American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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[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 Curacao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally
a sloop sent by the Curacao 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 L300 sterling, was
to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines
and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of L65, and provisioned for L50 more.
Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages
of L10 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 L775--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 L21,
L18, and L14 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 L357, 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
L15 per head in Barbados, L16 in Nevis, L17 in Jamaica, and L18 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, (_pieces 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 Francaises 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 Francaises_, 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.

CHAPTER III

THE SUGAR ISLANDS

As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable from
that of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reached
its greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extended
to the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularly
on those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as an
introduction and a parallel to the continental regime.