Transcripts For CSPAN3 Slavery In Colonial New England 20240712

Museum. My name is dana anderson, and i have the pleasure of serving as the executive director of the ham Historical Society, whose home here is abraham heritage museum. And what a treat to welcome you all tonight, at the sold out program. Id like to thank on the behalf aboard a director and our small staff, i would like to thank you all for making us a part of your week. Id also like to thank gerard excuse me, are dusty for traveling across the country to be with us tonight. Id like to thank cspan, for filming us. So that others who cannot be with us, can see us on a later date. And thank you to the Abigail Adams Historical Society, and their board of directors, who offered us this wonderful opportunity and to partner with them as we did last year with their speaker edith gelles. Abigails rich history in this region inspires us every day. Thank you. The hang in Historical Society is focused like never before on its history. To understand all voices. We currently are in the midst of a campaign for the Benjamin Lincoln house. Which is our effort to purchase the home of hams American Revolutionary war hero at one 81 north street. Benjamin lincoln, received british sort of surrender and your town. Or as we like to tell our visiting schoolchildren, thats Benjamin Lincoln on the white boards. Featured so prominently and u. S. Capital. Benjamin lincoln also served him as a clerk, constable, and selectman. He also, came from a family that owns slaves. And to walk two blocks from here, theres a slave quarter in the attic of the lincoln home. Our next major exhibit here at the museum, generates out of the archeological finds from the nbcs green bush excavation. The artifacts of colonial a fishing wait on and allow away tell many stories. But the amazing story of the trial for which the common law gets its name. The massachusetts. We are privileged to work with the massachusetts tribe, a member of whom is with you tonight, to work on this exhibit, to be sure for the first time in the hang in Historical Society history, we present the voices correctly. But how do we do this . How do we tell the story of slavery . How do we tell the story of our native peoples we . Well and cola correctly . Its a joy to be here tonight with all of you. All the voices at the table, thank you for coming to tonights program. I would like to introduce michelle coffin, head of the board at the Abigail Adams Historical Society who will introduce our speakers. Thanks for coming tonight. applause welcome thank you so much for coming this evening. I want to thank the andrew and michael sincerely, and the rest of the ham Historical Society for again, partnering with us on a program that we are so happy to do this. And before i get into the introduction, i just want to tell you about another program that you might find of interest. On saturday, march 28th, from nine to one in plymouth at the spire center, the back roads of the south shore which is a consortium of local Historical Organization which the ham is snorkel society and abigail birthplace are part, are hosting our annual symposium. We have so many exciting anniversaries this year in massachusetts, that this supposedly this year will be focusing on those anniversaries. Such as obviously the 400th arrival adversary of the arrival of a mayflower. Hundred anniversary of the reaching of womens suffrage, an interesting lee locally, the 100th anniversary of up which will actually be the subject of the keynote. So booed the bill would whip, slip which is be our ss that work. So, the edges said, i am a member of the board of the adl Adams Historical society. And we, oversee, and are the stewards of the abigails birthplace, which was built in 16 85. Its in weymouth, its where Abigail Smith adams was born in 1744. She lived for the first 20 years of her life there, until she married john adams in 1764. She, she continued to be connected to this house throughout her life. She visited her parents lives, and she this is a place where her character and ideals were formed. So its very important to her. So we are in awe volunteer organization and, we try to continue our spirit by offering educational programs, we also offer seasonal tours and private tours. And if youd like more information, please check out our website at Abigail Adams birthplace. Org. So when i first joined the abigail birthplace a few years ago, despite knowing how prevalent slavery was in early new england, i was still shocked to discover that there were slaves in the home world at her anti slavery sentiments are wellknown. But her father, reverend william smith, have at least for slaves. Cato, tower, taunt, and phoebe. And these individuals were important to abdel adams early life. And we try to commemorate them and honor their memory by researching their lives and cooperating information about their lives into our tours, and also offering a program on early new england slavery every year. And so this year, we are very pleased to be able to have jarrett hardest in trying i wanted jerry to speak for us, since his first book came out which is on freedom slavery independence in 18th century boston. And this year, the stars have a line. So jared is an associate professor at western washington university, and he is the author of black lives native lands white worlds, history of slavery in new england. I welcome you to give jarrett award will. applause good evening everyone. Thank you for coming, thank you to the hangup Historical Society and everyone here. Displaces really swanky. Its really nice. And also, to the board of the Abigail Adams Historical Society, slash birthplace i was told to say slash birthplace at dinner, its a great honor to be here. And certainly thanks to the audience here tonight as well. This is now the seventh book topic given new england about this particular book. Almost every one of them has been sold out. As heartening as an arthur, but its heartening as someone who cares about the subject and wants