Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Part XXIII

After his 1st trial, when it looked as if Nathaniel Gordon might go free and that , in turn,would take the "not so secret underground industry" with him (June, 1861) the New-York Tribune complained in an editorial that "the slave-traders in this city have matured their arrangements so thoroughly that they almost invariably manage to elude the meshes of the law.  Now they bribe a jury, another time their counsel or agents spirit away a vital witness...Fortunately, however, a new class of men (Lincoln appointees) now have direction of affairs, and a stop will be put to this iniquitous complicity with crime....To effect this it will be necessary to purge the courts and offices of these pimps of piracy (my emphasis), who are well known, and at the proper time will receive their desserts." ("the slave traders in this city"... New-York Daily Tribune, June 22, 1861.)

That industry included ship fitters, suppliers, recruiters of crews, and bribed marshals and customs agents; also it was well known that ship owners and captains accused of violating slave trade laws often were defended by Beebe, Dean & Donohue; these admiralty lawyers had offices at 76 Wall Street.  (Beebe, Dean & Donahue, Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law 1837-1862, Berkeley; University of California Press, 1963, p. 51)

Anyone who read a New York newspaper would know how it worked by 1861 just because of it's audacity.

Firstly, N.Y. ships sailed to Rio de Janeiro or, later, Havana, where they might take aboard a 2nd captain and crew.  The U.S. ship, for the crossing to Africa, listed foreigners as "passengers".  Then, on the African coast, there was a sudden switch in nationality; then, just before, or even while slaves were being loaded, the foreigners declared themselves the owners and commanders of (what was just moments before) a U.S. vessel.  The American captain and crew sometimes made the return voyage as working passengers on the now-foreign slave ship.  But more likely they'd return safe from arrest on an "innocent" tender that was the slave ship's accomplice.

As abolition threatened the entire national economies during the final years that were still dependent on slave labor, the illegal slave trade became more profitable (and if at all possible, even more horrific).

Larger ships, able to stow close to 1,000 Africans chained in pairs between their narrow decks, were built.  And some traders ordered steamships that could cross the Atlantic more quickly, but these new vessels led to new types of suffering on the centuries-old Middle Passage.  The hot boilers could cause skin ulcers and water-distilling machines that malfunctioned could poison an entire cargo of slaves!  (Steamships carrying slaves:  R.E.Conrad, World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986, p. 150, Karasch, Mary C., "The Brazilian Slavers and the Illegal Slave Trade 1836-1851." Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967, p.17 as capsulized from COMPLICITY,Farrow, Lang & Frank of The Hartford Courant, Ballantine Books, New York, 2005, p.126.)

Routinely the slave captains would burn the old wooden ships once they'd delivered their cargoes; plus burning avoided the nasty work of decontaminating a befouled ship and kept it from ever being used as evidence.  The ship's loss was just the cost of doing business just like the bribes paid to harbor agents, etc.

A British diplomat, in 1861, estimated that one single successful voyage could yield a 250% profit to the owners of an average slave ship.  Slaves in Africa routinely sold (at that point) for about $50, while the selling price in Cuba was more than $1,000.  

Calculations, according to this diplomat, included deductions for bribes fixed at $120 per slave, $25,000 for the ship, and $30,000 for the crew.  Captains were probably paid around $4,000.....enough to make a man rich. (Slave ship profits:  Howard, American Slavery, p. 236; British slave trade papers, vol. 47, Class A correspondence, Havana document #10.

Another predictable cost of doing business was the death of slaves during the Middle Passage; for accounting needs, this diplomat figured 10% of the slaves that originally embarked in Africa would die, but the actual rate would be much higher.  For instance, on its way to Cuba in 1857, one of the largest New York slave ships, the Haidee, lost 200 of its 1,100 slaves.

By Allen (Piewacket1861) He is member in the forum