COMPLICIT NORTH
NEW HAMPSHIRE
New England was a slave society. The first African slaves arrived in New England in 1638. When John Campbell published New England's first newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, in 1704, he ran ads from slave merchants. Benjamin Franklin's brother sold slaves at his Boston tavern.
To the Puritans, owning slaves was a symbol of wealth and prestigue. Ministers, doctors, and the merchant elite owned slaves. When Eleazar Wheelock founded Dartmouth College, slavery was at its height in New England. Wheelock had numerous slaves.
Rather than using slaves as primarily agricultural labor, the North used slaves in different ways to aligh with its economy. enslaved men and women in the North often performed household duties in addition to skilled jobs. Slaves toiled in spermaceti factories, on whalers, in shipyards and as house servants. Author James Zug, who has written about Wheelock's slaves, posits that Dartmoth was literally built with slave labor.
More than 16,000 people in the five New England colonies (about 3 percent of the total population) lived in chattel bondage. Most of the slaves in New Hampshire were held at the port cities, especially Portsmouth.
A recent archaeology project discovered a slave burial ground in a developed part of the city, paved over by progress. 200 slaves are estimated to be buried in unmarked graves there. This is an example of systemic racism in New Hampshire.
Enslaved people where held in Concord, Rye, Dover and other locations in New Hampshire.
The most desirable slaves in New Hampshire were children, who could be 'trained'. Imagine, separating children from their families at a young age to be owned as slaves in the North.
This practice went on for over a hundred years in New Hampshire, and was widely accepted by the social political, educational and religious elite. Profits were made on the backs of these enslaved people. How is New Hampshire going to reckon with this? Did your family inherit slave profits?
From Owner to Trader
New England slave traders dominated the lucrative international slave trade. As Irish immigrants began to replace the slave labor force in the granite state, slaves were less necessary, and were liquidated into labor markets that still relied on slave labor, primarily South America and the southern US.
But slave profits still continued to roll in as the slave trade continued. Captain George Walker of Portsmouth was a professional slave trader. Walker imported 32 “negroes” on the ship Anne in 1740 from St. Christopher in the West Indies. John Maffit, of Portsmouth, one of the richest man in New Hampshire was a slave trader.
As a port city in one of the few colonies that did not impose a tariff on slaves, Portsmouth was a major entry-point for slave ships in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. There, after enduring the horrors of the Middle Passage, enslaved Africans would first set foot on American soil. Signer of the US Constitution and Revolutionary War Gen. William Whipple was a slave owner.
Portsmouth was a slave auction site. Slaves were auctioned right off the ships at Long Wharf or brought to one of the local inns, such as Stoodley's Tavern on Congress Street.
In his biography "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" he described his 1842 trip to Pittsfield. In it, he recalls that despite his invitation from local abolitionists, his reception was quite chilly. Even his hosts, subscribers to The Liberator, refused to give him a ride in their carriage. Finding his way on foot to the town hall for the Sunday morning lecture he remarked, “There was no one to introduce me and I proceeded with my discourse without introduction. I held my audience till twelve o’clock – noon – and then took the usual recess of Sunday meetings in country towns, to allow the people to take their lunch. No one invited me to lunch, so I remained in the town hall till the audience assembled again, when I spoke till nearly three o’clock, when the people again dispersed, and left me as before.” He was turned away at the local tavern due to what he called “colorphobia.”
Frederick Douglass goes to New Hampshire
Historical Amnesia and Hypocrisy
New Hampshire school children have been taught that their hands are clean from the sin of slavery. What a twisted message to teach children that blaming others for your sins can heal your sins. It might make you feel good, but what are the practical results? Even the Portsmouth Black Heritage trail sugar-coats the horrors of slavery, calling Africans, captured and trafficked against their will "servants". Instead of calling it a slave auction, the docks are euphamistically called an "entry point." New Hampshire has shown its racist views for centuries, for example, The Noyes Academy, the first racially integrated, founded by New England was founded in 1835, but destroyed soon after by white locals after the city voted to destroy it. When are we going to be honest? It is time to acknowledge the deep roots of slavery and its impact on racist views in New Hampshire.