this information out there. It is an educator as well. So it is my great honor to be here this evening, to talk about black lives, native lands, white worlds. A history of slavery in new england. This book, is the first general overview of slavery, in new england in nearly 80 years. The last book to do this was, Lorenzo Johnson drains, the knee grow and colonial in new england, published in 1942. There has been plenty of books since then, that explore slavery in new england, but theyre usually part of a larger histories of slavery in united states. Slavery in the american north, why focused historical study, im certainly guilty of doing that with my first book. This is a general overview, meant for kind of reading public. This evening, i wanted to discuss the purpose of writing this book. Or in other words, why i think we need this book in this moment. To give you a big overview of its contents, in doing so ill talk a bit about the history of slavery in new england generally. So why write this book at all, especially in this moment it came out last year in 2019. In the end, i envision this book as a conversation. Or rather, be me narrating a conversation. Thats been going on about the top last 25 years. You see about four different conversations going on in that time period. The first, theres been a massive outpouring of academic scholarship books, journal, articles things like that, by scholars on the topic of new england slavery. Much of that scholarship, and im totally guilty here, has been hyper specialized. Focusing on particular places, moments, themes, or sets of sources. These works, as excellent as they are, are sometimes make it difficult to see the bigger picture. And also, there is sometimes inaccessible, because of the way that academics right, but also things like pay walls. Articles that are very expensive to get out access to. The second conversation, is that, coming into this conversation are the libraries, archives, and historical societies across new england, who have identified that they own collections related to slavery. And made them widely accessible, via online publishing, traditional print publishing, but also sometimes something as simple as when these libraries digitize their catalogues, providing subject headings related to slavery. It makes the sources much easier to identify, and much more accessible. Third, add to that, a historical reckoning with slavery by leading institutions across new england. Such as Brown University report on slavery injustice. Now, that reckoning which started back in 2003, with brown, has extended to Historic Sites large and small. As we are here tonight. Other universities, and local state governments. Have all begun to dig into their own past and relationships with slavery. The finally the final piece of this is the work of community activists. Of public historians, local historians, independent researchers, have uncovered an incredible amount of source material on slavery, and publicized it in the most radically accessible way. On blogs, and things like that. In this forces us all, to acknowledge the regions and history in connection to slavery. So we have all these different conversations that have been going on for the past generation. Many different people talking to each other, with each other, at each other, past each other oftentimes. About the history of slavery in new england, the memory of that history, and the politics of that memory. In the book, i tried to bring together these conversations, and use the narrate a new more comprehensive yet accessible history of new england slavery. In short, i stand on the shoulders of people who have been doing in the trenches doing this work for the past 25 years. In that sense, i view the book, not only isnt in, its synthesizes 25 years of scholarship. But i think its also a beginning. Its provides a set of facts, a framework, and a starting point for future conversations. So, how do i narrate this conversation . These kind of four conversations that weve seen come to gather . Well, i discuss the lives of enslaved african Indigenous People in the age of. How their enslavement was instrumental to the colonization of the region, and how slavery and colonizations were to process designed to transform new england into a place that best serve the region whites of the population. Especially the most elite settlers. All three of those are tall orders in and out of themselves. But to do that in about 60,000 words, the editor told me no more than 60,000 words, that is about 100 and 775 pages, if you are wondering. Its not much at all. And to make it approachable to the reading public. These were no small tasks. Short length, make it readable, make sure its readable. Indeed, the hardest part writing this book was actually not what to research and right, i had 25 years of excellent source material from academics, researchers, and activists. But rather, how . How to create a book that is short, yet comprehensive, conference pensive yet readable, readable yet sensitive to the subject matter . And now the books published, and many of you bought copies let me know i pulled it off. The book is both a chronological and topical narrative that opens with the colonization of new england in the 16 twenties and 16 thirties. It ends in the early 19th century, with the process of emancipation. To some coherent along chronology, its a big history. The book uses one organizing theme, connections. I look at the connection between new england slavery, and slavery and slave societies and other parts of the americas. I look at the connection of slavery in new england, to the larger social economic and Political Development of the region. And finally, i look at how those two types of connections, connections to other slaves societies, connection to the development of new england, how those two connections shaped the lives of enslaved people and how enslaved people shape those connections. Its a tall order, but nevertheless, the book opens by examining the connection between slavery