Rhode Island First to Ban Slavery in New World
General Court of Commissioners held at Warwick, May 18, 1652:
Whereas, it is a common course practiced amongst English men to buy negers, to that end they have them for service or slave forever: let it be ordered, no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten years or until they come to bee twentie four years of age, if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge with the liberties of this Collonie.
This is the first law banning slavery in North America. Unfortunately the law was largely ignored (see below), but in February 1784, the Rhode Island Legislature passed a compromise measure for gradual emancipation of slaves within Rhode Island. All children of slaves born after March 1 were to be “apprentices,” the girls to become free at 18, the boys at 21. By 1840, the census reported only five African Americans enslaved in Rhode Island.
In Rhode Island, until 1750, the slave population was directly related to local participation in the Atlantic slave trade. Like all northern British colonists, Rhode Islanders held and traded slaves, but unlike other northern colonies Rhode Island held a significantly higher number of slaves and dominated the British North American trade in slaves. In 1750, 10% (3,347) of the colony’s population was enslaved, compared to 2% (4,075) in Massachusetts, 3% (3,010) in Connecticut, 2% (550) in New Hampshire, 7% (5,354) in New Jersey, and 2% (2,822) in Pennsylvania.47 In the North, only New Yorkers held more slaves with 14% of their total population enslaved. Furthermore, between 1726 and 1750, 123 slave ships disembarked from Rhode Island and carried 16,195 African slaves to the Americas; in comparison, only 36 slave ships left from all the other New England colonies carrying just 4,575 slaves. New Yorkers sent just three slave ships carrying only 407 African slaves.
2009 Slavery, Emancipation and Black freedom in Rhode Island, 1652-1842, Christy Mikel Clark-Pujara – University of Iowa
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