Also a review at the NYRB https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/04/08/why-did-the-slave-trade-survive-so-long/
On Sat, Feb 20, 2021 at 8:18 AM Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > TheNation, MARCH 8/15, 2021, ISSUE > A Poisonous Legacy > New York City and the persistence of the Middle Passage. > By Gerald Horne > > THE LAST SLAVE SHIPS: NEW YORK AND THE END OF THE MIDDLE PASSAGE > By John Harris > > In the middle of 1856, the soon-to-be-celebrated poet Walt Whitman visited > an impounded slave ship in Brooklyn. The taking of the ship was an unusual > occurrence, as it was one of the few illegal slavers seized by an otherwise > lethargic Washington, D.C., and Whitman wanted to give his readers a tour > of the vessel, which had been designed to add even more enslaved laborers > to the millions already ensnared in this system of iniquity, including of > its hold, where those victimized were to be “laid together spoon-fashion.” > > Whitman’s keen journalistic interest was a response to the feverish > political climate in his homeland, featuring ever more overwrought cries > demanding the relegalization and reopening of the Atlantic slave trade. > Officially, this branch of flesh peddling had been rendered illegal by > Britain in 1807 and by the United States in 1808, but it had continued > nonetheless, with boatloads of kidnapped Africans being transported to the > Americas, especially Brazil, Cuba, and the United States. It was likely > that some of Whitman’s readers in New York City—the citadel of this illicit > commerce—would have taken a decided interest in his grim reportage. > > John Harris’s The Last Slave Ships offers a more comprehensive portrait of > the illegal slave trade in the Atlantic, starting with the last slave ships > to dock in New York Harbor. Mining the historical archives in Spain, > Portugal, Cuba, and the United States, Harris demonstrates how, even as > slavery was being abolished in the Northern states, it continued to > flourish, since the slave system was not confined simply to below the > Mason-Dixon Line. The financing of the slave trade’s illegitimate commerce > was sited heavily in Manhattan: The ships passed through the waterways of > the city’s harbor, and the denizens of Gotham also enjoyed the profits of > this odious system, even as many of them publicly denounced it. After all, > slave ships required crews, not to mention the need to grease the palms of > corrupt officials at the harbor and elsewhere with attractive bribes. In > sum, the wealth produced by slave labor built not only a region but a > nation. Like Charleston, S.C., and Galveston, Tex., New York City benefited > from the trade in human souls—which, in a sense, continues to undergird > Wall Street. > > Much of The Last Slave Ships concerns itself with the years immediately > preceding the crushing of this ugly business as a consequence of the Civil > War, and the book chronicles how the construction of swift ships was > financed in New York, how the audacious smuggling persisted as a result, > and how the breathtaking inhumanity that this smuggling created continues > to bedevil this country even though it ended many decades ago. > > Indeed, it does not require acrobatically inclined inferences to conclude > that the vessel Whitman visited in the Brooklyn Navy Yard symbolized far > more than the attempted impounding of slavery itself, which within five > years was to ignite a bloody war. It also represented a moral economy that > eroded the most basic human empathy. One might add that the story of how a > slave ship wound up in New York waters also sheds light on how a would-be > Manhattan Mussolini received 74 million votes in the presidential election > of 2020. > > After the triumph of the Haitian Revolution in 1804, which saw the > successful overthrow of slavery by the enslaved themselves, the British > Empire sensed the imminent danger both to its investments and to the lives > of British settlers in the Caribbean, especially those living in the cash > cows of Jamaica and Barbados, so it chose to curtail the country’s role in > the African slave trade. In 1807, the House of Commons passed the Slave > Trade Act, which made illegal the participation of British ships and > citizens and ultimately helped to extirpate this pestilence more generally. > By 1808, London’s spawn on the west bank of the Atlantic had moved > similarly—at least on the surface—with the Act Prohibiting Importation of > Slaves, which outlawed US involvement in the non-domestic slave trade. Had > these laws been rigorously enforced, they would have spelled the beginning > of the end of the Atlantic slave trade. > > But the monarchy and the newly independent republic once ruled by it > responded to these acts differently. The Royal Navy became the cop on the > beat chasing down scofflaws. Meanwhile, many of the scofflaws it was > chasing down were in US-built-and-flagged vessels that were maintained, at > times, by crews from the purported revolutionary republic. Thus, in the > first half of the 19th century, two parallel developments played a role in > the evolving drama: British ships hunted down human traffickers, while US > ships did their best to evade the long arm of the law. Even though the > Atlantic slave trade had been officially outlawed in the United States, it > persisted despite this fact, which meant that millions of captives still > departed