and colonization. Anyone whos familiar with the history of slavery in new england, theres like a mythical moment in history for the longest time, kind of narrating is the beginning of slavery in new england. It was in 16 38. In that year, the ship, the desire, sailed into boston harbour. And john is diary recorded the cargo on board the desire. And that was sugar, there was salt, and he also listed african captives. So 16 38, this is the starting date. Or about the 15 years or so, historians have really begin to challenge that as a foundational moment. In the history of slavery in new england. Theyve done and to a,s the first is pretty obviously there were unsafe people in new england before 16 38. We have direct eyewitness testimony from the early 16 thirties, the president s the presence of a slave africans. But the more important part, and where the scholarships really gone since, and where my book really tries to develop is not only studying the desire when it came back to new england. But the desire when it left. The desire, was based out of boston. And historians began looking into what did the desire ship to the west indies . To purchase the salt . And the sugar . And african captives . And in the whole of the desire, were a number of peak what captains. Between the year 16 36 and 16 38, the colonies of massachusetts, rhode island, connecticut went to war against the peacock people. The war yielded hundred of captives, many of them were enslaved locally. In a new england town, but we know a couple hundred at least were sold out of their colony. And so, there sold out of new england to the west indies where they are exchanged for african captains. We see here the direct connection between slavery and colonization and new england. Slavery served a dual purpose. First, its serve the purpose of removing Indigenous People from their land to open it for english settlement. What better way to remove people and to permanently tear them away, sell them away from their homeland. This allowed them for the rapid expansion of the new england colonies. Both large number of immigrants, they quickly expand into the interior, and that creates labor shortages. Especially in areas that they settled early. Major pour towns, boston, sale in places like that. And they need may labor. And the use african slave labor to supplement the labor force as a whole. So you see the process of, exchanging native captives for african captives, and that is the foundation of slavery in new england. Beginning in the 16 thirties. And its that process is gonna continue, exchanging captives indian captives for african captives, through the 16 seventies. As this cycle suggests central to, it was new englands connection to the west indies. Especially the growing plantation economies there, the english settled the west indies about the same time they settled in new england. 16 twenties. They arrived in barbados, a little bit better very quickly, these islands are completely colonized. And turned over to sugar cultivation. Almost the entire olive islands or. Theyre entirely strip the forest, in any piece of arable land is planted with sugarcane. And eventually they use in slaved africans to work those cane plantations. These islands, because they completely been stripped of their forest, theyre only growing sugar cane, they need food. They need provisions for that in slave labor force. They need supplies, timber for building, or for burning. They need livestock, for food, and for labor. And they turn to new england. As early as the 16 thirties, you see new england others selling the provisions to the west indies. Its used to fuel the plantation complex there. And in exchange, new england received sugar, and molasses, and and in the slave difference. It forms a symbiotic relationship between the two regions, between new england and the west indies, first barbados within the leeward antigua and later jamaica. Its kind of symbiotic relationship between the two. The symbiotic relationship extends beyond the economic. Its very much economic. But there is a considerable amount of Cultural Exchange as well. So some of these early graduates of harvard for example, where the sons of west indian top there is extensive in a marriage between merchant families in new england and planter families in the west indies. Further solidifying those economic ties. And, the new england colonies beacon borrowing from the slaves societies in the caribbean, to create their own systems of slavery here. So for example, massachusetts borrowed slave while customs governing direct slavery from barbados. And, most in slave people who arrived in the region and enslaved africans, actually spent time in the west indies before they arrived here. Sometimes theyre actually born there, sometimes they spend a couple months after writing on a slave ship. But they spent considerable amount of time on the caribbean. Were using this caribbean connection as a starting point, my book then turns and explores the language in slave people in new england. All told about 20,000 and slave africans arrived between the 16 thirties and the 1775. They came to comprise about 4 of the regions population. Now this is another place where they have to stop and kind of question the way in which the history of slavery in new england as been whether the ways historians have kind of push back against, or others have push back against the importance of slavery, is the demographic numbers. Oh its only 4 of the population, how important can actually be . Well theres two answers to that, the book takes up. The first is, when you look in specific regions, the puppy the unsafe population is significantly higher. So boston in the mid 18 century is about 12 to 15 and slave. Newport rhode island about 25 enslaved, so urban areas large and slate populations. But its not just the urban areas, which other historians would say. This is the mistake i made my first book, oh new england didnt matter. It mattered for boston. Researching this book, actually reveals it there is significant slave populations in other parts of the region as well. Rural areas. You feel massachusetts in 1750 had a population of 550 people. 