in 1794 she passed an “Act to prevent further importation and bringing of slaves,” etc.283 Even the body-servants of West India immigrants and, naturally, all free Negroes, were eventually prohibited.284

1793

Austin Steward was born enslaved in Virginia. He would be taken to Canandaigua, New York by his slaveowner, who would there get into financial difficulties.

276. Prince, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 786; Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, pages 440, 442. The exact text of this act appears not to be extant. Section I. is stated to have been “re-enacted by the constitution.” Possibly this act prohibited slaves also, although this is not certain. Georgia passed several regulative acts between 1755 and 1793. Cf. Renne, COLONIAL ACTS OF GEORGIA, pages 73-4, 164, note. 277. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 30, § 11. The clause was penned by Peter J. Carnes of Jefferson. Cf. W.B. Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA (1847), II. 501. 278. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, page 466. 279. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 431. 280. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 433-6, 444, 447. 281. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 449. 282. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, I. 492. 283. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 53. 284. Cf. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 94; LAWS OF NORTH CAROLINA (revision of 1819), I. 786. 846 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Slavery had begun in Canada at or near the beginning of the 17th Century, although it had not grown to be of great economic importance. There had been slaves for instance at Louisburg, which was in regular contact with the West Indies, and in Quebec. Although some of the Loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution were former slaves who had earned the reward of freedom by doing work for the British army, there were also many Loyalist slaveholders, and some of these were able to bring their slaves with them. In “Upper Canada” (now Ontario), however, in this year, the 1st Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, who had in England been a supporter of William Wilberforce in the British parliament, opposed slavery, although unable to abolish slavery outright because some members of his Executive Counsel were slaveholders, did manage to obtain a law prohibiting further importation of slaves into the province, and allowing for the gradual abolition of the offspring of existing slaves. The practice of slavery would die out in Canada about the time of the War of 1812, because so many black residents enlisted in military and militia forces that guarded Canada’s borders. In Quebec and the Maritimes, slavery would end without legislative action, as judges disposed of cases in which enslaved human “property” was in dispute or in which slaves had run away and been captured. Again, the practice died out in the first decades of the 19th Century. In 1834, with the abolition of slavery on the British islands of the Caribbean, slavery would be discontinued also throughout Canada. Although when the British abolished slavery in the West Indies, where slaves were held for reasons of profit, compensation was paid to the slaveholders, no such compensations were considered in Canada. –Evidently it was taken into consideration that in Canada, slaveholding was not so much for profit as for prestige.

Between 1790 and 1860, about one million slaves were moved west, almost twice the number of Africans shipped to the USA during the whole period of the transatlantic slave trade. Some slaves moved with their masters and others moved as part of a new domestic trade in which owners from the seaboard states sold slaves to planters in the cotton-growing states of the new Southwest region.

The chemist Franz Karl Achard informed the citizenry of Berlin that they might be obtaining the sugar they felt they needed from sugar beets rather than from subtropical sugar cane grown by the use of human slavery. Were the Berliners saying “Hmmm....,” or were they saying “Yummm....”?

SWEETS WITHOUT SLAVERY

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Late January: The British slaver Samuel Gamble loaded his negrero Sandown, owned by an investment syndicate of London brokers and consigned to Joseph and Angus Kennedy, merchants of Kingston, Jamaica, in Greenwich (England?) for a voyage to the windward coast of Upper Guinea to purchase people for transshipment to Jamaica where they could be sold as slaves.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

February 12, Tuesday: There has been a whole lot of loose talk about the concepts of “slave,” “slavery,” and “enslavement,” concepts which have never received any sort of legal definition at our federal level. Thus it is that we find that an enactment of this date is now being referred to in our history books as the “National Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,” and when we go back to the actual piece of legislation, we find that the bill is entitled instead “An Act respecting Fugitives from Labour and Justice, approved February 12th, 1793.” In other words, there is no definition of such a concept as enslavement to be found in this document, but instead of any such precision, what we encounter is a mere pot category which mingles together escaped slaves with absconding apprentices, premature journeymen, fleeing rapists and highwaymen in such manner as to remind one of the definition that conservative biologist Garret Harding (author of the ruthless concept “lifeboat ethics”) once provided for the concept “weed”: a plant that’s where it doesn’t belong.

The law as enacted by our Congress: ARTICLE 4. For the better security of the peace and friendship now entered into by the contracting parties, against all infractions of the same, by the citizens of either party, to the prejudice of the other, neither party shall proceed to the infliction of punishments on the citizens of the other, otherwise than by securing the offender, or offenders, by imprisonment, or any other competent means, till a fair and impartial trial can be had by judges or juries of both parties, as near as can be, to the laws, customs, and usages of the contracting parties, and natural justice: the mode of such trials to be hereafter fixed by the wise men of the United States, in congress assembled, with the assistance of such deputies of the Delaware nation, as may be appointed to act in concert with them in adjusting this matter to

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their mutual liking. And it is further agreed between the parties aforesaid, that neither shall entertain, or give countenance to, the enemies of the other, or protect, in their respective states, criminal fugitives, servants, or slaves, but the same to apprehend and secure, and deliver to the state or states, to which such enemies, criminals, servants, or slaves, respectively below. This “fugitive slave” law, for instance, make it very risky for any free northern black to be out and about, traveling unprotected in isolated locales. In particular it made this risky for a black fisherman such as Paul Cuffe, who was while at sea always at risk of capture and transportation south and sale as a slave. (—But that wasn’t what the law “intended.” —Yeah, right, that would be a “misuse” of the law.)

Early April: The British slaver Samuel Gamble took his negrero Sandown from Greenwich (England?) to the coast of Upper Guinea (the Rio Nunez region of present-day Sierra Leone) to purchase people for transshipment to Jamaica where they could be sold as slaves. Private traders such as Dr. James Walker and David Lawrence were in place there as middlemen, in the trade between African sellers and European buyers.

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Mid-June: The negrero Sandown of the slaver Samuel Gamble arrived on the coast of Upper Guinea (the Rio Nunez region of present-day Sierra Leone) too early to meet the peak season of the slave trade, and had to wait around in order to be able to accumulate a shipload of captives.285 The seamen of the crew would be exposed to the end of the rainy season and there was a probability that a number of them would die of the fever. This British captain thought little of Africa — a “country at variance with Mankind” and full of disagreeable wild beasts, enormous snakes, and an abundance of annoying insects. The animals of Africa indeed made such a racket that “there’s little if any sleep to be got so that a European richly deserves what he gains.” When he first had encountered Africans, in the Cape Verde islands, he had decided that they were “roguishly inclin’d from their Infancy.” The Africans he saw in the interior of Sierra Leone were even more offensive than that: “filthy and beastly as ugly” with “Miserable” houses, jealous, indolent, and “capable of depraved barbarity.” “A Philosopher,” he concludes “would here find an ample field to display his genius which may justly be term’d a Natural History of the Human Species in their Savage state.” However, Captain Gamble commented in all fairness that it was not only black Africans who were depraved: in Cork, Ireland he had seen that “People[,] Hogs[,] and Dogs all live in the same place” and probably ate “out of the same vessels.” The Irish women were worse off even than the African women, “us’d to a degree of barbarity carrying the manure on their backs to the land, while as of[ten] great idle fellows are looking on at their ease.”

285. In the 1790s, Americans traded in and commandeered the labor of captive Africans. These creatures were, and are, conventionally referred to in the US print culture as “slaves.” In the same timeframe, however Algerian Moslems were commandeering and trading in the labor of US sailors they were taking prisoner off the coast of North Africa. These creatures were, and are, being referred to in the US print culture as “captives.” The difference between being “slaves” and being “captives” was, and is, in part the difference between being black humans and being white humans, and in part the difference between being, on the one hand, naturalized and essentialized, and being, on the other hand, personalized and individualized: slaves are slaves because they are ontologically enslaved, while captives are merely captive because despite being ontologically “free” people, despite being individual agents with intact wills, they are temporarily being held against their intact will. Glenn Hendler has pointed out that a term such as “slave” effectively made the condition of enslavement inevitable, because it provided the totality of the identity of the persons so described. The term “captive,” on the other hand, disallowed this totalization and connoted both resisting intelligences operating against the enslaved condition, and the unnaturalness and injustice of the condition itself. The insistence of (white) US writers in the 1790s on applying the term of art “captives” rather than the term of art “slaves” to their fellow citizens held by Moslems on the north coast of Africa should, I think, give us pause. Is it serving the purposes of communication, if we continue to accept such a nomenclature system, or is it instead a fertile source of miscommunication? Here, describing as I do above the black Africans aboard a negrero as “captives” rather than as “slaves,” I am easily inverting the convention in order to draw attention to it. 850 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 4: The British slaver Samuel Gamble observed that his crewmen were “become quite Peevish, fraxious, ill natur’d and Childish.” He confessed he was at a loss to know how to deal with them. His early arrival had not helped him in getting a cargo of humans on board such that he could arrive in Jamaica in good time when the sugar harvest began and when planters were most likely to buy slaves. Ideally, he should depart West African waters during November 1793 but the necessity of replacing dead crew with new people, his own illness, and difficulties in dealing with both European traders as well as African intermediaries meant that his many journeys inland and around the coast to facilitate the purchase of slaves had little effect. By November 1793 he should have been able to secure a full complement of slaves, but this would not come about.

November: President Washington traveled to Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania to inspect lock construction on the Susquehanna and Schuylkill (Union) Canal.

December 7: Madame du Barry, mistress of French King Louis XV, was guillotined.

December 16: A Pennsylvania document entitled “Henry Wynkoop Esq to Phebe Tony & Tom”: Know all then by these presents that I Henry Wynkoop of Northampton Township in the County of Bucks Esquire for divers good causes and considerations me thereunto moving and of my own motion without any pecuniary consideration have manumitted and set free my Negro Woman Slave named and registered by the Name of Phebe, also my Negro Man named and Registered by the Name of Tony (both above the age of twenty eight years) and also my Negro Man Tom

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registered by the Same Name and under the age of Twenty eight years and by these presents do manumit and set free the said three Slaves, Phebe Tony and Tom for ever. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my Hand and Seal this sixteenth day of December in the Year of our Lord one thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety three. ~ Henry Wynkoop [Seal] Sealed and delivered in the presence of Jas. Linton } Wm Linton Bucks fr? [Seal] Before me the Subscriber one of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Bucks Henry Wynkoop Esquire acknowledged the above Manumission to be his Act and Deed. Witness my Hand & Seal Decr 16th 1793.

Francis Murray

Bucks fr Recorded in the Rolls Office for the County of Bucks in Lease Book No. 1 Page 232. Witness my Hand & Seal of office Decr 16th 1793 ~ Wm Linton D. Recorder286 MANUMISSION

December 19: When, after a siege of four months, British and Spanish forces quit Toulon, French Republican forces took control of the town. Among the victorious troops was a commander of artillery from Corsica, Major Napoléon Bonaparte, who proceeded to round up hundreds of royalists in the town square and mow them down with his cannon. The important buildings of Toulon were destroyed.

