"Destroying the Slave Trade, Would Stop the Wheels of New England Industry" - Newburyport and the Institution of Slavery

Last month, the Nerds came across a blog posting and a related series of social media postings discussing Newburyport's “Golden Age” from the eve of the American Revolution through the early 1800s. The blog post was exceptionally well-written and focused on many of Newburyport’s prominent families and the seaport town's economic and cultural accomplishments.

While the blog post generally touched upon slavery in 18th-century Newburyport, it did not address the question of to what extent the seaport community benefitted from the institution. As a result, the Nerds decided to take a deep dive and share some of the research findings we’ve come across on the topic.

Historian Susan Harvey noted in her 2011 master’s thesis, Slavery in Massachusetts: A Descendent of Early Settlers Investigates the Connections in Newburyport, Massachusetts, “[M]any individuals and families in Newburyport and Newbury did profit directly and indirectly from the transatlantic slave trade, some handsomely and some in small ways, but profit they did. Only the ports in Rhode Island out-built Newbury in terms of the number of ships constructed for the slave trade. The currency used to purchase the slaves was rum, made in more distilleries in Newburyport than in any other town in Massachusetts except Boston. Even those who died with little wealth but had sugar bowls and silver sugar tongs among their last possessions benefited from the labor of the enslaved by using the sugar they harvested.”

Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first American colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and enslaved peoples were still considered property at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Newbury and Newburyport were no exception. In 1754, Newbury, including the “Waterside District” (which would later become Newburyport), could account for fifty slaves, of whom sixteen were female and thirty-four male. Only two other Essex County towns, Salem and Gloucester, had more slaves.

18th Century Slave Shackles, International Slavery Museum, London, England

18th Century Massachusetts slave owners, particularly those in Middlesex and Essex Counties, purchased their slaves one of two ways. The first involved traveling to Boston, Salem, or Newburyport to purchase imported slaves from the West Indies or “domestic” slaves. For example, on February 16, 1774, the Newburyport newspaper, the Essex Journal, and Merrimack Packet published an advertisement for the sale of a “Healthy Negro girl, about twenty-three years old, born in this country - likewise a serviceable mare.”

Massachusetts enslaved peoples were often exchanged as gifts or bequeathed as part of a deceased’s estate. Harvey’s thesis paper is replete with Newburyport-specific examples of enslaved peoples being gifted as part of a decedent’s estate. 

In many Newburyport households that owned enslaved peoples, male slaves worked side by side with their masters as coopers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and wheelwrights.  In other homes, they ran errands, functioned as valets, and performed heavy work for their masters. Some Newburyport slaves worked in the community’s shipyards along the Merrimack River. 

Newburyport female slaves were required to carry out the various household tasks their mistresses demanded, most notably laundry. Female slaves were also set to scrub floors and walls, soap-making, garden work, and fieldwork.

However, the mere presence of enslaved peoples in Newburyport did not lead to the town’s economic success. Instead, the town created its wealth by supporting the institution of slavery itself through shipbuilding and rum making.

In the 18th century, shipbuilding was Newburyport’s economic staple. By 1717, Newbury-built ships accounted for almost 9 percent of all Massachusetts-built ships. In 1727, there were nearly thirty shipyards along the Merrimack River, with most centered in the Waterside District (Newburyport). By the middle of the 18th Century, Newbury shipyards were launching approximately fifty ships a decade or five ships per year. By the French and Indian War, The Royal Navy was contracting with Newbury shipyards to construct military vessels to help combat the French Navy.

Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet, February 16, 1774

When a ship was contracted to be built, the ship owner and merchants (often the same) sought investors to help finance the venture. While they understandably secured financing from the Newbury and

Newburyport elite also accepted smaller investment funds from the town's middle- and lower-class residents. As a result, it was not uncommon for shopkeepers, ministers, doctors, lawyers, and yeomen to have a financial interest in constructing a ship, regardless of its purpose. 

For example, Newbury farmer Jonathan Woodman owned “one Eight part of the Sloop Eagle, …one quarter part of the Sloop Speedwell,…(and) one eight part of the Sloop Hannah” at the time of his death. When Deacon Joshua Beck died in 1747, his probate inventory included “a sixteenth part of a Sloop about Eighty Tuns.”  

Economic opportunity also existed for those who could not invest in ship construction. 

Many Newbury and Newburyport shipyards would employ local artisans and skilled tradesmen. According to Joseph Goldenberg’s Shipbuilding in Colonial America, It would not be uncommon to see in a Newburyport shipyard, “Joiners smoothed the outside planking, built rails and did interior cabin work. Caulkers filled seams with oakum to make the ship watertight. With iron more plentiful in the colonies than in England, colonial builders used more iron on masts, blocks, and deckware than British shipwrights did; . . . Responsible for all the iron work on the vessel, smiths also had the task of forging anchors. A mason laid bricks to support the galley, a tinman lined the scuppers, and a glazier installed glass ports. Mast-makers, sailmakers, blockmakers, and ropemakers supplied their respective products. Other tradesmen included painters, riggers, boatmakers, coopers, tanners, and carvers. Before sailing, the ship required the services of instrument makers, chairmakers and upholsterers to complete the officers’ quarters, and brewers, bakers, and butchers to supply provisions.”

