History

Revised Team Blog Format

2008-05-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

The Craft's flight to freedom

Ellen Smith Craft was born in Clinton, Georgia in 1826. Her father, Colonel James Smith, was white and was the owner of her mother, Maria. Maria was mulatto or mixed-race. Ellen was very fair skinned and often mistaken for being Caucasian. Ellen was separated from her mother at the age of eleven and given to Dr. Robert Collins. This was a wedding present for Dr. Collins who married Colonel Smith's daughter, Eliza. This was Ellen's white half-sister.It was here at her new master’s home in Macon, Georgia that Ellen meet William.William and Ellen married in 1846. Their marriage was not seen as legal or binding in the southern states. They weren't able to live together due to having different masters. They began to save their money and develop a plan to escape.Ellen disguised herself as a white gentleman traveling with his slave, William, to Philadelphia for medical treatment. Ellen was illiterate but skirted this issue by putting her right arm in a sling. This overtly injured arm could then be used as an excuse for not being able to write. To hide her feminine facial features she wore a poultice on her face. This bandage also discouraged conversations with strangers. With the plan in place they asked their masters for a few days to visit friends and families. It took them only four days to reach a Quaker farm near Philadelphia.

Justin

After arriving in Philadelphia on December 25th, 1848 William and Ellen spent 3 weeks with the Iven’s family. The Craft’s then decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts knowing they would be safer there then in Philadelphia. Once in Boston they were assisted by abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, William Welles Brown (a fugitive slave) and Vigilance Committee of Boston. Their daring escape was the topic in abolitionist discussion and Brown arranged for the Craft’s to make appearances at their meetings in which an admission fee was charged. This admission fee was given to William and Ellen to help them to settle in Boston in a free black community on Beacon Hill. They both became involved with the abolitionist movement. In Boston, William having been apprenticed as a cabinetmaker by his former master continued this line of work and also started a furniture shop. Ellen took up work sewing, having been a household servant and familiar with needlepoint developed her skills and assisted William in upholstery of furniture in his shop. The Crafts spent two years in Boston in relative harmony, they had their marriage sanctioned by a Christian church and settled down to a life of freedom and lived comfortably.

Justin/Amy

During this time congress was attempting to hold the union together, California and Texas were territories recently acquired and were petitioning to join the union as free states. The slave states wishing to keep a balance between free and slave states were in an uproar over this. They would lose the balance of representatives in congress if this occurred. In order to appease the slave states the Compromise of 1850 was proposed by Henry Clay and on January 29th, 1950 the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted. The Fugitive Slave law allowed slave owners to recover escaped slaves in the free states and required authorities in the free states to assist in enforcing the law. Furthermore, both federal marshals and private citizens were mandated to help capture these fugitive slaves. While this compromise kept the Union intact it was the end of freedom to blacks living in the north.

Amy/Kasey

Shortly after the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted the Craft’s learned two slave catchers, Willis Hughes and John Knight, were dispatched by Ellen's prior owner, Dr. Collins, to Boston to bring her back down south. William and Ellen decide to go to England not feeling that Canada would be safe. Abolitionists helped them to escape Boston. The authorities and slave catchers would be watching the ports so it was necessary for them to flee to Portland, Maine. In Portland they stayed with Daniel Oliver until leaving for St. John, New Brunswick. From St. John’s they took a steamer to Windsor Nova Scotia and then a coach to Halifax, Nova Scotia. They were the subject of racism and prejudice during flight from America but finally reached England.
Though they stayed in England until after the end of the Civil War, they worked passionately on their cause. During their time in England, they had four children and developed a business. William financed and went on several trips to Africa to teach Christianity and promote agriculture and trade. However, after these mostly unsuccessful trips, the Craft’s were left in financial ruin. It was at this time that they felt it best to return Stateside. The year was 1869.

Kasey/Amy

The Craft’s were left in financial trouble after William's endeavors in Africa (teaching Christianity and promoting trade). They decided to return to America in 1869. At this point, the Civil War had ended and they purchased a plantation, Hickory Hill, in Savannah, Georgia. Their vision was to have a cooperative farm for freed slaves, but in 1870, a group of angry (white) people burned the farm to the ground, as well as the crops. A year later, they leased yet another farm, this time outside Savannah. Woodville became a cooperative farm and a school for blacks.Financial troubles, hostility and other factors followed the Craft's for the rest of their lives. In 1891, Ellen passed away and was buried, at her request, under a tree on their land. Following the passing of his wife, William relocated to Charleston, South Carolina where he later died.It should be noted that there is significantly more information available about Ellen Craft's life than her husbands. Most information regarding him is intertwined with his wife's biography.

Kasey

TIMELINE
1837 – Given as gift to the Smith family at age 11
1846 – Marries William Craft
1848 – Escapes to Boston with husband
1850 – Slave catchers attempt capture
1850 – Flees to England
1851 – Lectures across England about horrors of slavery
1852 – First child is born
1868 – Returns to U.S.
1869 – Settles in Hickory Hill, S.C.
1870 – Ku Klux Klan burns the Crafts’ cooperative farm
1873 – Purchases plantation in Georgia, opens school
1876 – White neighbors’ slander damages farm business and schoolJustin

I found a great web site that has the electronic version of William Craft's autobiography:Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery.

Wilberforce / Evangelicalism

2008-04-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

William Wilberforce was an advocate of evangelical Christianity. Evangelicalism was a movement in modern Anglo-American Protestantism. Wilberforce and his associates contributed greatly to education for the poor, the founding of the Church Missionary Society (1798) and the British and Foreign Bible Society (1803), the institution of the British ban on slave trading (1807), and the abolition of slavery (1833) in British territories. Protestantism rejected the authority of the pope and in emphasizing instead the authority of the Bible and the importance of individual faith.

Unsuccessful effort to capture the Crafts

2008-04-24T09:24:00.001-07:00

December 6, 1850
From the Georgia Constitutionalist is an account of an unsuccessful attempt to recapture fugitive slaves from Boston. It is written by Willis H. Hughes, from Macon, dated Nov. 21, 1850, and is addressed to “fellow citizens”. The fugitive is named as “Bill”, but it becomes clear it is William Craft. Hughes recounts the ways in various officials in Boston avoided assisting him by delays, postponements, jurisdictional disputes, and even at one time when he was arrested for slandering Ellen Crafts, and held to bail for $20,000. He indicates that he has leaned that the Crafts had “positively left for England”. Hughes concludes that he “went to Boston as an agent to execute a lawful trust, thinking I should be protected and assisted by the laws of my country. But, on the contrary, from the first, the laws of the country, instead of a protection, were made an engine of cruelty, oppression, injustice, and abuse; so that my life was constantly endangered, and this, without the first offer of assistance from Government, national, State, or city. I feel that every man who has a Southern heart in his bosom, and would maintain the honor of his country, should sustain the Southern right cause, by every constitutional measure, until our rights are acknowledged, and justice obtained.”
A similar account is given here by John Knight, the slave Pursuer, from Macon, who had been with Mr. Hughes.
Filed in - Slaves - escaped, - Crafts - William & Ellen, 1850, * ALL ARTICLES CHRONOLOGICALLY Comments (0) Permalink
http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/slaves-escaped/
William and Ellen Craft were two fugitive slaves who sought refuge in Boston after escaping their master, Robert Collins of Macon, Georgia, in December 1848. Two agents for Collins, Willis H. Hughes (?-1851) and John Knight, arrived in Boston in October 1850 intending to recapture the Crafts under the new Fugitive Slave Law. The Boston Vigilance Committee and local black community took immediate action to defend the fugitives. Each time Hughes and Knight approached the Crafts, the southerners were arrested, once for slander and once for kidnapping. Large crowds of blacks besieged the agents? hotel and shadowed their movements. This harassment, coupled with thinly veiled threats against their lives delivered by the Reverend Theodore Parker, eventually unnerved Hughes and Knight and persuaded them to return to Georgia empty-handed. The Crafts soon after fled to England. Lib., 6 December 1850, 24 January 1851; R.J.M. Blackett, "Fugitive Slaves in Britain: The Odyssey of William and Ellen Craft," Journal of American Studies, 12:41-44 (April 1978); Donald Martin Jacobs, "A History of the Boston Negro from the Revolution to the Civil War" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1968), 273-74.
http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu/craft.htm

To Fredrick Douglass,

2008-04-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Your story in a basic way resembles William and Ellen Crafts. Your mistreatment may have been more severe but your flight to freedom shows ingenuity. Having the papers to sail on the ship from the mysterious black seaman seems to have been your saving grace. I am surprised they did not check these better. Your decision to tour Ireland after the printing of your biography may have been prudent as your ex-owner, Hugh Auld may have attempted to recover you. Your story is memorable; it shows what can be accomplished. From beaten and whipped slave to the first African American to receive a nomination for Vise-President of the United States. I applaud an indomitable spirit!!

Mary Prince

Middle Passage

2008-04-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

The Middle Passage
The middle passage was the second leg of the triangular slave trade route between 1450 and 1860. Although slave trade was banned by the British in 1807, in America by 1808, France and Netherlands in 1815, Portugal on 1817, and Spain in 1820 illegal trade continued for some years.

Journey length and Crews
Slaves were transported from Africa to North America, South America, and the Caribbean. The average length of the journey lasted six weeks. Weather, condition of the ship and the design of the ship played a role in the length of the time taken to cross the Atlantic. The ships were generally manned with a crew of thirty. The captains of these ships were known for their brutality and crews were often treated harshly. Crews in kind were often made up of men who had been in prison or were fugitives from justice.

Conditions on Board
The conditions on board ship were unsanitary and cramped. A normal between deck levels was approximately five feet. On a slave ship these levels were cut in half by installing another deck between the two making headroom of less then thirty inches. Some ships could carry approximately three hundred slaves in this way. Usually men and women were separated. The slaves were shackled ankle to ankle with leg irons. The slaves placed below decks could not sit up, stand, or roll when sleeping. They received no bedding and the boards they lay on were unsanded. Usually one rudimentary toilet was available so the weak and sick often lay in their own urine and excrement. Ventilation was minimally provided by portholes which were boarded over during bad weather. Dysentery was common among slaves on ship. Communal bowls were used to feed slaves; they ate from these bowls using their bare hands which helped spread disease. The food at first was European in origin but after time the crews found that an indigenous African diet seemed to keep the slaves healthier. The slaves were allowed on deck for exercise once a day to keep them healthy. Exercise often involved dancing for the entertainment of the crew. Women were often allowed more freedom but were prey to the sexual advances of the crew because of this.

