Colonial Slavery

1619 to 1775

The ships had found their market. Now the colonies wrote it into law.

In 1619, a privateer sold twenty and odd Africans at Point Comfort, Virginia, for food. In 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch, an African who ran away, to serve for the rest of his life. The two white men who ran with him got four more years.

And the record names our own here too. In 1655, a Virginia court sent John Casor back to his master, Anthony Johnson, a free Black man.

Kings stood behind it. From 1660, the King of England's brother led the Royal African Company, which branded its initials on the people it carried. In 1661, Barbados called Africans "an heathenish, brutish, and an uncertaine dangerous kind of people." In 1662, Virginia ruled that a child born to an enslaved mother was born a slave. In 1685, the King of France signed the Code Noir.

In 1705, Virginia ruled that a master who killed an enslaved person while "correcting" him went free, "as if such incident had never happened."

And the people fought back. They rose up in New York in 1712, and at Stono in 1739, marching for Florida, "calling out Liberty."

Merchants put up the money. In the 1770s, the ships of Aaron Lopez of Newport sailed "mostly in slave trade."

Tap Next to read each record. Every fact in them carries a small [Source] mark. Tap it to see where the fact comes from.

We don't need to raise our voice. The truth, told exactly, is enough.

1619 Proven

Twenty and Odd

In August 1619, a privateer ship sold "20. and odd" Africans at Point Comfort, Virginia, in exchange for food.

This is where it began for us in what became the United States: with a sale, for food.

The people on that ship had been taken from the kingdom of Ndongo, in today's Angola, and put on a Portuguese slave ship, the São João Bautista. At sea, privateers attacked it and took captives from it. [Source 1]

At the end of August 1619, one of those privateers, the White Lion, reached Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia. [Source 1]

John Rolfe wrote it down in a letter that winter: "He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls." [Source 2]

Fifteen women and seventeen men. Our first recorded ancestors on this land were traded for supplies. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Arrival of the First Africans in 1619 (National Park Service, Fort Monroe National Monument, 2024).
  2. 2.Primary record. John Rolfe, "Twenty and odd Negroes": an excerpt from a letter from John Rolfe to Sir Edwin Sandys (Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities (from Records of the Virginia Company, vol. 3), 1619), Kingsbury, vol. 3, pp. 241–248. “He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls”

1640 Proven

John Punch, Servant for Life

In 1640, three servants ran away together in Virginia. The two white men got four more years. John Punch, an African, was sentenced to serve for the rest of his life.

Three men ran for freedom together. Only one was sentenced to lose it forever.

They were servants of Hugh Gwyn: a Dutchman named Victor, a Scotsman named James Gregory, and an African named John Punch. They ran to Maryland, and were brought back. [Source 1]

On 9 July 1640, Virginia's General Court gave each of them thirty lashes. Victor and James Gregory were to finish their time, serve one more year, and then serve the colony for three years. [Source 1]

For John Punch, the court wrote: he shall "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." [Source 1]

Same crime. Same whip. But for the African, a life sentence. It may be the first time a Virginia court drew that line between Europeans and Africans. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. General Court Responds to Runaway Servants and Slaves (1640) (Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities), pp. 466–467. “serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere”

1655 Proven

Anthony Johnson and John Casor

In 1655, a Virginia court ordered John Casor back into the service of his master, Anthony Johnson, a free man of African descent.

The record does not spare our own, and neither will I.

John Casor said he had come to Virginia bound by indenture for seven or eight years, not as a slave for life. A neighbor, Robert Parker, took him in. [Source 1]

His master was Anthony Johnson, a free man of African descent. Johnson took the case to the Northampton County Court. [Source 1]

On 8 March 1655, the court found that Parker "most unjustly keepeth the said Negro from Anthony Johnson his master." It ordered "the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson," and made Parker pay the costs. [Source 1]

It is one of the earliest Virginia court rulings to uphold one man's claim to own another. The man who won it was Black. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Court Ruling on Anthony Johnson and His Servant (1655) (Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities), Order Book 1655–1668, fol. 10. “the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson”

1660 Proven

The Royal African Company

In 1660 the English crown set up its own slave-trading company, governed by the King's brother, James, Duke of York.

