17. New England and the Slave-Trade. Vessels from Massachusetts,[1] Rhode Island,[2] Connecticut,[3] and, to a less extent, from New Hampshire,[4] were early and largely engaged in the carrying slave-trade. "We know," said Thomas Pemberton in 1795, "that a large trade to Guinea was carried on for many years by the citizens of Massachusetts Colony, who were the proprietors of the vessels and their cargoes, out and
home. Some of the slaves purchased in Guinea, and I suppose the greatest part of them, were sold in the West Indies."[5] Dr. John Eliot asserted that "it made a considerable branch of our commerce.... It declined very little till the Revolution."[6] Yet the trade of this colony was said not to equal that of Rhode Island. Newport was the mart for slaves offered for sale in the North, and a point of reshipment for all slaves. It was principally this trade that raised Newport to her commercial importance in the eighteenth century.[7] Connecticut, too, was an important slave-trader, sending large numbers of horses and other commodities to the West Indies in exchange for slaves, and selling the slaves in other colonies.
This trade formed a perfect circle. Owners of slavers carried slaves to South Carolina, and brought home naval stores for their ship-building; or to the West Indies, and brought home molasses; or to other colonies, and brought home hogsheads. The molasses was made into the highly prized New England rum, and shipped in these hogsheads to Africa for more slaves.[8] Thus, the rum-distilling industry indicates to some extent the activity of New England in the slave-trade. In May, 1752, one Captain Freeman found so many slavers fitting out that, in spite of the large importations of molasses, he could get no rum for his vessel.[9] In Newport alone twenty-two stills
were at one time running continuously;[10] and Massachusetts annually distilled 15,000 hogsheads of molasses into this "chief manufacture."[11]
Turning now to restrictive measures, we must first note the measures of the slave-consuming colonies which tended to limit the trade. These measures, however, came comparatively late, were enforced with varying degrees of efficiency, and did not seriously affect the slave-trade before the Revolution. The moral sentiment of New England put some check upon the trade. Although in earlier times the most respectable people took ventures in slave-trading voyages, yet there gradually arose a moral sentiment which tended to make the business somewhat disreputable.[12] In the line, however, of definite legal enactments to stop New England citizens from carrying slaves from Africa to any place in the world, there were, before the Revolution, none. Indeed, not until the years 1787–1788 was slave-trading in itself an indictable offence in any New England State.
The particular situation in each colony, and the efforts to restrict the small importing slave-trade of New England, can best be studied in a separate view of each community.
18. Restrictions in New Hampshire. The statistics of slavery in New Hampshire show how weak an institution it always was in that colony.[13] Consequently, when the usual instructions were sent to Governor Wentworth as to the encouragement he must give to 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."[14] 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.[15] The participation of citizens in the trade appears never to have been forbidden.
19. Restrictions in Massachusetts. 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."[16] 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."[17]
The temptation of trade slowly forced the colony from this high moral ground. New England ships were early found in the West Indian slave-trade, and the more the carrying trade developed, the more did the profits of this branch of it attract Puritan captains. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the slave-trade was openly recognized as legitimate commerce; cargoes came regularly to Boston, and "The merchants of Boston quoted negroes, like any other merchandise demanded by their correspondents."[18] 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 Mas