50 of them enslaved. Then arrogance it countries, southern rhode island, Washington County it was called south county, home to large slave holding. s families who didnt own thousands of acres of grasslands, and they had vast herds of cattle on them, and they would get labor forces mostly women who would process the Dairy Products from the cow, to ship all over the place mostly to the west indies. So, you see Slave Holdings in the south county rhode island, of 40 50 60 enslaved people. So were talking rivaling plantations places like virginia. Highly localized, but then less significant slave holding, the lies that kind of 4 . The other piece of this though, the other way which i kind of pushback, is going back to that caribbean connection. While they were not large number of enslaved people in new england per se, the entire economy revolved around what historians called a business of slavery. The selling of provisions to the plantations, the transportation of enslaved people through the americas, but also transatlantic slave trade. Come to than a second. The entire economy revolved around enslavement. Historian of new england marc peterson, just published this giant book on boston. And i think he phrased it pretty well, when he said, boston was a Slave Society where most of the enslaved people lived elsewhere. And that is what we can say as a whole. We so, the demographics i push back against getting caught up in the demographics. For these reasons i just explain, but also the way which you see white new england is eagerly embrace slave trading by the late 17th century. They bristle a training especially from africa, but also within the americas. Theres a form of commerce. Rhode island, mcallen and rhode island became the center of slave trading and all british north america. If you take all the slave voyages from the colonial period, to all the colonies that became the united states, and he added them up, they would not equal those of rhode island. Rhode island is by far the center of the british north american slave trade. It actually rivals those of the west indies as well. So, it is an extensive slave trade central to the economy of of the colony. So, that is how i set up the second chapter, is pushing back against those demographic facts, to talk about the ways which insulate people arrived in new england and then push back against those narratives. But most important for that chapter, chapter two, i dedicate the bulk of it to exploring the lives of five individuals trafficked into new england. And their stories and experiences arriving in the region and being enslaved. I want to read a short passage from the book, about one of these some of you might be familiar with. Standing on the gallows, on a town common in cambridge massachusetts in september 1755, mark needle man who belong to the white captain john cardin of charleston, delivered a speech to large crowd awaiting his execution. Synced a hang, and a halfs dead body i might confesses crime in offered repentance, but also provide a short biography of his life. According to his confession, mark was born into slavery from barbados, sometime in the year 1725. You sold away from the island as a young boy, probably around the age of eight when he could be put to work. When he arrived boston he was sold to succession of masters, one a brass worker name mr. Seltzer. He was especially kind to mark, having quote learned him to read and quote educated him as tenderly as one of his own children. Salt are must not have been that kind however, as he has been sultana the master who in turn sold into john conman. Common put mark to work in a foundry on his property, as a skilled metalworker. Mark then toiled, working as an iron worker in boston and charleston, so he finally grew tired of abuse and murdered him. March story helps to illustrate an important trend in new england slavery, thats easy to overlook. When we discuss the slave trade to the region. We many and slave people who arrived in new england were actually born in the west indies. Traffic here of his children many times, and theyre natives of the caribbean. It shows that depth of the caribbean connection, and this is why its so important to delve into these individual lives. Its helps to prevent us from china stereotyping almost say were african or whatnot. It allows us to really see their background and kind of flesh them out and who they weres people. From there, the book has three chapters exploring the institution of slavery in new england, and the lives of enslaved people in the region. This chapters look at topics like slave law, slave labor. By the early 18th century, you could find enslaved people working in every part of the economy. Whether it was in domestic servitude, and household as women providing support for households, tremendous serving as valets and coachman, but also every industry. Every major colonial industry distilling, and slate people labor was central to it especially in urban areas like boston. But, economy as well, you see extensive use of an slave labor, and so its everywhere by the early 18th century deeply ingrained in the economy in the region. Also look at the lived experience of slavery and resistance to slavery. How enslaved people resisted. What allows me to narrate these stories kind of comes back to what i just told you about mark. Is that the records here are really rich the Court Records for example, the account books kept by merchants, and manufacturers, let private letters and diaries and give us newspapers they give us a really good sense of what life was like for enslaved people. For example, in one of the major collections for the colony of massachusetts, they are called the court files. All the court file papers for massachusetts as a whole. There are testimonies and depositions from enslaved people. Certainly, they are biased, testifying on a certain case as a