Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank of The Hartford Courant – A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Eleven, Chapter Six: New York’s Slave Pirates, Part Two

TYPICAL OF THE UTTER BRUTALITY of the New England and New York slave trade carried on under the same American flag Yankees carried in the War Between the States, was "a flotilla of illegal slave ships" from the North to Rio de Janeiro around 1843.

One ship:

[A] New York brig named the Kentucky, arrived in Brazil drenched in blood from one of the most gruesome revolts ever recorded.¹

It started "when the Kentucky's accomplice ship, the Porpoise, sailed into Rio with two child slaves on board, both boys branded on the chest with the mark of their Brazilian owner."

The Porpoise "though registered in Maine, had been turned over to Maxwell, Wright & Company, U.S. coffee traders in Rio who chartered her out, though an English broker, to one of Rio's wealthiest slave merchants, Manoel Pinto da Fonseca."²

Fonseca got control of the Kentucky in January, 1844 and "sent it to the east coast of Africa to rendezvous with the Porpoise." The two ships demonstrate the "depth of U.S. involvement in the illegal slave trade."³

Both ships were trying to get a full cargo but slaves were in short supply right then so "Fonseca's agent settled for 500."⁴

The two crews "working quickly" began to "build a slave deck in the hold of the Kentucky" with the Porpoise next to her.

Boston's Thomas Boyle, "second mate of the Kentucky," testified that the Kentucky had been turned over to a Portuguese captain but its American captain, George Douglass of Philadelphia "purposely left the American colors behind [with the Portuguese captain] when the two ships left Africa."⁵ They had painted over "Kentucky of New York" and renamed it "Franklyn of Salem" in Rio.

The now-named Franklyn of Salem, with a Portuguese captain, delivered its slaves.

Later, that captain told Boyle there had been a slave revolt and 27 slaves were killed but that was a lie. A lot more had been killed, not in a revolt, but executed.

A revolt had taken place and nobody died, but in the days that followed, 47 of the rebellious slaves, "46 men and a woman had been strung from the yardarms, shot, and thrown overboard. If one of the rebels happened to be shackled to a slave whom the crew wanted to save, the execution was especially gruesome." This is the account of "William Page, an English sailor on the Kentucky" from a deposition:⁶

If only one of two that were ironed together was to be hung, a rope was put round his neck and he was drawn up clear of the deck, beside the bulwarks, and his leg laid across the rail and chopped off, to save the irons and release him from his companion. . . . The bleeding negro was then drawn up, shot in the breast, and thrown overboard.

The legs of about one dozen were chopped off in this way. When the feet fell on deck, they were picked up by the Brazilian crew and thrown overboard, and sometimes at the body, while it still hung living; and all kinds of sport were made of the business. When two that were chained together were both to be hung, they were hung up together by their necks, shot and thrown overboard, irons and all.

When the woman was hung up and shot, the ball did not take effect and she was thrown overboard living, and was seen to struggle some in the water before she sunk.⁷

Page said there were horrible floggings ordered for other of the slaves that revolted. They were "stretched flat on the deck and tied hand and foot":

They were then whipped by two men at a time, by the one with a stick about two feet long, and with five or six strands of rawhide secured to the end of it . . . and by the other with a piece of hide . . . as thick as one's finger, or thicker, and hard as whalebone, but more flexible.⁸

The "20 men whipped survived in agony, but all 6 of the women who were whipped soon died."⁹

Page testified that the Philadelphian, Capt. Douglass, rushed from the Porpoise to the Kentucky when necessary to give the Kentucky the legitimacy of an American captain under the protection of the American flag:

Page said the American flags that Douglass left on the Kentucky [with the Portuguese captain] flew constantly. Such testimony prompted the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Henry Wise, to comment, 'Without the aid of our citizens and our flag, [the slave trade] could not be carried on with success at all.'¹⁰

NO Confederate battle flag every flew over a slave ship.

The Confederate battle flag was a soldier's flag used on some of the bloodiest battlefields in history by men defending their homes from a barbaric invasion.

