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THE GRANDEES: AMERICA'S SEPHARDIC ELITE |
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8. "MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE WINDWARD COAST OF AFRICA"
EVEN AFTER it became a British colony, New York remained very Dutch in feeling. The brick and tile with which the houses were built, the architecture, the machinery, the utensils -- everything had been imported from the Netherlands until a replica of a Dutch dorp had been created on the tip of Manhattan, a miniaturized Amsterdam. The British had arrived and taken over things, but the Dutch families refused to change their quiet, cultured ways. They continued to live with their mahogany furniture, their Oriental rugs, their delft ornaments, their fine brass and silverware, their paintings by Dutch masters. They continued to worship at the Dutch church, and to speak the Dutch language. So resolutely did they cling to their old-world roots that Dutch was spoken in the Dutch Church of New York right up until the time of the Civil War.
The Dutch were scornful of the British arrivals, and considered them boorish and uncultivated. The people who counted were still the Dutch families -- the de Peysters, the Bogarduses, the Lockermans, the Van Cortlandts, the Kierstedes, the Van Rensselaers, the Phillipses, and the Beekmans. The Jews of New York, with their affinity for things Dutch, felt similarly about the British. (England had, after all, had anti-Semitic pogroms, which Holland had never had.) As Revolutionary sentiments were marshaling themselves, there was no question of where most of the New York Sephardim would stand: squarely against the British.
But as the trickle of Sephardic arrivals continued -- along with a much smaller trickle of Jews from central Europe, who joined the Sephardic congregations when they got here -- Jews were scattering to cities other than New York, establishing little settlements in Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans to the south, and in New England to the north, following the pattern of expansion of the American colonies along the eastern seaboard. A particularly important Sephardic community had been established early in the eighteenth century in Newport, where sons and grandsons of the Twenty-Three, along with their later-arriving cousins, had settled and were taking part in Newport's booming trade. By 1750, Newport had outdistanced New York as a commercial seaport, and Newport's Sephardim were getting even richer than New York's. There were strong ties between Jewish Newport and Jewish New York. The famous Touro Synagogue in Newport was built as -- and continues to be -- a branch of New York's Shearith Israel, and is owned by the New York congregation (it pays rent of a dollar a year). But in terms of eighteenth-century politics, Newport and New York were somewhat unlike. Newport, after all, was a New England city. There was more pro-Tory feeling about. Writing to his young Newport cousin, Aaron Lopez, Daniel Gomez frequently chided him for failing to support the Revolutionary cause. But young Aaron, though he respected his New York relative, had different ideas. On his arrival in America he had sworn in his naturalization oath to "be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty George the Third." And Aaron had business reasons for remaining on good terms with the British. He had extensive dealings with them in Newport's flourishing slave trade.
Aaron Lopez was a very determined young man. He had arrived in Newport from Portugal -- where his family had been successful Marranos -- in 1750 at the age of nineteen, and he had already acquired a wife, another cousin, five years older than he, named Abigail (Anna had been her Christian alias in Iberia), and a tiny daughter, Sarah (alias Catherine). In Newport the little family immediately resumed their Old Testament first names, and Aaron and his wife were remarried in the Jewish rite.
Men of Aaron's generation had a distinct advantage over the earliest pioneers such as the Twenty-Three. There were other Jews, many of them relatives, to welcome them and help them set themselves up in business. In Aaron's case, there were his Gomez and de Lucena connections in New York, and, in Newport, an older halfbrother, Moses Lopez, and still another cousin, Jacob Rodriguez Rivera, who had both become successful merchants. For several years, Aaron Lopez worked for Jacob Rivera while he saved his money so as to get into something on his own. Mr. Rivera was credited with having founded Newport's spermaceti industry, dealing in the whitish, waxy substance that could be separated from the oil of the sperm whale and was the principal ingredient of candlemaking. Between spermaceti and the town's "other" industry -- slavery -- Newport's harbor was one of the busiest in America, where as many as 150 ships lay at anchor at a time.
