Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Part XXVII

We left off with the Nightingale having been sold in New York to a foreign buyer.  Her speed had made her the fastest clipper ship in the China trade up until the point that she was sold, and who was to be captained by Capt. Francis Bowen, the Prince of Slavers who would take her to Africa. 

It's to be noted that with the death sentence of Capt. Nathaniel Gordon thus was marked a death sentence for the slave trade, but not the closing of it. Nov. 1861 saw Gordon convicted, but a deadlocked jury had freed the Nightingale's third mate, Minthorne Westervelt, a young man from one of New York's wealthiest families.

The U.S. Consul, in Feb.1862, the same month Gordon was hanged, wrote a memo to Washington warning a ship out of Mystic, Conn., the Ocilla, had left on a suspected slave voyage.  Even though there was an alert, the Ocilla was not caught!   December, 1862 saw the consul sending another memo stating that the Ocilla had landed an unknown number of slaves in Cuba, and estimating that 2,000 slaves had been brought in illegally within a month's time.   Someone identified as a member of the Ocilla's crew had admitted himself and the Ocilla's captain as being Philadelphians.

And in 1864, May had an even more disastrous report from Havana; it was reported that the Huntress of New York, and owned by a New Bedford, Mass. native, as well as a New York native was found burned after landing 500 slaves.  A captured crew member from New York said the voyage from the Congo to New York took so long - almost 3 months- that the ship had begun to run out of water!  About 250 Africans died.  As usual, to protect the health of the rest of the cargo, their bodies were thrown overboard.

In his still authoritative book, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, documented by W.E. B. DuBois, he states that the Ocilla and the Huntress were the final 2 of more than 100 slave ship voyages.  His book, originally published in 1896, DuBois asks a burning question about the slave trade that each generation must answer[/u]: How should those who sanctioned or abetted it be judged?

Du Bois wrote.  He also had these words:

When his classic was reissued a half-century later, on the tip of the civil rights movement, Du Bois wrote that he wished he'd looked more closely at the economics driving the slave trade rather than the laws governing it.[/u]s[/b]   Laws codify morality; economics ignore both.

The illegal slave trade catered to an international plantation economy.  As for its morality, the words spoken to Nathaniel Gordon in a New York court room at his sentencing, Nov. 1861, sound correct even now.  William Shipman, the judge, sent down from a court in Hartford, Conn., urged the slave captain from Maine to think about his crime, and the many who shared it during the slave trade's long history.

Shipman said.

There is much more to come but I want to list some of the bibliography that has gone into this thread.

How the North PROMOTED, PROLONGED, and PROFITED from Slavery
                     COMPLICITY by Anne Farrow,Joel Lange, and Jenifer Frank of The Hartford Courant, Forward by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (I have used this book, paraphrasing unabashedly since their story telling style is so "readable".)  I believe that this book is now a definite must on most first year history courses in colleges. 

Also I used Avery Craven's books, The Coming of the Civil War, also Civil War in the Making, all published in Louisiana.

Others used: Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law 1837-1862.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.

Howard Jones:  "The Peculiar Institution and National Honor:  The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt,"   In Civil War History, vol. 21.  Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1968.

Howe, George.  Mount Hope: A New England Chronicle.  New York: Viking Press, 1959.

Log Book of Slave Traders Between New London, Conn. & Africa:  The Africa, John Easton, Commander, Jan. 18-Apr. 10, 1757; The Good Hope,  Alexander Urguart, Commander, Apr. 11-May 29,1757; The Fox, William Taylor, Commander, Mar. 28-Aug. 10, 1758.  State Archives, Connecticut State Library.

And many, many more.

This is all I have time for tonight.