Emancipation of the Jews
Many European countries, around 1800, legally emancipated the Jews opening additional economic and academic opportunities. However, many families continued their long-standing economic activities and some even became more specialized in financing, including their system of network banking.[566]
The members of the Congress of Wilhelmsbad popularized the emancipation of the Jews. A Christian, Wilhelm von Dohm completed his book, Upon the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews in August 1781, eight years before the French Revolution. His book accelerated the progress of pro-Semitism, as opposed to anti-Semitism, throughout Europe. Dohm wrote his book under the tutelage of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), a German Jewish philosopher whose ideas fomented Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) in Europe. Dohm’s book greatly influenced the new Jewish cause.[567] Mendelssohn’s descendants include Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn (composers) and Joseph Mendelssohn the founder of Mendelssohn & Company, a private bank in Berlin, Germany in 1795. The alleged goal was universal liberty and equality for all, including the Jewish minority. However, in the process, its proponents intended to destroy religion, morality, and the reverence for marriage. Using the authority of the state, they would coerce parents to relinquish the responsibility for the education of their own children.[568]
Moses Mendelssohn was friends with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic who was an influential voice for the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation. In 1771, Freemason officiators initiated Lessing into Freemasonry in the lodge “Zu den drei Rosen” in Hamburg. Although he defended the faithful Christian’s right of freedom and thought, he argued against the idea of “revelation” and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Lessing defined the concept of the religious “Proof of Power:” How can miracles continue as a base for Christianity when we have no proof of miracles? He said that one could not use questionable historical “truths” to prove metaphysical truths (such as God’s existence).[569]
Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz acknowledged the immense importance of Wilhelm von Dohm’s work, which characterized Christians as cruel barbarians and Jews as pitiful martyrs. As a result, contemplative individuals began to consider the Jewish question. Count Honoré Mirabeau, the French Statesman and key individual in the preparatory events of the French Revolution, became friends with Dohm while serving as ambassador in Berlin. Dohm introduced him to several disciples of the recently deceased Mendelssohn who convinced him to speak up in favor of the Jews. Consequently, Mirabeau published Mirabeau’s Letters During His Residence in England, which was ideologically similar to Dohm’s book. In 1781, Anacharsis Clootz, the future author of La Republique Universelle, wrote his pro-Semitic pamphlet called Lettre sur les Juifs.[570] Mayer A. Rothschild, with more influence, money and power would help “sweep away the chains of Jew Street” and advocate for Jewish enfranchisement as free citizens of Frankfurt rather than highly regulated serfs.[571]
James H. Billington wrote, “Mirabeau popularized the Illuminatist term ‘revolution in the mind’ and introduced the phrase ‘great revolution’ and apparently invented the words ‘revolutionary, counter- revolution, and counter-revolutionary.”[572] He also adapted many of his “revolution” concepts directly from the Illuminati examples.[573] Mirabeau, when discussing France’s emerging revolutionary political organizations, ostensibly “to regenerate” the nation, skillfully utilized language generally associated with
established religion, possibly to transfer longtime loyalties from God to a synthetic institution. He referred to the National Assembly as the “inviolable priesthood of national policy.” By thus sanctifying a manufactured institution into a holy entity, “a political gospel,” men, supported by their families, would be more willing to sacrifice and spill their blood in the planned warfare of future generations. In 1788, because of his experiences in Berlin, Mirabeau, “a founding father of the revolutionary tradition,” declared that Prussia was an appropriate place for a potential revolution, led by the German Illuminists. [574] HefirstusedthewordrevolutionaryonApril19,1789,andbythefall,thewordwasinpopularuse.[575] Mirabeau, while exploiting religious terminology, was a major collector of literary pornography.[576]
Mirabeau and Henri Grégoire, who people referred to as the Abbe Grégoire, passed edicts in the National Assembly in 1791 mandating a Jewish emancipation. The Abbe Grégoire was a French Roman Catholic priest, a constitutional bishop of Blois, a city in central France, and a Jesuit-educated revolutionary leader. The statutes that Mirabeau and the Abbe Grégoire passed forbade the exclusion of Jews from Masonic lodges. This legislation was the direct result of the resolutions passed by the Masonic Congress of Wilhelmsbad, purportedly attended by and a group of Jews wishing to embrace Freemasonry. The Congress also decided to relocate the headquarters of illuminized Freemasonry to Frankfurt, dominated by Jewish bankers such as the Rothschilds, the Oppenheimers, the Wertheimers, the Schusters and others. Members of the Frankfurt Lodge implemented the massive plan for world revolution. In 1786, at a Masonic Congress, two French Freemasons allegedly plotted to kill Louis XVI and Gustav III of Sweden.[577]
Prince Wilhelm of Hesse, who some allege was a co-founder of the Illuminati, was a nephew of the King of Denmark, and a brother- in-law to the King of Sweden. Gustav III (1746-1792) was also a devotee of the French enlightenment ideas. In 1772, Gustav had dictated a new oath of allegiance, which absolved the oath takers from their allegiance to the Estates of the Realm (four different divisions) and bound them to obey “their lawful king, Gustav III.” Gustav followed the path of other sovereigns of the “age of enlightenment.” He reformed the criminal justice laws, introduced new economic policies, and proclaimed limited religious liberty.
