THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE
At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in
1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free
black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the
coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in
this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested
within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This
instance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates went
against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business
not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from selling
in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item
in the trade.
[Footnote 1: U.B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed
also as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial
Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will be
cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.]
The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the
Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the
active assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to the
commercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in gold
and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible;
but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm
control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave
market.
The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his
career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary
Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by
certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in
three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the
sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to
Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them
for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to
himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the
month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins
again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and
proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities
interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and
when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a
mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he
reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with
the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the
venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing
home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name
therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed
Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them
among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a
Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the
Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into
the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen
ships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three of
her consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ under
the young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. One
result of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire for
revenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters.
Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading for
nearly a century to follow.
[Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts of
Hawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuable
introduction in C.R. Beazley, ed., _Voyages and Travels_ (New York, 1903),
I, 29-126.]
The defeat of the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of
Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion
of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty
years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their
heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea
in the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell their
prey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take them
over. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company not
only founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster the
employment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish island
of Curaçao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smuggling
slaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and the
Danes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indian
opportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading or
colonization.
The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For a
quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese
as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included.
But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. The
English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French
and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading
contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale
commerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish
colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the
century. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanish
colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for
slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo
legitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestant
flags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, were
not yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such an
ascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract with
two Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangement
with Dutch and English who delivered them at Curaçao and Jamaica. Soon
after this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an item
of Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. It
became in fact the badge of maritime supremacy, possessed now by the Dutch,
now by the French in the greatest years of Louis XIV, and finally by the
English as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht.
By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacy
as slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under the
English; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guiana
under the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies,
while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina were
beginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling without
as well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of the
seventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and the
English were preparing for their final ascendency therein.
In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but
that of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea
trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without
the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and
without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. The
first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to
gold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia
was offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer," Jobson
relates, "we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities;
neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at
which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize
they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly
desired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different from
us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return
again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another
in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege
was granted for a time to the East India Company.
[Footnote 3: Richard Jobson, _The Golden Trade_ (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87,
quoted in James Bandinel, _Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa_
(London, 1842), p. 43.]
Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered
in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its
capital of £122,000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs were
taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in
1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly
rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape
of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling
some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash
dividends on its £100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300
per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the
competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves
legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a
clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from
England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by
would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697
restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea
upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent,
on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on
certain minor exports carried thence.
[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R.
Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of
England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.]
The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil
practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at
reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage
subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its
trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages
as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock
sold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however added
largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new
prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders
of all dues, substituting a public grant of £10,000 a year toward the
maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company,
managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal
contest until 1751 when it was dissolved.
The company régime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the
coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they
reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French
were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the
Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade
between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight
of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English.
Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of
soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a
dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few
bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an
abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants.
The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often
standing no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of them
had acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the case
of the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factor
about 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none at
all. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes so
close that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade with
us; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing of
provisions to us till we have made peace with them." The tribe was in fact
able to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treaty
engagements at will to its own advantage.[5] Further eastward, on the
densely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the trade
virtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea,
the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely to
be in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were so
notorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thither
unless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alone
bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods
were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door,
was in Bosman's esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in. The
people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and
reasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king's
private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the
news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be
opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded
in an open field. There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon,
would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch
company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd
before being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in the
trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver
a thousand slaves each month.[7]
[Footnote 5: Bosman's _Guinea_ (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton's
_Voyages_, XVI, 363.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., XVI, 474-476.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., XVI, 489-491.]
Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the
journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730
to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south
and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five
to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of
Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there was
a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European
infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a "bastard language"
known locally as Creole. Many of these last were busy in the slave trade.
The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an
island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading
stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king
was content without a factory near his "palace." The slaves bought were
partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland.
These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with
leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn
on their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast
in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of
his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves
outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the
domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would
cause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemies
however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom
ransomed.
[Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738).]
[Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4th
ed., London, 1800), pp. 287, 428.]
The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value which
varied in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certain
length of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which had
the value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it was
twelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] while
on the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds in
weight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar"
in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in some
commodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Iron
itself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagle
dollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguished
as the "heads of goods," and the inclusion of three or four units of them
was required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making up
the price of a prime slave.[11] In previous years grown slaves alone had
brought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand for
boys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices of
these almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, for
example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate
a bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase of
slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but
the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares
to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn.
[Footnote 10: The Abbé Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's
_Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.]
[Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.]
The company and the separate traders faced different problems. The latter
were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A Rhode
Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare
is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our
case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading
at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry
goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a
veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never
had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I
have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have
Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett
Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man
Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken
Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr. Taylor, and he got not well,
and three more of my men has [been] sick.... I should be Glad I coold Com
Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farr
we can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck.... heare Lyes Captains
hamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Ferguson
has Gone to Leward all these is Rum ships."[13]
[Footnote 12: _American Historical Record_, I (1872), 314, 317.]
[Footnote 13: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 59,
60.]
The separate traders also had more frequent quarrels with the natives.
In 1732 a Yankee captain was killed in a trade dispute and his crew set
adrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captive
and required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the natives
at Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moore
for having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and were
quieted through the good offices of a company factor.[14] The company
suffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing its
factory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king of
Barsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory
where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the
stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors.