Slavery, and their part in it, has understandably become a sore point with the Sephardim, who tend to play down their ancestors' role, or to insist that Jewish merchants who took part in the slave trade did so "only on a very limited scale." Looking at it in historical perspective, however, and bearing in mind the attitudes that prevailed at the time -- and remembering man's limitless capacity to overlook his own folly -- it is possible to view slavery as it was viewed in the eighteenth century, as just another business. No one questioned the morality of the slave trade. Whether it was right or wrong was something not even considered. It was not in any way a Jewish preoccupation. All the "best people" were involved in it, and a great many of New England's oldest, finest, and most redoubtable fortunes are solidly based on human cargo. (One should not point to the Jews and overlook the Christians.)
In New England, slavery was not only tacitly approved. It was actually touted as an institution of great benefit to the black man, in that it brought him out of the heathen jungle into the civilized land of Christian godliness. A certain elder of the church in Newport would, according to one historian, go to church the Sunday following the arrival of a slaver from the Coast and "thank God that another cargo of benighted beings had been brought to a land where they could have the benefit of a Gospel dispensation." In a volume called Reminiscences of Newport, an idyllic picture of slavery is painted, and the attitudes prevalent in Aaron Lopez' day are perfectly defined. "If we look at the relation of master and slave at that time," the author writes, "we must own that the attachment between them was stronger, and the interest manifested in the welfare of each other far greater than anything in our days between employer and employee." He adds, "Few were the complaints of the servitude exacted." True, there were some who regarded slavery with distaste or even horror, but these were regarded as harmless eccentrics. Ministers such as Ezra Stiles and Samuel Hopkins ranted against slavery from their New England pulpits, but to little avail. Every man of substance owned slaves. The Episcopal Church itself owned a plantation in Barbados, and from time to time had to purchase fresh slaves to keep it in operation. And slavery had become such an immensely profitable business that those men engaged in it had no difficulty whatever in turning deaf ears to their scattered critics.
Newport's first human cargo from Mrica arrived as early as 1696, and soon afterward began that interesting triangular trade route which the slavers followed for the next hundred years. A ship would set sail from Newport to the west coast of Africa loaded with hogsheads of New England rum. In Africa, the rum would be traded for slaves, who would then be carried to the West Indies, where the third major transaction would take place -- slaves traded for sugar, which was then brought back to Newport, where no less than twenty-two stills waited to turn the sugar into rum, which would then make its way back to Africa to be exchanged for more slaves.
The rum, in part, stayed in the African coastal colonies, where it was simply another form of currency, and of course a small portion of it went into the interior of Africa, where tribal chieftains accepted it in payment for their people. But most of the rum eventually went to Europe -- to England, France, Holland, Portugal, and Denmark -- for all these countries were then engaged in what amounted to an international business. And these were the countries, too, that needed slaves to provide labor in their expanding colonies.
There were opportunities for sizable profits at each corner of the triangular slave trade, and from a great variety of other goods that were bought, sold, and traded along the way. But slaves produced the tidiest yield -- between £1,500 and £2,000 profit per shipload being about average, at a time when, to get an idea of comparative prices, a hundred-gallon cask of Madeira wine sold for something like £6. At the height of the slave trade when Aaron Lopez was active, as many as 184 vessels were involved from the state of Rhode Island alone. In the United States, only South Carolina exceeded this figure. This meant that Newport saw the arrival or departure of a slave ship every single day of the year.
Of course it was easier for the men who owned the slaving fleets to justify their curious occupation. Most owners never set foot aboard their ships. They had never seen a slave ship being unloaded or watched the sick and filthy men and women -- and children, too -- emerge with their black skins gone gray from hunger and confinement below the decks. The same was true of the rest of commercial and social Newport. Slavery was invisible. Slaves were nearly always disposed of in West Indian or southern ports. As Jeremy Belknap, an old Newporter, once recalled: "Very few cargoes ever came to this port. . . . I remember one, between thirty and forty years ago, which consisted almost wholly of children . . . sometimes the Rhode Island vessels, after having sold their prime slaves in the West Indies, brought the remnants of their cargoes hither for sale." Mr. Belknap then wistfully added: "Since this commerce has declined, the town of Newport has gone to decay."