Mortality Rate
Ten to twenty percent of the slaves died during the Middle Voyage. An average of thirteen percent succumbed to the hazardous voyage. The majority of deaths (malnutrition and disease) occurred during the first two to three weeks of the voyage due to the forced marches to the coast and prolonged interment at the forts and factories. The slaves were not the only casualties, about one in five of the crew usually died of disease during the journey. While all deaths were not due to disease on the ship ‘Zong’ in 1781 the ships captain threw 133 slaves overboard in an attempt to collect insurance money.

Rebellions
Rebellions on board ship consisted of staving oneself to death, in this event the slave was force feed or tortured using different means to make them eat. Another way to rebel was to commit suicide; some slaves would through themselves overboard. Violent rebellions were dealt with harshly by the captain and crew. On one ship the ‘Unity’ out of Liverpool slaves rebelled five times. In one instance forty men were put in leg irons side by side, in the next the leader was shoot dead, and two women were killed as the result of a revolt on this ship. Many rebellions may have gone undocumented since slaves did not write and the only records were those from surviving ships journals.

Improvements
In 1788 Dolben’s law was enacted by the British, this law controlled the number of slaves a ship could carry. The law required a doctor be on board. The laws were not driven by humanitarian reasons but ones of profit. The doctors supervised the cleaning of the slave decks and kept the sick slaves separated from the healthy. Less crowding in the slaves ships reduced the number of slaves to sell but the death rate fell to approximately one in eighteen offsetting the reduced cargo.

Conclusion
Figures are estimated that 11,328,000 slaves were transported by the Europeans during this time period not including the years of illegal trafficking. The slaves were traded for sugar, tobacco, coffee, molasses, and rum which were then taken to Europe for sale. The Swahili term for this era of history is called ‘Maafa’ which means Holocaust or Great Disaster.

Slave Catchers

2008-04-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

On September 18th 1850 the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law as a compromise between the southern slave states and the northern free states. This law allowed southern slave owners to reacquire runaway slaves in the free states. The law also required authorities in the free states to assist in the return of runaways. Anyone providing food, shelter or aid to fugitive slaves were subject to a $1000.00 fine and 6 months in jail. After the Crafts escape in December of 1848 they moved to Boston until December of 1850, they learned that two slave catchers, Willis Hughes and John Knight, had been sent by their prior masters to return them to Macon, Georgia. The Crafts fled to Nova Scotia and then to England.

1. Unsuccessful effort to capture the Crafts
December 6, 1850
From the Georgia Constitutionalist is an account of an unsuccessful attempt to recapture fugitive slaves from Boston. It is written by Willis H. Hughes, from Macon, dated Nov. 21, 1850, and is addressed to “fellow citizens”. The fugitive is named as “Bill”, but it becomes clear it is William Craft. Hughes recounts the ways in various officials in Boston avoided assisting him by delays, postponements, jurisdictional disputes, and even at one time when he was arrested for slandering Ellen Crafts, and held to bail for $20,000. He indicates that he has leaned that the Crafts had “positively left for England”. Hughes concludes that he “went to Boston as an agent to execute a lawful trust, thinking I should be protected and assisted by the laws of my country. But, on the contrary, from the first, the laws of the country, instead of a protection, were made an engine of cruelty, oppression, injustice, and abuse; so that my life was constantly endangered, and this, without the first offer of assistance from Government, national, State, or city. I feel that every man who has a Southern heart in his bosom, and would maintain the honor of his country, should sustain the Southern right cause, by every constitutional measure, until our rights are acknowledged, and justice obtained.”
A similar account is given here by John Knight, the slave Pursuer, from Macon, who had been with Mr. Hughes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Law_of_1850
http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/crafts-william-ellen

Power Loom

2008-04-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

Power Loom - Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823)
From Mary Bellis,Your Guide to Inventors.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Reverend Edmund Cartwright patented the power loom.
The power loom was a steam-powered, mechanically operated version of a regular loom, an invention that combined threads to make cloth.
In 1785, Edmund Cartwright patented the first power loom and set up a factory in Doncaster, England to manufacture cloth. A prolific inventor, Edmund Cartwright also invented a wool-combing machine in 1789, continued to improve his power loom, invented a steam engine that used alcohol and a machine for making rope in 1797, and aided Robert Fulton with his steamboats.
Cartwright's power loom needed to be improved upon and several inventors did just that. It was improved upon by William Horrocks, the inventor of the variable speed batton (1813) and American, Francis Cabot Lowell. The power loom became commonly used after 1820.
View Image: Power Loom When the power loom became efficient, women replaced most men as weavers in the textile factories.
Power Looms in America
The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell.
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The city of Lowell and other early industrial American cities grew supporting a nearby Francis Cabot Lowell's designed power loom, an amended version of the British power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright. The power loom allowed the wholesale manufacture of cloth from ginned cotton, itself a recent innovation of Eli Whitney's.
According to the Lowell National Historical Park Handbook, for the first two centuries of American history, the weaving of cloth was a cottage industry, even after the introduction of power spinning frames in 1790. Yarn produced by machines in water-powered factories was still put out for weaving on hand looms in homes. All cloths were woven in basically the same way, although weavers followed patterns to produce cloths with intricate weaves. Because the operations of a loom focus on such a small working area, its movements must be exact. And weaving, as opposed to spinning, requires a cycle of sequential steps and involves reciprocal movement as well as circular. In a power loom, movements coordinated by human hand and eye have to be replicated through the precise interaction of levers, cams, gears, and springs. For these reasons, weaving was the last step in textile production to be mechanized.
Successful power looms were in operation in England by the early 1800s, but those made in America were inadequate. Francis Cabot Lowell realized that for the United States to develop a practical power loom, it would have to borrow British technology. While visiting English textile mills, he memorized the workings of their power looms. Upon his return, he recruited master mechanic Paul Moody to help him recreate and develop what he had seen. They succeeded in adapting the British design, and the machine shop established at the Waltham mills by Lowell and Moody continued to make improvements in the loom. With the introduction of a dependable power loom, weaving could keep up with spinning, and the American textile industry was underway.
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventors/a/power_loom.htm
Reverend Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823)
Edmund Cartwright was originally from Nottingham. After graduating from Oxford University in 1779, he became the rector of Goadby church, Marwood in Leicestershire. In 1784 he visited Arkwright's cotton-spinning mill. Cartwright was sure that he could develop similar technology to benefit weaving.
In 1785, he patented the first version of his power loom and set up a factory in Doncaster. He was no businessman, however, and he went bankrupt in 1793, which forced him to close his factory.
Cartwright was a prolific inventor. He patented a wool-combing machine in 1789 and a steam engine that used alcohol, as well as a machine for making rope, in 1797. He even helped the American, Robert Fulton, with his steamboat inventions.
The power loom was quickly integrated into the weaving industry. It was improved upon by William Horrocks, famous for his invention of the variable speed batton in 1813. The power loom was used alongside Crompton's Spinning Mule in many factories. Although Cartwright did not make very much money from any of his patents, in 1809 the House of Commons voted him a sum of £10000 in recognition of his contribution to the textile industry. Cartwright retired to a farm in Kent, where he spent the rest of his life improving farm machinery.
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=inventors&cdn=money&tm=129&gps=78_27_1020_623&f=00&su=p554.2.150.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/012.html

The invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1776 represented a major advance in the development of powered machines. It was first applied to an industrial operation - the spinning of cotton - in 1785. A new kind of work-slave it not only marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but also the coming age of mass production.In the England of the 18th century five important inventions in the textile industry advanced the automation of work processes. 1) John Kay's flying shuttle in 1733 , which permitted the weaving of larger widths of cloth and significantly increased weaving speed, 2) Edmund Cartwright's power loom in 1785, which increased weaving speed still further, 3) James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in 1764, 4) Richard Arkwright's water frame and 5) Samuel Crompton's spinning mule in 1779, whereby the last three inventions improved the speed and quality of thread-spinning operations. Those developments, combined with the invention of the steam engine, in short time led to the creation of new machine-slaves and the mechanization of the production of most major goods, such as iron, paper, leather, glass and bricks.Large-scale machine production was soon applied in many manufacturing sectors and resulted in a reduction of production costs. Yet the widespread use of the novel work-slaves also led to new demands concerning the work force's qualifications. The utilization of machines enabled a differentiated kind of division of labor and eventuated in a (further) specialization of skills. While before many goods were produced by skilled craftsmen the use of modern machinery increased the demand for semiskilled and unskilled workers. Also, the nature of the work process altered from one mainly dependent on physical power to one primarily dominated by technology and an increasing proportion of the labor force employed to operate machines.

http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659368/?opmode=history

The spinning jenny is a multi-spool spinning wheel. It was invented circa 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, near Blackburn, Lancashire in the north west of England (although Thomas Highs is another candidate identified as the inventor). The device dramatically reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn, with a single worker able to work eight or more spools at once.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny

The water frame is the name given to the spinning frame, when water power was used to drive it. Both are credited to Richard Arkwright who patented and exploited the technology. It was based on an invention by Thomas Highs and the patent was later overturned. John Kay, a clock maker and mechanic who helped Highs build the spinning frame, sold the design to Arkwright (for what might be considered a derisory sum). It was Arkwright, however, who made the system work, realising that account had to be taken of the fibre lengths in the batch being spun.
The water frame is derived from the use of a water wheel to drive a number of spinning frames. The water wheel provided more power to the spinning frame than human operators, reducing the amount of human labor needed and increasing the spindle count dramatically. However, unlike the spinning jenny, the water frame could only spin one thread at a time until Samuel Crompton combined the two inventions into his spinning mule in 1779. However the water frame could be assembled with hundreds of spinning heads in a single building and was easy to operate.
In 1771 Arkwright installed the water frame in his cotton mill at Cromford, Derbyshire, on the River Derwent, creating one of the first factories that was specifically built to house machinery rather than just bringing workers together. He is considered an innovator as he combined water power,the water frame and machine factories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_frame

