The
international trade in African slaves was something that went on for
many years. In different timeframes it, and the struggle to suppress
it, manifested itself in very different ways. For instance, in early
years, two of the primary ports for such trade were Newport and
Bristol, in the Narragansett Bay of Rhode Island, but in later years,
after the trade has ostensibly been outlawed, the fitting out of
negrero slave vessels became more or less the property of Portland,
Maine, Boston, Massachusetts, and the harbor of New York City
(especially the harbor of New York City). To find out what the
situation was in a particular timeframe, click on the indicated file.
If you download this Acrobat PDF file to your home computer, you will
be able to add your own notes to your own copy of this file by use
of your freebie Acrobat Reader:
The Early Years of the Trade
The Trade from 1700 to 1737
The Trade from 1738 to 1758
The Trade from 1759 to 1774
The Trade during 1775 and 1776
The Trade during 1777 and 1778
The Trade from 1779 to 1782
The Trade during 1783
The Trade from 1784 to 1787
The Trade from 1788 to 1791
The Trade from 1792 to 1799
The Trade during 1800 and 1801
The Trade from 1802 to 1804
The Trade during 1805
The Trade from 1806 to 1813
The Trade from 1814 to 1817
The Trade during 1818 and 1819
The Trade from 1820 to 1824
The Trade from 1825 to 1830
The Trade from 1831 to 1834
The Trade from 1835 to 1839
The Trade during 1840 and 1841
The Trade from 1842 to 1848
The Trade from 1849 to 1856
The Trade during 1857 and 1858
The Trade during 1859 and 1860
The Trade during 1861
The Trade from 1862 to 1863
The Trade from 1864 on
Venture Smith and the International Slave Trade
Read about the life of a person who became entangled in the international slave trade.
Olaudah Equiano and the International Slave Trade
Is part of Olaudah Equiano's excellence as a human being -- that he was able to con his way all the way into human dignity?
"Amazing Grace" and the International Slave Trade
The
life of the Reverend John Newton. He wrote this song about his
conversion and forgiveness, which was something that had happened
before he became an international slave trader. When he retired from
the trade, apparently he did so merely for reasons of personal health.
Only later did he decide that the slave trade was wrong -- and of
course he never offered to give back any of the money he had made by
buying and selling human beings.
Friend Thomas Clarkson and the abolition of the International Slave Trade
The life of a Quaker activist.
The Mayflower
At a critical juncture in our Civil War, Nathaniel Hawthorne tried to make out that the Mayflower
had been, after it had dropped off the white settlers at Plymouth, a
negrero slave vessel. That wasn't true and even beyond that,
Hawthorne didn't have any indication that it might be true --
he was just making up this story out of whole cloth. Why
would he have attempted to pull a stunt like that at such a critical
point in our nation's history? (By the way, in England
the "may-flower" is the flower of the hawthorne tree.)
The Mayflower Bastards
Not all the folks on board the Mayflower
were "Brownist" members of the disaffected English congregation that
had chartered the vessel. Some of the passengers were children who had
been put on board in order to get rid of them, because they
were illegitimate -- and it was considered embarrassing, even
shameful, to have such kiddies around, in tight little England.
Out of sight, out of mind -- so ship them off to a New World, and let
the little bastards fend for themselves!
Astronomy
Many
people are unaware that besides being interested in a whole bunch of
other things, such as bugs and birds and plants, Henry David Thoreau was also
vitally interested in astronomy -- he lived, after all, only a few miles
as the crow flies from a world-class center for astronomical research,
the Harvard Observatory on Concord Avenue in Cambridge.
John Burroughs
Henry
Thoreau was a nature writer, John Burroughs was a nature writer. Nature
writer, nature writer. Alla same as no difference, huh?
Dueling
Does
"duellum" have anything to do with "bellum"? --Here's an answer from an
expert, Henry David Thoreau, who was related to a duelist.
Some select sea-serpent sightings
Some select sea-serpent sightings -- and what Henry David Thoreau had to say about such observations.
Eagleswood
A utopian social experiment in New Jersey, and how Henry David Thoreau was involved.
The Concord School of Philosophy
What's that funny-looking barnlike building in the back yard of the Louisa May Alcott house in Concord?
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Was this man a source of inspiration for the creation of good schools?
Northampton, Massachusetts
In
the 19th Century Northampton, Massachusetts, and the village of
Florence next door, was the home for a great social experiment,
specializing in silk manufacture and the growing of decent human
beings. This experiment collapsed.
The Reverend Robert Collyer
Why, when Henry David Thoreau visited Chicago, did he go knock on the door of a local Unitarian reverend?
Unitarianism
How did Unitarianism originate?
