June 13, 2024: Ocean State Histories: The Slave Trade

[250 yearsago this week, Rhode Island banned theslave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littleststate’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean Statehistories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learnmore about Rhode Island!]

On twosignificant layers to Rhode Island’s groundbreaking1774 Act.

I wrote atlength about the history of the slave trade and slavery more broadly in RhodeIsland for thisSaturday Evening Post ConsideringHistory column, so in lieu of a full first paragraph I’ll ask you to checkout that column and then come on back for further thoughts.

Welcomeback! I’ve written a good bit overthe years, here and elsewhere,in relationship to variouscontexts, about how and why we need to better remember that slavery existedthroughout the colonies at the timeof the Revolution. While that was true for every New England colony, it wasdoubly true for Rhode Island given Bristol’s central role in the slave trade (aprincipal subject of that Postcolumn). Which makes it that much more important and impressive that it wasRhode Island which became the first colony to ban the slave trade, and which justas importantly did so, as thisarticle on the 1774 Act notes by quoting aJournal of the American Revolutionarticle from historian Christian McBurney, by “addressing the evils andinconsistencies of slavery as a whole, and not just the slave trade.” Giventhat fifteen years later the U.S. Constitution itself would only addressthe slave trade, and not slavery as a whole, Rhode Island here reallymodeled a far more sweeping and inclusive vision of community.

There werevarious factors which contributed to that moment and model, but certainly acentral one was the colony’s largeQuaker community. The most direct predecessor to the 1774 Act was a 1772formal denunciation of slavery by the Rhode Island Society of Friends, adenunciation co-authored by colonial leader Stephen Hopkins (who would alsodraft the Preamble to the 1774 Act). And just a few months, Hopkins an authoredan even more impassioned attack on slavery in adocument freeing his own enslaved person Saint Jago, writing that “keeping anyof his rational Creatures in Bondage, who are capable of taking care of, andproviding for themselves in a State of Freedom, is altogether inconsistent withhis Holy and Righteous Will.” Hopkins would go on to sign the Declaration ofIndependence on behalf of Rhode Island, reminding us that whileslaveholding was frustratingly part of the identities of too many AmericanFramers, opposition to slavery was likewise part of the Revolutionary moment,and nowhere more potently than in Rhode Island.

Last RhodeIsland history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?