The spinning mule was created in 1779 by Samuel Crompton. It was a combination of the water frame (created by Thomas Highs, initially falsely attributed to Richard Arkwright) and the spinning jenny (created by either John Kay or by James Hargreaves; sources differ). In short, it created high quality textiles, in a short amount of time.
Before cloth can be woven, the yarn has to be carefully spun. This was done by women and young children, but several spinsters were needed to keep each weaver at work. Several labor-saving machines were developed in the mid 18th century enabling yarn to be spun faster. The spinning mule was a culmination of these, so named because it represented the hybridization of two previous and separate inventions.
The mule produced strong, but thin yarn, which was suitable for any kind of textile. Initially, it was used for spinning cotton, but later applied to other fibres. The development of the mule was a step towards increased textile production in factories as the mule was too large for most homes. The reason for combining was because the spinning jenny could spin more thread at a time and the water frame used water power instead of man power. The combination of these two meant that the spinning mule could now spin more thread using water power.
Samuel Crompton was too poor to be able to apply for a patent for his invention. Instead, he sold the rights to David Dale, who patented it and collected the profits. Later, the mule was run off steam power. It has helped the advancement of the textile industry.
The spinning inventions were significant in enabling a great expansion to occur in the production of textiles, particularly cotton ones. Cotton and iron were leading sectors in the Industrial Revolution. Both industries underwent a great expansion at about the same time, which can be used to identify the start of the Industrial Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Mule

The Portuguese and the exploration of the 15th century African West coast

2008-04-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Portuguese and the exploration of the 15th century African West coast

The Moors controlled the Trans-Sahara trade routes between West and North Africa. This gave the Moors control over much on the slave, gold, and spice trade from this area to Europe. The Portuguese at first were not as interested in the slave trade as much as the gold and spice trade the Moors were proprietors of. The hope of obtaining slaves may have been part of the initial quest but the need for vast amounts of slaves would not expand until later with the advent of the sugar plantations and mining in Brazil.
Prince Henry believed that the source of the gold was the coast of Guinea but in truth the gold came from remote area near the upper waters of the Senegal River and Volta River. (PG. 52)
Prince Henry convinced his father to attack Ceula which was on the north most point on the West African coast at the Straights of Gibraltar. The capture of this port would hopefully have two effects, reduce the attacks by Barbary Pirates on the towns of the Algarve on the southern Portugal coast and gain control of the trade routes of the Moors. The capture of Ceula was not a complete success; the Moors simply moved their trade centers further east to Algiers. It did help to reduce the attacks by the Barbary Pirates that had used Ceula as a home port but most of all Moorish prisoners told detailed stories of passage trains of merchants and camels carrying goods to exchange for gold and slaves in Timbuktu on the Niger River and Cantor on the Gambia. Hearing these stories Prince Henry was more determined to find a sea route to the source of this lucrative trade. To prepare for these ventures he established a headquarters on Cape Saint Vincent at Sarges in Portugal. Here he gathered astronomers, cosmographers, and promising ship captains. At Lagos he commissioned the building of the Caravel Ship which had a Lanteen (triangular) sail, these ships were lighter, faster, and could sail windward. These ships were superior for exploration to other ships of that time.
Prince Henry financed his ventures partly with his own investments. He had a monopoly of fishing for Tuna along the coast of the Algarve, he owned a fishery on the Targus, and from subsidies from the “Order of Christ”, a knightly association. As a Grand Master of the order he gained profits from fairs sponsored by the Order at Tomar as well as Houses and shops leased around the fairground.
(PG. 53)
The first ventures of the Portuguese under the direction of Prince Henry were the seizures of the deserted islands of Madeira and the Azores. The Azores lay off the coast of Africa at approximately 535 miles from the mainland from the coast of Morocco.
Madeira (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira)

The Azores are a small cluster of islands in the Atlantic Ocean about 950 miles from Lisbon.
Azores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationAzores.png)

Prince Henry believed that they would be profitable ventures and to prevent Spanish expansion laid claim to these islands in the name of Portugal. After colonization of both Madeira and the Azores the islands produced Dyes from resins, Wax, Honey, and wood.

Prince Henry continued to send out expeditions down the coast of West Africa reaching Cabo Branco at the extreme northern coast of modern day Mauritania. In 1444 continuing south along the coast, Dinis Dias discovered the Senegal River and further on rounded Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) and realized the coast turned eastward.

The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas 1997

Good People of England

2008-04-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

I do not mean to disparage the good people of England; especially those who have lead the fight against slavery. England shines like a beacon in the night, a place of freedom for all my people. The irony of it often reflects in my mind of how at one time England was once the greatest catalyst in the continuation of the practice of slavery and has become its champion in the abolishment of this cruel tradition. It is England that has given me freedom when I came to its shores but I have become tired and bitter over the journey. Yes, was helped by the Moravians for they know how it is to suffer also. Was not Jan Hus its founder not tried and burned at the stake as a result of his search for freedom! I do appreciate what the Anti-Slavery Society has accomplished. But even now I still hear some people in this country say that slaves do not need better usage, and do not want to be free. They believe what others say who deceive them and say slaves are happy. I say, not so! How can slaves be happy when they have a halter round their neck and the whip upon back!

i am mary prince

2008-04-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

I am Mary Prince; I was born in Bermuda at Brackish Pond now known as Devonshire Marsh in Devonshire Parish in 1788. My parents are both slaves and I have lived in the slavery for forty years. In this time I have seem my family torn from each other when sold to different masters, I have been unmercifully whipped and beaten for the slightest transgressions, I seen my people treated as cattle, no worst then cattle by their masters. Mans inhumanity to man has left an indelible mark on my life and had it not been for our lord and his hand in others I would surely succumbed to my wretched existence.

Dr. Trotter

2008-04-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dr. Trotter
To be quite frank I was at first amazed that I have not heard your name mention in our fight to abolish slavery. Your time as a physician aboard the slave ship Brookes apparently has given you some insight as to the ordeal of the Middle Passage on the Africans who were forced to make this voyage, not having to undergone the ordeal I find your testimony before the British House of Commons in 1788, both enlightening and ghastly. The conditions aboard ship, although carrying 600 slaves on a ship that was to carry only 451 shows that the slave merchants valued maximizing profit over life.

Crafts

2008-04-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotel look at his later

The Crafts quickly moved to Boston, which had an established free black

William Craft
community on Beacon Hill and well-organized, protective abolitionist activity. William, a carpenter, founded a thriving furniture business. The pair looked forward to celebrating marriage sanctioned by a Christian church and rearing children who were free. They also participated with the fugitive slave William Wells Brown in antislavery lectures throughout New England, where they quickly won the hearts of audiences with their romantic tale of escape.
In 1850, however, Congress disturbed their peace by ratifying the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it a crime for residents of free states to harbor or aid fugitive slaves like the Crafts. The act also handsomely rewarded officers of the law for assisting slave owners by apprehending their fugitive "property" and sending them back to slavery.
The ink

Ellen Craft
had barely dried on this new bill when two bounty hunters named Willis Hughes and John Knight traveled north from Macon to return the Crafts to slavery by persuasion or by force. They met with resistance and harassment from black and white Bostonians, who moved the couple around the city to elude their detection and recapture. Defeated, Hughes and Knight soon returned to Georgia. The Crafts no longer felt safe, however, even in the northern states. In December 1850, just two years after they had fled slavery, they sailed into calmer waters in Liverpool, England

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-622

In December of 1848, the Crafts escaped enslavement. Ellen’s light complexion allowed her to dress as a white man. She then claimed William was her slave. This plan worked and they settled in Boston where they became famous because of their remarkable and romantic escape. Their story briefly generated a sizeable income. With their new wealth, the Crafts started a successful furniture business. In their spare time, Ellen and William participated in antislavery lectures with fugitive slave William Wells Brown. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. Consequently two slave catchers, Willis Hughes and John Knight, traveled north to capture the Crafts. The town of Boston sheltered the couple and kept them away from the bounty hunters, but the Crafts no longer felt safe anywhere in the United States and moved to England in 1851.

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/craft-william-and-ellen-1824-1900-1826-1891
For safety, they then moved on to Boston, the center of the Abolitionist movement. There, they supported themselves by working in their respective trades: cabinet-making for William and sewing for Ellen. Both became active in the abolitionist movement and gained fame on the lecture circuit. Stories about them were published in The New York Herald, The Boston Globe, the Georgia Journal and The Macon Telegraph.
http://www.georgiawomen.org/_honorees/craftes/index.htm
In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, permitting the forcible recapture of ex-slaves from free states. Ellen’s former master, Dr. Collins, sent two slave catchers to hunt her down. An ex-slave group called the League of Freedom protected Ellen and William. But no longer feeling safe in Boston, the Crafts decided to flee to England, going over land to Maine to board a ship departing for England from Canada.
They remained in there for several weeks before continuing on to Boston, where abolitionists hailed them as the heroes they were. They spent the next few months on a speaking tour of Massachusetts and then began boarding in the Beacon Hill home of black activist Lewis Hayden. Ellen worked as a seamstress and William as a cabinetmaker. He became both a successful tradesman and a leader in Boston's black community.
In September of 1850, however, a newly passed federal law, the Fugitive Slave Act, put them in jeopardy. Northerners were now obliged to help slave owners reclaim their "property." Within a month, two agents arrived in Boston looking for the Crafts. William barricaded himself in his shop while friends stood guard outside. The agents persisted, but William managed to get himself back to the Haydens'. Lewis Hayden armed his house with kegs of gunpowder and vowed to blow it up rather than surrender a single person under his protection. Ellen Craft went into hiding at Reverend Theodore Parker's home. For the next two weeks, the minister wrote his sermons "with a sword in the open drawer under [his inkstand], and a pistol in the flap of the desk."
Anti-slavery activists harassed and threatened the agents and followed them everywhere. In the course of five days, they had them arrested five different times on charges such as slander and attempted kidnapping. Finally, the agents were intimidated into leaving the city.
The abolitionists were jubilant, but they knew that the Crafts were no longer safe, even in Boston. When the Crafts' former masters wrote to President Millard Fillmore for help, he replied that he would mobilize troops if necessary to see the law enforced. The Crafts decided that, like hundreds of other fugitive slaves, they would have to leave Boston. Since all the ports were being watched and guarded, they traveled overland to Nova Scotia, where they eventually boarded a boat to England.
http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=102