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
How
did Nazism originate? How far back can we trace "Proto-Nazism"? What
were the characteristic racist and antisemitic beliefs of the
Proto-Nazi, and what is the cultural soil in which they were nourished?
Did these roots extend outside of Germany? Did any of these roots
extend even to America? Might we, for instance, if we thought about
this hard enough for long enough, be able to trace some of the roots of
the Third Reich back to attitudes of individuals who were alive during
the lifetime of Henry David Thoreau? -- Who might such individuals have
been and what were their prescient 19th-Century attitudes? Were there
distant early warning signs which it would have been better if we had
heeded? Let's "walk back the cat" on this one!
cholera
There
were a number of mass die-offs during Thoreau's lifetime, due to the
Asiatic cholera. Nobody could figure it out -- and then they did.
The small pox
The
history of the small pox (variola), and of variolation and vaccination.
The smallpox is now "extinct" except in military bioweapons
labs, and your vaccination has therefore been allowed to get way
out of date -- it won't be at all difficult for them to kill you.
Socrates Plato Aristotle
From
time to time people compare Bronson Alcott with Plato, and at least
once somebody has said "As Plato was to Aristotle, Waldo Emerson was to
Henry Thoreau." What does that sort of comparison amount to?
The Famous Quaker Painter, Benjamin West
When is a famous painter not a Quaker?
The "Straw Towns" of New England
When
Britain imposed a trade blockade upon Napoleonic Europe, we needed to
learn how to make our straw bonnets locally as we could no longer
readily import them from such foreign climes as Livorno, Italy.
Various stories have sprung up, as to how this copying of foreign straw
weavings originated in New England.
"Walking back the cat" on the technologies used here
Just
for fun, I've been "walking back the cat," as they say at the NSA, on
the various technologies used in the production of the Kouroo
Contexture. --What technologies are we using for this, what
technologies were necessary preliminaries for these, what
infrastructure had previously to be erected, etc... As you will see,
I've taken this all the way back to Day One.
Thomas Paine
Tom
Pain came to the New World and reinvented himself as Thomas Paine. Fast
forward a few centuries and now it is the 4th of July of 2006: despite
the fact that nothing much actually happened on July 4, 1776, we've
decided to celebrate this day as our national B'day. Well, OK America,
here's your birthday present this year, in the form of a bio of our
chiefest publicist, Thomas Paine -- a man whose writings we
temporarily admired and a man whom we later came to greatly
despise. Where are his bones?
Various Declarations of Independency
Read about what came before the Declaration of Independence, versus what came afterward.
Campaign finance reform
What can we learn about what is wrong with us today, from Italian Fascism?
Chicago, Illinois
What can you make from three-sevenths of a chicken, two-thirds of a cat, and half a goat?
Ota Benga
Could it be true, that we once exhibited a pygmy in a cage with the monkeys in a zoo?
Alvan Fisher
Alvan Fisher was a landscape painter.
A Semisweet History of Chocolate
What can the history of chocolate teach us about slippery slopes?
(If you fall in a hot vat of chocolate, don't yell "Hot Chocolate!")
John von Neumann
How do you optimize 2+2=5?
Milton Bradley
Through
the efforts of the Reverend John Bunyan and the game manufacturer
Milton Bradley (with some assistance from Seneca the Younger, Sir
Thomas More, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Cole, and Louisa May Alcott), we
have become infatuated with the conceit that our lives are like a
journey.
Mr. Herbert Spencer
How is it that America went for Social Darwinism the way a chimp dives into a banana split?
Herbert Wendell Gleason
An early visualizer of Thoreau materials.
Edwin Forrest
The John Wayne of Thoreau's generation was an authentic American clown.
Communitarianism
Various
attempts to form special social communities (utopias) during Thoreau's
generation: Bronson Alcott's "Consocial Family" at Fruitlands, the
Northampton Association for Industry and Education, Eagleswood, the
Ursuline convent, the Paulist Fathers, The Kingdom, etc.
Paul Revere
Founding father Paul Revere, one of the Huguenots in the history of Concord, Massachusetts.
Dr. William Andrus Alcott
Amos
Bronson Alcott's cousin, Dr. William Andrus Alcott, was heavily engaged
in the advice business. One of the health things he did was prepare
treatises of advice for young people, as to how they should live their
lives. Now, I cannot establish that Henry Thoreau ever saw any of this
genre of literature, but it was certainly available to him and in fact
there has been a school of thought that suggested that Thoreau's
didactic writings amount to such treatises of advice as to how people
should live their lives. Therefore, we should at least take a look for
similarities, if any.
barberry
The plant is now rare, because it conflicts with our cereal crops.
The Parker House
The Parker House in beautiful downtown Boston has become our Omni Parker Hotel.
The Reverend Thomas Chalmers