Georgia prohibited the importation of negroes not from everywhere but from locations specifically enumerated. “An act to prevent the importation of negroes into this state from the places herein mentioned.” Title only. Re-enacted (?) by the Constitution of 1798. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST, page 442; Prince, DIGEST, page 786. SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In a few years [after the Haitian revolution began] the growing sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt compelled in 1793287 to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798288 to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This provision was placed in the Constitution of the 286. Folder 1, Spruance Library, Bucks County Historical Society, 84 South Pine Street, Doylestown PA 18901 287. Prince, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 786; Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, pages 440, 442. The exact text of this act appears not to be extant. Section I. is stated to have been “re-enacted by the constitution.” Possibly this act prohibited slaves also, although this is not certain. Georgia passed several regulative acts between 1755 and 1793. Cf. Renne, COLONIAL ACTS OF GEORGIA, pages 73-4, 164, note. 852 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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State, and, although miserably enforced, was never repealed. South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore, between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788289 she had forbidden the trade for five years, and in 1792,290 being peculiarly exposed to the West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it “inexpedient” to allow Negroes “from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea” to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with lessening penalties, until 1803.291 The home demand in view of the probable stoppage of the trade in 1808, the speculative chances of the new Louisiana Territory trade, and the large already existing illicit traffic combined in that year to cause the passage of an act, December 17, reopening the African slave-trade, although still carefully excluding “West India” Negroes.292 This action profoundly stirred the Union, aroused anti-slavery sentiment, led to a concerted movement for a constitutional amendment, and, failing in this, to an irresistible demand for a national prohibitory act at the earliest constitutional moment. North Carolina had repealed her prohibitory duty act in 1790,293 but in 1794 she passed an “Act to prevent further importation and bringing of slaves,” etc.294 Even the body-servants of West India immigrants and, naturally, all free Negroes, were eventually prohibited.295

1794

The capital of North Carolina, which had previously been located in New Bern, was moved to Raleigh and a state house was erected there (the structure would burn in 1831).

North Carolina prohibited “further importation and bringing of slaves and indented servants of colour into this state” whether by land or by water. § 1. “Be it enacted ..., That from and after the first day of May next, no slave or indented servant of colour shall be imported or brought into this state by land or water; nor shall any slave or indented servant of colour, who may be imported or brought contrary to the intent and meaning of this act, be bought, sold or hired by any person whatever.”

288. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 30, § 11. The clause was penned by Peter J. Carnes of Jefferson. Cf. W.B. Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA (1847), II. 501. 289. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, page 466. 290. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 431. 291. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 433-6, 444, 447. 292. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 449. 293. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, I. 492. 294. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 53. 295. Cf. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 94; LAWS OF NORTH CAROLINA (revision of 1819), I. 786. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 853 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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§ 2. Penalty for importing, £100 per slave; for buying or selling, the same. § 4. Persons removing, travelling, etc., are excepted. The act was amended slightly in 1796. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 53, 94. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In a few years [after the Haitian revolution began] the growing sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt compelled in 1793296 to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798297 to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although miserably enforced, was never repealed. South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore, between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788298 she had forbidden the trade for five years, and in 1792,299 being peculiarly exposed to the West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it “inexpedient” to allow Negroes “from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea” to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with lessening penalties, until 1803.300 The home demand in view of the probable stoppage of the trade in 1808, the speculative chances of the new Louisiana Territory trade, and the large already existing illicit traffic combined in that year to cause the passage of an act, December 17, reopening the African slave-trade, although still carefully excluding “West India” Negroes.301 This action profoundly stirred the Union, aroused anti-slavery sentiment, led to a concerted movement for a constitutional amendment, and, failing in this, to an irresistible demand for a national prohibitory act at the earliest constitutional moment. North Carolina had repealed her prohibitory duty act in 1790,302 but in 1794 she passed an “Act to prevent further importation and bringing of slaves,” etc.303 Even the body-servants of West India immigrants and, naturally, all free Negroes, were 296. Prince, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 786; Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, pages 440, 442. The exact text of this act appears not to be extant. Section I. is stated to have been “re-enacted by the constitution.” Possibly this act prohibited slaves also, although this is not certain. Georgia passed several regulative acts between 1755 and 1793. Cf. Renne, COLONIAL ACTS OF GEORGIA, pages 73-4, 164, note. 297. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 30, § 11. The clause was penned by Peter J. Carnes of Jefferson. Cf. W.B. Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA (1847), II. 501. 298. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, page 466. 299. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 431. 300. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 433-6, 444, 447. 301. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 449. 302. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, I. 492. 303. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 53. 854 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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eventually prohibited.304

Dr. Benjamin Rush manumitted his long-term slave William Grubber (image not provided).

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George Washington recommended Harpers Ferry as the site for a new federal armory and arsenal. (The primary considerations in such a decision, of course, were transport, ease of defense, and power.)

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Under the leadership of the mulatto François Dominique Toussaint Louverture, 51, Jean Jacques Dessalines,

36, and Henri Christophe, 27, some 500,000 black and mulatto Haitian slaves rose against the 40,000 whites of the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti) on Hispaniola, and then defeated a Spanish/English force sent to re-impose slavery upon the island.

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Friend Moses Brown and Friend Samuel Rodman presented to President George Washington and Vice- President John Adams a memorial in opposition to the international slave trade. The federal Congress passed an act prohibiting the trans-Atlantic trade. (When officials of the Newport customs district would begin to enforce this law in the subsidiary port of Bristol, this would interfere with the nefarious activities of Rhode Island slavetraders James DeWolf and Shearjashub Bourne. The slavetraders would lobby the government for the establishment of Bristol as a separate customs district and no longer subject to these out-of-control officials of the Newport customs district — who were actually daring to enforce this new law.) W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.

The DeWolf Crest

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The Rhode Island schooner Dolphin made a round trip to the coast of Africa and brought 52 new slaves over the Middle Passage.

Meanwhile, back at home in Rhode Island, conditions in the whites-only factories along the Pawtucket River weren’t all that benevolent. Here is Samuel Slater, fulminating: “You call for yarn but think little about the means by which it is to be made such as the children.”305 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.306 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”307 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was 305. Although I don’t know the date of this remark, it would seem appropriate to include it at this point: Friend Moses Brown, Rhode Island’s premiere industrialist, once commented contentedly that, since yarn was being manufactured by the labor of children from 8 to 14 years old, “it is a near total saving of labor to the country.” 306. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. 307. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 859 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”308 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

The District of Columbia did not have a legal interstate slave trade. In this year the federal Congress prohibited the exchange of Virginia or Maryland slaves within the city limits and limited the sale of DC slaves. Most of the transactions involving the sale of slaves were occurring in Alexandria, Virginia, which had a thriving trade: Franklin and Armfield, America’s largest slave trading firm, established its office on Duke Street there in order to circumvent the letter of the law. Thus, the District’s trade was far from self-contained and any study of DC has to take into account the surrounding area. Slave traders, however, had some slave depots in Washington DC and rented space in taverns there as well. Miller’s tavern became especially notorious in this regard. There are accounts of auctions in the District, but then if the slave was to be taken out of the District, the actual bill of sale was supposed to be registered elsewhere. The upshot is that slaves for sale could be exhibited in DC, but the actual paperwork had to be done somewhere else. For that reason, most of the larger slave traders put their facilities in Alexandria. Of course slaves were marched through the District once they had been purchased (a fact to which numerous northern congressmen alluded), giving the appearance of DC as a slave depot.

February 4: Thomas Clarkson issued a pamphlet urging suppression of the international slave trade.

Slavery and the slave-trade were abolished in all French colonies. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: At the beginning of the nineteenth century England held 800,000 slaves in her colonies; France, 250,000; Denmark, 27,000; Spain and Portugal, 600,000; Holland, 50,000; Sweden, 600; there were also about 2,000,000 slaves in Brazil, and about 900,000 in the United States.309 This was the powerful basis of the demand for the slave-trade; and against the economic forces which these four and a half millions of enforced laborers represented, the battle for freedom had to be fought. Denmark first responded to the denunciatory cries of the eighteenth century against slavery and the slave-trade. In 1792, by royal order, this traffic was prohibited in the Danish possessions after 1802. The principles of the French Revolution logically called for the extinction of the slave system by France. This was, however, accomplished more precipitately than the Convention anticipated; and in a whirl of enthusiasm engendered by the appearance of the Dominican deputies, slavery and the slave-trade were abolished in all French colonies February 4, 1794.310 This abolition was short-lived; for at the command of the First Consul slavery and the slave-trade was 308. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 309. Cf. Augustine Cochin, in Lalor, CYCLOPEDIA, III. 723. 860 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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restored in An X (1799).311 The trade was finally abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte during the Hundred Days by a decree, March 29, 1815, which briefly declared: “À dater de la publication du présent Décret, la Traite des Noirs est abolie.”312 The Treaty of Paris eventually confirmed this law.313 In England, the united efforts of Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce early began to arouse public opinion by means of agitation and pamphlet literature. May 21, 1788, Sir William Dolben moved a bill regulating the trade, which passed in July and was the last English measure countenancing the traffic.314 The report of the Privy Council on the subject in 1789315 precipitated the long struggle. On motion of Pitt, in 1788, the House had resolved to take up at the next session the question of the abolition of the trade.316 It was, accordingly, called up by Wilberforce, and a remarkable parliamentary battle ensued, which lasted continuously until 1805. The Grenville-Fox ministry now espoused the cause. This ministry first prohibited the trade with such colonies as England had acquired by conquest during the Napoleonic wars; then, in 1806, they prohibited the foreign slave-trade; and finally, March 25, 1807, enacted the total abolition of the traffic.317

March 22: The United States federal government forbad the export half of slavetrading (but not the import half), and the fitting out of negreros in US ports. “An Act to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country.” STATUTES AT LARGE, I. 347. For proceedings in Congress, see SENATE JOURNAL (reprint of 1820), 3rd Congress, 1st session, II. 51; HOUSE JOURNAL (reprint of 1826), 3rd Congress, 1st session, II. 76, 84, 85, 96, 98, 99, 100; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 3rd Congress, 1st session, pages 64, 70, 72. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: This declaration of the powers of the central government over the slave-trade bore early fruit in the second Congress, in the shape of a shower of petitions from

310. By a law of Aug. 11, 1792, the encouragement formerly given to the trade was stopped. Cf. CHOIX DE RAPPORTS, OPINIONS ET DISCOURS PRONONCÉS À LA TRIBUNE NATIONALE DEPUIS 1789 (Paris, 1821), XIV. 425; quoted in Cochin, THE RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION (Booth’s translation, 1863), pages 33, 35-8. 311. Cochin, THE RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION (Booth’s translation, 1863), pages 42-7. 312. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, page 196. 313. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 195-9, 292-3; 1816-7, page 755. It was eventually confirmed by royal ordinance, and the law of April 15, 1818. 314. STATUTE 28 GEORGE III., ch. 54. Cf. STATUTE 29 GEORGE III., ch. 66. 315. Various petitions had come in praying for an abolition of the slave-trade; and by an order in Council, Feb. 11, 1788, a committee of the Privy Council was ordered to take evidence on the subject. This committee presented an elaborate report in 1789. See published REPORT, London, 1789. 316. For the history of the Parliamentary struggle, cf. Clarkson’s and Copley’s histories. The movement was checked in the House of Commons in 1789, 1790, and 1791. In 1792 the House of Commons resolved to abolish the trade in 1796. The Lords postponed the matter to take evidence. A bill to prohibit the foreign slave-trade was lost in 1793, passed the next session, and was lost in the House of Lords. In 1795, 1796, 1798, and 1799 repeated attempts to abolish the trade were defeated. The matter then rested until 1804, when the battle was renewed with more success. 317. STATUTE 46 GEORGE III., ch. 52, 119; 47 GEORGE III., sess. I. ch. 36. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 861 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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abolition societies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.318 In some of these slavery was denounced as “an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature,”319 and the slave-trade as a traffic “degrading to the rights of man” and “repugnant to reason.”320 Others declared the trade “injurious to the true commercial interest of a nation,”321 and asked Congress that, having taken up the matter, they do all in their power to limit the trade. Congress was, however, determined to avoid as long as possible so unpleasant a matter, and, save an angry attempt to censure a Quaker petitioner,322 nothing was heard of the slave-trade until the third Congress. Meantime, news came from the seas southeast of Carolina and Georgia which influenced Congress more powerfully than humanitarian arguments had done. The wild revolt of despised slaves, the rise of a noble black leader, and the birth of a new nation of Negro freemen frightened the pro-slavery advocates and armed the anti-slavery agitation. As a result, a Quaker petition for a law against the transport traffic in slaves was received without a murmur in 1794,323 and on March 22 the first national act against the slave-trade became a law.324 It was designed “to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country,” or the fitting out of slavers in the United States for that country. The penalties for violation were forfeiture of the ship, a fine of $1000 for each person engaged, and of $200 for each slave transported. If the Quakers thought this a triumph of anti-slavery sentiment, they were quickly undeceived. Congress might willingly restrain the country from feeding West Indian turbulence, and yet be furious at a petition like that of 1797,325 calling attention to “the oppressed state of our brethren of the African race” in this country, and to the interstate slave-trade. “Considering the present extraordinary state of the West India Islands and of Europe,” young John Rutledge insisted “that ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,’ and that they ought to shut their door against any thing which had a tendency to produce the like confusion in this country.” After excited debate and some investigation by a special committee, the petition was ordered, in both Senate and House, to be withdrawn.