witness or a plaintiff or defendant or Something Like that, but they are also talking about their everyday lives, who they encounter, who they know, what they know. You can hear their voices through these documents, and that is unique for understanding slavery in the englishspeaking world until the 19th century. The records here are really rich and you can find them everywhere. Anywhere you look in the records, you will find the presence of slavery in the documentary record. So that allows us to kind of narrate and tell the stories of enslaved people, what their lives are like, what they did for work, who they married, what the relationship between enslaved parents and their children were. You can see all of these facets in the documents, and the book takes those in turn. The final chapter of the book explores the American Revolution and its impact on slavery. The revolution, in many ways, provided the impetus for ending slavery in new england, for both ideological and economic reasons. More significantly, it created opportunities for enslaved people to strike out for their own freedom. Through activism, military service, or simply running away. The opportunities created by the revolution open up a whole world of possibilities and in terms of writing this book, this is perhaps my favorite part to research, this time to the revolution. My first book, i did not want to deal with the revolution. This one, i do. I found some amazing things. For example, if you look at the 1790 federal census, for the state of connecticut, in the 1790 federal census, they only list householders, who was the head of house, but they will list the race of the householder. If you look in the state of connecticut, you find all of the africanamerican men who were head of house in 1790 in connecticut, 20 of them were veterans of the continental army, and they could link their freedom to the service in the continental army. Its amazing. Disproportionately, africanamerican men in new england fought in the continental army. They served many of them linked to their freedom to that service. Integrated army, by the way. But of course, the American Revolution had two sides, and theres plenty of evidence of enslaved people joining the british as well. One of my favorite stories i found was of a man named pompey fleet. He belonged to a guy named thomas lee junior, who was a printer in boston, rapid patriot. Pompey fleets appearance in the records, he comes and goes in and out of the records for about a 25 year period, beginning in 1774 and leading up to the 1790s. The first is a runaway ad. Pompey has runaway. He did not run away from thomas fleet. He ran away from jail. He broke out of jail. As it turns out, many enslavers in new england, if they could not control their bondsmen and women, they put them in jail, sent them to jail. Let the town or the state or the colony deal with it. And that is what had happened to pompey, but he broke out. He disappears from the record again. His next appearance in the record is march 17, 1776. When the british army decamped. By that point, 3000 africanamericans were living in and around new york city, working for and with the British Military, and the British Military evacuates them. And one of the officers records all of the people of african descent who left. He records their names, their spouses, their ages, and how they came to end up in british service. Pompey fleet appears in this record. It is called the book of the gross is the name of the document. He appears and beside his name, it says evacuated with the army from boston. So we know he evacuated from the army with the british army, he went and lived in new york city for the duration of the war where he worked for a loyalist printer by the name of alexander robinson. After the war, he moved to halifax, nova scotia, and it appears he may have received some land. He continued working for alexander robinson, publishing the royal american gazette until 1786, when robinson decided he was going to leave and moved to Prince Edward island. Pompey once again disappears from the records, and then he appears again in 1791. Departing for sierra leone, which was a colony for loyalists to resettle in west africa. And circumstantial evidence i will preferencepompey was the first printer in british sierra leone. It is a really neat story. Because of stories like his and the stories of connecticut, that chapter on the American Revolution ends on a cautiously optimistic note. By the mid1780s, slavery had no legal standing in any of the new and going states. In theory. And slave people were rapidly becoming free. In theory. The regions slave trade had been abolished. In theory. And they were real possibilities for free people to become new members of the new united states. In theory. The epilogue of the book is much, much less optimistic and examines all of those in theories and puts them into context. Demonstrating the ways enslaved and recently free people were systematically denied their freedom, disenfranchised, segregated, and alienated from white society. One of the other opportunities i had in researching this book and in the process of studying this revolutionary era was a process historians have termed selling out. This is a process that began in the 1760s and last through the 1790s in which they were sold out of new england. Many of them were kidnapped. Every new england state by the mid1780s had passed laws against this, yet it continued. The work of abolitionist societies came to be really composed of trying to help people had been kidnapped and recover them to petition the government, to have them found and brought back. Significant numbers of enslaved and free black new englanders are sold out of the region. Many wind up in canada. There are many ties between new england and nova scotia, and the maritime economies in nova scotia could use that sort of enslaved labor that at work here in new england. And so, for example, if you look at loyalist newspapers from the 1780s and 1790, they also publish runaway slave