A Forgotten History: the Slave Trade and Slavery In
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England CHOICES Acknowledgments for the 21st Century Education Program A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England June 2005 was developed by the Choices for the 21st Century Education Program with the assistance of the research staff at the Watson Director Institute for International Studies, scholars at Brown University, Susan Graseck and other experts in the field. We wish to thank the following researchers for their invaluable input: Curriculum Developer Andy Blackadar James Campbell Associate Professor of Africana Studies and American Civilization Brown University Curriculum Writer Sarah Cleveland Fox Neta C. Crawford Associate Professor (Research) International Education Intern Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University Rebecca Leaphart Christiana Morgan Grefe Director of Education and Public Programming Office Assistant Rhode Island Historical Society Dan Devine Steven Lubar Outreach Coordinator Professor of American Civilization, Brown University Bill Bordac Director, John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization Joanne Pope Melish Professional Development Coordinator Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky Lucy Mueller Joseph Opala Program Coordinator for Capitol Forum Adjunct Professor of History, James Madison University Barbara Shema Seth Rockman Assistant Professor of History, Brown University Program Associate Madeline Otis Keith Stokes Director, Newport, Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce Staff Associate Anne Campau Prout John Wood Sweet Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The Choices for the 21st Century Michael Vorenberg Education Program develops cur- Associate Professor of History, Brown University ricula on current and historical international issues and offers Special thanks to Tim Bickford and Barry Marshall of Moses workshops, institutes, and in- Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island for conceiving of this service programs for high school unit, contributing to its development, and writing the Day One teachers. Course materials place lesson plan. Thanks also to Merrill D’Arezzo, Viki Rasmunsen, special emphasis on the impor- Felicia Ricci, and Benjamin Zimmer for their research assistance. tance of educating students in their participatory role as citizens. We also wish to thank the Brown University Steering Committee The Choices for the 21st Century on Slavery and Justice. Education Program is a program of the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England for International Studies is part of a continuing series on international public policy issues. at Brown University. New units are published each academic year and all units are Thomas J. Biersteker updated regularly. Director, Watson Institute for International Studies Visit us on the World Wide Web — www.choices.edu Contents Introduction: Slavery in the North 1 Part I: New England and the African Slave Trade 2 Bringing Slaves to the New World 2 The Browns and the Sally 7 Part II: Slavery and Abolitionism in New England 10 Enslaved Africans in New England 10 Quakers and Abolitionism 14 Slavery and the Revolution 16 Winter 1783: Rhode Island’s Moment of Decision 20 Options in Brief 21 Option 1: Continue Trading and Owning Slaves 22 Option 2: Emancipate Gradually 24 Option 3: Emancipate Immediately and Completely 27 Option 4: Send Africans Back to Africa 31 Epilogue: The Struggle of Freedom 33 The End of the Slave Trade 33 “Freedom” in the North 35 Supplementary Documents 40 Supplementary Resources 42 THE CHOICES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION PROGRAM is a program of the Watson Institute for Inter- national Studies at Brown University. CHOICES was established to help citizens think constructively about foreign policy issues, to improve participatory citizenship skills, and to encourage public judgement on policy issues. The Watson Institute for International Studies was established at Brown University in 1986 to serve as a forum for students, faculty, visiting schol- ars, and policy practitioners who are committed to analyzing contemporary global problems and developing initiatives to address them. © Copyright June 2005. First edition. Choices for the 21st Century Educa- tion Program. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-891306-86-3. WWW.CHOICES.EDU ■ WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY ■ CHOICES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION PROGRAM ■ A Forgotten History: ii The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England o t o r c e i u R P Image courtesy of V. Estabrook. Image courtesy of V. ■ CHOICES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION PROGRAM ■ WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY ■ WWW.CHOICES.EDU A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England 1 Introduction: Slavery in the North n the United States, slavery is often thought as the Triangular Trade. Ships carried sugar Iof as a Southern institution. Many people and molasses from the plantation colonies of today are unaware of