Africa for a hellish enslavement in the Americas. Indeed, Harris > writes, “almost four million captives left African shores between the > beginning of the century and the closure of the traffic in the 1860s, > around a third of all captives who ever crossed the Atlantic.” > > A ray of sunshine in this cumulus of gloom came in the mid-19th century. > At least by some accounts, the bulk of this horrendous merchandising of > human souls reached a zenith in the 1840s in Brazil, the largest market of > all, and then began to slow. But even following a military defeat of the > enslavers in the United States in 1865, the slave trade limped along in > Brazil and Cuba until the 1880s. As Harris shows, much of this bondage > survived as a result of financial and diplomatic support from the nation > that had proclaimed itself a “shining city upon a hill” and, in particular, > from its shiniest city: New York. > > The obscenely profitable slave ships were financed in New York City, and > as Whitman discovered, the ships departed from there, too. Moreover, when > New Yorkers sipped their morning coffee or sweetened their morning tea, it > was often coffee that had been produced by slave labor in Brazil and sugar > produced by slave labor in Cuba. A number of New York’s elected > representatives may have been officially opposed to the slave trade, but > they nonetheless represented a city and a state that profited from it > immensely. > > As Harris writes, during the Atlantic slave trade’s later stages, slave > ships embarked from many points along the Eastern Seaboard, but New York > City accounted for two out of every three departures. Investors in the > illegal trade were willing to assume the risk, since, during this era, the > average return on investment was an eye-watering 91 percent. Just as later > generations of Wall Street wizards devised collateralized debt obligations > and other devious instruments designed to maximize profit, their > predecessors acted in a manner that anticipated today’s financial > engineering. Revealingly, Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street firm whose 2008 > bankruptcy was said to have triggered a financial crisis that required > massive bailouts and almost brought capitalism to its knees, began by > capitalizing lucratively on the production of cotton picked by enslaved > labor in Alabama. > > Insurance companies also wallowed in the filthy lucre of this odious > business. Then as now, the financing and insuring taking place in New York > proved to be a transnational business. This unclean interchange may have > originated in Gotham, but it involved and benefited investors in Western > Europe (especially Portugal and Spain) and in Cuba and Brazil. Also > implicated were the ship-building industries of Maine and Maryland, often > kept afloat by Manhattan investors, along with many other New Yorkers who > lived in a city whose economy was still buoyed by slavery. > > While certain New Yorkers were diabolically investing in the illegal slave > trade, across the ocean in London, the British government began to invest > in spies in order to keep track of it, devising publications to chart the > movements of slave ships and subsidizing the Royal Navy, which was > authorized to halt their devilry. > > The overly optimistic observer might have imagined that the United States > would move in a similar direction. Yet while London proved to be an often > fierce watchdog, Washington proved to be a toothless terrier, protestations > about an antislavery Constitution notwithstanding. From 1851 to 1860, 159 > individuals were prosecuted under US slave trade laws in the republic; of > these, 99 were acquitted, encountered a deadlocked jury, or were otherwise > ordered released. Twelve were tried and convicted but endured only a slap > on the wrist, and nine managed to escape custody somehow. The outcomes for > the remainder are unclear, though it is fair to assume that they too eluded > punishment. Prosecutors failed to file charges against 21 others, because > of the distinct possibility they would not be convicted. > > The Africa Squadron of the United States, ostensibly intended to quash > this illicit trading at the source, was hardly robust. Based in Cape Verde, > it was stationed far from the Congo-Angola region used by enslavers—to say > nothing of similarly hounded Mozambique, on the opposite side of the > sprawling continent. The Africa Squadron’s placement was akin to basing the > Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-bank-robbery squad in Racine, Wis. The > US Navy was incompetent, typically dispatching fewer than five vessels to > Africa, while London posted about 30. Predictably, from 1843 to 1858, the > US Navy captured 20 slavers, while during the same period the Royal Navy, > based more sensibly in Luanda, Angola, captured over 500. Perhaps worse, > the United States sought vigorously to bar the Royal Navy from searching > suspected slave ships bearing the Stars and Stripes. > > The dictates of monograph writing—hard-pressed publishers seeking to cut > costs by shrinking page counts, assisted by hawkish peer reviewers eager to > insist that authors remain in their narrow lane—likely helps to explain why > Harris’s otherwise informative book does not engage with the strategic > reasons for this geopolitical fiasco. But the United States’ slothfulness > in responding to such rampant illegality did serve