The type of ships built in Newburyport and Newbury shipyards included barks, sloops, snows, schooners, and brigantines. These ships served various purposes, including serving as fishing vessels, shipping mercantile goods, and, sadly, transporting enslaved peoples. 

According to Harvey’s thesis, between 1734 and 1800, Newburyport and Newbury shipyards constructed forty-five ships that were used explicitly for the slave trade. If we expand the scope to include neighboring communities along the Merrimack River, 9 additional slave ships were constructed in Amesbury and Salisbury shipyards, brining the total to fifty-four slave ships constructed along the Merrimack River.

Despite the onset of the American Revolution, five Newburyport registered ships departed from the port between 1775 and 1777 to help transport enslaved peoples across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Even after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, Newburyport continued to profit from the construction of these ships. According to one late 18th-century account, Newburyport and other American and English seaport communities experienced an economic boom between 1797 and 1806 due to increased export and transport of enslaved people. 

Construction of Newburyport slave ships seemed to halt by 1810, but two more vessels, the Ardennes and the Marquitta were built in the town on the eve of the American Civil War.  

Harvey’s research findings suggest that the forty-seven Newburyport-built ships were responsible for the transport of 22,000 enslaved peoples to the New World. Of those, 3582 died while crossing the Atlantic.

Shipbuilding was not Newburyport’s only means of supporting the institution of slavery; rum production was a close second. Rum's origin can be traced back to the 17th-century sugar plantations where it was determined that molasses, a byproduct of the sugar refining process, could be fermented into alcohol. By the early 18th century, rum was one of New England’s primary exports, often called “the currency of the seas.” 

By 1774, Massachusetts Bay Colony boasted 51 rum distilleries, ten of which were located in Newburyport. During the Revolutionary Era, Massachusetts rum distilleries produced over two million gallons worth of rum per year, of which almost half was exported overseas. The only town with more rum distilleries operating at this time was Boston, with thirty-six.

By 1790, the number of rum distilleries in Newburyport had exploded to over 50; collectively, Massachusetts distilleries increased their production to over six million gallons per year.

And that is where Newburyport’s connection to the institution of slavery was further solidified. A Newburyport ship filled with rum would sail to the coast of Africa, where its cargo of rum was traded for captured Africans. Sometimes the captives were alone; other times, they were entire families. From Africa, the ships usually went to the West Indies or South America, where they sold most of the captive Africans into slavery and took on new cargoes of sugar and molasses. The sugar, molasses, and remaining captives were brought back to Newburyport, where the sugar and molasses were used to make rum, and any remaining captives were sold into slavery. The rum manufactured in Newburyport was then sent to Africa to begin the cycle again.

Slavery in the West Indies was critical to the success of the New England economy. Professor Lorenzo Greene noted, “The effects of this slave trade were manifold. On the eve of the American Revolution, it formed the very basis of the economic life of New England; about it revolved, and on it depended most of her industries. The vast sugar, molasses, rum trade, shipbuilding, distilleries, many fisheries, the employment of artisans and seamen, and even agriculture depended on the slave traffic.”

The African slaves transported to the West Indies by Newburyport vessels were doomed from the start. According to Hayes, the life span of a male slave working cane might reach seventeen years, but it averaged about seven years. Because the turnover of workers was so great, as was the increase in planting sugarcane, more and more Africans were transported to the West Indies each year as a part of the growing Triangle Trade. 

In 1764, England passed the Sugar Act. This economic reform law directly threatened Massachusetts’ rum and slave trades.  In response to Parliament’s action, a coalition of merchants, including many from Newburyport, drafted a letter of opposition. Entitled “A Statement of the Massachusetts Trade and Fisheries,” they argued “that any duty imposed upon these articles would ruin the fisheries, cause the destruction of the rum distilleries, and destroy the slave trade. Destruction of the Negro commerce would throw 5,000 seamen out of employment and would cause almost 700 ships to rot in idleness at their wharves. It would affect those immediately engaged in these industries, and its blighting effects would topple the dependent economic structure. Coopers, tanners, barrel makers, and even farmers would be reduced to poverty and misery if the Act were enforced. In short, the Sugar Act, by destroying the slave trade, would stop the wheels of New England industry.”

In short, Newburyport needed the slave trade to remain economically successful.

To read Susan Harvey's master’s thesis, which formed the basis for this blog post, please click on this link: Slavery in Massachusetts: A Descendent of Early Settlers Investigates the Connections in Newburyport, Massachusetts.