William and Ellen Craft in Kingston
February 9, 1849
A letter to Garrison, from T. Bicknell, Kingston, Feb 8th, tells of an Anti-Slavery meeting in the Town Hall. W. W. Brown, and the Crafts, and Jonathan Walker are present. Brown introduces Mr. Craft, who spoke, ” and in a very modest and becoming manner gave the details of the recent escape of himself and wife from slavery…..The crowded assembly present were deeply interested in the narrative, and frequently interrupted him with bursts of applause…..”
Crafts in New Bedford
February 16, 1849
A note about Anti-Slavery meetings in New Bedford, two successive evenings. W.W. Brown introduced the Crafts. During the presentations by the two they were questioned by the audience.
“A lady in the audience wanted to know of Ellen if they called her ‘a nigger’ at the South. ‘Oh, yes, ‘, she said, ‘they didn’t call me anything else; they said it would make me proud’”
“William was asked what he expected to do, if any attempt was made to take him. Said he, with deep energy, ‘I knew the consequences; I made up my mind to kill or be killed, before I would be taken.’”
Public Welcome for Crafts
April 6, 1849
“The meeting at the Tremont Temple, on Sunday evening last, to extend to William and Ellen Crafts, the interesting fugitives from Georgia, a public welcome, was one of thrilling interest, and doubtless of highly beneficial results.” Garrison made introductory remarks, William W. Brown introduced the Crafts. Mr. Craft spoke, followed by Wendell Phillips, in his usual eloquent strain: “most effectively did he exhibit the criminal indifference and hypocrisy of the American Church, and the base subserviency of the political parties (Free Soil not excepted), on the subject of slavery.”
Unsuccessful effort to capture the Crafts
December 6, 1850
From the Georgia Constitutionalist is an account of an unsuccessful attempt to recapture fugitive slaves from Boston. It is written by Willis H. Hughes, from Macon, dated Nov. 21, 1850, and is addressed to “fellow citizens”. The fugitive is named as “Bill”, but it becomes clear it is William Craft. Hughes recounts the ways in various officials in Boston avoided assisting him by delays, postponements, jurisdictional disputes, and even at one time when he was arrested for slandering Ellen Crafts, and held to bail for $20,000. He indicates that he has leaned that the Crafts had “positively left for England”. Hughes concludes that he “went to Boston as an agent to execute a lawful trust, thinking I should be protected and assisted by the laws of my country. But, on the contrary, from the first, the laws of the country, instead of a protection, were made an engine of cruelty, oppression, injustice, and abuse; so that my life was constantly endangered, and this, without the first offer of assistance from Government, national, State, or city. I feel that every man who has a Southern heart in his bosom, and would maintain the honor of his country, should sustain the Southern right cause, by every constitutional measure, until our rights are acknowledged, and justice obtained.”
A similar account is given here by John Knight, the slave Pursuer, from Macon, who had been with Mr. Hughes.
http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/crafts-william-ellen

Their journey ended in Boston, where they arrived in early 1849, and after speaking at the Brookline Town Hall, stayed at the Bowditch House and other Brookline Underground Railroad stops. The Crafts fled once again to England after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/underground/ma3.htm

Congregationalism / Methodism relationship

2008-04-24T09:06:00.001-07:00

Corky, in post Re: Definition of a Congregationalist you asked what was the link.
Does this chain of events show how Congregationalism intersects with Methodism?

Definition of a Congregationalist: they felt they should make their own decisions about affairs of the congregation independent of any higher authority. This is the same doctrine as the Methodists who felt that the Anglican Church was in a state of apathy and wished to follow a more ethical system that did not dwell on the divinity of Jesus and the salivation doctrine. The Methodists targeted the working class which had slipped towards this apathy to religion by using powerful preaching, Bible study, communal hymn singing, love of God, and fostering a relationship with their savior and became a powerful movement influencing Anglicanism which was later known as “evangelical”. The strict doctrine of the Catholic church and the dictates of the Pope are part of which lead the young divinity students of the 1720’s at Oxford university in England to start Methodism.

http://www.beliefnet.com/

Bulfinch Lambe

2008-04-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

Bulfinch Lambe,

If I am not mistaken did not King Agaja give you money to go to the King of England in his behalf to try an get more flintlocks but instead you secured passage to the new world on a slave ship and used the remainder of the money to purchase slaves on said ship to sell at a profit so you could live comfortably in New England?

Mary Prince

Black Cargos research

2008-04-24T09:04:00.001-07:00

Black cargos

PG. 6 Kruman primarily fisherman, refused to be subjugated, sometimes procured as “captains” over the other slaves. Would paddle canoes that could hold 40 people transporting slaves through the high surf to the waiting slave ships.

PG 11 The first white man to reach Benin was a Portuguese, Ruy de Sequeria in 1472.
Continual warfare between among the smaller states was encouraged by the slavers who provided both sides with muskets and powder in return for slaves at a low price.

Pg.12 several towns near the west coast were more populous then any but the largest European cities. There were kingdoms and commonwealths comparitable with many European nations, and between the smaller tribes had definite and complex cultures. The West Africans invented their own forms of architecture and their own method of weaving. Some were skilled workers in wood, brass, and iron which they had learned to smelt long before the white man came. Many communities had highly involved religions, well organized economic systems, efficient agricultural practices, codes of law.
In the words of President Nkrumah of Ghana has called “the Balkananization of Africa” the slavers greatest advantage was that one tribe could not understand the. There were 264 Sudanic languages, 182 Bantu languages, and 47 Hamitic languages.

research websites

2008-04-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

· Atlantic slave trade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... the Navy turned its attention back to the challenge and established the West Coast of Africa ... The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 - 1870 . London: Picador, 1997. ...
o en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Atlantic_Slave_Trade
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o Show more results from en.wikipedia.org

West Africa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent . Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa (which coincides with common reckonings of ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa
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Results
maps of Africa and the slave trade
maps showing modern day Africa and Africa during the slave trade, locations of major slave trading castles and forts, and primary routes of slave ships across the Atlantic Ocean to ...
www.slaverysite.com/Body/maps.htm
· 1/30/2008
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European Voyages of Exploration - Home Page
Richly illustrated site looks at the factors that contributed to 15th and 16th century exploration and the individuals, as well as the roles Spain and Portugal.
www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya
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Results
Guinea: West Africa's Cosmopolis of Culture
Switzerland of Africa: Part Four . Guinea's Atlantic Coast and the Slave Route
www.africa-ata.org/gu_cosmopolis.htm
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Henry the Navigator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Infante Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu KG ( Porto , March 4 , 1394 – Sagres , November 13 , 1460 ); pron. IPA : [ẽ'ʁik(ɨ)] ), was an infante of the Portuguese House of ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator

Henry the Navigator
Henry the Navigator. Born: 4-Mar -1394 Birthplace: Oporto, Portugal Died: 13-Nov -1460 Location of death: Vila do Infante, Portugal Cause of death: unspecified
www.nndb.com/people/995/000094713

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Sagres - Portugal
Portugal:Ponta de SagresAlthough Sagres is on the Algarve it doesn't have the same over-developed holiday town feel of some of those towns further east. Situat.
www.travel-in-portugal.com/Sagres
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· Portugal > Travel > Algarve > Towns of Algarve
PORTUGAL INFO Travel - who what where & when in portugal - your travel guide to Algarve towns for its ... Due to the importance of its position on the world map this province ...
o portugal-info.net/algarve

The 'Diligent': A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade
The Diligent wends its way down the West African coast, purchases its cargo of Africans, then heads for the Portuguese islands of Principe and Sao Tome to purchase food before ...
www.arlindo-correia.com/080403.html

European Voyages of Exploration: The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Best of the Web. European Voyages of Exploration: The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/ Provider:
www.learnnc.org/bestweb/eurovoyage

Wilberforce

2008-04-24T09:01:00.001-07:00

Having inherited a considerable fortune from his father, Wilberforce toured France and Switzerland in 1784 and 1785, along with Isaac Milner, an advocate of evangelical Christianity (see Evangelicalism). As a result of Milner’s influence, Wilberforce embraced evangelicalism
William Wilberforce was an advocate of evangelical Christianity. Evangelicalism was a movement in modern Anglo-American Protestantism. Wilberforce and his associates contributed greatly to education for the poor, the founding of the Church Missionary Society (1798) and the British and Foreign Bible Society (1803), the institution of the British ban on slave trading (1807), and the abolition of slavery (1833) in British territories. Protestantism rejected the authority of the pope and in emphasizing instead the authority of the Bible and the importance of individual faith

african climate

2008-04-24T09:00:00.001-07:00

The African west coast as seen by the Portuguese of the 15th century would seem inhospitable. Gambia / Nigeria -There are no easily accessible ports. The coast is prone to sandbars and few major tributaries. The Niger River and River Gambia are both barely accessible due to large amounts of sand washed to the deltas. Mangrove swamps and tropical forests consisting mainly of bamboo. Away from the rivers it is wooded grasslands. Temperatures range between 79 to 84 degrees F. with humidly at evening time as high as 95 to 100 percent

John Newton

2008-04-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Amazing Grace,The story of John Newton, author of America's favorite hymn
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Print this Page
Free Sermon on the Mount Bible Study
A slaveship anchored off the African coast. (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris) from Bronz, et. al, The Challenge of America (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 155)
I used to think America's favorite hymn, "Amazing Grace" (MIDI), was a bit overdone: "... that saved a wretch like me." Really now!
But the author was a wretch, a moral pariah. While a new believer around 1750, John Newton had commanded an English slave ship.
You know what that meant. Ships would make the first leg of their voyage from England nearly empty until they would anchor off the African coast. There tribal chiefs would deliver to the Europeans stockades full of men and women, captured in raids and wars against other tribes. Buyers would select the finest specimens, which would be bartered for weapons, ammunition, metal, liquor, trinkets, and cloth. Then the captives would be loaded aboard, packed for sailing. They were chained below decks to prevent suicides, laid side by side to save space, row after row, one after another, until the vessel was laden with as many as 600 units of human cargo.
Slaves were "packed" in ships for the voyage across the Atlantic. (The Granger Collection) in Peter Wood, The Seafarers: The Spanish Main (Time-Life Books, 1979), p. 63)
Captains sought a fast voyage across the Atlantic's infamous "middle passage," hoping to preserve as much as their cargo as possible, yet mortality sometimes ran 20% or higher. When an outbreak of smallpox or dysentery occurred, the stricken were cast overboard. Once they arrived in the New World, blacks were traded for sugar and molasses to manufacture rum, which the ships would carry to England for the final leg of their "triangle trade." Then off to Africa for yet another round. John Newton transported more than a few shiploads of the 6 million African slaves brought to the Americas in the 18th century.
At sea by the age of eleven, he was forced to enlist on a British man-of-war seven years later. Recaptured after desertion, the disgraced sailor was exchanged to the crew of a slave ship bound for Africa.
It was a book he found on board--Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ--which sowed the seeds of his conversion. When a ship nearly foundered in a storm, he gave his life to Christ. Later he was promoted to captain of a slave ship. Commanding a slave vessel seems like a strange place to find a new Christian. But at last the inhuman aspects of the business began to pall on him, and he left the sea for good.
While working as a tide surveyor he studied for the ministry, and for the last 43 years of his life preached the gospel in Olney and London. At 82, Newton said, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour." No wonder he understood so well grace--the completely undeserved mercy and favor of God.
Newton's tombstone reads, "John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy." But a far greater testimony outlives Newton in the most famous of the hundreds of hymns he wrote:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me,I once was lost, but now am found,Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,And grace my fears relieved.How precious did that grace appearThe hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares,I have already come.'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home.
http://www.joyfulheart.com/misc/newton.htm