318. See MEMORIALS PRESENTED TO CONGRESS, etc. (1792), published by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. 319. From the Virginia petition. 320. From the petition of Baltimore and other Maryland societies. 321. From the Providence Abolition Society’s petition. 322. HOUSE JOURNAL (reprinted 1826), 2d Congress, 2d Session, I. 627-9; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 2d Congress, 2d Session, pages 728-31. 323. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 3d Congress, 1st Session, pages 64, 70, 72; HOUSE JOURNAL (reprinted 1826), 3d Congress, 1st Session, II. 76, 84-5, 96-100; SENATE JOURNAL (reprinted 1820), 3d Congress, 1st Session, II. 51. 324. STATUTES AT LARGE, I. 347-9. 325. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 5th Congress, 2d Session, pages 656-70, 945-1033. 862 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 26: The British slaver Samuel Gamble had finally accumulated a full shipload of 220 enslaved Africans aboard his negrero Sandown. He was likely to arrive in the British West Indies after the peak of the buying season.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

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May 8: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who had been born in 1743-1794, had disproved the phlogiston theory, naming oxygen and discovered its importance in respiration and combustion. Here was a guy, I may opinion, who really knew how to think. His last letter: “I have had a fairly long life, above all a very happy one, and I think that I shall be remembered with some regrets and perhaps leave some reputation behind me. What more could I ask? The events in which I am involved will probably save me from the troubles of old age. I shall die in full possession of my faculties.” Lavoisier was obliged to watch as the head of his father-in-law, Jacques Alexis Paulze, fell into the basket, before he himself stepped up to the machine that had come to be known as the Guillotine. His brain was then deprived of its oxygenated blood supply.

Theodore Dwight spoke before “The Connecticut Society, for the promotion of freedom and the relief of persons unlawfully holden in bondage,” in Hartford, Connecticut: ... The injustice of it has been generally, if not uniformly acknowledged; and the practice of it severely reprobated. But when the question of total abolition has been seriously put, it has met with steady opposition, and has hitherto miscarried, on the ground of political expediency - That is, it is confessed to be morally wrong, to subject any class of our fellow- creatures to the evils of slavery; but asserted to be politically right, to keep them in such subjection.... In this state indeed, and with the sincerest pleasure I make the remark, in consequence of the small number of slaves, the advancement of civilization, and the diffusion of a liberal policy, the situation of the Negroes is essentially different. Exposed to few severe punishments, and indulged in many amusements, compared with what is found in most other countries, they are here flourishing and happy. But even here they are slaves.

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The very idea embitters every enjoyment. SLAVERY

May 13: Upon arrival in Kingston harbor, Captain Samuel Gamble had only 6 crewmen and was down to his last something like 180 slaves. Leaks in his water kegs had forced him to put his crew on three-quarters rations and when he had put into Barbados for fresh supplies, 16 members of his crew had deserted, abandoning all their pay. There were already 17 negreros in Kingston harbor offering for sale a total of 5,432 Africans. Provisions were “very scarce and dear” and therefore the “Sale of Negroes here very indifferent at present” because the planters were having difficulty feeding them. The slaver captain also noted that the island was overrun with French emigrants and that an epidemic of yellow fever was going on. It would take him nearly two months to dispose of all his ship Sandown’s cargo, except for four who were so ill that he could get no-one to purchase them at any price.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE RACE SLAVERY

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October 11: The down-on-its-luck negrero Sandown of the British slaver Samuel Gamble –the one that had sailed out of Greenwich with such expectations in late January of the previous year, had arrived at the island of Jamaica from Upper Guinea with the survivors of his shipload of 220 people to be sold as slaves, after having been forced to put down a slave insurrection by killing 10 of his cargo and having lost 34 of his cargo to disease, along with several of his crewmen, and after having been deserted by many of his crew– at this point returned to Greenwich to deliver its unsatisfactory report to the vessel’s owners and investors, an unhappy syndicate of London brokers. Gamble had not paid off.

December: Austin, one of George Washington’s slaves at the President’s House in Philadelphia, was allowed to return from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon to spend Christmas with his family, but while on this trip back home, he died. The total number of slaves the Washingtons had in Philadelphia was down from eight to four. There is documentation of escape attempts by three of the remaining four. Since Hercules was owned by Washington, he might have been freed in his will, but since Hercules’s late wife had been a dower slave, his children also were dower slaves, and thus would have remained enslaved. Richmond was caught stealing money for what may have been a planned attempt by the father and son to run away together. Following Washington’s presidency, Hercules did escape at the last possible moment, somewhere between Philadelphia and Chester, on the final trip back to Mount Vernon. Oney Judge, a dower slave, escaped, and Henry Wiencek reports in AN IMPERFECT GOD: GEORGE WASHINGTON, HIS SLAVES, AND THE CREATION OF AMERICA (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003) that Washington who could not tell a lie concocted a fiction that she had been stolen

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from him by a Frenchman, in order to legitimate use of illegal means in his search to recover her and force her return to his household (evidently this fiction was concocted on the basis of a popular novel that Martha Washington had just been reading). When Oney Judge was tracked down in New Hampshire, she attempted to negotiate with her white master to return if she too could be freed in his will, but of course the President refused to bargain about this. Christopher seems to have known how to read and write after a fashion, since Washington discovered notes in which he was outlining his plot to escape from Mount Vernon. Oney Judge is the only one of the eight whose whereabouts would be traceable after Mrs. Washington’s death. She would settle in New Hampshire, have a family and live a long life, and would be interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the 19th century. Hercules would never be found or heard from again. The fate of the rest, of Hercules’ children, and of those of the late Austin (all dower slaves) is not known.

December 20: South Carolina revived and extended its Act of 1792 that had prohibited the importation of Slaves from Africa, or other places beyond Sea, and had prohibited the importation or bringing in of Negro Slaves, Mulattoes, Indians, Moors or Mestizoes, bound for a term of years, from any of the United States, by Land or Water. § 1. Act of 1792 extended until Jan. 1, 1797. § 2. It shall not be lawful hereafter to import slaves, free Negroes, etc., from the West Indies, any part of America outside the United States, “or from other parts beyond sea.” Such slaves are to be forfeited and sold; the importer to be fined £50; free Negroes to be re-transported. Cooper, STATUTES, VII. 433. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.326 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes 326. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 867 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”327 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”328 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

1795

North Carolina legislated against free persons of color who might attempt to come into the state, and against slavemasters who might attempt to emigrate from any of the West India or Bahama islands, or the French, Dutch or Spanish settlements on the southern coast of America bringing along with them their West Indian slaves. “An act to prevent any person who may emigrate from any of the West India or Bahama islands, or the French, Dutch or Spanish settlements on the southern coast of America, from bringing slaves into this state, and also for imposing certain restrictions on free persons of colour who may hereafter come into this state.” Penalty, £100 for each slave over 15 years of age. LAWS OF NORTH CAROLINA (revision of 1819), I. 786. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many. 327. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 328. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 868 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On the island of Jamaica during this year and the next, the 2d Maroon War against escaped slaves:

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 mountains.

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

SERVILE INSURRECTION

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The United States government entered into a treaty with Spain, opening navigation on the Mississippi River, which treaty would later be misapplied in the case The U.S. v. The Libelants, etc., of the Schooner Amistad. Article 9 of this Pinckney treaty dealt with the prompt return of ships and merchandise in times of peace, when saved from pirates or robbers, and Article 6 dealt with the prompt return of ships and merchandise in time of war when property of either nation had by force been brought under the jurisdiction of the other. It would take the Supreme Court decision of March 9, 1841 to correct a preposterous government allegation that the blacks of the La Amistad, who had been kidnapped from Africa, were property which the US government was obligated under this treaty with Spain to deliver back to Cuba — to be there burned at the stake as pirates.

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Through a series of interlocking treaties backed by what historian Charles Allen has called “bullying, bribery, and military prowess,” the Honourable East India Company started spreading British procedural law throughout India. This was less gunpowder diplomacy than the fact that the Company was the only cohesive force in India. British officers often served as advisers to allied maharajahs, and through their efforts, disputing Indian rulers started using wrestling pits, polo games, and courtrooms as surrogate battlefields.

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By this point (possibly already in the previous year), Robert Voorhis, the man who would wind up his life as a hermit in Rhode Island, had escaped from his enslavement in Charleston by hiding away on a ship that had a Quaker master. He made it from Boston to Charlestown MA to Lynn to Salem, where he enlisted as a common seaman aboard a ship bound for India. He would be a seaman for approximately the following nine years. During this time, while in home port, he evidently would get a girl in the family way and would need to marry with her, for he would say in regard to his marriage before Justice Putnam of Danvers that he was being “strongly urged so to do by those who undoubtedly had the authority to use compulsory means had I declined.” –However, upon his return from his next voyage, to and from Canton, China, for whatever reasons his bride would no longer feel affection for him.

In the Virginia colony of the North American seaboard, a white planter named George Washington was advertising for the capture of one of his slaves, who had escaped from his plantation. The planter stipulated for some reason, however, that this advertisement should not appear north of Virginia.

The Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker died in Virginia.

NATHANIEL WHITAKER, son of David Whitaker, was graduated [at Harvard College] in 1730. After being some time employed as a minister at Norwich in Connecticut, he went to England in 1765 or 1766, accompanied by Sampson Occum, the first Indian educated by the Rev. Mr. Wheelock, afterwards President of Dartmouth College, to solicit donations for the support of Mr. Wheelock’s school “for the education of Indian youth, to be missionaries and school-masters for the natives of America.” He was installed “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 871 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 28, 1769, over the 3d Church in Salem. In 1774 his meetinghouse was burnt, and a division in his society took place. He and his friends erected a new house, and called it the Tabernacle Church in 1776; but, difficulties having arisen, he was dismissed in 1783, and installed at Canaan, Maine, September 10, 1784. He was again dismissed in 1789, and removed to Virginia, where he died.329 In his Message to Congress of this year, George Washington delivered some thoughts on race relations in America:

It is necessary that we should not lose sight of an important truth which continually receives new confirmations, namely, that the provisions heretofore made with a view to the protection of the Indians from the violences of the lawless part of our frontier inhabitants are insufficient. It is demonstrated that these violences can now be perpetrated with impunity, and it can need no argument to prove that, unless the murdering of Indians can be restrained by bringing the murderers to condign punishment, all the exertions of the Government to prevent destructive retaliations by the Indians will prove fruitless and all our present agreeable prospects illusory. The frequent destruction of innocent women and children, who are chiefly the victims of retaliation, must continue to shock humanity.

I had to read this a couple of times before it sank it, what this privileged white father was saying to other privileged white fathers from the bully pulpit. The thing that enabled me to break the racial code was realizing that the only relationship that Washington was envisioning, between a white female and a non-white male, was rape and slaughter. Washington was saying, without saying, that unprivileged white men were going out on “village raids,” and raping and slaughtering non-white people, just as had happened near Walden Pond in 1676, and that privileged white men needed to protect white women by forcing unprivileged white men to discontinue this practice. Yet, we notice, Washington offered no effective plan to achieve this race-oriented objective by this class-oriented means, he merely offered that for reasons of race relations the American white upper class needed to bring more firmly under control the American white lower class.

