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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
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.
Monday, Mar. 13, 2006
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.
