How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Money from New York bankers went on to finance every facet of the slave trade: New York businessmen built the ships, shipped the cotton, and produced the clothes that enslaved people wore. The financial capital in the North allowed slavery in the South to flourish. As the cotton trade expanded, New York City became the central port for shipments of raw cotton moving between the American South and Europe. By 1822, more than half of the goods shipped out of New York’s harbor were produced in Southern states. Cotton alone was responsible for more than 40 percent of the city’s exported goods. Once we all made our way back to the group, Damaras explained, “One of the biggest lies we are still telling in this country—and I know because I’m trying to combat it—[is that] during the Civil War we were the good guys, right? New York City was good. Everybody else in the South, they were bad.”