The African Slave Trade ~ Profits and Prosperity

The Evening Post, the New York Tribune, and other anti-slavery journals in this city are discharging themselves of such a mass of special and minute information about the movements of slavers, and the activity of the slave trade in New York, New London, New Bedford and Boston, that it seems highly probable they are stockholders or secret agents in the business.

These ports, in which the slavers are fitted out belong to the most rabid anti-slavery States, and there can be no doubt that the vessels are the property of the Republicans in those several places. The profits of the trade are so great that they can well afford to contribute a hundred thousand dollars or more towards the election of an anti-slavery President [Lincoln]. From lists published a short time ago In the Post and Tribune, it appeared that eighty-six* slavers had Sailed from this port and the other ports we have mentioned, and from other cases since reported, the number cannot be now far short of one hundred sail. The net proceeds on a cargo of five hundred slaves are at the lowest estimate $100,000, which is only an average profit of $200 per head. The sum of the profits of the “blackbird fleet” at one hundred vessels would therefore amount to ten millions of dollars, and this estimate makes an allowance of five million for expenses and losses.

From facts and figures it is evident that it is a most profitable, prosperous business, and accordingly we are informed by the Post that steamships are about to give new activity to the traffic, and that they will be packed with some 3,000 negroes, whose aggregate prices would sum up about a million of dollars. One instance is mentioned by both our anti-slavery contemporaries, of 450 negroes being landed on the 30th of June from an American bark, and sold publicly in the streets of Trinidad at an average of $650 each. The gross proceeds of this cargo would be $292,500, which, for one hundred “blackbirds.” Would amount to upwards of twenty-nine millions of dollars, leaving a clear profit of from twenty to twenty-five million. It is added, in the Post, that the Governor of Trinidad received in this transaction $30,000 hush money.

Now, it may be fairly asked, how those who are not implicated or interested in the trade themselves can be so well posted in this matter of bribery, or make up the lists of slavers which have appeared in their journals? How can they be so minutely informed of the names of the vessels, their captains, the ports from which they have sailed, the number of slaves they land, the prices received for them, and the “hush money” to corrupt Governors, unless they are secret partners in the trade? If they are possessed of all this information, they must have known of the fitting out of every vessel before she sailed. Why did they not give information to the authorities before the bird had flown, unless they had an interest in concealing her flight till it was too late. Once these ships bare made their voyages and landed their cargoes, and the owners have realized fortunes, they or their agents may then inform the public that such operations were made, the legal evidence against those concerned being no longer in existence.

They can thus afford to be severe in their denunciations of the slave traffic, and call it “infernal,” having the prices of the Africans in their pockets, or snugly deposited to their credit in banks, and they can also afford to bleed copiously for the purchase of campaign documents to secure the election of Old Abe Lincoln. Like sleek Joseph Surface, in the “School for Scandal,” who zealously preached up sentiments of morality to his wild brother Charles at the very moment that he had Sir Peter Teazle’s wife concealed for a criminal purpose in his room, the anti-slavery loaders are most enthusiastic against the slave traffic at the very time that they are enjoying its profits and doing a thriving business In human flesh.

The New York Herald, August 10, 1860, Page 4
Transcribed by Bobby Edwards, September 19, 2018