Out of sight was out of mind and, meanwhile, an altogether different sort of character was required for the man who captained a slaving ship, who anchored off the Mrican coast and engaged in the actual barter of human bodies in exchange for hogsheads of rum.
Of a different caliber, too, was the "governor" who operated the coastal "castle" where slaves were herded and corraled until sold. At the height of the eighteenth-century slave trade, as many as forty of these stations were strung along the so-called Slave Coast, the low-lying delta country that stretches for 700 miles between the mouth of the Volta River and Mount Cameroon. Here, those blacks "deemed to make the best slaves" were brought for 350 years. Of the forty castles, fourteen were English, three were French, fifteen were Dutch, four were Portuguese, and four were Danish. But from the figures of a single year of trade -- 38,000 slaves sold by the British, 20,000 by the French, 4,000 by the Dutch, 10,000 by the Portuguese, and 2,000 by the Danes -- it is quite clear that more than half the trade was in British hands. [i]
Slaves were driven on foot to these castles from their villages in the interior. For this most dreadful stage of their long journey, during which the greatest loss of life occurred, their herdsmen were almost always their own people. The most demoralized positions in the entire slave trade fell to these men. As for the native chieftain who sold off members of his tribe for barrels of rum, he was almost as remote from the death and torture of the business as the powdered and bewigged ladies and gentlemen back in Newport, chatting over teacups, the leaders of business and society who were enjoying the gratifying monetary fruits of the operation at the other end. White or black, slavery was the creation of the nabobs.
On the African coast, price negotiations were in the hands of the slaver captain and the resident governor of the castle. It was all very businesslike, and there were fluctuations in the market just as there were in every other commodity. Sometimes it took months for a satisfactory deal to be completed, but once it was, the slaves were loaded aboard with great dispatch. A captain who "lost" his slaves for any reason was, understandably, not assured a precisely warm welcome back in Newport, and so some care was taken for the slaves' well-being, but no more care than was economically feasible. Slave quarters were in spaces between the decks, three to three and a half feet high. Men were stretched out on their backs, in spaces eighteen inches wide per man, their ankles secured by chains. Women and children lay in a separate compartment, equally crowded but unchained. The journey across the Atlantic took anywhere from six to ten weeks, depending on the weather. Sometimes, if the captain was a lenient one, the prisoners were allowed above decks for short periods to get exercise and a breath of fresh air. Often, during these moments, prisoners tried to fling themselves overboard into the sea. Uncooperative prisoners were punished in such bizarre ways as being tied to ships' anchor chains and dragged in the wake.
There were equally bizarre dangers to be encountered by those employed at various points of the slaving triangle. One of Aaron Lopez' Da Costa cousins, who helped her husband with his end of the business in Kingston, Jamaica, and who happened to be pregnant at the time, one night "went to draw rum to adulterate for the Sunday sale of slaves" [ii] by candlelight. A spark from her candle dropped into the high-proof rum, and the rum, along with the unfortunate woman, went up in flames. Mrs. Da Costa very nearly did for Kingston what Mrs. O'Leary's cow later did for Chicago, for nearby were "rum, brandy and gin shops by the score" which contained thousands of inflammable gallons. Luckily, the "eingine" arrived quickly and the fire was extinguished, though too late to save the lady.
