The Series

Day 1, Sunday, March 12

Buying and Selling the Human Species: Newport and the Slave Trade

For more than 75 years, the Triangular Trade flourishes in Newport. Rhode Island rum is traded in Africa for slaves, many of whom are sold in the West Indies. Molasses is brought back to Newport so distillers can make more rum.

Day 2, Monday, March 13

Plantations in the North: The Narragansett Planters

The prosperous Narragansett Planters, operating plantations in South County, send food and livestock vital to the huge sugar cane plantations in the West Indies.

Day 3, Tuesday, March 14

Strangers in a Strange Land: Newport's Slaves

Newport slaves left few accounts to convey what they thought or how they felt.

Day 4, Wednesday, March 15

1 Boye Slave Dyed: The Terrible Voyage of the Sally

As Capt. Esek Hopkins found at the height of the trade, transporting slaves was dangerous and dirty work. The Brown brothers' first joint investment in a slave voyage is a financial disaster.

Day 5, Thursday, March 16

Brown vs. Brown: Brothers Go Head to Head

Providence brothers John and Moses Brown, one a slave trader and the other an abolitionist, square off.

Day 6, Friday, March 17

Living Off the Trade: Bristol and the DeWolfs

Although federal and state laws are passed to end slave trading, merchants find ways to evade them and continue to prosper. The DeWolfs of Bristol dominate the slave trade and the town.

Day 7, Sunday, March 19

Teaching the truth

When Kristin Hayes teaches slavery, she shows her students a colorful mural depicting a white man on a horse overseeing bare-chested slaves toiling in a field.

 

 

 

The Newport merchants who trafficked in human cargo were among the town's richest residents. Of the 135 taxpayers assessed in 1772 at 2 pounds or more, nearly half of the top 50 taxpayers were also slave merchants. Six were former slave captains, seven ran distilleries and 19 were major importers of molasses and rum. A dozen years earlier the list included the town's early slave merchants, including Godfrey Malbone, William Ellery and David Cheseborough and Abraham Redwood.

  Name                        Position on                 No. of slaves
                                 1772 tax list               owned 1774
     
     Aaron Lopez                     1                           5
     Joseph & William Wanton *       2                           6
     George Rome                     3                          13
     Jacob R. Rivera                 6                          12
     John Tillinghast                7                           1
     Simon Pease                     8                           6
     John Collins *                  9                          13
     Evan Malbone                   10                           7
     Francis Malbone                11                          10
     Samuel & William Vernon        14                          10
     John Scott                     15                           x
     Charles Wickham *              18                           3
     George Gibbs                   19                           6
     Benjamin Mason                 20                           7
     Edward Wanton                  21                           x
     Moses Levy                     22                           1
     John Mawdsley                  26                          20
     Caleb Gardner                  29                           2
     Thomas Richardson              31                           4
     Christopher Champlin           38                           2
     Jonathan Otis                  42                           3
     James Clarke                   43                           5
     Abraham Redwood                44                           3
     Thomas Cranston                45                           6

* former slave ship captain

Sources: Elaine Forman Crane, A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era; Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, Rhode Island and the Slave Trade, 1700-1807.