ads. Occasionally the enslavers who took the ad would say they are trying to get home to massachusetts. The numbers are hard to get at, because if you look at the work of the providence abolition society, black civil rights activists, i would estimate as many as 1000 people were trafficked out of new england between the 1760s and 1790s. Remember, this is 20,000 people over the entire colonial period. A 20th of that population is trafficked out. This suggests lost promises of freedom. Not only do you have selling out, you have the rise of formal segregation. Segregating all the new and going states. The marginalization from the labor force after the revolution. You have the rise of racism and application of racist supposed Public Policy racist principles to Public Policy. Many people just leave knowing going entirely. Many black veterans just settle away from new england and never return home. Others struggle to make a living, drifting town to town look and for work and chased down by town authorities, worn out, as the process was called. As this was happening, what was happening in white new England Society . I have my second reading from the book here. As blacks left the region they struggled to eke out a living. The white population never faced consequences for the sins of slavery. Rather they enjoyed all the benefits of slave ownership little regard for those who suffered. Even some sympathetic whites or enslavers who realized the errors of their ways benefited. Poor whites, many of whom never owned slaves, embraced racism. It gave poor whites the psychological satisfaction of racial superiority. As slavery dwindled in new england, many whites, including those who owned slaves, began to define themselves as fundamentally different from other americans, especially those in the south. New england was free soil, so rich in liberty that slavery could never take deep root. Slavery, this line of thought went, was never important to the new mundt economy, was only practiced by a few wealthy families, and was a largely benevolent institution. What new englanders realize the errors of their ways during the American Revolution and abolished slavery forever. In crafting this narrative of a free new england, white absolved themselves of the sin of slavery. Such a belief system allowed for whites to shift the blame for black poverty away from the legacy of slavery and onto individual moral failings. Under this logic, if people cannot thrive in a land of liberty and opportunity, they had no one to blame but themselves. White new englanders, in short, made slavery and his legacies history. And it is that facet which reverberates across time to us today and where i am going to end this evening. The ability of white new englanders to totally distance themselves from slavery, help craft many of the myths about slavery in new england, ones youre probably familiar with. The myth that slavery never really took root in new england. That they quickly abolished slavery. Or perhaps worst of all, slavery never existed in new england. Or at least not in a form most americans would recognize as such. And my hope is that at the very least that this book is able to confront and help fight against those myths. Thank you so much. applause [applause] i am happy to take a few questions, but do wait for the microphone once i call on you. So, this one right here. Who were the earliest voices against slavery . And second, a more political comment, what is your view on reparations . Oh boy. [laughter] so, the first answer, the earliest antislavery activity you see, you are going to start to see some antislavery activity by the late 17th, early 18th century. There is always antislavery sentiment as long as slavery is present. That is the first thing. The second thing is that in terms of actual white sentiment against slavery, you begin to see this in the late 17th, early 18th century. Quakers are some of the earliest antislavery. But quaker antislavery has much more to do with the internal dynamics of the quaker community. The way in which the ability to own and hold other people as property to do with what you want with those people, the way that hurts the community. You see a very similar argument coming out of samuel stool, who was a puritan and prominent jurist in massachusetts. He writes a pamphlet in 1700 which argues against slavery. His concern about slavery is that enslaved people constitute in his words a quote, extra basket of blood. They can never be incorporated into the body politic. They are always foreign, always alien. That is why we have to get rid of slavery, because it will disrupt the community. So, a sort of abolitionism that we recognize as such, perhaps the enfranchisement of this is much more towards the revolution in the 1760s and 1770s. And one of the things i talk about, the weight so much is individual initiative. There is a community of abolitionist lawyers who help them file suits and petition and things like that. The question of reparations. Um, um, i am not comfortable answering it, first of all. My take on it, i draw from the the question is what constitutes reparations. That is the first question. I think about ta nahesi coatesessay. It will be redistributing public goods to help communities that have been disproportionately affected by the legacies of slavery. So, anyone who pays taxes would be paying into that. I think that is the road to go. I dont want to punt on the question. The other side of it though is, and where i am much more come to will talking about is on a and an as a historian and an educator, is these stories have to be told. They should be part of any interpreted programming at Historic Sites. Those stories deserve to be told this as much as those of the founding fathers. So, theres an education component to reparations which i think is an easier answer for me as a historian, which is to say yeah, these stories should be front and center, they should be present in history in a way that they have not been. And i think that is the first step