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...” So begins one of the most beloved hymns of all times, a staple in the hymnals of many denominations, New Britain or “45 on the top” in Sacred Harp. The author of the words was John Newton, the self-proclaimed wretch who once was lost but then was found, saved by amazing grace.
Newton was born in London July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. When John was eleven, he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744 John was impressed into service on a man-of-war, the H. M. S. Harwich. Finding conditions on board intolerable, he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to common seaman.
Finally at his own request he was exchanged into service on a slave ship, which took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known John's father. John Newton ultimately became captain of his own ship, one which plied the slave trade.
Although he had had some early religious instruction from his mother, who had died when he was a child, he had long since given up any religious convictions. However, on a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his “great deliverance.” He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.
For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power. “Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’tis grace has bro’t me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” He continued in the slave trade for a time after his conversion; however, he saw to it that the slaves under his care were treated humanely.
In 1750 he married Mary Catlett, with whom he had been in love for many years. By 1755, after a serious illness, he had given up seafaring forever. During his days as a sailor he had begun to educate himself, teaching himself Latin, among other subjects. From 1755 to 1760 Newton was surveyor of tides at Liverpool, where he came to know George Whitefield, deacon in the Church of England, evangelistic preacher, and leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Newton became Whitefield’s enthusiastic disciple. During this period Newton also met and came to admire John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Newton’s self-education continued, and he learned Greek and Hebrew.
He decided to become a minister and applied to the Archbishop of York for ordination. The Archbishop refused his request, but Newton persisted in his goal, and he was subsequently ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln and accepted the curacy of Olney, Buckinghamshire. Newton’s church became so crowded during services that it had to be enlarged. He preached not only in Olney but in other parts of the country. In 1767 the poet William Cowper settled at Olney, and he and Newton became friends.
Cowper helped Newton with his religious services and on his tours to other places. They held not only a regular weekly church service but also began a series of weekly prayer meetings, for which their goal was to write a new hymn for each one. They collaborated on several editions of Olney Hymns, which achieved lasting popularity. The first edition, published in 1779, contained 68 pieces by Cowper and 280 by Newton.
Among Newton’s contributions which are still loved and sung today are “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” and ”Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” as well as “Amazing Grace.” Composed probably between 1760 and 1770 in Olney, ”Amazing Grace” was possibly one of the hymns written for a weekly service. Through the years other writers have composed additional verses to the hymn which came to be known as “Amazing Grace” (it was not thus entitled in Olney Hymns), and possibly verses from other Newton hymns have been added. However, these are the six stanzas that appeared, with minor spelling variations, in both the first edition in 1779 and the 1808 edition, the one nearest the date of Newton’s death. It appeared under the heading Faith’s Review and Expectation, along with a reference to First Chronicles, chapter 17, verses 16 and 17 [see the below for this Scripture – Graham Pockett].
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)That sav’d a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found,Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,And grace my fears reliev’d;How precious did that grace appear,The hour I first believ’d!
Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,I have already come;’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promis’d good to me,His word my hope secures;He will my shield and portion be,As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,And mortal life shall cease;I shall possess, within the veil,A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,The sun forbear to shine;But God, who call’d me here below,Will be forever mine.
The origin of the melody is unknown. Most hymnals attribute it to an early American folk melody. The Bill Moyers special on “Amazing Grace” speculated that it may have originated as the tune of a song the slaves sang.
Newton was not only a prolific hymn writer but also kept extensive journals and wrote many letters. Historians accredit his journals and letters for much of what is known today about the eighteenth century slave trade. In Cardiphonia, or the Utterance of the Heart, a series of devotional letters, he aligned himself with the Evangelical revival, reflecting the sentiments of his friend John Wesley and Methodism.
In 1780 Newton left Olney to become rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, St. Mary Woolchurch, in London. There he drew large congregations and influenced many, among them William Wilberforce, who would one day become a leader in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Newton continued to preach until the last year of life, although he was blind by that time. He died in London December 21, 1807. Infidel and libertine turned minister in the Church of England, he
http://www.anointedlinks.com/amazing_grace.html
21 December 1807
The Times
DIED At his house in Coleman-street-buildings, aged 82, the Rev. John Newton, Rector of the United Parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth, and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, of which parishes he had been Rector 28 years. His unblemished life, his amiable character, both as a man and as a Minister, and his able writings, are too well known to need any comment.

advert placed 23 December 1807

Newton's epitaph

(written by himself,
engraved by John Bacon jnr, RA)

JOHN NEWTON, CLERK,
Once an Infidel and Libertine,
A servant of slaves in Africa ,
Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour
JESUS CHRIST,
Preserved, restored, pardoned,
And appointed to preach the Faith
He had long laboured to destroy,
Near 16 years at Olney in Bucks;
And [27] years in this church.

On Feb. 1, 1750, he married
MARY,
Daughter of the late George Catlett,
Of Chatham .
He resigned her to the Lord who gave her,
On 15th December, 1790.

St Mary Woolnoth Register

1807 December
On Monday evening the twenty-first day of this month the Revd John Newton, the Rector of these united parishes, departed this life in the eighty-third year of his age having been upwards of twenty-eight years Rector. The last time he officiated in this church was Sunday evening October 5th 1806, and the last time he was at divine worship in it was Sunday morning January 4th 1807. He was born in London July 24 1725 OS, was presented to this church by the late John Thornton Esqr of Clapham in the County of Surrey, inducted December 8th
1779 and entered on a glorious immortality about a quarter past eight in the evening of the twenty-first day of this month December, and being dead he yet speaketh. Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken to you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever!

His mortal remains were deposited in the chancel vault of this church on December the thirty-first, the service being read according to his own desires, by his friend the Revd Henry Foster AM, minister of St James Clerkenwell, and a funeral sermon preached at this church on Sunday morning January 3rd 1808 by the Rev Richard Cecil AM, minister of St John’s Chapel Bedford Row

Thos Batt, Parish Clerk
Josiah Pratt, Curate and Lecturer
John Piper's [Newton!] Bicentenary Blog

Funeral Sermon for Newton by Richard Cecil

[extract]

And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. Luke 12:42,43.

Thus acted your late minister, as a good steward of the manifold grace of God… I think I may assert, without fear of contradiction from such as knew the character of your late minister, that no man ever executed his office with a more single eye, or a more disinterested [impartial] heart.

This thing was not done in a corner, or in the presence of two or three interested witnesses, but it was done in the centre of the largest city in the world.

http://www.johnnewton.org/Group/Group.aspx?id=69918

industrial revolution

2008-04-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

After reading Chapter 8 & 9 in ‘Black Cargoes’ I realized my misconception of the industrial revolution’s effect on slavery in the colonies. I would have thought that the invention of the ‘cotton gin’ would have reduced the amount of slaves needed to produce cotton but in actuality it increased the amount of cotton plantations as the demand for cotton increased. The increase in number of cotton plantations as colonists turned to cotton as the cash crop to produce created a stronger demand for slaves. As England sought to abolish slavery cotton in the southern states of North America drove up the demand for cheap labor. The invention of the ‘Power Loom’ in England also helped to drive demand of slaves.
As to the movement to abolish slavery it seems unlikely that people of conscience would come forth in any country where the economy is driven by the procurement of slaves. Men like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had the courage to champion the cause to sway public opinion. The voice of the masses seems to be the determining factor of swaying the minority in power that reaped the benefits of the slave trade.

‘Black Cargoes’ Daniel P. Mannin

Andrew Jackson said once, "One man with courage can make a majority."

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
Edmund Burke

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’ ’Edmund Burke

http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html

Crafts in Boston

2008-04-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

After arriving in Philadelphia on December 25th 1848 William and Ellen spent 3 weeks with the Ivens family. The Crafts then decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts knowing they would be safer there then in Philadelphia. Once in Boston they were assisted by abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and William Welles Brown (a fugitive slave). Their daring escape was the topic of in abolitionist discussion and Brown arranged for the Crafts to make appearances at their meetings in which an admission fee was charged. This admission fee was given to William and Ellen to help them to settle in Boston in a free black community on Beacon Hill. William having been apprenticed as a cabinetmaker by his former master continued this line of work and furniture shop which became a thriving business. Ellen having been a household servant and familiar with needlepoint developed her skills and assisted William in upholstery of furniture in the shop. The Crafts spent two years in Boston in relative harmony, they had their marriage sanctioned by a Christian church and settled down to a life of freedom.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-622

During this time congress was attempting to hold the union together, California and Texas were territories recently acquired and were petitioning to join the union as free states. The slave states wishing to keep a balance between free and slave states were in an uproar over this. They would lose the balance of representatives in congress if this occurred. In order to appease the slave states the Compromise of 1850 was proposed by Henry Clay and on January 29th. 1950 the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted. The Fugitive Slave law allowed slave owners to recover escaped slaves in the free states and required authorities in the free states to assist in enforcing the law. While this compromise kept the Union intact it was the end of freedom to blacks living in the north.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2952.html

Shortly after the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted two slave catchers, Willis Hughes and John Knight, were dispatched by William and Ellen’s former masters with warrants for their arrest. Once again the Crafts had to flee to remain free. William and Ellen decide to go to England not feeling that Canada would be safe. Abolitionists helped them to escape Boston. The authorities and slave catchers would be watching the ports so it was necessary for them to flee to Portland, Maine. In Portland they stayed with Daniel Oliver until leaving for St. John, New Brunswick. From St. John’s they took a steamer to Windsor Nova Scotia and then a coach to Halifax, Nova Scotia. They were the subject of racism and prejudice during flight from America but finally reached England.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~dek7/SSAWW/writCraft.htm

Congregationalism/Methodism relationship

2008-04-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

Congregationalism / Methodism relationship

Definition of a Congregationalist: they felt they should make their own decisions about affairs of the congregation independent of any higher authority. This is the same doctrine as the Methodists who felt that the Anglican Church was in a state of apathy and wished to follow a more ethical system that did not dwell on the divinity of Jesus and the salivation doctrine. The Methodists targeted the working class which had slipped towards this apathy to religion by using powerful preaching, Bible study, communal hymn singing, love of God, and fostering a relationship with their savior and became a powerful movement influencing Anglicanism which was later known as “evangelical”. The strict doctrine of the Catholic church and the dictates of the Pope are part of which lead the young divinity students of the 1720's at Oxford university in England to start Methodism.
http://www.beliefnet.com/