to deliver an enormous > gift to its monarchical foe in the form of those African Americans willing > to take their side. > > The eminent Frederick Douglass was among the legions who expressed a love > for Britain at a time when the two powers were at each other’s throats. But > Douglass was hardly the first African American to do so: Many of the > republic’s enslaved people—the greater number of them by far—backed the > redcoats during the 1776 war for this very reason, opposing the ultimately > victorious rebels. During the War of 1812 between the United States and > Britain, enslaved people also defected en masse to the Union Jack, > including during the sacking of Washington in August 1814, when enslaved > Africans fled on retreating British vessels to Trinidad and Tobago, where > they received land grants and where their descendants continue to live. > > Perhaps the Yankees realized that this pro-London stance was unlikely to > last forever and comforted themselves nervously with the thought. Yet there > was doubtless fear when Douglass announced that “in the event of a British > army landing in the States and offering liberty to the slaves, [the > enslaved] would rally round the British at the first tap of the drum.” > > In sum, the allegiances of the enslaved were situational. After all, those > with longer memories may have recalled the Stono Revolt in colonial South > Carolina in 1739, when the enslaved were assisted by Spanish Florida in the > bloodiest slave revolt of the colonial era in British North America. Others > may have recalled the time in the late 16th century when it was Spain’s > turn to worry, as the maritime John Brown—Jacques Sorie, a French > corsair—terrorized Madrid’s settlements from South America to the Florida > Straits by offering freedom to the enslaved. Or that just before the US > takeover in Florida 200 years ago, the British sponsored the well-armed > Negro Fort, staffed by Africans and their Indigenous comrades, which was > the beginning of several decades-long wars, some of the bloodiest fought by > the US military. Unsurprisingly, as the Stars and Stripes were unfurled on > the peninsula, a steady stream of ships overflowing with Africans headed > south to Cuba, unwilling to wager that the allegedly antislavery US > Constitution would—eventually—reveal itself. > > Washington, D.C., had good reason to believe that London was determined to > harass its former colony and use the enslaved as a bludgeon with which to > accomplish this ambition, which is often what London did. In 1858, it > placed a “man of color,” Sir James Douglas, as its chief executive in > British Columbia, inducing many Africans—enslaved and otherwise—to flee > there and to other sites along the elongated border with Canada just as > Washington sought to claim the vast Oregon Territory. > > Hastening the scurrying of Texas into the Union was the fear that Britain > was determined to create yet another Haiti in the Lone Star State, thus > jeopardizing neighboring Louisiana and Arkansas and the slave-holding South > as a whole. Circling the wagons around fellow republicans was thought by > the US government to be a way to guarantee this fate would not befall what > became a bulwark of secession. It also helped convince the otherwise > audacious Texans that the better part of wisdom was in joining the > like-minded Yankees and liquidating their own imperiled independence. > > The British were hardly a pristine ally of the oppressed. At the same time > that the officialdom in Whitehall was denouncing republican pretensions in > the United States with full-throated fieriness, redcoats were repressing > South Asians as a result of the Sepoy Revolt in 1857. But wrestling with > this contradiction was hardly unique to the enslaved and their allies. > Strategic flexibility is almost always an unavoidable reality when > confronting humanity’s forms of barbarism. > > While Harris occasionally considers this strategic flexibility and the > countless heroic African Americans who were largely responsible for > sabotaging the republic’s—and New York City’s—dirty role in sustaining this > bondage, he could have written more about African American resistance, > especially in Manhattan itself. Consider, for example, the heroic David > Ruggles, who was a one-man battering ram against actual and potential > enslavers. Ruggles, a mariner—a labor force that often included the most > militant of proletarians—applied the organizing acumen he learned at sea to > the abolitionist movement, which in turn embodied the truism that the > working class as a whole could not be liberated if African Americans in the > republic were branded with the indelible badge of inferiority. > Unsurprisingly, the mass struggle for an eight-hour workday, and the > liftoff of unions more generally, only occurred after the abolition of > slavery. > > Nevertheless, Harris does illuminate some of the dilemmas that today face > those seeking to resist the poisonous legacy of slavery. Though dimly > understood, even by those who consider themselves class warriors, class > struggle—often emblazoned in a blindingly fierce anti-racism—has > characterized the travails of enslaved Africans in North America from the > start of their resistance and was given even fiercer determination as a > result of the illegal slave trade. Perhaps the harshest, most cruelly > antagonistic and draconian of class relationships is