In this, Newport's leading, highly respected, even fashionable industry, young Aaron Lopez -- enterprising, handsome, with dark hair, high cheekbones, and large, dark, commanding eyes; small and wiry -- was an early success. From the pennies saved while working with his cousin Jacob Rivera, he had been able, within two years, to become a partner in the purchase of the ship Ann, described in her bill of sale as "A double deck new brigantine about 113 tons burthen . . . completely finished for the African trade . . . to be sheathed with inch pine boards or 1/2 inch cedar ... the awning, a second boat, caboose, colors, small arms, chains and hand cuffs [these items are underscored in the bill of sale] and every other small utensil to be excluded and provided by the Captain." Not even the implements of imprisonment were dealt in by the owner. [iii]
At 113 tons, the Ann was probably about seventy feet in length, a small ship for such long voyages, but few slave ships were larger. Her cost to Aaron Lopez was quoted at "£690 Sterling," not even half the profit that could be made from a single load of slaves. On November 27, 1772, nine months after she had been ordered, the Ann lay ready to sail in Newport harbor, her decks loaded with such items as Madeira wine, brown sugar, molasses, vinegar, thirty sheep, thirty-nine turkeys, twenty-eight geese, twenty-one ducks. But the largest item, which caused the Ann to ride low in the water, was "98 hogsheads and 14 tierces New England Rum," approximately 11,000 gallons, weighing over forty tons. Lopez made a brief inspection of his new ship -- probably the last he ever saw of her -- and turned her over to his captain, a sturdy Yankee named William Einglish, with the following orders:
[quote]Sir:
Our brig the Ann, of which you are at present the master, being loaded and ready for the Seas, Our orders to you are, That you Embrace the first fair wind and make the best of your way to the Coast of Africa; and as we have no opinion of the windward Coast trade, we think it advisable, that as soon as you procure the necessary rice that you proceed without delay to Anamoboe Road; when please God you arrive there safe Convert your cargo into good Slaves; on the best terms you can; you are not insensible that lying any considerable time on the Coast is not only attended with a very heavy expense, but also great risk of Slaves you may have on board. We therefore would recommend to you dispatch, even if you are obliged to give a few gallons more or less on each slave....[/quote]
Obviously, a great deal depended on the reliability of the captain, and there is no way of telling how many of these men were able successfully to cheat their owners. But Einglish seems to have been an honest man. His orders went on to explain that a certain David Mill, governor of one of the coast castles, still owed Lopez' cousin Jacob Rivera "twenty-seven men and thirteen women slaves" from an earlier shipment which had arrived short that number. These, Lopez asserted, Mill would "immediately deliver" to Captain Einglish, and he was sure of this "from Mr. Mill's universal character." In order that these forty not be confused with the rest of the shipment, Lopez instructed the captain to "put some distinguishing mark" on those, "that we may distinguish them from those of the cargo."
The bookkeeping was then explained. Two-thirds of the regular cargo were to be bought on Lopez' account, and the remaining third were to be charged to Jacob Rivera. The forty owed slaves were to be credited to each man equally. All slaves, the orders advised, were to be sold in the slave market of Savannah La Mar, Jamaica, and the Ann was to return to Newport "clean of them."
It would be romantic and wrong to picture Captain Einglish as a demon. Actually, his approach to the business was crisp and dispassionate. He had a job to do. He was meticulous in his record keeping, and anything that smacked of inefficiency or wasted motion annoyed him. In his first report to Lopez, dated January 14, 1773, Einglish wrote: "After a voyage of forty days I arrived at the Islands of Deloes on the windward Coast of Africa, where I furnished myself with what rice I think will be sufficient for my voyage [rice, and a little mutton, comprised the diet of the captured slaves], and shall sail this day for the Gold Coast, wind and weather permitting." Rumors, he said, had reached him that business was "very Dull for our Trade," and that ships were being forced to move further eastward along the coast in search of slaves. "The lowest price that they asked for slaves here," he wrote, "is a hundred and fifty barrels, which is equal to two hundred gallons of Rum." He went on to report that "Various Gales of Wind" had meant that "the greatest part of my Turkeys Perished, Also Lost the 30 Bundles of Hay the Fourth day after I sail'd. I have still on board twenty-eight sheep with the greatest part of the Geese and Ducks which I expect to deliver in good order." This meant that only two sheep had been butchered and consumed during the crossing, a commendably thrifty record.