Voice of Conscience

2008-04-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

I found interesting that as mentioned in the second paragraph it states "While before many goods were produced by skilled craftsmen the use of modern machinery increased the demand for semiskilled and unskilled workers." this I believe is what drove the demand for slaves in the southern U.S. grew. As the demand for cotton increased the number of plantations increased hence the need for unskilled workers.
Edmund Cartwright after patenting his invention attempted to set up a factory in Doncaster, England but went bankrupt within a few years. This was not due to any defect in his invention but a lack of business knowledge on his part. The Power Loom when used in conjunction with Samuel Crompton’s Spinning Mule in many factories.
Power looms were operated successfully in the early 1800's but the ones made in the U.S. were defincient. Francis Cabot Lowell visited English textile mills and used the technology he learned there to improve the American made model to be more dependable so that weaving could keep up with the production the of spinning of cotton.
With the invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1776 and applied to the application of spinning cotton in 1785 the ability to increase production over the use of the Water Frame and allowed for more diversity in factory sites because a constant water source was no longer required.
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventors/a/power_loom.htm
In the England of the 18th century five important inventions in the textile industry advanced the automation of work processes. 1) John Kay's flying shuttle in 1733 , which permitted the weaving of larger widths of cloth and significantly increased weaving speed, 2) Edmund Cartwright's power loom in 1785, which increased weaving speed still further, 3) James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in 1764, 4) Richard Arkwright's water frame and 5) Samuel Crompton's spinning mule in 1779, whereby the last three inventions improved the speed and quality of thread-spinning operations. Those developments, combined with the invention of the steam engine, in short time led to the creation of new machine-slaves and the mechanization of the production of most major goods, such as iron, paper, leather, glass and bricks.Large-scale machine production was soon applied in many manufacturing sectors and resulted in a reduction of production costs. Yet the widespread use of the novel work-slaves also led to new demands concerning the work force's qualifications. The utilization of machines enabled a differentiated kind of division of labor and eventuated in a specialization of skills. While before many goods were produced by skilled craftsmen the use of modern machinery increased the demand for semiskilled and unskilled workers. Also, the nature of the work process altered from one mainly dependent on physical power to one primarily dominated by technology and an increasing proportion of the labor force employed to operate machines. http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659368/?opmode=history

William Wilberforce

2008-04-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

Congregationalism

2008-04-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

Congregationalism, a belief that it was the right and duty of each congregation to make its own decisions about its affairs, independent of any higher authority, emerged in Britain in the late 16th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries Congregationalists were often called Independents. In the 19th century Congregationalists were one of the largest nonconformist groups and tended to share the faith and general outlook of the evangelical movement.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REcongregationalists.htm

Amazing Grace by John Newton 1760

2008-04-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

The exact date of when John Newton wrote ‘Amazing Grace’ is not known. It is believed that the hymn was written between 1760 and 1770 as part of a weekly service in Olney. Through the years others have written additional verses. It is believe that William Cowper, a poet and friend, colaberated with Newton in many of his writtings. In 1779 the first edition Olney Hymns was published and Amazing Grace first appeared in print. The orginal was six stanzas as pubulished in the first volume closet to Newton death which are believed to be closest to the original.
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)That sav’d a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found,Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,And grace my fears reliev’d;How precious did that grace appear,The hour I first believ’d!
Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,I have already come;’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promis’d good to me,His word my hope secures;He will my shield and portion be,As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,And mortal life shall cease;I shall possess, within the veil,A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,The sun forbear to shine;But God, who call’d me here below,Will be forever mine.
The origin of the melody is unknown. Most hymnals attribute it to an early American folk melody. The Bill Moyers special on "Amazing Grace" speculated that it may have originated as the tune of a song the slaves sang.

http://www.anointedlinks.com/amazing_grace.html

1807 & the U.S. constitution

2008-04-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

In general
The above clause, which sanctioned the importation of slaves by the States for twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution, when considered with the section requiring escaped slaves to be returned to their masters, Art. IV, § 1, cl. 3, was held by Chief Justice Taney in Scott v. Sandford,[1770] to show conclusively that such persons and their descendants were not embraced within the term “citizen” as used in the Constitution. Today this ruling is interesting only as an historical curiosity.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art1frag8_user.html
Clause 1. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. at 3/24/2008 1:29 PM Edit

abolishment of slavery and the industrial revolution

2008-03-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

After reading Chapter 8 & 9 in ‘Black Cargoes’ I realized my misconception of the industrial revelation’s effect on slavery in the colonies. I would have thought that the invention of the ‘cotton gin’ would have reduced the amount of slaves needed to produce cotton but in actuality it increased the amount of cotton plantations as the demand for cotton increased. The increase in number of cotton plantations as colonists turned to cotton as the cash crop to produce created a stronger demand for slaves. As England sought to abolish slavery cotton in the southern states of North America drove up the demand for cheap labor. The invention of the ‘Power Loom’ in England also helped to drive demand of slaves.
As to the movement to abolish slavery it seems unlikely that people of conscience would come forth in any country where the economy is driven by the procurement of slaves. Men like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had the courage to champion the cause to sway public opinion. The voice of the masses seems to be the determining factor of swaying the minority in power that reaped the benefits of the slave trade.

‘Black Cargoes’ Daniel P. Mannin

Andrew Jackson said once, "One man with courage can make a majority."

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
Edmund Burke

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’ ’Edmund Burke

http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html

abolisment

2008-03-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

In 1772 a runaway slave named James Somerset was the victim of an attempted abduction by Charles Stewart, his previous owner. While in London, Somerset had been baptized and his Godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus (a legal action through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of himself). Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield, had to judge whether the abduction was not under English Common Law as there was no legislation for slavery in England. It was thus declared that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law. This judgement by Lord Mansfield emancipated the thousands of slaves in England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablitionism#first_steps

2008-03-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

On September 18th 1850 the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law as a compromise between the southern slave states and the northern free states. This law allowed southern slave owners to reacquire runaway slaves in the free states. The law also required authorities in the free states to assist in the return of runaways. Anyone providing food, shelter or aid to fugitive slaves were subject to a $1000.00 fine and 6 months in jail. After the Crafts escape in December of 1848 they moved to Boston until December of 1850, they learned that two slave catchers, Willis Hughes and John Knight, had been sent by their prior masters to return them to Macon, Georgia. The Crafts fled to Nova Scotia and then to England.
Unsuccessful effort to capture the Crafts
December 6, 1850
From the Georgia Constitutionalist is an account of an unsuccessful attempt to recapture fugitive slaves from Boston. It is written by Willis H. Hughes, from Macon, dated Nov. 21, 1850, and is addressed to "fellow citizens". The fugitive is named as "Bill", but it becomes clear it is William Craft. Hughes recounts the ways in various officials in Boston avoided assisting him by delays, postponements, jurisdictional disputes, and even at one time when he was arrested for slandering Ellen Crafts, and held to bail for $20,000. He indicates that he has leaned that the Crafts had "positively left for England". Hughes concludes that he "went to Boston as an agent to execute a lawful trust, thinking I should be protected and assisted by the laws of my country. But, on the contrary, from the first, the laws of the country, instead of a protection, were made an engine of cruelty, oppression, injustice, and abuse; so that my life was constantly endangered, and this, without the first offer of assistance from Government, national, State, or city. I feel that every man who has a Southern heart in his bosom, and would maintain the honor of his country, should sustain the Southern right cause, by every constitutional measure, until our rights are acknowledged, and justice obtained."
A similar account is given here by John Knight, the slave Pursuer, from Macon, who had been with Mr. Hughes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Law_of_1850
http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/crafts-william-ellen

Mary Prince

2008-03-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

Mary Prince was one of a few slaves who publish a narrative of her life, part of which was on Turks Island located due north of Haiti in theCaribbean. This is just a short excerpt from this link.

History of Mary Prince a West Indian slave.

We slept in a long shed, divided into narrow slips, like the stalls used for cattle. Boards fixed upon stakes driven into the ground, without mat orcovering, were our only beds. On Sundays, after we had washed the saltbags, and done other work required of us, we went into the bush and cut the longsoft grass, of which we made trusses for our legs and feet to rest upon, for they were so full of the salt boils that we could get no rest lying uponthe bare boards. He would stand by and give orders for a slave to be cruelly whipped, and assist in the punishment, without moving a muscle of his face; walking about and taking snuff with the greatest composure. Nothing could touch his hard heart--neither sighs, nor tears, nor prayers, nor streaming blood; he was deaf to our cries, and careless of our sufferings.--Mr. D---- has often stripped me naked, hung me up by the wrists, and beat me with the cow-skin, with his own hand, till my body was raw with gashes. Yet there was nothing very remarkable in this; for it might serve as a sample of the common usage of the slaves on that horrible island.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/prince/prince.html

Rum Cash cow from sugar

2008-03-07T05:08:00.000-08:00

Another important source of income for the cane plantation owners was Rum made from distilling molasses. The English planters in the West Indies were the first sugar makers to discover this. The muscovado would yield molasses this would be mixed with inferior cane juice and skimmings and let it ferment for about week. The Rum provided more income being of higher price then molasses and gave an outet for this byproduct of sugar. A distellery was standard at every plantation.
Surar and slaves-Richard S. Dunn Pg. 196

Antiguain Rebellion

2008-03-04T16:56:00.001-08:00

Antigua is the only Island to have had a genuine slave revolt in the 17th century. Slaves would run away to the hills and hide in the jungle near Boggy Peak in the southwest corner of the Island. There were so many run aways that the colony government posted bounties on them in 1684. The bounty was twice as much for a live run away as a dead one. In 1687 fifty armed negros maintained a fortified camp in the Boggy Peak area, they would enter the sugar plantation compound an encite rebellion. In the later part of that year the Antigua militia spurred by double bounties stormed the run aways camp, captured or killed the majority, burned one ringleader to ashes, executed the others, and cut out the tounge and cut off the leg of another.
Sugar and Slaves, Richard S. Dunn Pg. 259