329. 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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July 27: In Concord MA, Cato Ingraham and Philis, the maid of the widow Tuft, got married. Apparently at this time Cato was still working for Squire Duncan Ingraham, for we have on record that “on his desiring to marry, his master consented; on condition of his no longer depending upon him for support, to which he agreed.”330

(We may wonder how many of us would venture to marry, if by marrying we were implicitly to be required to abandon any entitlement to all retirement benefits after a lifetime of labor. :-)331

1796

Judge St. George Tucker of Virginia wrote on the evils of human enslavement, not the least of which was the prospect of servile insurrection: I presume it is possible that an effectual remedy for the evils of slavery may at length be discovered. Whenever that happens, the golden age of our country will begin. Till then, ————— “Non hospes a hospite tutus Non Herus a Famulis, fratrum quoque gratia rara.

“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

330. Squire Ingraham remained still his master, and still had the privilege of making such decisions, in Concord, despite the fact that “slavery had been abolished” in the entire sovereign state of Massachusetts, at least ostensively, since 1783, which is to say, for about the previous one dozen years! 331. It was an established principle of law that slaves and bond-servants could never marry, or have sexual intercourse, without the permission of their owner, as such activities subtracted from the energies available to the use of their master. This sort of deal would not have been permitted out of kindness, but must have been a way to dispose of an elderly servant for whom, otherwise, the master would have been expected to provide during his old age. In plain language, this was a taking of advantage. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 873 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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As the Washingtons were sitting in the dining room of their home on High Street in Philadelphia, having their supper, Martha Washington’s personal slave, a woman named Oney Judge, was seizing this opportunity and stealing herself away to freedom in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (But Martha was so nice, such a sweet lady, why would anyone ever want to run away from her? Oney Judge left no Farewell Address To Our Nation, explaining her conduct, but she did comment later, while living in old age and poverty in New Hampshire, to the effect that a moment of freedom was better than a lifetime of enslavement — something like that, or more or less in that vein. The structure from which Oney Judge made her escape in Philadelphia, in a marvelous and very typical piece of national irony, now houses our Liberty Bell! You will discover no commemorative plaque at this locale, noticing and commenting upon such an intimate relationship between our American slavery and our American liberty.)

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In Providence, John Brown took Thomas Poynton Ives as a partner. The firm of Brown and Ives would become world famous. One of their ventures would be the very successful trading ship Ann and Hope (named for their wives).

In John Brown’s Rhode Island trial for slave-trading, he was found “not guilty.” This would persuade many that against the wealthy and powerful who engage in such practices legislation, and the system of courts, are impotent. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

However, such legislation was not being considered impotent in Maryland, for in this year that state apparently had the idea that they would be able to get people to obey a law against certain types of importation of slaves. “An Act relating to Negroes, and to repeal the acts of assembly therein mentioned.” “Be it enacted ..., That it shall not be lawful, from and after the passing of this act, to import or bring into this state, by “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 875 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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land or water, any negro, mulatto or other slave, for sale, or to reside within this state; and any person brought into this state as a slave contrary to this act, if a slave before, shall thereupon immediately cease to be the property of the person or persons so importing or bringing such slave within this state, and shall be free.” § 2. Any citizen of the United States, coming into the State to take up bona fide residence, may bring with him, or within one year import, any slave which was his property at the time of removal, “which slaves, or the mother of which slaves, shall have been a resident of the United States, or some one of them, three whole years next preceding such removal.” § 3. Such slaves cannot be sold within three years, except by will, etc. In 1797, “A Supplementary Act,” etc., slightly amended the preceding, allowing guardians, executors, etc., to import the slaves of the estate. Dorsey, LAWS, I. 334, 344.

The Rhode Island ship Liberty brought 104 slaves from Africa. The Rhode Island sloop General Greene brought 88 slaves from Africa.

In Bristol, Rhode Island, new slaves brought over from the coast of Africa by another voyage of the Juno were auctioned. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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March 10: Cato Pearce would remember that when he was about 6 his mom “ran away from her master,” Giles Pearce, leaving him and two others (one a 10-month infant) behind. The children would never see her again: “I ’member she told me to be a good boy and she would bring me somethin’ when she came back.” On this day the North Kingstown, Rhode Island slavemaster placed an ad in a Providence newspaper, the United States Chronicle, offering a $10 reward for his slave woman’s capture and return: RAN-AWAY from the Subscriber, in North Kingstown, County of Washington, on the 5th instant, A NEGRO WOMAN, about 27 years of Age, 5 feet 4 inches high, and walks with her Head very upright, had on when she went away, a dark Flannel Short Gown, and a Petticoat, a white Petticoat, a Man’s Gray Gown, and a napped Felt Hat partly worn. Whoever will return said Negro to her Master, shall receive the above Reward, and all necessary Charges, paid by JOSHUA PEARCE, in North Kingstown, near the Devil’s Foot.

December 19: South Carolina prohibited the importation of negroes from Africa, or other places beyond seas, until the first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine.332 “Whereas, it appears to be highly impolitic to import negroes from Africa, or other places beyond seas,” etc. Cooper, STATUTES, VII. 434, 436. SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”334 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”335 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

1797

The Rhode Island snow Sally came to America with a cargo of 149 new African slaves, and the brigantine Louisa brought a cargo of 92.

In this year arguments against the international slave trade that were based upon principles of human decency were found to be counterproductive in our nation’s capital — they had begun to provoke a flaming indignation: W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: This declaration of the powers of the 334. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 335. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 878 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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central government over the slave-trade bore early fruit in the second Congress, in the shape of a shower of petitions from abolition societies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.336 In some of these slavery was denounced as “an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature,”337 and the slave-trade as a traffic “degrading to the rights of man” and “repugnant to reason.”338 Others declared the trade “injurious to the true commercial interest of a nation,”339 and asked Congress that, having taken up the matter, they do all in their power to limit the trade. Congress was, however, determined to avoid as long as possible so unpleasant a matter, and, save an angry attempt to censure a Quaker petitioner,340 nothing was heard of the slave-trade until the third Congress. Meantime, news came from the seas southeast of Carolina and Georgia which influenced Congress more powerfully than humanitarian arguments had done. The wild revolt of despised slaves, the rise of a noble black leader, and the birth of a new nation of Negro freemen frightened the pro-slavery advocates and armed the anti-slavery agitation. As a result, a Quaker petition for a law against the transport traffic in slaves was received without a murmur in 1794,341 and on March 22 the first national act against the slave-trade became a law.342 It was designed “to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place or country,” or the fitting out of slavers in the United States for that country. The penalties for violation were forfeiture of the ship, a fine of $1000 for each person engaged, and of $200 for each slave transported. If the Quakers thought this a triumph of anti-slavery sentiment, they were quickly undeceived. Congress might willingly restrain the country from feeding West Indian turbulence, and yet be furious at a petition like that of 1797,343 calling attention to “the oppressed state of our brethren of the African race” in this country, and to the interstate slave-trade. “Considering the present extraordinary state of the West India Islands and of Europe,” young John Rutledge insisted “that ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,’ and that they ought to shut their door against any thing which had a tendency to produce the like confusion in this country.” After excited debate and some investigation by a special committee, the petition was ordered, in both Senate and House, to be withdrawn.

Richard Henry Dana, Sr. was sent to school in Newport, Rhode Island.

336. See MEMORIALS PRESENTED TO CONGRESS, etc. (1792), published by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. 337. From the Virginia petition. 338. From the petition of Baltimore and other Maryland societies. 339. From the Providence Abolition Society’s petition. 340. HOUSE JOURNAL (reprinted 1826), 2d Congress, 2d Session, I. 627-9; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 2d Congress, 2d Session, pages 728-31. 341. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 3d Congress, 1st Session, pages 64, 70, 72; HOUSE JOURNAL (reprinted 1826), 3d Congress, 1st Session, II. 76, 84-5, 96-100; SENATE JOURNAL (reprinted 1820), 3d Congress, 1st Session, II. 51. 342. STATUTES AT LARGE, I. 347-9. 343. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 5th Congress, 2d Session, pages 656-70, 945-1033. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 879 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Maryland slavemaster Aaron Anthony moved with his slaves to Holme Hill Farm on Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County. His slaves included females named Betsey and Harriet ancestors of Frederick Douglass.

Publication of THE COLUMBIAN ORATOR, a collection of short takes in favor of such generalities as patriotism, education, temperance, freedom, and courage and in opposition to such generalities as oppression and slavery, excerpted from various speeches, dialogs, plays, and poems by Caleb Bingham. In the following excerpt from NARRATIVE, the dialog Frederick Douglass refers to between a master and his slave is in Bingham’s prefatory discourse upon the art of oratory:

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master-things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.

MANUMISSION

According to his own account, Nathan Johnson had been born in this year in Philadelphia. We have, however, no record of such a birth in Philadelphia church records, nor is there a record either of him or of his mother, Emily Brown, in Philadelphia directories between 1785 and 1800. It appears that he may have been born a slave in either Pennsylvania, where slavery was being gradually abolished, or Virginia, from which he had escaped or where he had somehow become able to purchase his freedom.

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In Philadelphia, George Washington’s slave cook Hercules stole himself away. (The site from which Hercules made his escape in Philadelphia, on High Street, now houses our Liberty Bell! You will discover no commemorative plaque at this locale, noticing and commenting upon such an intimate relationship between our American slavery and our American liberty and our American sense of irony.)

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At Mount Vernon, the slaves of George and Martha Washington were being allowed one peck of Indian maize per week per adult for their sustenance, plus a half of a peck per week for each of their children. In addition each of these slaves would received 20 small salt herring per month. They were being permitted to supplement their diets by keeping small personal gardens to supplement their food supply, but were not being permitted to keep fowl, or pigs.

Their only taste of meat during the year came at harvest time. But we’re very sure that had these slaves applied themselves harder, or worked smarter — George and Martha would have been very willing to allow them more food, or nicer food!

From a Connecticut letter by Isaac Hillard, a description of the routine operation of the perverse American “reverse underground railroad” system by which the freedom papers of northern blacks were confiscated, and they were spirited south to be sold as new slaves: ... I was in Virginia; there I saw with my eyes, two poor helpless children, thus stolen or kidnapped from Derby, in the county of New-Haven, and sold as slaves for life. I really thought it my duty to prosecute the men who had been thus guilty. When I returned home I conversed with my best friends; they all united to discourage me ... [an attorney told him] the cause was new, the expense was great, and that there was so many wicked people, it would be very unpopular.... Now if these are good deeds I am entitled to a reward, and I am sure of having it, let devils suggest what they will. I am determined to do my duty, and one part of my duty is to provide for my family, or I am worse than an infidel. You see I have taken some pains to answer your questions. I hope it will prevent my being troubled with any more, and serve to open your eyes to see your error.... I shall leave you with your beloved spirit of envy, and subscribe myself, a friend of mankind, but more especially to the poor unhappy blacks, as they most need it.

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In the Swartekill neighborhood of the town of Hurley, now just north of Rifton in Ulster County NY (but now within the town boundaries of Esopus), Sojourner Truth was born a slave to Johannes Hardenbergh and was assigned the name “Isabella.”

The infant Isabella’s parents Betsy and James, two of the Hardenbergh family’s seven slaves, also lacked a family name.