This was not a few bad traders. This was the Crown.

In 1660, England formed the Company of Royal Adventurers in Africa. Its minute book names its Governor: "James, Duke of York, brother to Charles II." The future King James II headed the trade himself. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Holly Brewer (introduction and transcription), Royal African Company: charter of 1663 and minute book (Slavery, Law, and Power in Early America and the British Empire, 1663). “The Governor (James, Duke of York, brother to Charles II)”

1661 Proven

The Barbados Slave Code

Barbados wrote down the rules of slavery in 1661, and put a price in sugar on an enslaved life.

Before there was a United States, there was Barbados, and its law became a pattern.

In 1661, the English colony of Barbados passed "An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes." The copy that survives sits in Britain's National Archives. [Source 1]

In its opening words, it called our people "an heathenish, brutish, and an uncertaine dangerous kind of people." [Source 1]

No one could leave the plantation without a ticket in the master's hand. For a serious crime, two justices and three freeholders could try an enslaved person, and order death. [Source 1]

And if one of us died under punishment, "noe person whatsoever shalbee accomptable to any Law therefore." A man who killed his own slave on purpose paid "three thousand of Musco[vado] Sugar" into the public treasury. A life, priced in sugar. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Transcribed by Holly Brewer, Matt Fischer and Lauren Michalak, Barbados Slave Code (1661): An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes (Slavery, Law, and Power in Early America and the British Empire), CO 30/2/16-26. “an heathenish, brutish, and an uncertaine dangerous kind of people”

1662 to 1669 Proven

Born to the Mother's Condition

In 1662, Virginia ruled that a child born to an enslaved mother was born a slave, whoever the father was. By 1669, a master who killed an enslaved person while "correcting" him committed no felony.

With three laws in seven years, Virginia made slavery something you were born into, could not pray your way out of, and could die from with no one to blame.

English law had said a child took the condition of its father. In December 1662, Virginia turned that around. The law admitted that "some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or ffree." Its answer: every child born in the colony would be "held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother." [Source 1]

That meant a slaveholder's own children by the women he held were born his property.

In 1667, Virginia declared that "the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome." [Source 2]

In 1669, it passed "An act about the casuall killing of slaves." If an enslaved person died under correction, "his death shall not be accompted ffelony," and the master would be "acquit from molestation." [Source 3]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Negro Womens Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother (1662) (Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities). “held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother”
  2. 2.Primary record. Virginia General Assembly, An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage (1667) (Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities (from Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 2), 1667), Hening, vol. 2, p. 260. “the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome”
  3. 3.Primary record. Virginia General Assembly, Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia Colony (1642–1705) (Equality Before the Law, University of Nebraska–Lincoln (from Hening, Statutes at Large), 1669). “that his death shall not be accompted ffelony”

1672 Proven

The Royal African Company

Remade in 1672 as the Royal African Company, the crown's company became the largest single institution in the trade, and branded its initials on the people it carried.

They burned the company's name into our skin.

In 1672 the Crown's company was remade as the Royal African Company. It became "the single largest institution trading in enslaved people from Africa to the Americas." [Source 1]

Many of them were branded with the company's initials, RACE for the Royal African Company of England, or DOY for the Duke of York, "on their backs, on their bodies." [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Royal African Company (Cast in Stone, University of Exeter). “the single largest institution trading in enslaved people from Africa to the Americas”
  2. 2.Scholarly. The British Museum, Hew Locke: what have we here? Large print guide (The British Museum, 2024), Large print guide. “branded on their backs, on their bodies”

1685 Proven

The Code Noir

The law Louis XIV gave his colonies set punishments for running away: first the ears, then the hamstring, then death.

France wrote its cruelty down article by article, and the King signed it.

The edict was signed at Versailles in March 1685: "Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre." [Source 1]

A runaway "shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with a fleur de lys on one shoulder." The second time, "he shall have his hamstring cut." The third time, "he shall be put to death." [Source 1]

One of us who struck a master in the face, or drew blood, "shall be punished by death." [Source 1]

Children of enslaved parents were born enslaved, and belonged to the mother's master. A child of a free father and an enslaved mother was enslaved too. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Transcription of the Code Noir (The Black Code) (National Park Service).