The Confederate battle flag has more honor, valor and glory attached to it than most flags in history, and no flag has more.

That is the reason certain groups, which have no right to the Confederate battle flag, use it as their own. They want to be associated with the courage and honor the battle flag represents.

Most Yankees had great respect for the Confederate battle flag and said so constantly.

British diplomats in Rio:

noted that 43 vessels of various nations had brought 16,200 new slaves to Brazil, and that the most successful slave voyages were those of ships that flew the American flag.¹¹

Slaves were needed in Brazil to satisfy the enormous worldwide demand for coffee.

The Mary E. Smith "began its voyage in Boston in August, 1855." A deputy U.S. marshal "tried to arrest its defiant owners, who gave him a choice: Get off the ship, or go to Africa. He got off the ship."¹²

The ship was later seized off the coast of Brazil with a cargo of "Africans dying of thirst and hunger" because the ship could find no safe place to land.¹³

Brazil cracked down on slave trading in the 1850s which sent New England and New York's slave traders, with others, to the sugar plantations of Cuba.

The Wanderer, "a racing yacht built on Long Island" was notorious. It was owned by "Southern members of the New York Yacht Club allied with Charles A. L. Lamar" of Georgia. It landed 400 slaves on a private island off the coast of Georgia around 1858.

Lamar and others were tried but there were no convictions. A "special prosecutor appointed to the cases later claimed the entire voyage was a conspiracy organized in New York."¹⁴

The Nightingale, "a yacht bigger and more exotic than the Wanderer" was seized by the U.S. Navy with "nearly 1,000 Africans on board and another 600 waiting on the beach" just days before the War Between the States began.¹⁵

The Nightingale was named for Swedish singer Jenny Lind and "had been built a decade before in Maine, across the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth, New Hampshire." It had been sold in New York in January 1860 to Francis Bowen, "'the Prince of Slavers.'" ¹⁶

After it was seized, its third mate, "Minthorne Westervelt, a young man from one of New York's wealthiest families" was tried but the jury deadlocked.¹⁷

Authorities tried to catch the Ocilla out of Mystic, Connecticut but it got away with landing slaves in Cuba. It's crew were identified as Philadelphians.

The Huntress "of New York, owned by a New Yorker and a New Bedford, Massachusetts, native, was found burned after landing 500 slaves" in Cuba. A crew member said 250 other slaves had died of thirst and their bodies were thrown overboard.¹⁸

The illegal slave trade "catered to an international plantation economy."

W.E.B. Du Bois, whose book The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 is still authoritative, regretted he didn't look at the economics of the slave trade further: "Laws codify morality; economics ignore both."

That is a true statement as proven by the War Between the States that was fought because the Northern economy faced economic annihilation when the Southern states seceded and suddenly the North could not count on the rivers of cotton it had to have constantly.

Instead, Lincoln and the North would have to face the South as a powerful competitor with 100% control of King Cotton and a low 10% tariff viz-a-viz the North's astronomical Morrill Tariff that was 47 to 60% higher.

The South, once military and trade alliances with Great Britain were signed, could not be beaten by the North in a war, and Lincoln knew it.

That's why Lincoln sent five hostile military missions into Southern waters in March and April, 1861.

He wanted the war started as quickly as he could so he could throw up his blockade and chill relations between the South and Great Britain.

Lincoln announced his blockade before the smoke had cleared from the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

Next Week:

A Comprehensive Review of

COMPLICITY

How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery

by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank
of The Hartford Courant

Part Twelve
Chapter Seven: The Other Underground Railroad
Part One

(Click Here to go to last week's blog article:

Complicity, How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank of The Hartford Courant - A Comprehensive Review by Gene Kizer, Jr., Part Ten, Chapter Six: New York's Slave Pirates, Part One)

NOTES:

(Scroll down for:
Complicity, Actual Citation from Book)

¹ Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 128.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 129.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 130.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 131.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Farrow, Lang, Frank, Complicity, 132.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Ibid.

Complicity,
Actual Citation from Book