At various points in her life, to various persons, this citizen would be known as “Betsy,” “Bell,” “Mau Mau” (Mommy, in the local parlance of the immigrant country folk), “Isabella van Wagenen” — and, finally, she would become known to us all as our dear “Sojourner Truth” of Northampton, Massachusetts and of Battle Creek, Michigan. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

January 18: Delaware codified its existing laws “concerning Negro and Mulatto slaves.” § 5. “... any Negro or Mulatto slave, who hath been or shall be brought into this state contrary to the intent and meaning of [the act of 1787]; and any Negro or Mulatto slave who hath been or shall be exported, or sold with an intention for exportation, or carried out for sale from this state, contrary to the intent and meaning of [the act of 1793], shall be, and are hereby declared free; any thing in this act to the contrary notwithstanding.” LAWS OF DELAWARE (edition of 1797), page 1321, Chapter 124 c. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”345 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”346 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

345. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 346. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 884 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BILLY BUDD: It was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the commotion at Spithead followed in May by a second and yet more serious outbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without exaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a demonstration more menacing to England than the contemporary manifestoes and conquering and proselyting armies of the French Directory. To the British Empire the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the fire-brigade would be to London threatened by general arson. In a crisis when the kingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years later published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon occasion England expected of Englishmen; that was the time when at the mast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own roadstead –a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free conservative one of the Old World– the blue- jackets, to be numbered by thousands, ran up with huzzas the British colors with the union and cross wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded law and freedom defined, into the enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and unbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical grievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion, as by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames.... Such an episode in the Island’s grand naval story her naval historians naturally abridge; one of them (G.P.R. James) candidly acknowledging that fain would he pass it over did not “impartiality forbid fastidiousness.” And yet his mention is less a narration than a reference, having to do hardly at all with details. Nor are these readily to be found in the libraries. Like some other events in every age befalling states everywhere, including America, the Great Mutiny was of such character that national pride along with views of policy would fain shade it off into the historical background. Such events can not be ignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them. If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.... Yes, the outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure, not the less impressment, for one thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for centuries, and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor as late as [William Murray, Baron] Mansfield, that mode of manning the fleet, a mode now fallen into a sort of abeyance but never formally renounced, it was not practicable to give up in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its ships of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the convulsed Continent.

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BILLY BUDD: ... now for some period the British Navy could so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the muster-rolls, that not only were press-gangs notoriously abroad both afloat and ashore, but there was little or no secret about another matter, namely that the London police were at liberty to capture any able-bodied suspect, any questionable fellow at large and summarily ship him to dockyard or fleet. Furthermore, even among voluntary enlistments there were instances where the motive thereto partook neither of patriotic impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a bit of sea-life and martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of minor grade, together with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality found in the Navy a convenient and secure refuge. Secure, because once enlisted aboard a King’s-ship, they were as much in sanctuary, as the transgressor of the Middle Ages harboring himself under the shadow of the altar. Such sanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government would hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and as affecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped into oblivion, lend color to something for the truth whereof I do not vouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I remember having seen in print, though the book I can not recall; but the same thing was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat with whom I had a most interesting talk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore Negro, a Trafalgar man. It was to this effect: In the case of a war-ship short of hands whose speedy sailing was imperative, the deficient quota in lack of any other way of making it good, would be eked out by draughts culled direct from the jails. For reasons previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy at the present day directly to prove or disprove the allegation. But allowed as a verity, how significant would it be of England’s straits at the time, confronted by those wars which like a flight of harpies rose shrieking from the din and dust of the fallen Bastille. That era appears measurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But to the grandfathers of us graybeards, the more thoughtful of them, the genius of it presented an aspect like that of Camouns’ Spirit of the Cape, an eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious. Not America was exempt from apprehension. At the height of Napoleon’s unexampled conquests, there were Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who looked forward to the possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the ultimate schemes of this French upstart from the revolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling judgement prefigured in the Apocalypse.... About as much was really known to the Indomitable’s tars of the Master-at-arms’ career before entering the service as an astronomer knows about a comet’s travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky. The verdict of the sea quid-nuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were necessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality, — a thief among the swinging hammocks during a night- watch, or the man brokers and land-sharks of the sea-ports.

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August 5: There was a preliminary appearance in federal court in Providence, Rhode Island on this day, in preparation for the trial of John Brown on charge of being engaged in the international slave trade.

Per Jay Coughtry, Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas: On August 5, 1797, John Brown, the premier merchant and first citizen of Providence, Rhode Island, reluctantly entered federal district court in his hometown and became the first American to be tried under the U.S. Slave Trade Act of 1794. After months of out-of-court wrangling with the plaintiffs, officers of a state abolition society, it appeared that Brown would now stand trial for fitting out his ship Hope for the African slave trade. The voyage had concluded profitably in Havana, Cuba, with the sale of 229 slaves a year earlier.347 Brown’s accusers included his younger brother, Moses, a tireless opponent of both slavery and the slave trade since his conversion, on the eve of the American Revolution, from the family’s Baptist faith to the Society of Friends. A founding member and officer of the Abolition Society, chartered in 1789, Moses Brown had been fighting Rhode Island slave traders, including brother John, for a decade, since the passage of the largely ineffective state statute of 1787 that prohibited the trade to state residents.348 In this instance, the society’s traditional tactic –cajoling a pledge from the accused to forswear slaving in the future in exchange for dropping the suit– had failed. Even so, as Moses had pointedly reminded John before trial, the charges thus far were limited, involving only the comparatively mild first section of the three-year-old federal statute. A conviction would therefore require nothing more than forfeiture of the vessel, an aging one at that. What John should most fear, Moses advised, were “larger prosecutions” should he further provoke the Abolition Society by refusing to settle out of court.349 Ultimately, the elder Brown ignored his brother’s mediation efforts and offered only an eleventh hour plea for a continuance to haggle over milder pledge terms. Its patience exhausted, the Abolition Society flatly rejected that ploy whereupon the case proceeded swiftly to trial. As predicted, the district court judge had little choice but to assent to the arguments and evidence in the prosecution’s narrowly defined case. Consequently, John Brown lost his vessel at a local auction in late August, thereby closing the forfeiture case. When the Abolition Society again sought Brown’s promise to abandon his African commerce, he refused, quickly prompting the “larger prosecutions” Moses had warned him about.350 Meanwhile, Moses had become suspicious of John’s continuing 347. Jay Coughtry, THE NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE: RHODE ISLAND AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE (Philadelphia, 1981), pages 214- 215. 348. NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE, chapter 6. See also Mack Thompson, MOSES BROWN: RELUCTANT REFORMER (Chapel Hill, 1962), pages 175-190. 349. Moses Brown to John Brown, March 15, 1797, MOSES BROWN PAPERS, vol. 9, no. 29, Rhode Island Historical Society; Moses Brown to John Brown, ibid., vol. 9, no. 32. 350. John Brown to Moses Brown, July 29, 31, 1797, MOSES BROWN PAPERS, vol. 9. nos. 43 and 44, Rhode Island Historical Society. See also NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE at 215. 890 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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recalcitrance. It seemed premeditated in his younger brother’s view, perhaps a deliberate strategy devised by John’s “friends at Newport” (i.e., slave traders) to guarantee further suits over the illegal sale of the slaves. Such litigation, while potentially more costly, would also require a jury trial, and the slave traders assumed that local juries would not convict one of their own. They were right. Within six months John Brown announced his court victory over the “Wicked and Abominable Combination I mean the Abolition Society.”351 This insiders’ view of the foregoing case of the ship Hope is documented, along with numerous other key prosecutions, in the correspondence of John and especially Moses Brown, now available in this microfilm series, PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE: SELECTIONS FROM THE RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Moreover, Moses Brown’s letters reveal not only the Abolition Society’s formal legal stratagems but also its traditional policy of intense but informal negotiating with slave traders who often yielded to the group’s demands without a court fight. Cyprian Sterry, for example, the principal slave trader in Providence during the 1790s with fifteen voyages to the African coast in 1794 alone, fully succumbed to the society’s persistent pressure. He escaped prosecution (along with his captain, Samuel Packard) for an African voyage involving the ship Ann by signing a written pledge to leave the slave trade forever.352 Despite occasional successes in and out of court, in general the campaign against the slave traders in the wake of federal prohibition was proceeding haltingly at best. Moses Brown continued to monitor the efforts of customs officials in the Rhode Island district for the Abolition Society, which increasingly relinquished its early prosecutorial role to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Congress bolstered the federal district attorney’s legal arsenal with amendments to the 1794 statute in 1800 and again in 1803. Meanwhile, an aggressive secretary of the treasury appointed a special prosecutor for the district in 1801. The new laws closed the most obvious loopholes in the original act while the appointment of a resident special prosecutor provided a full-time federal agent who could focus exclusively on the escalating volume of vessels clearing state ports for Africa.353 Documentation for these events not only reveals the growing docket of slaver cases but also regularly exposes the personal and political dimensions of enforcement and evasion. By century’s end, for example, it had become clear that slavers had rendered nearly null the local auctions designed to separate owners from their slaving vessels. African merchants and their influential supporters simply intimidated all potential bidders and then repurchased their ships for a fraction of their assessed value. To end such bogus sales-at-auction, the government in 1799 sent Samuel Bosworth, surveyor of the port of Bristol, to bid for the D’Wolf family’s recently condemned 351. John Brown to Moses Brown, July 31, 1797, MOSES BROWN PAPERS, vol. 9, no. 44, Rhode Island Historical Society and Moses Brown to John Brown, November 17, 1797, ibid., vol. 9, no. 49; John Brown to James Brown, June 21, 1798, John Brown Papers, box D, Rhode Island Historical Society 352. John Brown to Moses Brown, MOSES BROWN PAPERS, vol. 9, no. 43. See also NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE at 213-214. 353. NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE at 216-222. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 891 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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schooner Lucy. Twice within twenty-four hours of the scheduled sale, John Brown and two D’Wolf brothers, the country’s largest slave traders, visited Bosworth at home to dissuade him from his duty. Despite a threatened dunking in Bristol harbor, Bosworth “with considerable fear and trembling” arrived at the wharf on auction morning where he was met by a party of local “Indians” in unconvincing native garb and with faces blackened. No Bristol version of the patriotic tea party ensued, fortunately. Instead, Bosworth’s captors hustled him aboard a waiting sailboat and deposited him two miles down the bay at the foot of Mount Hope. The government never employed that strategy again.354 Such an outrage was not the limit of “the trade’s supporters” arrogance, however. Soon, Special Prosecutor John Leonard would personally feel the wrath of Rhode Island’s African merchants. Even his limited success in libeling several of their vessels under the anemic section one was enough to prompt an attack on his person. They apparently feared that Leonard’s February 1801 victory in prosecuting a D’Wolf captain caught redhanded by a U.S. Navy cruiser would set a costly precedent. Consequently, several overzealous supporters of the slave trade assaulted Leonard on the steps of the federal courthouse in Washington.355 Even John Brown thought this response somewhat extreme, especially as he was then involved in concocting a federal legislative solution to his slaving constituents’ problem. During the hectic months between Thomas Jefferson’s election and inauguration as president, Brown successfully spearheaded a move in Congress to create a separate customs district for the port of Bristol. Following passage of the requisite legislation late in February 1801 and the eventual appointment of customs officers amenable to the slave traders’ needs, the effort to stop the slave trade in the courts permanently stalled. The end of Rhode Island participation in illegal African commerce would begin only years later with the implementation of the Anti-Slave Trade Act of 1807 on January 1, 1808. This now constitutional statute outlawed all foreign slave trading by American citizens in any capacity. By the time violations of this new law carried the death penalty in 1819, Rhode Islanders, along with other New Englanders, had found new markets for their commerce and textile factories for their surplus capital. The brief revival of the slave trade in clipper ships of the antebellum era from ports such as Baltimore would proceed without them.356

354. Samuel Bosworth to Oliver Wolcott, August 1799, Shepley Papers, vol. 9, no. 8, Rhode Island Historical Society; Jonathan Russell to Albert Gallatin, March 18, 1804, ibid., vol. 9, no. 7. George Howe tells the tale of the Lucy in his MOUNT HOPE: A NEW ENGLAND CHRONICLE (New York, 1959), 107-108. 355. John Brown to Benjamin Bourn, February 1801, Peck MSS, vol. 11, no. 66, Rhode Island Historical Society. 356. John Brown to James D’Wolf and Shearjashub Bourn (n.d. but 1800), JOHN BROWN PAPERS, Rhode Island Historical Society; John Brown to Shearjashub Bourn, February 1801, Peck MSS, box 11, no. 66, Rhode Island Historical Society. The full story of the separate district issue and the eventual end of slave trading from Rhode Island is detailed in NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE at 225-229 and 233-237. 892 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 5: John Gardner Wilkinson was born in Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, a son of a Westmoreland clergyman, the Reverend John Wilkinson, an amateur enthusiast for antiquities. Both parents would soon die, and the child would inherit a modest income.