1688 Proven

The Germantown Protest

Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, put their objection to slavery in writing in 1688.

Even then, some knew it was wrong, and said so.

In 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius, a young German lawyer, and three other Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, wrote a protest against slavery. [Source 1]

They built it on the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." [Source 1]

Their meeting called the question "fundamental and just," but too "difficult and consequential" to decide. It passed the protest up to the larger Quaker meetings, and no decision came. [Source 1]

It was the first protest against African slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies. They knew in 1688. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery (National Park Service).

1705 Proven

The Virginia Codes of 1705

In 1705, Virginia gathered its slave laws into one act. A master who killed an enslaved person while "correcting" him went free, "as if such incident had never happened."

In 1705, Virginia put it all in one law, and wrote us out of humanity.

It was called "An act concerning Servants and Slaves." Servants brought into the colony who had not been Christians in their own country "shall be accounted and be slaves, and such be here bought and sold." [Source 1]

If one of us died while being "corrected," the master "shall be free and acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such incident had never happened." [Source 1]

For lifting a hand against a Christian: "thirty lashes, well laid on." For a runaway judged incorrigible: punishment "by dismembering, or any other way, not touching his life." [Source 1]

Every horse, cow and hog that belonged to an enslaved person was to be seized and sold by the church wardens of the parish. [Source 1]

And no minister could "wittingly presume to marry a white man with a negro or mulatto woman." A white person who married one of us went to prison for six months. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. General Assembly of Virginia (from Hening, The Statutes at Large), An Act concerning Servants and Slaves (1705) (Teaching American History, Ashbrook Center), Hening, vol. 3, pp. 447–461. “as if such incident had never happened”

1712 Proven

The New York Revolt of 1712

A rising of enslaved Africans in New York City in 1712 ended in executions held in public.

Not only in the South. In New York City, our people rose up too.

On the night of 6 April 1712, more than twenty Africans gathered in an orchard on Maiden Lane and set fire to a building in the middle of the city. [Source 1]

The Governor, Robert Hunter, wrote to London that "nine Christians were killed, and about five or six wounded." Six of those taken "laid violent hands upon themselves." [Source 2]

Twenty-seven were condemned, and twenty-one executed. The Governor wrote how: "Some were burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in chains in the town." [Source 2]

They did it in public, so everyone would see. We see it still.

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Governor Hunter reports on the New York slave revolt of 1712 (Social History for Every Classroom, American Social History Project). “On the night of April 6, 1712”
  2. 2.Primary record. Robert Hunter, Governor of New York, Letter to the Lords of Trade on the 1712 slave revolt, 23 June 1712 (from Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, vol. 5) (CUNY Academic Commons, 1712), O'Callaghan, vol. 5, pp. 341–345. “Some were burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in chains in the town”

1727 Proven

The Kings of Dahomey and the Trade

Between 1724 and 1727, King Agaja of Dahomey conquered the slave ports of the coast. Weeks after Whydah fell in 1727, an English slave captain saw the heads of four thousand of its people.

The record names our own kings too, and so will I.

Dahomey, in today's Benin, rose under King Agaja. In his campaigns of 1724 to 1727, his armies conquered Allada and then Whydah, the great slave port of the coast. [Source 1] [Source 2]

Some have argued that Agaja fought to end the trade. The historian David Ross finds no support for that: Agaja's expansion was about control of the trade routes, and the guns they brought. [Source 1]

An English slave captain, William Snelgrave, wrote that before Whydah fell, "there were above twenty thousand Negroes yearly exported from thence." [Source 3]

Snelgrave reached Whydah at the end of March 1727. There he saw "the Heads of four thousand of the Whidaws, who had been sacrificed by the Dahomes to their God, about three weeks before." [Source 4]

With Whydah taken, Dahomey made itself the middleman of the trade. As Ross puts it, "the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community." [Source 2]

African hands sold African people, into a market Europe built.

