The Browns, one of the great mercantile families of colonial America, were Rhode Island slave traders. Slaves that were not auctioned off were put to work aboard merchant ships. And, at its peak, tiny Rhode Island had a larger percentage of slaves -- 11.5 percent -- than either Massachusetts or Connecticut. Rhode Island, of course, was among the most active Northern colonies in importing slaves.

All Rights Reserved. In the years after the Revolution, Rhode Island merchants controlled between 60 and 90 percent of the American trade in African slaves.

Preston, Howard W. Rhode Island and the Sea (1932). © 2020 TIME USA, LLC.

Civil Rights

From 5.9% in 1708, black slaves rose to account for 11.5% of the colony's population by 1755. After overtaking Boston by 1750, Newport and Bristol were the major slave markets in the American colonies. At least six of them -- James and his brother Obadiah, and James's four sons, Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses -- ran one of the biggest slave-trading businesses in New England, and for more than half a century the family reaped huge profits from the slave trade. [5] Early settlements were. [6] Rhode Island attracted many different people because it was a colony based on

A study of Rhode Island records showed that only 5 percent of the transients warned out in the 1750s were identifiable as black. The latest 'Karen' -- …

The colony dominated the North American trade of slaves, with Newport is the major slave-trading port in North America. In Narragansett County, conditions favored large-scale farming, and here more than anywhere else in the North a system began to emerge that looked like the Southern plantation colonies. For Rhode Islanders, slavery had provided a major new profit sector and an engine for trade in the West Indies."

“We all know the end of the story, that black slave labor becomes the dominant [form of labor], but I think people forget that there was nothing inevitable about that.

Early Rhode Island: A Social History of …

By 1807, black seamen made up 21% of Newport crews. As was the case throughout the North, Rhode Island, having ended slavery, also sought to make it difficult for blacks to remain in the state or move there. The law against thefts by slaves in Rhode Island was, again, the severest in New England, carrying a sentence that could be 15 lashes or even banishment from the colony -- a particularly dreaded punishment, as it usually meant deportation and sale to the merciless sugar plantations of the West Indies. By The figure was up to 22 percent by the 1790s, and 50 percent by 1800.

Narragansett planters used their slaves both as laborers and domestic servants. In February 1784 the Legislature passed a compromise measure for gradual emancipation. Newport, the colony's leading slave port, took an estimated 59,070 slaves to America before the Revolution. Slavery was practiced in Rhode Island until the early 19th century, and that state's merchants also played a key role in the transatlantic slave trade. Santoro, Carmela E. The Italians in Rhode Island: The Age of Exploration to the Present, 1524–1989 (Rhode Island Heritage Commission, 1990), Weeden, William B.
Rhode Island's early history with slavery was complicated Rhode Island passed what is considered the first slavery ban in the U.S. colonies. founded on religion, freedom of government, farming and commerce.


Black slaves were in Rhode Island by 1652, and by the end of that century Rhode Island had become the only New England colony to use slaves for both labor and trade. During the Revolution, Quaker abolitionists and the powerful Newport shipping interest clashed over slavery. In keeping with the usual pattern, a higher percentage of blacks meant a more strict control mechanism. The runaway law of 1714 penalized ferrymen who carried any slave out of the colony without a certificate from their masters. After 1750, anyone who sold so much as a cup of hard cider to a black slave faced a crushing fine of £30. In the early 19th century, Rhode Island towns especially turned to the old New England custom of "warning out" strangers to purify themselves racially.

SLAVERY in RHODE ISLAND. This rose sharply after the end of slavery, however. 1774: Connecticut und Rhode Island verbieten die Fortsetzung der Einfuhr von Sklaven.

As with other Northern instances of gradual emancipation, this gave slaveowners many years of service to recoup the cost of raising the children. Slave-based economies existed in the Narragansett plantation family, the Middletown crop workers, and the indentured and slave craftsmen of Newport. "When James Brown sent the Providence, after 1785, apparently made wholesale evictions of blacks who were deemed "liable to become chargeable." strong Puritan ethics of work, self-reliance and education.

In parts of "South Country" (as Narragansett also was called), one-third of the population was black work force by the mid-18th century. William Robinson owned an estate that was more than four miles long and two miles wide, and he kept about 40 slaves there.

As early as 1708, slaves outnumbered white indentured servants in the colony almost 8 to 1.


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