Baptist businessman John Brown of Providence became on this day the 1st American to go on trial in a federal district court under the first section of the US Slave Trade Act of 1794, for sending out his old ship Hope in the African slave trade. Brown had fitted out his ship Hope as a negrero, and a year earlier it had brought a cargo of 229 new slaves to Havana, Cuba.

Accusers included Brown’s younger brother Friend Moses Brown, who had become a tireless opponent of both enslavement and the international slave trade since his conversion from the family’s Baptist faith to the

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Religious Society of Friends. A founding member and officer of the Abolition Society chartered in 1789, Friend Moses had been fighting his state’s slave traders, including his own brother, during the decade that had elapsed since the passage in 1787 of a largely ineffective state statute that had prohibited the trade to residents of Rhode Island.

The penalty, if the case was lost, would be comparatively mild: no jail time, merely the confiscation of the Hope, since any more substantial penalty would necessitate a jury trial and there was no reasonable expectation that a local jury would convict their prominent fellow citizen. (In fact no American slave trader would meet with the death penalty for engaging in the international slave trade until the initial year of our civil war, and even then, only exactly one-count-’em-one such American slave trader would ever actually be hanged by the neck until dead — isn’t history interesting?) W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.

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1798

New Jersey repealed its 1786 law of manumission. It raised the upper age limit for the manumission of slaves from 35 to 40 years, and required the signatures of two witnesses on the manumission document (P.L. 1798, chap. 727, p. 364).

Betsey Stockton was born in Princeton as the property of Robert Stockton, a local attorney. She would be presented to Stockton’s daughter and son-in-law, the Reverend Ashbel Green, then President of Princeton College, as a gift. (In that new capacity, she would be permitted to attend evening classes at the Princeton Theological Seminary, manumitted, and accepted into membership by the American Board of Commissions for Foreign Missionaries.) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

An act of Maryland enumerated among articles of property “slaves, working beasts, animals of any kind, stock, furniture, plate, and so forth.”“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such The cardinal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things —is an article of property, a chattel personal —obtains as undoubted law in all the slave states. — STROUD’S S KETCH, page 22

SLAVERY The dominion of the master is as unlimited as is that which is tolerated by the laws of any civilized country in relation to brute animals — to quadrupeds; to use the words of the civil law. — STROUD’S S KETCH, page 24 Slaves cannot even contract matrimony. — STROUD’S S KETCH, page 61 a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

Georgia forbade further importation of slaves. SLAVERY

Caesar was brought north by his slavemaster in this year and the next, making some good friends in Boston and in Medford MA and offering him an opportunity to long to be free. SLAVERY

The Polish traveler Julian Niemcewicz wrote this account in his diary after walking around in beautiful downtown Washington DC: SLAVERY We went this morning to roam about the Capitol. It was eleven

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o’clock. No one was at work; they had gone to drink grog. This is what they do twice a day, as well as dinner and breakfast.... The Negroes alone work. I have seen them in large numbers, and I was very glad that these poor unfortunates earned eight to ten dollars per week. My joy was not long lived: I am told that they were not working for themselves; their masters hire them out and retain all the money for themselves. What humanity! What a country of liberty.

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In this year the dashing house slave Sally Hemings bore her 3rd of seven children, presumably sired upon her by her owner Thomas Jefferson since, in the one case out of the seven in which we do still have almost perfectly conclusive genetic evidence, that child was indeed Jefferson’s issue.

SLAVERY

It has been established by the historian Dumas Malone that Jefferson was in the vicinity during the period when this child would have been conceived. This child, a son, was named Beverly and was so light of complexion that, although technically a slave, when mature he would be able to vanish from the Monticello plantation and disappear, uneducated of course,357 into the general white population.

I would submit that to understand the above, we need to take into account what the ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA had to offer during this year, by way of a description of the black race: Round cheeks, high cheek-bones, a forehead somewhat elevated, a short, broad, flat noes, thick lips, small ears, ugliness, and irregularity of shape, characterize their external appearance. The negro women have loins greatly depressed, and very large 357. Well, not entirely uneducated. Jefferson had his slave sons trained, by other of his plantation slaves, in carpentry and in the playing of the violin. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 897 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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buttocks, which give the back the shape of a saddle. Vices the most notorious seem to be the portion of this unhappy race: idleness, treachery, revenge, cruelty, impudence, stealing, lying, profanity, debauchery, nastiness and intemperance, are said to have extinguished the principles of natural law, and to have silenced the reproofs of conscience. They are strangers to every sentiment of compassion, and are an awful example of the corruption of man when left to himself.

But why, if Jefferson had been the daddy, had he not treated his child better? —Because that just wasn’t Jeffersonian:

He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to his children. — Madison Hemings

A Father of our Country But why, if Jefferson had been the daddy, had he not married the mommy? —Because this is the Thomas Jefferson who himself had penned the Virginia statute:

A marriage between a person of free condition and a slave, or between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a mulatto, shall be null.

RACE SLAVERY RACE POLITICS

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January 31: William Apess was born in Colrain, Massachusetts to William and Candace Apes, who were Pequot.

Georgia prohibited “further importation of slaves into this state ... from Africa or elsewhere, ... of any age or sex.” § 1. “... six months after the passing of this act, it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to import into this state, from Africa or elsewhere, any negro or negroes of any age or sex.” Every person so offending shall forfeit for the first offence the sum of $1,000 for every negro so imported, and for every subsequent offence the sum of $1,000, one half for the use of the informer, and one half for the use of the State. § 2. Slaves not to be brought from other States for sale after three months. § 3. Persons convicted of bringing slaves into this State with a view to sell them, are subject to the same penalties as if they had sold them. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST, page 440. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In a few years [after the Haitian revolution began] the growing sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt compelled in 1793358 to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798359 to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although miserably enforced, was never repealed. South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore, between a plethora and a dearth of 358. Prince, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 786; Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, pages 440, 442. The exact text of this act appears not to be extant. Section I. is stated to have been “re-enacted by the constitution.” Possibly this act prohibited slaves also, although this is not certain. Georgia passed several regulative acts between 1755 and 1793. Cf. Renne, COLONIAL ACTS OF GEORGIA, pages 73-4, 164, note. 359. Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF GEORGIA, page 30, § 11. The clause was penned by Peter J. Carnes of Jefferson. Cf. W.B. Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA (1847), II. 501. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 899 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Negroes, she prohibited the slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788360 she had forbidden the trade for five years, and in 1792,361 being peculiarly exposed to the West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it “inexpedient” to allow Negroes “from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea” to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with lessening penalties, until 1803.362 The home demand in view of the probable stoppage of the trade in 1808, the speculative chances of the new Louisiana Territory trade, and the large already existing illicit traffic combined in that year to cause the passage of an act, December 17, reopening the African slave-trade, although still carefully excluding “West India” Negroes.363 This action profoundly stirred the Union, aroused anti-slavery sentiment, led to a concerted movement for a constitutional amendment, and, failing in this, to an irresistible demand for a national prohibitory act at the earliest constitutional moment. North Carolina had repealed her prohibitory duty act in 1790,364 but in 1794 she passed an “Act to prevent further importation and bringing of slaves,” etc.365 Even the body-servants of West India immigrants and, naturally, all free Negroes, were eventually prohibited.366

March 14: New Jersey prohibited bringing any negro or other slave into the state, either for sale or for servitude. § 12. “And be it enacted, That from and after the passing of this act, it shall not be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever, to bring into this state, either for sale or for servitude, any negro or other slave whatsoever.” Penalty, $140 for each slave; travellers and temporary residents excepted. § 17. Any persons fitting out vessels for the slave-trade shall forfeit them. Paterson, DIGEST, page 307. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Border States, Virginia and Maryland, strengthened their non-importation laws, Virginia freeing illegally imported Negroes,367 and Maryland prohibiting even the interstate trade.368 The Middle States took action chiefly in the final abolition of slavery within their borders, and the prevention of the fitting out of slaving vessels in their ports. Delaware declared, in her Act of 1789, that “it is inconsistent with that spirit of general liberty which pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels should be fitted 360. Grimké, PUBLIC LAWS, page 466. 361. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 431. 362. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 433-6, 444, 447. 363. Cooper and McCord, STATUTES, VII. 449. 364. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, I. 492. 365. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 53. 366. Cf. Martin, IREDELL’S ACTS OF ASSEMBLY, II. 94; LAWS OF NORTH CAROLINA (revision of 1819), I. 786. 367. Virginia codified her whole slave legislation in 1792 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, New Series, I. 122), and amended her laws in 1798 and 1806 (VIRGINIA STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 251). 368. Dorsey, LAWS OF MARYLAND, 1796, I. 334. 900 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the purpose of receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places where they are held in slavery,”369 and forbade such a practice under penalty of £500 for each person so engaged. The Pennsylvania Act of 1788370 had similar provisions, with a penalty of £1000; and New Jersey followed with an act in 1798.371

April 7: The Congress of the United States of America prohibited the introduction of slaves into the Mississippi Territory. “An Act for an amicable settlement of limits with the state of Georgia, and authorizing the establishment of a government in the Mississippi territory.” STATUTES AT LARGE, I. 549. For proceedings in Congress, see ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 5th Congress, 2d session, pages 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 532, 533, 1235, 1249, 1277-84, 1296, 1298-1312, 1313, 1318. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.372 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”373 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into

369. LAWS OF DELAWARE, 1797 (Newcastle ed.), page 942, Chapter 194 b. 370. Dallas, LAWS, II. 586. 371. Paterson, DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF NEW JERSEY (1800), pages 307-13. In 1804 New Jersey passed an act gradually to abolish slavery. The legislation of New York at this period was confined to regulating the exportation of slave criminals (1790), and to passing an act gradually abolishing slavery (1799). In 1801 she codified all her acts. 372. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. 373. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 902 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”374 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

May 30: Georgia adopted a Constitution forbidding any “future importation of slaves into this state from Africa, or any foreign place,” while also forbidding the legislature from enactment of any “laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of each of their respective owners previous to such emancipation,” while also forbidding the legislature from attempting to “prevent emigrants, from either of the United States to this state, from bringing with them” their slaves. Art. IV § 11. “There shall be no future importation of slaves into this state from Africa, or any foreign place, after the first day of October next. The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of each of their respective owners previous to such emancipation. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants, from either of the United States to this state, from bringing with them such persons as may be deemed slaves, by the laws of any one of the United States.” Marbury and Crawford, DIGEST, page 30. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.375 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by

374. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 375. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 903 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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common consent.”376 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”377 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

1799

A “slow freedom” policy was adopted in the state of New York: slavery was to be ended at the convenience of all concerned, by stages which were to be complete by the 4th of July of the year 1827. Children of slaves, as a first step, were to be born as indentured servants rather than as slaves. In the Swartekill neighborhood of the town of Hurley, New York in this year, learning Dutch rather than English, under this “freedom like molasses” policy the already-born-enslaved baby Bell (Sojourner Truth) was hopelessly a slave rather than an indentured servant. Supposedly it became more or less against the letter of the law, for the white people to sell their slaves south just before they were to become free. When Johannes Hardenbergh died between May 15th and October 26th, his ownership of the two-year-old girl with the single name passed to another white man, his son Charles Hardenbergh.

