Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Volume III)

Abstract

The story of the slave trade of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the two New England colonies of importance in this traffic, is set forth in such detail in the pages which follow that little need be said here. The significance of their connection with this traffic lies not in the amount of their importation, which, though probably larger than is generally realized, was insignificant as compared with that of the Southern colonies, but in the economic importance of their slave – carrying business and to a lesser degree of their commerce in rum, on which in its later years the slave trade rested.