June 13, 2024: Ocean State Histories: The Slave Trade

[250 years ago this week, Rhode Island banned the slave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littlest state’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean State histories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learn more about Rhode Island!]

On two significant layers to Rhode Island’s groundbreaking 1774 Act.

I wrote at length about the history of the slave trade and slavery more broadly in Rhode Island for this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, so in lieu of a full first paragraph I’ll ask you to check out that column and then come on back for further thoughts.

Welcome back! I’ve written a good bit over the years, here and elsewhere, in relationship to various contexts, about how and why we need to better remember that slavery existed throughout the colonies at the time of the Revolution. While that was true for every New England colony, it was doubly true for Rhode Island given Bristol’s central role in the slave trade (a principal subject of that Post column). Which makes it that much more important and impressive that it was Rhode Island which became the first colony to ban the slave trade, and which just as importantly did so, as this article on the 1774 Act notes by quoting a Journal of the American Revolution article from historian Christian McBurney, by “addressing the evils and inconsistencies of slavery as a whole, and not just the slave trade.” Given that fifteen years later the U.S. Constitution itself would only address the slave trade, and not slavery as a whole, Rhode Island here really modeled a far more sweeping and inclusive vision of community.

There were various factors which contributed to that moment and model, but certainly a central one was the colony’s large Quaker community. The most direct predecessor to the 1774 Act was a 1772 formal denunciation of slavery by the Rhode Island Society of Friends, a denunciation co-authored by colonial leader Stephen Hopkins (who would also draft the Preamble to the 1774 Act). And just a few months, Hopkins an authored an even more impassioned attack on slavery in a document freeing his own enslaved person Saint Jago, writing that “keeping any of his rational Creatures in Bondage, who are capable of taking care of, and providing for themselves in a State of Freedom, is altogether inconsistent with his Holy and Righteous Will.” Hopkins would go on to sign the Declaration of Independence on behalf of Rhode Island, reminding us that while slaveholding was frustratingly part of the identities of too many American Framers, opposition to slavery was likewise part of the Revolutionary moment, and nowhere more potently than in Rhode Island.

Last Rhode Island history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?