In Kentucky, Henry Clay began to argue that in his consideration, although slavery was indeed an evil, it was for the time being a necessary one, and less demanding than any available alternative (by the way, lest I forget to mention: Clay was a white man who owned slaves):

376. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 377. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 904 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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H-NET BOOK REVIEW

PUBLISHED BY [email protected] (SEPTEMBER, 2005)

REVIEWED FOR H-SOUTH BY PHILLIP HAMILTON, DEPARTMENT OF

HISTORY, CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT U

Harold D. Tallant. EVIL NECESSITY: SLAVERY AND POLITICAL CULTURE IN ANTEBELLUM KENTUCKY. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 2003 Stuck in the Middle with Slavery Harold D. Tallant has written a well-researched and nuanced study about Kentucky politics and slavery during the antebellum age. He focuses on the attempt by its political leaders to deal with human bondage at a time when the institution nationwide had become a powerful and divisive issue. Tallant asserts that not only did white Kentuckians see themselves as occupying the nation’s “moderate” middle ground long before the Civil War, but also that their moderate beliefs actually strengthened and perpetuated slavery inside the state. Tallant’s study gets to the heart of the Kentucky paradox--many prominent whites genuinely and publicly proclaimed slavery to be an “evil,” but then thwarted effective actions against it. Indeed, issues of property rights, labor needs, and racism always rendered emancipation schemes unfeasible, thus rendering bondage itself a necessary evil that could not yet be ended. Although some issues and ideas need to be developed, this is a valuable book that will help scholars understand the political and economic complexities of American slavery in the decades prior to the Civil War. Tallant begins EVIL NECESSITY with Kentucky’s most famous antebellum son, Henry Clay, who initially articulated the necessary evil philosophy during the debates of 1799 over the drafting of the state’s first constitution. A half century later in 1849, although Kentucky and the nation had profoundly changed, Henry Clay’s position “was remarkably similar”: slavery remained “an evil” which unfortunately still had “to be tolerated until individual states could devise gradual, cautious plans of emancipation” (pp. 2-3). The static views of “Harry of the West” were shared by many white Kentuckians during the first half of the nineteenth century. Unlike fellow slaveholders in the Deep South, Kentuckians refused to embrace the fantasy of the positive good theory; rather, most of them understood that the institution harmed the state, the South, and the nation. Bondage was, moreover, grossly unfair to African Americans in a

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land of liberty. On the other hand, Clay and other Kentuckians refused to embrace northern abolitionists who stridently demanded slavery’s immediate end. State leaders and owners instead called for emancipation to be gradual and, above all, orderly. Problems concerning property, the labor supply, and the creation of a free black population all had to be confronted and solved before bondage could start down the path toward extinction. In the 1820s and 1830s, many antislavery Kentuckians believed that African colonization would solve these multiple problems. After fully compensated owners voluntarily freed their slaves, all blacks in the state (both ex-slaves and free African Americans) would be shipped across the Atlantic to return to their ancestral homeland. In 1829, political leaders established the Kentucky Colonization Society (KCS) as an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society to make this plan a reality. Although a failure by any standard (Tallant notes that the KCS sent only 661 blacks to Africa before the Civil War), colonization efforts reveal the complexities of antislavery. As in most southern states, many Kentucky owners saw colonization merely as a way to rid themselves of supposedly troublesome free blacks. However, unlike masters in the Deep South, a number of white Kentuckians insisted that colonization also be a tool to genuinely (albeit slowly) eliminate slavery. They argued, furthermore, that the colony of Liberia could prove the competency of African Americans to survive independently. Indeed, Liberia could even lead to the “redemption of Africa” itself (p. 56), as ex-slaves would establish key elements of American civilization, especially Christianity, which they had learned during their time in bondage. In the book’s third chapter, “The Dilemma of Conservative Reform,” Tallant provides a fine discussion of the numerous issues antislavery advocates had to keep in mind in their ongoing search for solutions. Although they eventually grasped the impracticalities of colonization, Kentucky emancipationists clearly realized and wrote how bondage socially and economically hurt the state as a whole. Generations inside the system of slavery had certainly debased African Americans morally and intellectually, and created racial enmities that imperiled all residents. Emancipationists insisted, though, that principles of liberty and equality must apply to all, even slaves. Indeed, blacks were “fully human” and definitely not “a different and lower species than the Caucasian[s]” (p. 74). Like whites, they possessed “the gift of reason” (p. 75). Furthermore, reformers argued that bondage crippled the dignity of labor and undermined the desire of lower-class whites to “advance themselves through hard work” (p. 82). Because hard work and progress were whiggishly linked in Kentucky’s emancipationist mind, slavery’s presence in the state ultimately meant a long-term economic decline in which both races would suffer. Despite their efforts, antislavery leaders realized by the early 1840s that resistance to even modest legislative plans was insurmountable. In addition to ongoing questions about labor and property, emancipationists had to confront the social reality

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that slave ownership provided Kentucky masters with “a mark of exalted status” (p. 101)--a mark to which many whites still aspired. The only hope for change, therefore, was to convince the General Assembly to call a constitutional convention. Perhaps such an extralegal body could develop a strategy for gradual emancipation and then write it into the new plan for state government. Throughout the decade, antislavery conservatives like Cassius Clay became leading and vocal supporters of what was known as “the convention movement” (p. 113). Deriving political support from the state’s growing urban population as well as from the eastern mountain counties, emancipationists helped push a convention bill through the General Assembly during the 1845-46 legislative session. Although Tallant explains that the demand for constitutional change stemmed from “a variety of forces,” “the issue of slavery quickly overshadowed most other issues as the state prepared to select [convention] delegates” (p. 137). Indeed, the possibility of constitutional change with regard to slavery brought out both antislavery advocates as well as proslavery supporters, who furiously “denounce[d] the emancipationists” (p. 137). Thus, by the late-1840s, Kentuckians witnessed and participated in the kinds of emotional debates over the future of slavery that were then occurring throughout the nation. Violence also visited Kentucky. During the election campaign for delegates, for instance, Cassius Clay was stabbed by a supporter of bondage. In another incident, a proslavery candidate from Paducah pulled out a revolver in the middle of a debate and shot his emancipationist opponent dead. The convention held in the fall of 1849 proved a disaster for the emancipation cause. Only 9.7 percent of the state’s voters selected antislavery delegates. By contrast, “[a]t least a third of the delegates elected to the convention had run as proslavery candidates” (p. 151). This ensured that nothing would be done to advance an emancipation agenda. On the contrary, proslavery delegates insisted that additional protections for bondage be written into the new plan for government. In particular, slave owners’ property rights were to be scrupulously secured in the possible event that Kentuckians later passed a post nati emancipation plan. In the final summary of the convention’s work, moreover, proslavery delegates successfully inserted a passage declaring the institution to be not an evil, but a positive good for all; it was, they wrote, a source of “great ... wealth, and social and political power” (p. 158). In essence, the delegates had drafted, according to Tallant, “the most strongly proslavery state constitution yet written in the United States” (p. 158), leaving the antislavery forces defeated and demoralized. Despite this unmistakable drift toward proslavery sentiments, Tallant argues that Kentuckians did not entirely abandon their toleration for emancipation supporters. He illustrates this fact in the book’s final two chapters, which examine the Kentucky abolitionist John G. Fee and his activities in the 1850s as leader of the American Missionary Association (AMA). In some respects, these are the book’s best chapters, in part because

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Fee is such a compelling and heroic figure. In terms of Tallant’s overall argument, however, the chapters add little to our understanding of either Kentucky slavery or the politics of bondage during the most crucial antebellum decade. Tallant asserts that Fee’s abolitionist efforts “tested the limits of his state’s toleration” (p. 217). Fee was indeed very active and he did avoid death despite his work. However, while proslavery supporters in Kentucky were not like their counterparts from the Deep South, they hardly “paid ... little attention” to the AMA’s efforts (p. 216). As the author discusses in great detail, Fee and his fellow AMA members met repeated threats and violence. And Fee himself was expelled from the state sixteen months prior to the Civil War. Moreover, by focusing on a single individual at the book’s end, we lose sight of the bigger picture Tallant had so carefully drawn in the previous chapters. I am curious about what was going on politically throughout the state and also how leaders reacted to the escalating sectional crisis across the nation. Still, EVIL NECESSITY remains an impressive book. It joins a growing number of deeply researched state studies that illuminate the complex political and economic world that antebellum Americans occupied.378 Several things, though, could be developed or provided in order to make the book even stronger. First, Tallant needs to elaborate more fully on geographic regionalism within Kentucky. He does mention the eastern mountain counties, the Bluegrass region, and the growing urban cities of Lexington and Louisville in some of his analysis. But, as a historian of Virginia myself, I know how crucial regionalism can be in terms of understanding the contours and evolution of hot-button issues such as slavery. Therefore, a sustained discussion toward the book’s beginning about how regional differences shaped slavery and other questions (along with a map of the state) would provide context and insight, especially for the generalist reader. Kentucky’s economic development also requires more discussion. Tallant mentions that the state possessed a diversified economy, producing hemp, grain crops, and livestock. But what about Kentucky’s overall role within the national economy throughout the antebellum age? Furthermore, given that the economic and political trends of the period were so tightly linked, how did the economics of slavery play out? Tallant does discuss how slave imports were blocked by the General Assembly in 1833 (later repealed in 1849), but nothing is said about how actively Kentucky owners participated in the export of their bondspeople. Indeed, the export of surplus slaves and the national slave trade are not mentioned throughout the book. Discussion of this issue is especially important because, as in Virginia, this commerce boosted slave prices and further curbed what little enthusiasm there was for emancipation in the Upper South. Nevertheless, EVIL NECESSITY is a solid and intelligent book that clearly makes the point that Kentucky’s “moderation” in reality did little to help the nation move beyond this tragic

378. See, for instance, William D. Shade, DEMOCRATIZING THE OLD DOMINION: VIRGINIA AND THE SECOND PARTY SYSTEM, 1824- 1861 (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1996). 908 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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institution. Copyright © 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.

The Rhode Island brigantine Orange (or is this a typographic error in regard to a voyage in 1779?) brought a cargo of 120 new slaves from the coast of Africa.

William Ellery seized the DeWolf schooner Lucy (Captain Charles Collins) for engaging in the slave trade and put it up for auction in Bristol. Local surveyor Samuel Bosworth was appointed to bid on the vessel on behalf of the government. After John Brown of Providence and several other slavers had attempted unsuccessfully to intimidate Bosworth, the DeWolfs simply hired thugs who, costumed as native Americans, kidnapped him and took him several miles up the bay while with a trifling bid the DeWolfs recovered their vessel.

John Brown, as ever a strong defender of the absolute righteousness of the international slave trade, was elected to the US House of Representatives. He would sponsor legislation to create a separate Customs House in Bristol, in facilitation of the international slave trade that was still being conducted through that port by James DeWolf and Shearjashub Bourne.

The DeWolf Crest W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.379 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves 379. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 909 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”380 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”381 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

Although the major European powers had long since given up the use of galley slaves, the Papal States had continued to rely upon the slaves who rowed its galleys, chaining them at night and during their rest periods (penance and penitence are good for the soul, even if they are not so good for the body). These slaves might be in one or another of the following categories: “convicted criminals condemned to a life sentence” — “captured non-Christian prisoners of war” — “bonavoglie, so-called ‘volunteers’ who through indigence had sold themselves into slavery, and could be released at the end of their contracted period of service in the galleys on condition of good conduct.” In this year, however, the Papal States also discontinued its reliance upon such galley slaves.

