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.
Wednesday, Mar. 15, 2006
About 100 leagues off the west coast of Africa, the Newport slave ship Little George bobbed in the darkness.
While the crew slept -- dawn was an hour away -- a group of slaves escaped from their irons and killed John Harris, a doctor; Jonathan Ebens, a barrel-maker and Thomas Ham, a sailor.
Awakened by the commotion, Capt. George Scott and several crewmen huddled in his quarters to come up with a plan: they would hurl two bottles of gunpowder into the midst of the slaves and "either suppress them or lose our Lives," Scott told the Newport Mercury.
But when a crewman tried to light a bottle of gunpowder, a slave broke it with an ax. A nearby keg of gunpowder exploded, blew out the windows, burned a crew member and injured Scott.
After blocking the captain in his quarters, the Africans sailed for land. Nine days later, the ship struck a sandbar in the Sierra Leone River. The Africans waded ashore and fired on Scott and his men as they tried to escape to the other side of the river. The beaten crew sought food and water from a French ship, "being all of us in a weak and miserable condition" Scott said of the 1730 uprising.
The shipboard revolt is one of 17 -- including the attack aboard the Sally -- reported by Rhode Island captains and newspapers from 1730 to 1807. More than a dozen crewmen and more than 100 slaves died in the uprisings, says historian Jay Coughtry. That number is probably higher because captains were reluctant to report such losses, he says.
In 1762, Newport Capt. George Frost, anchored in an African river, sent two men ashore to gather wood, then allowed 60 slaves to come topside. The Africans threw Frost overboard. When he tried to return to the ship, they harpooned him, according to a newspaper account. Frost then tried to swim to shore, "but after swimming about half the way, he sunk, and was seen no more."
Even a few Africans could mount a takeover. In 1795, Providence Capt. Abijah Potter allowed his first six slaves to roam the main deck of the Liberty. They killed him and a mate with an ax.
Crews were careless and often ill, explains David Eltis, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
Also, many slaves were prisoners from tribal wars and may have been combative, he says. In fact, during the 300 years that slave trading flourished internationally, the slaves commandeered about 40 ships and returned to Africa.
The attacks dispel the image by some historians of chained and passive captives suffering aboard ships bound for the New World. "I have no doubt that, given the opportunity, they wanted to take over the ship and return to Africa," says Eltis.