in education. So, i have a question about the 20,000 that you estimate that were enslaved in new england. Im wondering if you base that on the 1765 slave census. Because my reading of that slave census is that it was only persons above 16 that were counted. Based on that when you think the number would be even higher than 20,000 if you include those who were 16 and below . Yes. Yes. So, about 20,000 people looking through the records, looking the trans atlantic slave database, corroborating that others arrived in new england. That is not accounted for people who were smuggled in and things are that. It also does not include the 100s of carolina people trafficked into new england as well. Probably a significantly larger number. Certainly 20,000 in the region. All of the censuses, either the slave census, the official one, they dramatically undercount the number of enslaved people. For example, as noted, a very large percentage of enslaved people in new england were children. The largest percentage of slaveholders in a place at boston were artisans, middleclass people, middling people as they would be called in the 18th century. And they would prefer to buy children, because they were cheaper, you can raise them in your household. You are taking on apprentices. You can fit them into that apprentice system, but they are property for life. By the time they are adults, they are worth a hefty sum of money and they are skilled and experienced. So a desire for children, you can see this in writing, requesting children from africa for his personal valet, he wanted a 12yearold boy. So yeah, so especially in the official records there is drastic undercounting. Also enslaved people were taxable property. And new englanders, they do not like paying taxes. We know this. It behooved them to hide enslaved people, to under claim. If you take a look, you can see this dramatically in boston, where the largest enslaved population lived in new england. There is a record taken, about over 1500 enslaved people in boston in 1752. You look at the slave census in 1754, and there is only like 900. What happened to 600 people in two years . It is dramatically undercounting. This is something that has led to this interpretation by historians if you look at official records, there is stuff happening, just look at the low number. There is dramatic undercounting. I am being very conservative with numbers in the book, because it is so hard to get at them. I have kind of a preamble question to your book. I was struck when youre talking about folks in the 16 30s enslaving people, just as people came here with skills. They came with the skill to make someone a slave. And they also came with permission as to what they could get away with. And, you know, so my question kind of is, without going back to egypt and greece and rome, and going to britain, the magna carta, the rest of it was it a permission that was granted for native peoples, for nonchristian peoples, for people with brown skin . Where did the skills come from, and what was the permission that was granted . There is a lot going on. That is a big question. Slavery largely disappears by 1400 or so, especially after the black death. That said, other forms of unfreedom still exist. They do have experience of using bound labor even in the absence of slavery. A few things happen in the 1500s that are key for understanding what is happening in new england. The first is englishmen begin traveling abroad. They go all over the world. And they begin writing about what they encounter and what they see. One of the places they spend a lot of time in is in the caribbean and latin america. By the 16th century when they visit a place like cuba or mexico or peru, they see large numbers of africans that the portuguese and spanish use. What this doesnt their minds is it links slavery to blackness, slavery to african, africanness. Through these travels, that is one of the things that happens. The other development that comes out of the 16th century and into the 17th century is the nature of colonization, of english colonization. It is largely private. We think about the virginia money, the plymouth company. These are private entities with broad powers to design their own laws. They can kind of do what they want within a certain reason. Remember, they are 3000 miles away from any royal oversight. So they can craft laws. So what happens in the colony of massachusetts, in 1641 they openly legalize slavery. Ironically, it is called the body of liberties. Article 91 deals with slavery. If you read it, you would first think they outlaw slavery because it says it bans, except. They list three exemptions. People who were captured in just wars. I. E. , nonchristians. Native people can be enslaved. People who are strangers. Ah, africans who are foreigners, they are strangers among us. Or those who are sold to us, is the third. So now you have just accounted for the ability to capture native people as slaves because they are captured in just wars. I will come back to that in a second. Two, for the facilitation of selling people into new england as slaves. Either african or indigenous. And those who are foreign or strangers, so, africans. So it reads like they outlawed slavery, but actually it is racially codified very early. You are basically saying people of european descent cannot be enslaved. Anyone else who comes or is captured in war can be. Where i will end the question is the idea of just wars. This is deliberate. One of the shocking things, i talk about that cycle of indigenous captives being sold for african captives. It struck me as just how open and deliberate and shameless this was. There is a letter from 1645 from emmanuel downing. He was John Winthrops brotherinlaw and a prominent magistrate. And in this letter, downing writes to winthrop and says we should start a war with the narragansett. They are causing problems. It will be a just war because they are not christian. We will be able to take them captive, and we will be able to sell those captives to