The last of Scotland’s underground slave laborers at its collieries were set free, in a process that had begun in 1779. Robert Chambers would later comment that he personally knew Scotsmen who had been, during their youth, slaves, and would pass along an anecdote he had heard from a mining engineer, about an old slave named Moss Nook who had once been “exchanged for a pony” — evidently there’s nothing specifically black about slavery except in some of its instaurations.

380. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 381. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. 910 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March: James DeWolf of Rhode Island made a record of a financial transaction involving thirteen live slaves (and five who had died) in Havana, Cuba:

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May 3: On page 4 of Volume 27 of the records of deeds and mortgages for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, the heirs of Joseph Brown (to wit Obadiah, Elizabeth, and Mary Brown and Richard and Eliza Ward) prepared a Power of Attorney for Obadiah as their Lawful Attorney to show the Town Council, in order to obtain its consent for their liberating, manumitting, and feting Free a 24-year-old black Woman named Phillis, ownership of whom they had recently inherited from their father: MANUMISSION [flourish] `tÇâÅ|yá|ÉÇ SLAVERY {{stamp}}[x|Üá Éy ]ÉáxÑ{ UÜÉãÇ WxvAw àÉ c{|ÄÄ|á UÜÉãÇA‰ ^ÇÉã tÄÄ ÑxÉÑÄx uç à{xáx ÑÜxáxÇàá? à{tà jX? XÄ|étuxà{ UÜÉãÇ? ã|wÉã Éy ]ÉáxÑ{ UÜÉãÇ Ätàx Éy cÜÉä|wxÇvx |Ç à{x fàtàx Éy e{Éwx \áÄtÇw 9vA ÅxÜv{tÇà wxvxtáxw tÇw `tÜç UÜÉãÇ? e|v{tÜw jtÜw 9 XÄ|ét jtÜw? ã{É àÉzxà{xÜ ã|à{ butw|t{ UÜÉãÇ tÜx à{x ÉÇÄç yâÜä|ä|Çz [x|Üá tà _tã àÉ à{x Xáàtàx Éy à{x yt|w ]ÉáxÑ{ UÜÉãÇ? wÉ tâà{ÉÜ|éx ? vÉÇáà|àâàx tÇw tÑÑÉ|Çà à{x át|w butw|t{ UÜÉãÇ ÉâÜ _tãyâÄ TààÉÜÇxç yÉÜ à{x ÑâÜÑÉáx Éy tÑÑxtÜ|Çz uxyÉÜx à{x [ÉÇÉÜtuÄx à{x gÉãÇ VÉâÇv|Ä Éy át|w cÜÉä|wxÇvx tÇw à{xÜx tvvÉÜw|Çz àÉ _tã àÉ Ä|uP PxÜtàx? ÅtÇâÅ|à tÇw yxà yÜxx t VxÜàt|Ç uÄtv~ jÉÅtÇ ÇtÅxw c{|ÄÄ|á? Ätàx à{x yxÜätÇà Éy à{x yt|w ]ÉáxÑ{ UÜÉãÇ tÇw ÇÉã à{x yxÜätÇà Éy à{x át|w ã|wÉã tÇw [x|ÜáN tá yâÄÄç > vÉÅÑÄxàxÄç tá ãx vÉâÄw wÉ ÉâÜáxÄäxá |y cÜxáxÇàáA[sic]———————— [flourish]TÇw ãx wÉ xÇztzx àÉ {ÉÄw y|ÜÅ>itÄ|w ã{tàáÉxäxÜ Åtç ux wÉÇx uç ÉâÜ yt|w TààÉÜÇxç uç i|Üàâx {xÜxÉyA———————— àÉ à{xáx ÑÜxáxÇàá? ãx {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ yxà ÉâÜ [tÇwá\Ç tÇwj|àÇxyá yxtÄá tà yt|w cÜÉä|wxÇvx? à{|á à{|Üw Wtç Éy `tç? tWAbÇx g{ÉâátÇw YxäxÇ [âÇwÜxw > Ç|Çxàç Ç|ÇxA———————— f|zÇxw? fxtÄxw tÇw wxÄ|äxÜxw XÄ|étuxà{ UÜÉãÇ ((L.S.)) |Ç à{x ÑÜxáxÇvx Éy âá } `tÜç UÜÉãÇ ((L.S.)) ZxÉA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà } e|v{tÜw jtÜw ((L.S.)) \áttv ZÜxxÇwãÉÉw XÄ|ét jtÜw ((L.S.)) cÜÉä|wxÇvx lxA \Ç cÜÉä|wxÇvx `tç FAw tWADJLLA———————— cxÜáÉÇtÄÄç tÑÑxtÜxw XÄ|étuxà{ UÜÉãÇ? `tÜç UÜÉãÇ? e|v{tÜw jtÜw > XÄ|ét jtÜw yâuávÜ|uxÜá àÉ à{x yÉÜxzÉ|Çz \ÇáàÜâÅxÇà tÇw tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw à{x ytÅx àÉ ux à{x|Ü yÜxx Tvà tÇw Wxxw ã|à{ à{x|Ü {tÇwá > fxtÄá tÇÇxåxw?UxyÉÜx Åx? ZxÉA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà ]âáA cxtvx [flourish] tÑÑxtÜxw uxyÉÜx à{|áVÉâÇv|Ä j{xÜxtábutw|t{UÜÉãÇXáÖâ|ÜxtÇw ÑÜÉwâvxw ã|à{ {|Å c{|ÄÄ|á? yxÜätÇà Éy à{x [x|Üá Éy]ÉáxÑ{UÜÉãÇ wxvxtáxw yÉÜ à{x ÑâÜÑÉáx Éy {tä|Çz {xÜ Åtwx yÜxxN à{x VÉâÇv|Ä ÉÇ wâx |ÇÖâ|Üç? wÉ tw}âwzx à{tà à{x át|w c{|ÄÄ|á |á âÇwxÜ à{|Üàç çxtÜá Éy Tzx? àÉ ã|à? Éy à{x Tzx Éy àãxÇàç yÉâÜ çxtÜá? tÇw à{tà y{x |á Éy áÉâÇw UÉwç tÇw `|Çw? tÇw à{x VÉâÇv|Ä wÉ vÉÇáxÇà? à{tà à{x át|w c{|ÄÄ|á ux ÅtÇâÅ|ààxw tÇw Åtwx yÜxxA———————— WÉÇx tà t gÉãÇ VÉâÇv|Ä {ÉÄwxÇ[sic]tà cÜÉä|wxÇvx ÉÇ à{x f|åà{ Wtç Éy `tç tWADJLLA———————— [flourish]j|àÇxyá? ZxÉA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà gAVÄ~A—————

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 912 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

May 6: On page 5 of Volume 27 of the records of deeds and mortgages for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, Obadiah Brown, acting on his own behalf and on behalf of the other heirs of Joseph Brown (to wit Elizabeth and Mary Brown and Richard and Eliza Ward), and having in his hand a written Letter of Attorney, did Liberate, manumit, and fet Free a fervant Black Woman named Phillis Brown — in the fullest and completest manner that the fame may or can be done:

[flourish] ? à{tà\ à{x ã|à{|Ç ÅxÇ= à|ÉÇxw butw|t{^ÇÉã UÜÉãÇ tÄÄ`xÇ yÉÜ ÅçáxÄy? uç tÇw à{xáxcÜxáxÇàá tÄáÉ |Ç à{x ux{tÄy Éy à{x ã|à{|Ç ÇtÅxw XÄ|étuxà{ UÜÉãÇ? `tÜç UÜÉãÇ?e|v{= =tÜw jtÜw tÇw XÄ|ét jtÜw? uç ä|Üàâx Éy à{x ã|à{|Ç ãÜ|ààxÇ _xààxÜ ÉyTààÉÜÇxç wÉ_|uxÜtàx? ÅtÇâÅ|à? tÇw yxàYÜxx à{x ã|à{|Ç ÅxÇà|ÉÇxw yxÜätÇà UÄtv~ jÉÅtÇ ÇtÅxw c{|ÄÄ|á? |Ç à{x yâÄÄxáà tÇw vÉÅÑÄxàxáà ÅtÇÇxÜ? à{tà à{x ytÅx Åtç ÉÜ vtÇ ux wÉÇxA ã{xÜxÉy \ {täx {xÜxâÇàÉ áxà Åç {tÇw tÇw fxtÄ\Ç tà át|w j|àÇxyá cÜÉä|wxÇvx à{|á Y|åà{ wtç Éy `tçA tWA bÇx g{ÉâátÇw YxäxÇ {âÇwÜxw tÇw Ç|Çxàç Ç|ÇxA————————— f|zÇxw? fxtÄxw tÇw wxÄ|äxÜxw |Ç ÑÜxáxÇvx Éy âá ——————— butw|t{ UÜÉãÇ ((L.S)) } ——————————— ZxÉA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà} ]ÉáA ———————— UtÄv{A cÜÉä|wxÇvxlxAcÜÉä|wxÇvx`tçIà{A DJLLAcxÜáÉÇtÄÄç tÑ= =ÑxtÜxw butw|t{ UÜÉãÇXáÖÜA tÇw Tv~ÇÉãÄxwzxw à{x tuÉäx \ÇáàÜâÅxÇà uç {|Å yâuávÜ|uxw? àÉ ux {|á yÜxx äÉÄâÇàtÜç Tvà tÇw Wxxw? UxyÉÜx Åx? ZxÉA ——————————— g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà ]âáAcxtvx exvÉÜwxw `tç Jà{A tWDJLL j|àÇxyáZxÉA g|ÄÄ|Çz{táà gÉãÇ VÄxÜ~}

MANUMISSION SLAVERY

June 6: At Red Hill Plantation VA, Patrick Henry died.

He had been a founding father of American freedoms, and of course he died like one! On the general topic of human slavery, he had once lamented “I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them.” He really did not want human slavery. Human slavery was unfortunate. Such things should not exist, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. He had commented once on slavery and the Religious Society of Friends that “Believe me; I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery.” He had commented once that “Slavery is detested — we feel its fatal effects — we deplore it with all the earnestness of humanity.”

(On his deathbed Pat freed a certain number of his slaves — that certain number of course being, to the nearest round number, zero. Like many another white American hypocrite, Pat was opposed to human slavery — but not nearly so opposed to human slavery as he was to his being in any way personally inconvenienced. :-)

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 913 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

December 14: During his lifetime George Washington had suffered intermittently from an ailment that he himself had termed consumption (we now know “consumption” as pulmonary tuberculosis). On this day he died of a throat infection (referred to at the time as quinsy) after making a tour of Mount Vernon on horseback during severe winter weather, and after being bled several times by his physician.

“For 2400 years patients have believed that doctors were doing them good; for 2300 years they were wrong.”

— David Wootton, BAD MEDICINE: DOCTORS DOING HARM SINCE HIPPOCRATES, Oxford, June 2006

No ministers were called to his deathbed and no prayers were offered. Although he had provided in his will that upon the death of his wife Martha the family’s slaves were to be manumitted, and although this will instructed his executors to set up a special fund for the support of aged and infirm former slaves (lucky slaves, to be the property of a truly swell guy :-) — there has been no evidence as yet uncovered that the executors of his will actually ever did any of this.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 914 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

1794 George Jacques Danton he had been convicted of not having “Show my head to the people. made adequate use of the guillotine It is worth seeing.”

1798 Giovanni Casanova having spent his life collecting sequen- “I have lived as a philosopher and died tially and in tandem 132 pubic scalps as a Christian.”

1799 George Washington fearing being buried alive (a common “’Tis well.” fear for that period), he was being heartily reassured by his physician

1806 Charles Dickinson he was dueling with Andrew Jackson “Why have you put out the lights?”

1809 Thomas Paine his physician asked whether he wished “I have no wish to believe on that subject.” to believe Jesus to be the son of God ... other famous last words ...

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 915 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

CONTINUE TO READ CHRONOLOGICALLY

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: January 1, 2013

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 916 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT ETC.

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.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 917 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.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 918