Two months later, in March, Einglish wrote to Lopez from Anamabu, a village still standing on the Gold Coast, saying: "I arrived at Cape Corse Castle on the 12th of February, where on my arrival applied to Governor Mill and gave him the offer of my cargo on Various Terms, from one hundred and eighty gallons to two hundred for men and in proportion for women," who were always sold for somewhat less. Mr. Mill, it turned out, despite his "universal character," was somewhat overextended. He owed slaves to captains in all directions -- including, of course, the forty to Lopez and Rivera -- and the best he could promise Einglish, the captain reported to his employer, was that after every ship, in its proper turn, had received its share, he might be able to supply Einglish with some "in about Eighteen Months." As for the forty short from the previous order, Mill replied vaguely that he would have them for Einglish when Einglish was "ready to sail."
Anamabu that spring was understocked with slaves and overstocked with rum. Wrote Einglish: "Here is very poor times for every fort and private house is stocked with Rum. . . there is no selling of Rum nor anything else. 1have not been five nights on board since my arrival but continually cruising from one fort to another striving to sell my Cargo." The more he cruised, apparently, the higher the price of slaves became and the longer the wait for delivery. From a deal which he reports "I struck with Mr. Henrick Woortman," he exchanged four thousand gallons at the rate of "two hundred gallon for men and one hundred and eighty for women, payable in three months." From "Various private traders," he was able to get a few more at a slightly lower price -- "190 Gallon and 195 for men and in proportion for women" -- but soon the price jumped again to 210 gallons for men slaves, and a three-month delay. He wrote to Lopez and Rivera: "Gentlemen, 1have but five Slaves on board and God knows when 1shall have five more for the Country Trade is so dull and Slaves scarce." He added that his supply of sheep was now down to twenty-seven, along with sixteen geese, twelve ducks, and five turkeys.
Two weeks later, Einglish wrote to Lopez that he had bought ten more slaves, bringing the total on board to fifteen, and that he was about to deliver Mr. Woortman's rum at his castle. "If Mr. Woortman pays me according to agreement," he noted somewhat nervously, "I shall sail the Beginning of June." The rum market continued depressed and, "There is no Governor, neither English Nor Dutch that will take Rum for present pay." The same went for "Lisbon wine," though the captain noted a better market for "wine that will pass for Madeira." The price of rum was driven further downward by the arrival of two more vessels, one from Boston and one "of Mr. Brown of Newport," both loaded to the gunwales with hogsheads of the stuff and, of course, when rum prices dropped, slave prices rose.
By the middle of May -- Einglish had been at anchor over two months -- thirty slaves were on board the Ann. Governor Mill had still not delivered the forty slaves he owed Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rivera, and Captain Einglish was still anxiously awaiting delivery from Mr. Woortman, which was promised for May 28. There was more bad news. Captain Einglish's chief mate, whom Einglish describes as "a worthless Drunking fellow," had, in a moment of bibulous carelessness, been responsible for the loss of the Ann's longboat and a load of valuable provisions. "I dispatched him," Einglish writes, "to Cape Cord in the Long Boat for water and to settle some business there that I could not leave the vessel to tend, his boat being well fitted with everything that I thought necessary, and had in Twenty Three water casks, two barrels Hour, one box soap, and fifty pounds of coffee, which goods he was to deliver and receive the Gold." However, "In one of his drunking frollicks, carrying more sail than Good Judgment would allow him, he took in a large quantity of water and stood so nigh the shore that he was almost in the breakers, whereupon the natives perceiving came off with a number of canoes and several of them boarding the boat on one side, and she already waterlogged, readily overset and Every shilling's worth lost to the Great Determent of the Voyage. For now I am obliged to hire a canoe and employ a number of Blacks that I should have had no occasion for." To add to his indignation, he noted that the price of slaves had climbed to 230 gallons a head.
By June 6, Einglish had forty-one slaves on board, and Woortman was eight days past his deadline, promising delivery now "in a few days." Mr. Mill, too, was dragging his feet, and the captain wrote to his employer in Newport: "I waited on Governor Mill two days ago for the slaves due, but did not receive them, although his promise to me was that I should have them whenever demanded." If Mill's response seemed suspiciously evasive, Einglish's countermove against Mill was properly aggressive. He applied to Mill for payment of the sunken longboat, claiming that it was the natives, who were in Mill's charge, climbing aboard on one side that had caused the boat to sink, not the chief mate's drunkenness and poor judgment. Mill agreed that the "Natives should be made to pay," and Einglish seems to have concluded that this was quite just since "they were concerned in a most Vilanous Action in plundering and oversetting her." Eing1ish concludes with a prayer that no more rum might arrive from New England to further drive down the price.
