The first American slave ship, the Desire

“IT HAS been contended that the colonists, in first introducing the negroes into this country, were to some extent inspired by religious motives, and that the ‘soul-saving’ proposition was at the bottom of it; but in course of time the cloak became woefully threadbare, to be finally converted into a shroud in no way concealing the cadaver that might fitly stand for the emblem of this disgusting traffic. Slavery at first prospered in the colonies, and, seeing this, not a few attempts were made to enslave the indigenous redmen; but it was an utter failure.

“At an early date the British entered the field as slave traders, and they succeeded in this undertaking from the very start. Royal Companies were formed, treaties were drawn and ratified, and British slave trade soon became a powerful institution (1713). “In those days,” says an authority at hand, “the shipchandlers of Liverpool made special displays in their windows of such things as hand-cuffs, leg-shackles, iron collars, short and long chains, and furnaces and copper kettles designed for slavers’ use. The newspapers were full of advertisements of slaves and slaver goods. The young bloods of the town deemed it fine amusement to circulate hand-bills in which negro girls were offered for sale. An artist of wide repute — Stothard — painted ‘The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies.’ No doubt much of the same sort went on in the colonies, for New England soon took the lead in the slave trade, as it was a field full of adventure, cruelty, independence, chance for wealth, and unlimited opportunity to gratify the sexual passions with a new and an enslaved race.” The colonial Yankees plunged into it with avidity. Moore, in his ‘History of Slavery in Massachusetts,’ says: ‘At the very birth of foreign commerce from New England the African slave trade became a regular business;’ and Hopkins, in his ‘Reminiscences,’ stated that in 1770 there were no less than 150 vessels belonging to Rhode Island alone in the African slave trade, and that that State was responsible for enslaving more of them than any other one in all New England. Newport, in fact, was started and built up almost entirely on the African slave trade.

[…]

“An average slave-ship was in those days one of about 500 tons burden; she had a length between 60 and 70 feet, and was built with especial regard for speed. Her storage capacity consisted in a capacious hold, in which rum, trinkets, powder, provisions, and slave truck were stowed away. There was an upper deck, with a space between it and the hold, known as ‘twixt decks.’ This space is where the slaves were quartered during the voyage. It was less than four feet high, and in some slavers even not so much. In here, in this horrid death-pit, this unventilated hole and rotten dungeon, they packed away the poor negroes by the hundreds. The men were usually forward, shackled together two and two; the women and children were aft, and, though confined, were not chained. All of them were pushed along until they touched each other. In some instances they were rammed in, and compelled to lie spoon-fashion during the entire trip of many weeks. In a little while the dead and the living were in there together, linked together in the dark. Sometimes death claimed three fourths of them; hunger, burning thirst, and unmitigated misery assailed them all the time. They wallowed in their own filth, breathing an air pestilential in the extreme. The women were raped and ravaged by the entire crew.”

[…]

The profits of the slave trade were simply enormous, single trips clearing as much as from $20,000, to over $40,000. These are net profits. In one case the net profit made in six months by a small vessel amounted to $41,438.54.

“In 1835 a Baltimore clipper, the Napoleon, made on one cargo a net profit of over one hundred thousand dollars; but such facts have little to do with the present work. They simply show the incentive that kept up the filthy enterprise, making men blind to the trouble they were heaping up in this country for following generations to get out of as best they could.”

[cont.]

— Robert W. Shutfeldt, America’s Greatest Problem, The Negro (1915)**

[Note: I have not read this book in its entirety and thus cannot endorse all its content.]

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