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. David Ross, Robert Norris, Agaja, and the Dahomean Conquest of Allada and Whydah (History in Africa, vol. 16, 1989), pp. 311–324. “Agaja was far from having been a nation-builder”
  2. 2.Scholarly. David Ross, The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727–c. 1818 (Journal of African History, vol. 28, no. 3, 1987), pp. 357–375. “the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community”
  3. 3.Primary record. William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave-Trade (London, 1734) (Project Gutenberg, 1734), Introduction. “there were above twenty thousand Negroes yearly exported from thence”
  4. 4.Primary record. William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave-Trade (London, 1734) (Project Gutenberg, 1734), Book I. “the Heads of four thousand of the Whidaws, who had been sacrificed by the Dahomes to their God, about three weeks before”

1738 Proven

The Dutch West India Company

Chartered in 1621, the Dutch West India Company took Portugal's forts in Africa and traded some 140,000 captives before it gave up its hold on the trade in 1738.

Portugal was no longer alone. The Dutch wanted the trade too.

On 3 June 1621, the rulers of the Dutch Republic chartered the West India Company. The charter gave it alone the right "to traffic on the coast and countries of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope," and in "the countries of America, or the West-Indies," "for the Term of four and twenty Years." [Source 1]

The company began its work in 1624. [Source 2]

It went after Portugal's holdings in Africa. It captured the fortress of Elmina in 1637, and Luanda, in Angola, in 1641. [Source 2]

Between 1624 and 1738, the company traded some 140,000 of our people, most of them to Dutch colonies. Its island of Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela, became a market that delivered some 100,000 more to the Spanish. [Source 2]

In 1738, the company gave up its hold on the trade. [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. States General of the United Netherlands, Charter of the Dutch West India Company (3 June 1621) (The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 1621), Opening article. “to traffic on the coast and countries of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope”
  2. 2.Scholarly. Rafaël Thiebaut, The United Provinces and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Project Manifest, 2023).

1739 Proven

The Stono Rebellion

On Sunday, 9 September 1739, enslaved people rose up at the Stono River in South Carolina and marched for Spanish Florida, "calling out Liberty."

They marched for freedom with drums beating.

On Sunday, 9 September 1739, near the Stono River in South Carolina, twenty enslaved men gathered. Their captain was a man called Jemmy. They broke into a store, took guns and powder, and killed the men who kept it. [Source 1]

Then they "marched on with Colours displayed and two Drums beating," "calling out Liberty." Others joined them, until they were "above Sixty, some say a hundred." [Source 1]

They were heading south, on the road through Georgia to St. Augustine, where the King of Spain had "promised Protection and freedom to all Negroes Slaves that would resort thither." [Source 1]

The militia caught up with them. The account counts "about 40 Negroes and 20 whites" killed. Those taken in the field were "shot on the Spot." A family that says it descends from one of them remembers that they were taken, unarmed, and hanged. [Source 1]

Soon after, South Carolina tightened its laws on every enslaved person in the colony. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. A colonial official (sometimes credited to James Oglethorpe), An Account of the Negroe Insurrection in South Carolina (1739), and the Cato family account (National Humanities Center (from Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, vol. 22), 1739), Candler, vol. 22, pt. 2, pp. 232–236. “calling out Liberty”

1741 Proven

The New York Trials of 1741

After fires in New York City in 1741, the courts claimed a plot by the enslaved, and punished it with fire and the rope.

Twenty-nine years after 1712, New York burned our people again.