Antigua - How Sugar Plantations Work

2008-03-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Antigua - How Sugar Plantations Work
Discovered by Christopher Columbus during his second Caribbean voyage in 1493, it is located northwest of Barbados in the Leeward Island chain. Antigua is roughly 108 square miles, has low lying terrain and a good deal of level farmland but has no springs and suffers from drought.
Sugar became the sole industry on the Island, the most well known sugar plantation was ‘Betty’s Hope’ founded in the early 1650's by Gov. Christopher Keynell. After the French occupation of Antigua in 1666-67 ownership was transferred to Sir Christopher Codrington. The sugar plantations relied heavily on slave labor to operate. The first part of a plantation system was planting. The land was divided into 10 to 20 acre lots. The lots were a then further reduced to 4 foot grids. The grids were aligned in rows to allow the prevailing winds to dispel moisture on the cane to lessen the chance of "blast"a fungal disease.
The work was done using the "gang" system organizing labor into 3 groups depending on their ability and strength to work. The lead gang cultivated the land with hoes setting up the grids for planting. The second gang of less able men and women would plant the young cane in the holes 6" to 8" deep and cover them with a mixture of dung and soil. The least able and children served as errand runners, helpers and rat chasers.
The cane sections were planted sequentially to keep the crews and harvests in a rotational basis during the growing season. Weeding, hoeing, replanting and burning of the past seasons cane stubble from the outer edge inward to kill the rats was continual during this time.
Harvesting season for the cane came around the 1st of the year during the dry season; till the end of July. The field gangs worked from dawn till night. They used "cane bills" or cutlasses to cut the cane into 4 foot sections to be taken to the mill. The cane had to be processed with in 20 minutes of being cut because it would ferment resulting in an inferior product. Each windmill could process about 2 acres of cane a day. The average yield was 1 ton of sugar for each acre of cane. Therefore the harvesting had to be coordinated to the milling process.
Once the cane reached the mill the cane was fed back and forth through the rollers of the press driven by the wind. The pressed cane or "begasse" was dried and used as fuel for the boiling house. The juice would then be caught in a containment and flow through a pipe to the boiling house.
The boiling house collected the juice in vats where lime was added and boiled to thicken, then it was ladled to the next smaller vat until reaching the right consistency. It was then sent to wooden flats where it was allowed to cool. The sugar in the flats would be packed into wooden hogsheads with perforations at the bottom or use clay pots. The hogsheads or pots were placed in a rack to allow molasses to drain from the bottom. Sugar refined to this stage was called "muscovado".
Once the molasses had been drained form the sugar and it crystallized it was then packed into large wooden casks and transported to the coast and loaded into small boats and taken out to waiting sloops to be shuttled to ports around the Leeward Islands for export.
Www.antigua-barbuda.org
www.rootsweb.com
Sugar and Slaves, Richard S. Dunn

website for Boston research

2008-02-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.slavenorth.com/massachusetts.htm

Middle Passage Trade Winds

2008-02-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

The ships using the Middle Passage used the trade winds, meaning path or track. The north east Atlantic trade winds above the equator revolved in a clockwise rotation. The south east Atlantic trade winds below the equator rotated counter clockwise. The result is a directional wind from the West African coast to South America. The westerlies which are the portion of these winds located in the Nova Scotia to Europe in the north Atlantic and from Brazil to the southern tip of Africa. The prevailing winds at the equator are calm sometimes called the doldrums. The trade winds are just north and south of the equator. Near the tropics, 25 degrees north and south of the equator the winds calm again in the horse latitudes.

The resulting changes are due to air pressure. Heat rises at the equator creating a belt of low pressure called the doldrums. The air as it rises from the equator it cools and flows towards the earths poles. At the earths poles the cool air is a high pressure. The air flow is forced back to the equator creating the easterlies. This is known as the Coriolis Effect. The most well known trade winds is the alize’, a steady mild wind out of the northeast which blows across central Africa and the Caribbean bring cool temperatures between November and February.

Wk.Five Middle Passage Brazil

2008-02-25T02:55:00.000-08:00

Pedro Alvares Cabral a Portuguese explorer was the first European to see Brazil in April 1500. He claimed it for Portugual, naming it the "Island of the True Cross" which later became Brazil named after a plant. The Brazil he landed in was populated with between 2 and 6 million indigenous peoples, living as farmers or hunter-gatherers.

Very early in the settlement process the colonial office requested a sugar technician. By 1518 the first plantation was in operation but it was not until the 1530's that sugar agriculture was firmly established in Brazil.

By the sixteenth century, both demand and prices had risen because refined sugar was replacing honey in most recipes and was increasingly used as a sweetener in jams, jellies and other popular food products. The first commercial production of sugar in the new world was undertaken in 1550, when the Portuguese Donatarios built mills near Pernambuco and Sao Vicnete along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. This early producation was derived principally from techniques developed in Maderia, based upon a system resembling sharecropping, where the owner, or senhor de engenho (leased his land to a number of smaller planters in return for a portion of the sugar produced).

Senhor de engenho - lord of the mill, owned a hughe tract, maintained a large force of salaried artisans, tenant farmers and slaves. Lived nobly in a big house and presided over a self-sufficent, paternalistic community complete with church, court, police force and social welfare agencies.

The senhor lease his cane fields in small units (ten to fifteen acres) to a number of tenant lavradores de cana or cane growers who worked on the share cropping principal. Tilling the land with ten to twenty slaves and sending his cane to the senhor. The cane grower received usually considerably less the half then half the sugar as his share.

Slaves better suited to working on cane plantations then Indians or indentured servants, were used to living in hot, humid climate, and insects. The very harsh manual labour of the sugar cane fields involved slaves using hoes to dig large trenches. They planted sugar cane in the trenches and then used their bare hands to spread manure. They were a better value, cost less the feed and clothe and a permanent acquistion. Africans could be forced to submit to slavery.

In 1591 the sugar industry was expanding rapidly to meet the growing demand in European markets. By the middle of the seventeenth century the Brazilian sugar industry had begun to expand rapidly with support of capital from the Dutch East India Company, which had seized Permambuco from the Portuguese in 1630, and the Dutch importation of slaves from equatorial Africa. In 1612 the total production of sugar in Brazil had reached 14,000 tons, and by the 1640's Pernambuco alone exported more than 24,000 tons of sugar annually to Amsterdam.

In 1660 the focus of sugar production began to shift from Brazil to Barbados and other islands of the West Indies. It may have been that Brazil suffered economic stagnation because of higher cost of slaves and lower crop harvests that negatively affected sugar production in Brazil. Futhermore, the expulsion of the Dutch from Pernambuco in 1654 and the subsequent disruption in trade led the Dutch to focus their capital investments in the West Indies.

The Capham Sect were a group of evangelical reformers that campaigned during much of the 19th century for the United Kingdom to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of slaves to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over three decades. To this day, Brazil still is the world's largest sugar producer.

Brazil obtained 35.4% of all African slaves traded in the Atlantic slave trade, more than 3 million slaves were sent to Brazil to work mainly on sugar cane plantations from the 16th to the 19th century.

The Slave Trade - Hugh Thomas
Sugar and Slaves - Richard S. Dunn
www.ucalgary.com
www.bell.lib.umn.edu
www.en.wikipedia.org

Blieve it or Not

2008-02-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Found these while reading "The Slave Trade'. Thought they were questionable to some extent from all the other info on 'The Middle Passage', you will have to decide for yourselves.

The Portugese did try to better conditions on slave ships whether because of conscience or increasing profits is a matter of opinion. Early in the 16th Century King Manuel set rules for transporting slaves.

They are as follows:

1. All ships and cargos are to be Baptised.
2. Wooden beds are to be provided for the slaves.
3. A roof for protection from rain and cold.
4. Adequate supplies of food and water on board ship for the duration of the voyage.
5. Sticks to calm hunger pangs and clean the teeth.

A Swedish mineralogist named Wadstrom wrote in the 1790's "the Portugese slave ships are never over-crowded and the crews are chiefly 'Negros Ladines'* who speak thier language whose business it is to comfort and attend the poor slaves. The result is that little or no fetters are needed and this lowers the motality rate".

The Portugese in the 18th Century used a system to reduce the mortality rate of slaves during the 'Middle Passage'. Each sailor was allotted 15 slaves to his care. The crewman was paid a New Crown for every slave delivered alive that was in his vare at the end of the journey.

The Slave Trade - Hugh Thomas Pg.414

*slaves converted to Chrisianity and taught rudimentary Portugese vocabulary.

slaves overseeing slaves?

2008-02-22T09:51:00.001-08:00

During one voyage during the middle passage a Captain Thomas Philips stated " we have some 30 or 40 Gold Coast negroes ... to make gaurdians and overseers of the Whydah negroes, and sleep amoung them to keep them from quarreling".
The Slave Trade - Hugh Thomas pg. 412

Who's to Blame

2008-02-20T10:22:00.000-08:00

what I believe could be next to loss of life and treatment of African slaves, but the loss of a possible developing culture as the greatest crime. Africa was a developing nation, the forging of metals, development of laws in societies, all could be said to parallel early European history. Slavery was not uncommom in Europe but was used internally to develope that contenant. Then if left to their own devices could not Africa have not emulated England, France, or Portugal albit at a later date using their internal work force much as European countries did? The depopulation of the African Contenent destoryed any chance for a developing culture to survive. For this I blame the Portuguese. Subjecated peoples still have a chance to develope cultures, decimated ones don't.
The churches involvement in slavery dates back to the 6th century, as Justin stated in his post the church had been using slave labor to work their lands to suport them, this is how christanity was able to do its work, turning pagans into devout followers through gains made by the blood of slaves.
Or do we all suffer the sins of our fathers for if not for toil of slaves would their have been the monies to be invested in such engineering advances as the cotton gin as mentioned in "Black Cargos". If not for the monetary success of individuals using slave labor when would this country have had its industrial revolution.
In conclusion greed, religious expansion, capiitolism can be said as culprits to the advent to West Africas darkest era but to me the loss of 'what could have been' is the greatest crime of all.
Black Cargos - Manix
The Diligent - Harms

Week 4

2008-02-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

Insurance covered slaves that drowned. Insurance on these voyages also covered 'Acts of War'. The owners / captians contended that slave revolts aboard ship should be considered an act of war, this by the captains especially because they were responsible to the owners for all matters that occured aboard ship. This was a matter of contention between the financier's and insurer's of slave ship ventures.
Harms, The Diligent

The Middle Passage

2008-02-20T10:00:00.001-08:00

Stanley Elkins

2008-02-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

Stanley Elkins views on slavery were that the Europeans created an environment which made the West Africian slaves dependent on their owners. The term used was "psychologically infantilizing". In other words the Europeans created a "totalitarian environment" (1. of or pertaining to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life. 2. exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others; authoritarian; autocratic) which systematically destroyed their ability to resist, plan, and form positive relationships with one another. By making the slaves totally dependent on the white slave owners it instilled a "dependant personality pattern". The slaves looked to their owners for food, shelter after being placed in an alien environment and psychological conditioning. Stanley Elkins based his theory psychological research done by Bruno Bettelheim. Elkins views helped support the institution of Affirmative action program of the late 1960's due to the belief of lingering effects of slavery on Black culture.