that between the > enslaved and the slaveholder. As such, the class struggle of the enslaved > has shaped the contours of this land, defining not only resistance to > slavery but, ultimately, the political configuration that continues to this > very day. > > When, in the 1520s, the Spanish dispatched a complement of the enslaved > from their perch in Santo Domingo to the region stretching north from > Florida, the enslaved had other plans: Recognizing their common class > interests with local Native groups, they revolted with their Indigenous > comrades and chased the would-be settlers back to the Caribbean. When, by > 1607, the English had established a foothold in the land they called > Virginia, the Spanish due south wanted to intervene but were too busy > fighting the Africans and their Indigenous allies once again in Florida. In > short, class struggle by the enslaved helps to explain why today we are > communicating in English. > > Alternatively, settler colonialism—a phrase curiously missing from the > vocabularies of many of those who consider themselves radical in the United > States—was also a product of class collaboration from its inception. At the > behest of the English crown, small businessmen, tailors, goldsmiths, > teachers, and others arrived in the land to be known as North Carolina in > the 1580s. Sponsoring those who arrived in 1607 were grandees, including > leaders of the East India Company—London’s vector of exploitation in South > Asia—and various pillagers of West Africa. > > This class collaboration between the grandees and the hoi polloi reached > its ultimate expression during the Civil War, when nonslaveholders were the > main fighting force for the so-called Confederate States of America, which > sought to destroy the republic in order to maintain slavery. The shedding > of their blood for enslavers was not altogether an expression of misplaced > class interest, since many of the common soldiers sought to become > enslavers or thought that maintaining their castelike privilege was > something worth defending. Yet a victory would have meant a further > downward pressure on wages and working conditions driven by slavery. This > dastardly display illustrates that class collaboration can often take the > form of the highest stage of white supremacy, and vice versa. > Correspondingly, no more dramatic example of class struggle can be found > than that of tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people fighting with > arms in hand in order to terminate slavery and remain “forever free.” > > Similarly, in New York City, as Harris suggests, during the heyday of the > illicit slave trade, the perpetrators relied heavily not only on older > mercantile interests but also on working-class Euro-Americans, as evidenced > by the racist “draft riots” of 1863, when a deadly revolt unfolded, > ostensibly against conscription, that amounted to a bloody anti-Black > pogrom. > > Today, this supposed odd coupling of economic royalists and commoners > manifests itself in the remaining strongholds of conservatism in the city’s > five boroughs—from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to the mostly red > Staten Island. Unsurprisingly, campaign donations and foot soldiers for > Trumpism have emerged from these two areas. Equally unsurprisingly, the > vanguard of the US electorate—descendants of the enslaved—emerges from > those marinated in class struggle, who vote against the right wing at rates > as high as 9 to 1. Meanwhile, the working class is split, as some persist > in believing that the clock of history can be put into reverse and that a > system that once expropriated the Indigenous of their land, frequently on > behalf of less affluent Euro-Americans, can be restored. > > Not long after the guns of war roared at Fort Sumter, Nathaniel Gordon of > Maine was the first (and only) slave trader executed pursuant to US law, > and with the Civil War on, the Union finally moved to match London with a > treaty facilitating a further crackdown on this ugly business, especially > in New York, with Secretary of State (and former New York governor) William > Seward sagely informing Abraham Lincoln that this was “the most important > act of your life and of mine.” > > Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the successful prosecution of > the Civil War necessarily vitiates this extraordinary claim, and Harris’s > smoothly written, well-researched book provides further credence for the > proposition, illuminating an often forgotten yet crucially important > chapter in US history in which the republic continued to support and > promote the Atlantic slave trade after it had been declared illegal. But > another important theme in this history also emerges from his book: that a > divided working class, fractured along the lines of those involved in class > struggle and those in class collaboration, can hardly prosper, just as a > nation can hardly exist half slave and half free, as Lincoln once argued. > Harris’s timely tome helps clarify why this is so and helps remind us why, > in today’s republic, uplifting organized labor—especially those in the > ranks thought to bear the badges and indicia of inferiority—remains a > pressing priority. > > Gerald Horne is the author of books on slavery, socialism, popular > culture, and > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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