The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and
insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent
practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the
reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew
and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense
of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and
continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did
such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in
1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to
glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's
advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have
been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed
charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees.
[Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.]
[Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and
the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.]
[Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.]
Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and
casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives
who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close
of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the
"castles," which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageous
was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500
on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport,
Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after
losing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landed
the remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in one
lot at £35 per head.[19]
[Footnote 18: Snelgrave, introduction.]
[Footnote 19: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 398,
429.]
In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the
influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for
example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in
1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries
in Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be a
hopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with their
instructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic
nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento.
No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch
trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the
natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation,
and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under
the ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, the
only Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods but
also aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timely
plague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was a
divinely sent punishment for their contumacy,--and for the time at least,
the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective.[20] The English
appear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southward
except perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century.
[Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated from
the Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260.]
The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders
lay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the Grain
Coast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the
Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of
their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores
the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines.
The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, on
rivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see but
did not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness,
tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightened
even when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing in
endless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passing
villages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savage
beasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, storm
and flood, were threaded only by negroes, bearing arms or bearing burdens.
Many of the slaves fell exhausted on the paths and were cut out of the
coffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coast
into the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meet
either violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled on
board the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to an
unknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly be
worse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and that
things were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation and
curiosity was most helpful.
It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negro
serving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favored
tribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On the
Gambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slavery
in Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written in
Arabic, was bought from his master, carried to England, presented at court,
loaded with gifts and sent home as a freeman in 1734 in a Royal African
ship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him every
respect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellow
Foulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises of
the English nation.[21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testify
to British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpool
slaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave in
Jamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought home
with an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of £500 damages collected
from the slaving captain who had wronged him.[22]
The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the
separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal
of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool
into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of
all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary
parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and
extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her
ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight
thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves.
Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Gold
and Slave Coasts, five at Benin, three at New Calabar, twelve at Bonny,
eleven at Old Calabar, and ten in Angola.[24] For the year 1771 the number
of slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven with
a capacity of 29,250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London rated
to carry 8,136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8,810, and five from
Lancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in
Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights
of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or
seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were
yearly increasing.[25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150,
with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five
slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of
1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the
ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of
New England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact was
a small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of the
American ships are lacking.
[Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203.]
[Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an
Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.]
[Footnote 23: _Ibid_., p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive History
of Liverpool_ (1795).]
[Footnote 24: _Ibid_., p. 472 and appendix 7.]
[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492
note.]
[Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13.]
The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received
commissions of "4 in 104," on the gross sales, and also had the privilege
of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their
private account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowed
commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were often
allowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or less
definite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool
ship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to
combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy
550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would
purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he was
to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home
according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum,
and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27]
Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was
instructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little
or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum as
much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can." And
again: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise
by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a
Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people require
more kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than the
Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember
that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by
yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment
by insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slaves
almost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality,
seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you will
therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with
vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to
cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29]
[Footnote 27: Ibid., pp. 486-489.]
[Footnote 28: W.B. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_
(Boston [1890]), II, 465.]
[Footnote 29: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in
Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J.O. Felt, _Annals of
Salem_, 2d ed., II, 289, 290.]
Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for
after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there
they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more
speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried
persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in
1757,[30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destruction
of the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated the
necessity of patience, expensive and even deadly as that might prove to be.
[Footnote 30: Gomer Williams, pp. 481, 482.]
The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it
brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King
George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace
a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold
mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors,
pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball
molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use
in trade.[31]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.]
The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or
barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary
freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second
flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space between
forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two
mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of
this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum
was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch,"[32]
while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered for
sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that
dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same value
than did rum.
[Footnote 32: Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.]
[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.]
The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice
the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves
could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when
full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were
laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the
floor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the
ship, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity.
Bosnian tersely said, "they lie as close together as it is possible to be
crowded."[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead,
and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital.
[Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.]
While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the
negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake
of fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage," as the trip to
America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship's
triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in
foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and
exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and
swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were
usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances
of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place
to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be
repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of
the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo
was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of
poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from
African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by
some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an
instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal
to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted
the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a
market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians
from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the
cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what
condition they were landed."[36]
[Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.]
[Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp.
67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768
see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373]
William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was
accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his
interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not
to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain
to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they
struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be
severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies
in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he
never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said,
"I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death
itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified
by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of
an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him
to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I
should lose all the money I had paid for him.'" When the captain professed
himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring
his fellows that his life was safe.[37]
[Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp.
162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars,
human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain
and Slave Coasts.]
The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be
imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it
was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or
food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in
epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit
of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth
by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse was
generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In
a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest
accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and
hardships of the sea.[38]
[Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle
passage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791.
Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and
the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of
Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.]
Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India
Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April
and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely
enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of
Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad
food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died,
and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then
carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill
her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her
destination at Curaçao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally
a sloop sent by the Curaçao governor to remove the surviving slaves was
captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising
the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one
leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the
slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high
among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other
hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher,
made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the
average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or
ten per cent.
[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and
Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.]
[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.]
Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New
England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a
projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at £300 sterling, was
to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines
and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of £65, and provisioned for £50 more.
Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages
of £10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight
thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five
barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco,
tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of £775--it was to sail for the
Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some
35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85
gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum
and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold
in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage.
Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and
two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about £21,
£18, and £14 for the respective classes. Of these proceeds about one-third
was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. per
gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust
was also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected to
bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's
commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of
"4 in 104" on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing
for insurance at four per cent. on ship and cargo for each leg of the
voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of
the molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfit
and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of £357, 8s.
2d. as the expected profits of the voyage.
[Footnote 41: "An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of
Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop
of 60 Tons." The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the
manuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The
estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then
depreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven for
five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate
sterling equivalents.]
As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as
1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventy
thousand slaves a year had already been attained.[42] For the next half
century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may
well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth
century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less
than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to
have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician
has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810
these did not exceed 385,500[43]
[Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.]
[Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_
(Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.]
In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted
minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns
were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief
stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that
if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and
to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to
go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of
£15 per head in Barbados, £16 in Nevis, £17 in Jamaica, and £18 in
Virginia.[44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept this
arrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor of
Maryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored to
see if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100
or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentioned
in your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates good
enough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we are
naturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it."[45] But
soon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of the
poorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means of
sale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on the
one hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over the
rating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about the
collection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possible
encouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their traffic
might be.[46]
[Footnote 44: E.D. Collins, "Studies in the Colonial Policy of England,
1672-1680," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1901, I,
158.]
[Footnote 45: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_ no. 28, p.
249.]
[Footnote 46: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), part
I, vol. I, chap. 5.]
Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previous
contract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was to
advertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board at
an hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At the
time set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grab
the choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 from
Guadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company was
first sorted into grades of prime men, (_pièces d'Inde_), prime women, boys
and girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. To
each slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a corresponding
ticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At prices
then announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege of
drawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title to
the slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached.[47]
[Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant
1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.]
In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime
transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as
occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charleston
these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though
their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise;
and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the
proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785
jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell
is typical of the factors' announcements: "GOLD COAST NEGROES. On Thursday,
the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange
(if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo
of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting
chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been
here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this
climate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January,
1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes not
to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies
as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships
generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice
published in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfit
negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the ports
it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell
the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50]
[Footnote 48: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 49: _The Gazette of the State of South Carolina_, Mch. 10, 1785.]
[Footnote 50: C. C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 170.]
That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is
suggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "We
met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long
enough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter into
a talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about
sixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caught
and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence,
not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with
indignation.... He spoke of his master and his work as though all were
right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a
slave."[51]
[Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical
Association _Report_ for 1906, p. 882.]
In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to the
comparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensus
of opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporary
publications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica.[52] The
Senegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, were
considered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemed
for domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They are
good commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerable
share of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are not
robust nor their constitutions vigorous." The Mandingoes were reputed to be
especially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easily
sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery
and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of
cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as
hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and
stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it
was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave
conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the
most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them
Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 to
the English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best and
most faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is a
differance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible
for your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that
nation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to
be cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind
master, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who had
studied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years with
a very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante that
would not treat him like a friend rather than a slave."[53]
[Footnote 52: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 403,
404; Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_,
various editions, book IV, chap. 3; and "A Professional Planter,"
_Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves
in the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion of
this last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For the
similar views of the French planters in the West Indies see Peytraud,
_L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_, pp. 87-90.]
[Footnote 53: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West
Indies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721.]
The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most
highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and
submissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel,
and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as the
chastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submit
patiently." As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellow
tinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces like
baboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondent
and prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildest
treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be
once obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude as
can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery."
The "kingdom of Gaboon," which straddled the equator, was the worst reputed
of all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They are
purchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight with
them; but they generally die either on the passage or soon after
their arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions is
astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons
must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests,
for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their
garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for
strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly
large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican
writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they
were slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, but
exceptionally stupid.
[Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510.]
In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were the
favorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar,
which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because of
their suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealer
at Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar then
in port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived before
its quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of that
stock if any others were to be had.[55]
[Footnote 55: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 76, 77.]
It would appear that the Congoes, Angolas and Eboes were especially prone
to run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, for
among the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaica
workhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259
Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70
Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a total
of 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified.[56]
[Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by Professor
Chauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the
_Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preserved
in the Charleston, S.C. Library.]
This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all the
countries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires,[57] and elsewhere
in England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to ship
owners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods.
In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the production
of the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantly
in debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent and
increasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largely
transformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created new
and often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corrupted
tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were
irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired
a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of
witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the
number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that
they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the
creditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents might
be forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased until
no man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; and
wars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from the
earth and great zones lay void of their former teeming population.[58]
[Footnote 57: Gomer Williams, chap. 6.]
[Footnote 58: C.B. Wadstrom, _Observations on the Slave Trade_ (London,
1789); Lord Muncaster, _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade and of its
Effects in Africa_ (London, 1792); Jerome Dowd, _The Negro Races_, vol. 3,
chap. 2 (MS).]
The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent.
But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting
got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were
quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors
who remained in the African jungle. The only participants who got
unquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders and
manufacturers.