Week 2C

2008-02-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Relations between Europeans and Africans.

As the Portuguese sailed down the west coast of Africa it was apparent that the position of the negro was nothing more than trade good. To practices that were employed by European traders were (Panyaring and Razzies).

Panyaring or the kidnapping of persons into slavery, was a common occcurence during the early exploration of the African coastline. As an example of how the Europeans felt about the status of the African people, in 1493 Captain Nuno Tristao took 14 men that were in canoes and 15 more later on regreting that only their boat was so small they were unable to take as much cargo as they desired. As can be seen, the Africans were considered more than cargo or trade goods. They made these people into slaves without feeling or negotiating their purchase. The African tribes along the coast quickly developed a mistrust of the wite men and stayed away from the ships that sailed up and down the coast. The Portuguese began to buy slaves around 1445 A.D. A Captain named Joao Fernandes was ordered by Prince Henry to stay on the coast and gather information. Fernandes learned of markets where both slaves and gold might be acquired for European goods. When relieved of his post a year later, by Captain Anto Goncalbes, purchased 9 slaves and some gold dust which commenced the Portuguese practice of purchasing slaves and how they would be acquired for the next 400 years. The slaves were usually prisioners of war from other tribes in this region. The tribes continually attacked each other for different reasons such as land, water, or increasing their kingdom size etc. The Portuguese used this tribal turmoil to their advantage by supplying the Africans with knives, swords, flintlocks and powder. In this way they perpetuated their supply of slaves as each tribe would sell their captives to the portugues in return for more weapons. With more weapons the tribes would become stonger and less likely attacked and sold into slavery themselves. The more weapons a tribe had the more powerful the king and the more richer he became. The slave trade was built on greed of both parties and not condusive to relationships of trust.

The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas 1997

Peoples of Africa

2008-02-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

The people of Africa is divided by Ethnologists.

In the region of South Africa are the Bushmoids, yellow/brown in color with peppercorn hair (tightly kinked) usually less than 5 ft tall. Some were sent to the Brazil but not to the Americas as slaves.

Central Africa Pygmoids.

With average height of 4ft 9 in weight of 85 lbs, brown/black in color with high bulging foreheads. Not the first choice of slavers they were usually rejected.

Madagascar. Mongloids.

Came from Asia centuries ago and mingled with the darker aborignial people and slaves from the mainland. Resemble southeast Asians in stature and pigment.

In the northwest, (senegal to ethiopia) caucasoid.

Deep black to light brown with curly hair but not wooly. They have thin lips and noses and tend to be tall in stature with long legs and slender.

Lower west coast. Negroid.

Dark skins, wooly hair with thick lips and broad noses. Average height 5ft 10 in. The majority of the slaves shipped to the new world were negroids. These consist of the Bantu and Angola and tribes from Angola and Mozambique.

Black Cargoes, Mannix.

Week 2A

2008-02-06T15:37:00.000-08:00

The Portuguese and the exploration of the 15th century African West coast

The Moors controlled the Trans-Sahara trade routes between West and NorthAfrica. This gave the Moors control over much on the slave, gold, and spicetrade from this area to Europe. The Portuguese at first were not asinterested in the slave trade as much as the gold and spice trade the Moorswere proprietors of. The hope of obtaining slaves may have been part of theinitial quest but the need for vast amounts of slaves would not expand untillater with the advent of the sugar plantations and mining in Brazil. Prince Henry believed that the source of the gold was the coast of Guineabut in truth the gold came from remote area near the upper waters of theSenegal River and Volta River. (PG. 52)

Prince Henry convinced his father to attack Ceula which was on the northmost point on the West African coast at the Straights of Gibraltar. Thecapture of this port would hopefully have two effects, reduce the attacks byBarbary Pirates on the towns of the Algarve on the southern Portugal coastand gain control of the trade routes of the Moors. The capture of Ceula wasnot a complete success; the Moors simply moved their trade centers furthereast to Algiers. It did help to reduce the attacks by the Barbary Piratesthat had used Ceula as a home port but most of all Moorish prisoners tolddetailed stories of passage trains of merchants and camels carrying goods toexchange for gold and slaves in Timbuktu on the Niger River and Cantor onthe Gambia. Hearing these stories Prince Henry was more determined to find asea route to the source of this lucrative trade. To prepare for theseventures he established a headquarters on Cape Saint Vincent at Sarges inPortugal. Here he gathered astronomers, cosmographers, and promising shipcaptains. At Lagos he commissioned the building of the Caravel Ship whichhad a Lanteen (triangular) sail, these ships were lighter, faster, and couldsail windward. These ships were superior for exploration to other ships ofthat time.Prince Henry financed his ventures partly with his own investments. He had amonopoly of fishing for Tuna along the coast of the Algarve, he owned afishery on the Targus, and from subsidies from the "Order of Christ", aknightly association. As a Grand Master of the order he gained profits fromfairs sponsored by the Order at Tomar as well as Houses and shops leasedaround the fairground.(PG. 53)

The first ventures of the Portuguese under the direction of Prince Henry were the seizures of the deserted islands of Madeira and the Azores. The Azores lay off the coast of Africa at approximately 535 miles from the mainland from the coast of Morocco.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira)

The Azores are a small cluster of islands in the Atlantic Ocean about 950miles from Lisbon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationAzores.png)

Prince Henry believed that they would be profitable ventures and to prevent Spanish expansion laid claim to these islands in the name of Portugal. After colonization of both Madeira and the Azores the islands produced Dyes from resins, Wax, Honey, and wood.

Prince Henry continued to send out expeditions down the coast of West Africa reaching Cabo Branco at the extreme northern coast of modern day Mauritania.In 1444 continuing south along the coast, Dinis Dias discovered the Senegal River and further on rounded Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) and realized the coast turned eastward.

The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas 1997

week 2

2008-02-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

The Infante Henrique, Duke of Viseu

known in english as "Prince Henry the Navigator"

born: March 4, 1394

Oporto, Portugal

died: November 13, 1460

Sarges, Portugal

Prince Henry was the fifth child of King John the 1st. Born March 1, 1394 he founded a school for navigators on the southeastern tip of Portugal in a town called Sarges. One of the most famous alumni was Fernao de Maglhaes (Magellan). The peninsula the school was located on was the western part of the southern coast of Portugal on the Atlantic ocean. This southern most coast is known as the the Algarve.
http://travel-in-portugual.com
http://en.wikipedia.org

Prince Henry was an "infante" or prince of the Portugese house of Aviz. His Vila in Sarges became a school for navigators and map makers. he also erected an observatory at this site. Under his direction, a new style ship was developed called a caravel. This was a three masted ship with square sails a lanteen (triangular) sail. These ships were lighter, faster, and able to sail into the wind. The last ablity was very helpful when using the trade winds which changed in rotaional direction on each side of the equator. But also as important was that they were faster so therfor could travel farther. Two of Christopher Columbus' three ships were caravels, the Nina and the Pinta. (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/)

His interest in the coast increased when he took part in the conquest of the Mooish port of Ceuta in northern Morocco. Ceuta had been a long time base fir Barbary pirates that attacked villages on the Portugese coast and sold the inhabitants of these villages in the African slave market. The sucuss of his expedition against the pirates of Ceuta he could send ships to explore the coast of Africa, further search for more pirate bases and to look for the source of the West African gold trade. From 1444 to 1446 as many as forty vessels sailed on Henry's behalf. (http://www.nndb,com/) (www,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator)

The Moors controled the trade routes into Africa through the north of West Africa. The Portugese wished to cut out the middle man (the Moors) in the gold and spice trade. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave _trade)

Factories - were depots for slaves and goods, slaves were ferried to waiting ships. (Black Cargos, Manix, pg.17)

Factors - a group of middlemen usually who had trouble in their home country. They lived permmanently on the coast and would interact with african or mixed race traders that brought slaves to the coast from the african interior. They would prepare the slaves for the long voyage oversea and keep on hand a stock of healty Negroes. Factors usually a representtive of a large firm (Black Cargos, pg. 33)

Obsevation: at best the relationship between the africans and europeans was distrust. Each would take the other prisioner to sell as a slave. Neither trusted the other, the african kingdoms located along the slave coast would not allow the europeans to erect perment Forts. Many ventures in search of slaves appeared to be a quick attack on coastal villages and fleeing back to their ships with their human prizes. The africans seem to have been in a constant state of war with there neighbors over land, etc. so the taking of captives and making them into slaves seems to have been a practice long before the europeans set foot on the african coast line.

The first Europeans to arrive onthe coast of Guinea were Portugese. The first european to actually buy slaves in the region was Antao Goncalves, a Portugese explorer.

"Roots of the Atlantic Slsve Trade(http://www.lifelineexpedition.co.uk/) African Slave Trade (http://en,wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave_trade)

week 1

2008-02-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

week 1:
the west african coast is the western most region of Africa. the United Nations definition of western africa includes 16 countries over an area of 5 million square km. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa) I believe the 15th century Portugse definintion included the coast which extended to the Cape of Good Hope discovered by Bartolomeu Dias in May of 1488 having passed it without seeing land whille searching for a route to India on the reurn journey to Portugal. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_Dias).

the Portugese exploration consisted of coastal areas only during this period. The west african coast having very few natural harbors for anchorage. The Niger river and The Gambia are the two major rivers in west africa neither of which provided egress to the interior due to large aluval plains at the mouths of the rivers. Small islands were used for bases for the Portugese ships such as the Cape Verde Islands.

The coastal regionknown as the Ivory and Gold coasts are lined with mangrove swamps, sandy beaches and dense vegitation further inland are rain forested plains and mountious plateau. there are two seasons, the rainy season from May to November and a dry season from December to May. (en.wikipedia.org)

Another deterant to european exploration to the african coast was mosquitoes, malaria, dengue and yellow fever. Benin was called "the white man's grave". To slavers of that era west africa was three seperate zones, surf, brown sand, and jungle beyond. (Black Cargos, Mannix, pg. 13)

The peoples of west africa were called Negroids. They were devide into two groups, "true negros in the northwest and Bantu in the south and east. The distinction is more due to language then racial. Both peoples have dark skins, wooly hair, and broad noses. they were depicted as of average height by early europeans which means approximitly the same height as temselves. The majority of slaves shipped to the new world were Negroids because the great centers of the atlantic trade were located from Senegal to Angola where the Negroids were predominate. (Black Cargos, Manix, pg. 8)

The area due to climate, insects, dense vegitation, and lack of natural anchorages would make this area seem very inhospitable to the Portugese. They would have to leave the safety of their ships which would be well of shore, to explore, search for slaves, or barter with the area inhabitants.