the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave
slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The
significance of New England in the African slave-trade does not
therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of
slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her
citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the
carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An
inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to
suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and
chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of
citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the
efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.


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