On July 12, Governor Mill wrote to Lopez and Rivera explaining that he was once again sending the firm a short shipment. "I have only been able, trade being so bad," he said, "to pay Captain Einglish 30 of the 40 slaves owed . . . and hope the detention of those ten will be no loss to you. If it is I will thankfully pay you. 1 have paid for the stock and 1hope to your satisfaction." He does not mention paying for the longboat. The same day, Captain Einglish added to the list what his hold contained: "19 men slaves, marked '0' on the right thigh, also 11 women marked ditto. Being marked and numbered as in the margin, and are to be delivered in the like good order and well conditioned at the port of Kingston in Jamaica (mortality, insurrection, and the danger of the seas only excepted)."
The Woortman delivery must have been made soon after because, on July 15, Captain Einglish set sail from Anamabu, where he had spent just over five months, with a load of ninety-five slaves comprising, in addition to the thirty from Mill, "33 men slaves, 2 boys, 27 women, and 3 girl slaves." All, he noted, "is very good and healthy at present and have not lost one slave yet. Thank God for it." It took Einglish eighty-five days, in heavy weather most of the way, to make the westward journey across the Atlantic to Jamaica. Once there he was forced to report that he had had "the misfortune of burying six slaves on my passage," five of them from the regular cargo and one of the group marked "0" -- probably by branding -- on the right thigh. Of the remainder, he commented that they were "for the great part in good health and well liked by the gentleman who intends to purchase. . . . By what 1can learn from several gentlemen that has seen the slaves they will sell to good advantage -- the 13th Inst. is the Day for Sale."A few weeks later, however, the captain's report from Jamaica indicated that he had been somewhat optimistic in his earlier letter, as to both the state of the slaves' health and that of the market. A disorder which Einglish characterizes only as "swelling," and which was probably a form of scurvy or food poisoning, had afflicted many of his cargo during the crossing, and now Einglish wrote: "Gentlemen, I buried one man slave since my last, and the Swelling began to range so violent among the slaves that nine of them was sold for a mere trifle . . . when I arrived, there was but two slaves that had the least sign of swelling. This disorder first begun in their feet and worked upward ... when got as far as their stomach they died in a few hours." He added gloomily that "There has been three ships' cargoes of slaves sold since my arrival, and none of their averages exceeded [oursJ not five shillings in a slave. Therefor I do not think that this market is as good as the Merchants here says it ought to be."
Still, Captain Einglish was, according to the accounting he submitted, able to sell his remaining slaves for £3,620. Expenses amounted to £ 1,399,which meant a tidy profit of £ 1,259,or about go percent. He sailed from Jamaica in December and, after a brief stop at Mole Saint Nicolas, on the northwestern tip of Haiti, where he loaded the Ann with sugar, he headed home to Newport.
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[b]Notes:[/b]
i. Slavery was brought to the colonies by the English. England did get around to abolishing slavery somewhat before the United States did, in 1807. Denmark was the first nation to abolish slavery, in 1792. The northern American states, meanwhile, starting with Vermont in 1777 and ending with New Jersey in 1804, all had adopted state abolition laws before Great Britain did.
ii. Undoubtedly to thin it with water.
iii. There was an ancient Talmudic principle involved here. For centuries the rabbinate decreed that when a Jew was involved in the human slave trade, he could not go below certain standards of humanity and decency. The Jew could deal in slaves as a business -- as everyone else did -- but he could not be involved in their punishment or torture. In the tenth century, for instance, there was a great vogue for blond eunuch slaves. They were used in harems and for homosexual purposes. The Jews of the Orient and Middle East were disturbed by this trade, and went to their rabbis for guidance. They were advised that it was permissible for them to buy and sell eunuchs, but that they were under no circumstances to be involved with the performance of castrations. The rabbis told them, "Let the goy do that."
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