In 1741, a fire destroyed Fort George in New York City. The investigation that followed claimed to uncover a plot by enslaved people to overthrow the city. [Source 1]

On 29 May 1741, two enslaved men, Quack and Cuffee, were sentenced to be taken to the place of execution, "where you and each of you shall be chained to a stake, and burnt to death." [Source 2]

The next day, Daniel Horsmanden, the city recorder and one of their judges, wrote in his journal: "This day Quack and Cuffee were executed at the stake according to sentence." [Source 3]

Before it was over, thirteen people were burned at the stake. Seventeen Black people and four white people were hanged. Seventy enslaved people were shipped off to the West Indies. [Source 1]

For most of the twentieth century, historians believed there was no real plot, only white panic. Most now accept that enslaved people did plan to overthrow the slave society that held them. If they did, who could blame them? [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Graham Russell Hodges, New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 (Dictionary of American History, via Encyclopedia.com).
  2. 2.Primary record. Daniel Horsmanden, A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy (New York, 1744): the trials of Cuffee and Quack, May 1741 (Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder), 1744), May 29, 1741. “where you and each of you shall be chained to a stake, and burnt to death”
  3. 3.Primary record. Daniel Horsmanden, A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy (New York, 1744): the trials of Cuffee and Quack, May 1741 (Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder), 1744), May 30, 1741. “This day Quack and Cuffee were executed at the stake according to sentence.”

1750 Proven

The South Sea Company

Britain's South Sea Company held the contract to sell Africans to Spain's colonies, with the King himself at its head.

Another king, another company.

The South Sea Company was founded in Britain in 1711. [Source 1] In 1713, under Article XII of the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain gave Britain the Asiento, the monopoly on supplying enslaved Africans to Spain's colonies, "for the space of thirty years successively." [Source 2] The company held it. The contract called for 4,800 people a year. [Source 3]

In 1718, King George I of Great Britain became the company's governor, and he held a large share of its stock. [Source 4] [Source 5] The Crown again.

The company "transported just over 34,000 slaves on these voyages and managed to disembark just under 30,000." [Source 3] About 4,000 died in the Middle Passage. [Source 1]

The Asiento ended in 1750, and Spain paid the company £100,000 for its losses. [Source 3] For the people lost, no one paid anything.

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. South Sea Company (Cast in Stone, University of Exeter). “an estimated 4,000 dying during the course of the Middle Passage”
  2. 2.Primary record. The Crowns of Great Britain and Spain, Treaty of Utrecht, Article XII: the Assiento (1713), as printed in W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade (1896) (Alan Singer, Hofstra University (teaching document), 1713), Article XII. “for the space of thirty years successively”
  3. 3.Scholarly. Helen Julia Paul, The South Sea Company's Slaving Activities (Discussion Paper 0924) (University of Southampton, 2009). “the company transported just over 34,000 slaves on these voyages and managed to disembark just under 30,000”
  4. 4.Reference. South Sea Bubble (Encyclopaedia Britannica). “King George I of Great Britain became governor of the company in 1718”
  5. 5.Scholarly. Cast in Stone, King George I (University of Exeter, 2023), Entry. “was governor of the South Sea Company, which was involved in the transatlantic slave-trade through the Asiento contract”

1764 to 1765 Proven

The Sally

In 1764, the Brown brothers of Providence sent their ship Sally to Africa. Of the 196 Africans bought, at least 109 died.

A university carries their name. Here is what their ship did.

In 1764, the year the college in Providence was founded, the firm of Nicholas Brown and Company sent its ship Sally to Africa under Captain Esek Hopkins. [Source 1]

Hopkins stayed on the African coast more than nine months, and bought 196 Africans. Nineteen died before the ship ever left the coast. [Source 2]

On the seventh day at sea, our people rose up. Hopkins wrote in his own account book: "Slaves Rose on us was obliged fire on them and Destroyed 8." [Source 3] [Source 2]

He wrote to the Browns that afterward "Some Drowned them Selves Some Starved and Others Sickened & Dyed." At least 109 of the 196 died. [Source 2] [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, Slavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice (Brown University, 2006), pp. 3, 16–17. “At least 109 of the 196 Africans that Hopkins purchased on behalf of the Browns perished”
  2. 2.Scholarly. The Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, 1764-1765: The Middle Passage (Brown University Library, Center for Digital Scholarship). “Slaves Rose on us was obliged fire on them and Destroyed 8”
  3. 3.Primary record. Esek Hopkins, master, Account book of the slave ship Sally, 1764 to 1765, page 86 (Brown Family Business Records, John Carter Brown Library), transcription (Brown University Digital Publications, 1765), Account book, p. 86. “Slaves Rose on us was obliged fire on them and Destroyed 8.”

