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.
Friday, Mar. 17, 2006
The following secondary sources were used for The Unrighteous Traffic, Rhode Island and the Slave Trade:
Edward Andrews, "What About the 'Others'? The Social Experience of Slavery, Servitude, and Apprenticeship in the Families of Colonial Newport"; Irving H. Bartlett, From Slave to Citizen: the Story of the Negro in Rhode Island; John Russell Bartlett, History of the Wanton Family of Newport Rhode Island; Charles A. Battle, Negroes on the Island of Rhode Island; Bruce M. Bigelow, "Aaron Lopez: Colonial Merchant of Newport" and "The Commerce of Rhode Island with the West Indies, Before the American Revolution" (unpublished thesis); Gladys E. Bolhouse, "Abraham Redwood: Reluctant Quaker, Philanthropist, Botanist"; Stanley F. Chyet, Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince; Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807; Elaine Forman Crane, A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era;
Sarah Deutsch, "The Elusive Guineamen: Newport Slavers, 1735-1774"; Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade in America, Vol. 3, and "The New England Slave Trade After the Revolution"; Richard S. Dunn, Sugar & Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713; Robert K. Fitts, Inventing New England's Slave Paradise: Master/Slave Relations in Eighteenth-Century Narragansett, Rhode Island; Kevin Gaines, Beth Parkhurst, African-Americans in Newport, 1660-1690; David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua; Thomas R. Hazard, Recollections of Olden Times: Rowland Robinson of Narragansett and his Unfortunate Daughter; James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations: The Colonial Years; George Howe, Mount Hope: A New England Chronicle; Ricardo Howell, "A Special Report: Slavery, the Brown Family of Providence and Brown University";
Arline Ruth Kiven, "Then Why the Negroes: The Nature and Course of the Anti-Slavery Movement in Rhode Island: 1637-1861"; J. Stanley Lemons, "Rhode Island and the Slave Trade"; Rachel Chernos Lin, "The Rhode Island Slave-Traders: Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick Makers"; George Champlin Mason, Annals of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, R.I.; Marcus A. McCorison, The 1764 Catalogue of the Redwood Library Company at Newport, Rhode Island; Christian M. McBurney, "The Rise and Decline of the South Kingstown Planters, 1660-1783" (unpublished thesis); Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860, and "Rhode Island Slavery and Its Legacies"; The Final Victims, Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783-1810, James A. McMillin; William Davis Miller, "The Narragansett Planters"; Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan, A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795; Wilfred H. Munro, The Story of the Mount Hope Lands, From the Visit of the Northmen to the Present Time and Tales of an Old Seaport;
Christy M. Nadalin, "The Last Years of the Rhode Island Slave Trade"; Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: The Trade Between North America and the West Indies Before the American Revolution; Howard Willis Preston, Rhode Island and the Sea; Mack Thompson, Moses Brown: Reluctant Reformer; Charles O. F. Thompson, Sketches of Old Bristol; Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England; Wilkins Updike, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett Rhode Island; Lynne Withey, Urban Growth in Colonial Rhode Island: Newport and Providence in the Eighteenth Century; Carl R. Woodward, Plantation in Yankeeland: The Story of Cocumscussoc, Mirror of Colonial Rhode Island; and Richard C. Youngken, African Americans in Newport, An Introduction to the Heritage of African Americans in Newport, Rhode Island, 1700-1945.
Sources used in the Slavery timelines:
Clifford Lindsey Alderman, Rum, Slaves and Molasses: The Story of New England's Triangular Trade; John Hutchins Cady, "Rhode Island Boundaries, 1636-1936", Rhode Island Tercentenary Commission, 1936; Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807; William Dudley, (editor), Turning Points in World History: American Slavery; Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America; John R. Spears, The American Slave Trade; Earl C. Tanner, "Rhode Island: A Brief History"; The Encyclopedia of Rhode Island; Betty Wood, The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies; Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Web sites:
www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/index.html Slavery and the Making of America series