the extent of slavery in the Caribbean to New England where colonists the eighteenth and nineteenth century North, distilled it into rum. Merchants then shipped particularly New England. Long thought of as this rum to Africa where it was exchanged for the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement, slaves, who were carried back to the Caribbean New England has a more complex history of to produce more sugar. slavery and slave trading than many realize. Some Africans were brought back to New In the four hundred years after Columbus England. Because paid employees were often first sailed to the New World, some twelve unavailable or too expensive to use profit- million Africans were brought to the Ameri- ably, many New Englanders chose to purchase cas as slaves. About 500,000 of these people enslaved Africans. Though the vast majority came to mainland North America, what is now of the slaves were carried to the sugar colonies the United States. The first Africans to arrive of the Caribbean and South America, by 1755, in the colonies came in 1619, when a Dutch more than thirteen thousand enslaved people ship sold twenty slaves to people living in the were working in New England. Virginian colony of Jamestown. But slavery The slave trade became especially impor- was not confined to the South. It existed in all tant to Rhode Islanders. By the middle of the thirteen American colonies and for a time in eighteenth century, upwards of twenty ships all thirteen of the first states. per year sailed for Africa from the tiny colony, The transatlantic slave trade was history’s most of them from the city of Newport. Two- first great global industry. Ships from Spain, thirds of Rhode Island’s fleet was engaged in Portugal, Britain, France, Holland, and Den- the slave trade. mark traveled to the African coast to load their holds with people. The risks of such trade What is this reading about? were many—storms, pirates, disease, and This reading will explore the effects of rebellions were common—but the profits were the slave trade and slavery in New England. It great. Much of the wealth of modern western focuses especially on Rhode Island because of nations flows, either directly or indirectly, that colony’s heavy involvement in the Atlan- from the trade in human cargo: slaves. tic slave trade. Part I addresses the economy of the trade. Part II addresses slavery in New What was the Triangular Trade? England—often forgotten or overlooked to- Colonial North American ships began to day—and the various individuals and groups participate in the slave trade as early as the that argued for its continuation or its abolition 1640s. Almost all of colonial America’s slave following the Revolution. The readings and ships originated in New England. Confronted activities will introduce you to prominent fam- with a landscape and climate unsuitable for ilies and individual slaves and their owners. large-scale commercial farming, New England- As a central activity you will reenact Rhode ers looked to the sea for their livelihood. Island’s debate of 1783-84 on whether to abol- As a result, in the eighteenth century, New ish slavery and the slave trade. An epilogue Englanders developed what came to be known will explain the outcome of the actual debate. WWW.CHOICES.EDU ■ WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY ■ CHOICES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION PROGRAM ■ A Forgotten History: 2 The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England Part I: New England and the African Slave Trade hen English colonists came to New Rhode Islanders traded with other colonies WEngland in the 1630s, they encountered along the eastern seaboard, exporting lumber, a landscape that had been inhabited for thou- livestock, wool, and foodstuffs. Trade with sands of years. They found that by growing England was also important, as was a growing Native American crops like corn they could trade with the European plantation colonies establish productive, if modest, family farms in the Caribbean. It was this connection to the across the region. Still, the rolling terrain, the Caribbean that led to Rhode Island’s involve- rocky soil, and the cool climate generally pre- ment in the slave trade. vented New Englanders from developing the kind of large plantations that became so profit- able to planters in the Southern and Caribbean Bringing Slaves to colonies. the New World When Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, and English colonizers arrived in the New Unfortunately for its inhabitants, this World, they faced significant labor shortages. colony is scarcely anything but a line “ To resolve their problem they captured and of sea-coast.” enslaved the local inhabitants. The first slaves —Rhode Island merchant John Brown in the Caribbean and South America of the sixteenth century were Native Americans. Why did some New Englanders turn to the sea? When the supply of Native Americans Regulations from Great Britain also caused proved inadequate due to high mortality from problems for colonists. Great Britain prac- war and disease, European colonists began to ticed a policy called mercantilism, a policy import enslaved Africans.