1771 to 1772 Proven

The Somerset Case

In 1772, an English court ruled that James Somerset, who had escaped, could not be forced onto a ship and sold in Jamaica. The ruling did not end slavery.

One man's escape put slavery itself on trial in London.

James Somerset was enslaved by Charles Stewart, a customs officer from Boston, who brought him to England. In October 1771, Somerset escaped. [Source 1]

At the end of November he was caught and held on a ship in the Thames, the Ann and Mary, to be taken to Jamaica and sold. His godparents went to court to free him. [Source 1]

On 22 June 1772, in Westminster Hall, Lord Mansfield gave judgment. "So high an act of dominion must be recognized by the law of the country where it is used." [Source 2]

Of slavery he said: "It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law." England had no such law, "and therefore the black must be discharged." James Somerset walked free. [Source 3] [Source 4]

But the ruling went no further than England. Slavery in the colonies went on. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Joe Baker, Somerset v Stewart, 1772: an End to Slavery in Britain? (The History of Parliament, 2024). “so high an act of dominion must be recognized by law of the country it is used”
  2. 2.Primary record. Lord Mansfield, Court of King's Bench, Sommersett against Stewart: Lord Mansfield's judgment, Trinity Term, 22 June 1772 (from Lofft's Reports) (Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1772), Judgment, 22 June 1772. “So high an act of dominion must be recognized by the law of the country where it is used.”
  3. 3.Primary record. Lord Mansfield, Court of King's Bench, Sommersett against Stewart: Lord Mansfield's judgment, Trinity Term, 22 June 1772 (from Lofft's Reports) (Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1772), Judgment, 22 June 1772. “It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.”
  4. 4.Primary record. Lord Mansfield, Court of King's Bench, Sommersett against Stewart: Lord Mansfield's judgment, Trinity Term, 22 June 1772 (from Lofft's Reports) (Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1772), Judgment, 22 June 1772. “and therefore the black must be discharged.”

1773 Proven

Phillis Wheatley

Taken from Africa as a child and sold in Boston, Phillis Wheatley published her book of poems in 1773. Boston's leading men first had to swear she wrote them.

They did not believe one of us could write poetry. So they put her on trial for it.

Phillis Wheatley was taken from Africa as a child. When she arrived in Boston in 1761, John and Susanna Wheatley bought her. [Source 1]

They taught her to read and write. In 1772, a panel of Boston's leading men examined her to decide whether she had truly written her own poems. They found that she had, and signed a statement saying so. [Source 1]

The Wheatleys freed her soon after she came back from London. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Phillis Wheatley (National Park Service).

1774 Proven

Aaron Lopez of Newport

Newport's wealthiest merchant counted the trade in our people among his many businesses.

The North had its slave traders too. Newport, Rhode Island, was one of their capitals.

Aaron Lopez was born Duarte Lopez in Lisbon, to a family of conversos, Portuguese Jews forced to become Catholic. In 1752 he came to Newport, and within twenty years the tax records made him its wealthiest resident. His ships "transported whale oil, sugar, and enslaved people across the Atlantic." [Source 1]

His own papers survive. They record ships of his firm, Lopez and Rivera, "mostly in slave trade": the Cleopatra, from 1770 to 1773, and the Africa, from 1773 to 1774. Among them is a bill of sale from 1774 for a man written down only as "slave Charles." [Source 2]

Brown University's own report calls Lopez and Rivera "one of the largest slave trading firms in Newport." Rhode Islanders mounted at least a thousand slaving voyages, about six in every ten that sailed from North America. [Source 3]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Aaron Lopez (Newport Historical Society). “transported whale oil, sugar, and enslaved people across the Atlantic”
  2. 2.Primary record. Aaron Lopez, Aaron Lopez Papers, 1756–1783 (MSS 541), finding aid (Rhode Island Historical Society, 1756), MSS 541. “engaged in a wide variety of mercantile activities, including the slave trade”
  3. 3.Scholarly. Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, Slavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice (Brown University, 2006), pp. 10, 12. “one of the largest slave trading firms in Newport”