Oxford University Press Death or Liberty African Americans and Revolutionary America

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.As lowcountry merchantsand planters attempted to recover from the devastation of war, many beganto adjust their former aversion to the traffi c in humans.Writing to one ofhis London contacts, Laurens recommended the services of James Bloy,whose ship Betsey purchased slaves along the African coast as early as 1782. I have told him candidly my wish that the further importation of Negroesmay be prohibited, the increasingly fl exible Laurens observed, but should that Branch [of trade] be continued there will be no Evil in your receiv-ing Consignments. By 1784, English-born trader Josiah Collins, who hadbeen shipping small numbers of slaves between the Caribbean and NorthCarolina, fi tted out his Camden for the longer voyage to West Africa.Hisship, rebuilt and insured in Boston, returned to the Carolinas bearing eightyAfrican captives.19The swiftness with which the lowcountry s white minority abandonedtheir scruples suggests that earlier denunciations of the Middle Passage hardlyrefl ected deeply held convictions.For all of their talk about the patriarchalduties of masters to their African American retainers, residents of slave soci-eties could not afford to be particular about where they found the next gen-eration of unwaged laborers.As John Rutledge instructed South Carolina sdelegates to Congress, the recovery of our Country in the wake of having lost our Slaves meant that whites found it necessary to help ourselves,and he did not wish to hear the slightest reproach or even reproof. Savannahmerchant Joseph Clay agreed.The Negro business is a great object with us,he admitted in 1784. [I]t is to the Trade of this Country, as the Soul to thebody, and without it no House gain a proper Station, [so] the Planter willcaptain vesey s cargo | 155as far in his power sacrifi ce every thing to attain Negroes. British, Dutch,Danish, and French traders rushed to fi ll the market, and together withAmerican traders, slavers transported roughly eleven thousand bondpeoplefrom Africa and the Caribbean into Georgia and South Carolina between1783 and 1785.Not without justifi cation, Henry Laurens fumed that thecountry of Lord Mansfield was also the fountain from whence we have beensupplied with Slaves upwards of a Century. 20As had been the case just prior to the war, the largest ships typicallythose operating out of Liverpool purchased their human cargoes in theheart of the trade region in the Gulf of Guinea.Smaller vessels obtainedAfricans in Angola or the Gambia region.Regardless of their origins, how-ever, those men involved in the Carolina trade deposited their captives justoutside Charleston Harbor on Sullivan s Island, where they were quaran-tined and observed for signs of disease.Within a month of arrival, mostwere resold into South Carolina, although a smaller number were destinedfor resale into Georgia and North Carolina.The harsh realities of the Africantrade were never far from Charleston s view; Africans sometimes mutiniedwithin sight of land, and dead bodies thrown from slave ships often washedinto the harbor.Visitors found the sight ghastly, but locals learned to ignorethe problem except when the bobbing corpses became so numerous that nobody [could] eat any fish. 21As lowcountry planters hurried to purchase captives, they borrowed fromcity merchants, who granted loans only in exchange for promises to growexport staple crops.This cycle tied the lowcountry further to the commer-cialized economy of the Atlantic basin.The great estates along the Coopercontinued to produce rice, although some diversifi ed and turned to theincreasingly popular staple of Sea Island cotton.For upcountry agricultur-ists, who bought a few young bondmen before moving westward, tobaccoreplaced indigo as the new cash crop.The move inland meant that even asthe Chesapeake abandoned tobacco for wheat, southern tobacco productionactually increased by 36 percent in the decade prior to 1790.Black workers,most of them Africans, increased in the Carolina and Georgia upcountry aswell, by nearly 68 percent.Inspired by the large number of Africans tramp-ing across Charleston docks, the state assembly imposed an import duty onthe slave trade.22In 1785, however, the South Carolina economy began to stumble.Assem-blyman David Ramsay argued that the frenetic pace of human purchasesaggravated the state s unfavorable balance of trade.His critics, notably Con-gressman John Rutledge and Governor Thomas Pinckney, argued that thestate s depression was merely part of the larger national depression, and that156 | death or libertyas Charleston ceased to import Africans, the trade would simply move southto Savannah, which would then monopolize the profitable business.Theirarguments carried the day, but by 1787, with the rice market still grim, thestate voted to suspend the African trade for three years as a depression coun-termeasure.Not a single voice in the assembly spoke to the question of thetrade s cruelties, although South Carolina politicians were acutely aware of thehowls of protest heard in Richmond and Baltimore when Charleston openedits port to African captives.The economy remained stagnant, but as the glutof Africans imported after 1783 had served to slash the price of bondpeoplefrom nearly $500 to an affordable $250 by 1787 upcountry agriculturalistssaw little reason to demand that the trade be reopened [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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