the west indies and obtain africans. Because he is worried, by 1645, he is already worried that salem is running short of laborers. All the young people do not want to stick around. The moment they get opportunity to go and settle. They settle land. They move away from the town. So where do you get a labor force . You have to pay them. Wages are high in this context. So you bring in africans essentially 20 africans for one white man was this ratio he worked out in terms of provisions. A much cheaper system of labor. Open, advocating for this. Winthrop shuts it down, but any sort of hint of diplomatic issues with Indigenous People, you are seeing these letters all of a sudden, people wanted to capitalize, to see an opportunity to capture Indigenous People to sell to bring back. I promised i was going to end there, but im going to add one more thing. This cycle continues until king philips war in 1675, 16776, when thousands of indigenous are sold out of new england. Upwards of 2500 people are captured and sold to the west indies. Most of them are actually sold by the colony of massachusetts, not by private merchants, but by the colony trying to recover costs for the war. So many indigenous captives are being sold out of new england to barbados into jamaica that both of those colonies ban the further importation of indigenous new englanders. They are afraid there are so many warriors coming in that they are going to cause a slave rebellion. So they ban the further importation of indigenous warriors from new england. This tells you the scope and the volume of that exchange. My apologies for going on forever. But yes. Wait for the mic. Are you aware of any changes that are happening to textbooks in history, and has anyone been contacting you about trying to update and present the real stories so that children will have a better idea of what really happened . For me personally, no. I know theres a push to get my book in high schools from the press, which has looked into that option. Most of my work has been on the public history front. So, i have done quite a bit of work with old north and a few other groups. And they have begun to move this story of slavery to the front and in their educational and interpretive programs. I think at some point the dam is going to break and youre going to start to see these changes happening in textbooks and things like that. One of the remarkable things in this book is how many people come up and say i never learned the story. I did not know this. So, i hoping that this is a conversation that is going on. I think of it as a larger conversation, and i hope that dam is about the break and we see it spread all the way down into Elementary School curriculum. Yes. What made you become so interested in this topic . It is a long story, but i will try to keep it short. It actually started as fairly pragmatic. Ever since i was an undergraduate, i knew i wanted to study history and i became trusted in colonial American History and the history of slavery. I always thought because i was interested in that i could be a historian of the south and west indies. I get to Boston College and i realized graduate school takes a long time. You want to be a little more pragmatic. I had this idea of comparing these different colonies, and i had to learn a couple Foreign Languages and things. I just realized i did not want to be in graduate school for a decade. And so, i started looking, and i did some reading and i realized there is not a vast amount of literature on slavery in new england. There had not been anything on boston. There is history of slavery in new york, philadelphia, but why not boston . So i said i will take a look. At that point when my graduate advisors at Boston College informed me about the files i mentioned, this massive collection of court file papers. He said it is really hard to navigate but take a look. Lo and behold i found all these testimonies and depositions of enslaved people in boston, about 300 of them. I had never seen that before in an englishlanguage record. I had read about it in spanish and portuguese, but never in the english records. Not only could i now write a history of slavery in boston but Say Something about enslaved people and their lives more generally. So i became very excited about it. And they ended up writing the first book. This book in particular came out a frustration in writing that book. When i embarked on the research for the first book, i wanted a short readable history that would give me an overview. So i would have a reference work or something. There are a couple books that kind of work but they were particularly short and did not have any further reading or bibliographies, and that is what i wanted to do. This came out both as kind of a pragmatic concern, but when i got into the actual process of writing it, i realize we are kind of at a crossroads with all these different people talking to each other. And in the process of writing the first book, i met so many other scholars working on scholarly in new england, so many historians, educators, activists who were doing this work. And i felt this is bigger than just my kind of scholarly needs. This warrants a public conversation. Are there any other questions . One more. [applause] sure. In your research, did you come across anything specific to hingham . Um, not i mean, you see all these towns and records and things like that when youre looking at censuses, but i did not come across anything in particular to hingham. Although my first book as i learnrf from michelle, i ended up talking about some slave owners in hingham. Hingham was part of the county. A couple of slaveowners who were from here. Great. Well, thank you all for coming. [applause] [captions thank you all so much. For those of you who would like to meet jared, he will be up here signing books. You can have your bookplate personalized and we will deliver that to you over the weekend when the books arrive tomorrow. If we could form a line here in front of the podium. music music music