In 1789, King Gustav III persuaded the Swedish Parliament to begin issuing debt-free paper money called riksdalers through the Swedish National Debt Office. The private bankers, who had been making a tidy profit, were not happy about this turn of events. Just three years later, on March 16, 1792, Jacob Johan Anckarström and his co-conspirators surrounded King Gustav III at a dinner party and Anckarström shot him. The king did not die immediately but lingered until March 29. Thereafter, the Anckarström family changed their name to Löwenström. During Sweden’s war with Russia, the government printed too much currency. Warfare-associated inflation destroyed the concept of debt-free currency by 1834. When a government issues debt-free currency, it must also control the quantity and circulation.
Many countries have banished the Jews. According to one author, Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, the officials of several countries have banished Jews at least forty-seven times, in a period covering 1,000 years – Mainz, 1012; France, 1182; Upper Bavaria, 1276; England, 1290; France, 1306; France, 1322; Saxony, 1349; Hungary, 1360; Belgium, 1370; Slovakia, 1380; France, 1394; Austria, 1420; Lyons, 1420; Cologne, 1424; Mainz, 1438; Augsburg, 1438; Upper Bavaria, 1442; Netherlands, 1444; Brandenburg, 1446; Mainz, 1462; Mainz, 1483; Warsaw, 1483; Spain, 1492; Italy, 1492; Lithuania, 1495; Portugal, 1496; Naples, 1496; Navarre, 1498; Nuremberg, 1498; Brandenburg, 1510; Prussia, 1510; Genoa, 1515; Naples, 1533; Italy, 1540; Naples, 1541; Prague, 1541; Genoa, 1550; Bavaria, 1551; Prague, 1557; Papal States, 1569; Hungary, 1582; Hamburg, 1649; Vienna, 1669; Slovakia, 1744; Moravia, 1744; Bohemia, 1744; and Moscow, 1891.[578]
Professor Jesse H. Holmes, in The American Hebrew, a weekly journal first published in New York city,
on November 21, 1879, wrote, “It can hardly be an accident that antagonism directed against the Jews is to be found pretty much everywhere in the world where Jews and non-Jews are associated. And as the Jews are the common element of the situation it would seem probable, on the face of it, that the cause will be found in them rather than in the widely varying groups which feel this antagonism.”[579] Professor Jesse H. Holmes (1864-1942) was a Quaker philosophy professor at Swarthmore College (1900-1937). F. de Sola Mendes and Philip Cowen, of the American Hebrew Publishing Company, published The American Hebrew and invited educators, including Professor Holmes, to contribute to their Religio-Literary Symposium.[580]
In 1791, the French National Assembly issued an edict, “The National Assembly, considering that the conditions requisite to be a French Citizen, and to become an active citizen, are fixed by the constitution, and that every man who, being duly qualified, takes the civic oath, and engages to fulfill the duties prescribed by the constitution, has a right to all the advantages it insures; Annuls all adjournments, restrictions, and exceptions, contained in the preceding decrees, affecting individuals of the Jewish persuasion, who shall take the civic oath...”
Frankfurt was one of the first cities that emancipated the Jews and gave them civil rights. His superiors appointed Baron Karl Theodor von Dalberg, a high-ranking member of the Illuminati[581] and the Prince- Bishop of Mainz, as the sovereign of Frankfurt city officials incorporated the city into the new French- dominated Confederation of the Rhine. Many people referred to Dalberg as the emancipator of the Jews. The author Amos Elon wrote, “He was well disposed towards the Landgrave and he seems to have had some business dealings with Rothschild in the past.” When Dalberg needed cash for political or diplomatic uses, he could always go to Rothschild when the other bankers refused to lend him money.[582] Rothschild evidently approved of Dalberg’s political and diplomatic uses of the money he lent him. Perhaps Rothschild even suggested the ways in which Dalberg should promote certain programs, including the emancipation of the Jews.
Masonic officials allowed the Jewish Freemasons to remain in the local lodges. On February 8, 1811, Dalberg declared the Edict of Emancipation stating that all Jews and their descendants living in Frankfurt would have the same privileges and rights as other citizens. It did not take effect until December 28, 1811. [583] For this, the Jews paid him 440,000 florins, financed by Mayer, in consideration of which Dalberg abolishedtheannualprotectiontaxof22,000florins.[584] MayerRothschildhelped“sweepawaythechains of Jew Street” and advocated for the “Jews’ enfranchisement as free citizens of Frankfurt” instead of highly regulated serfs.[585]
New England Slave Trading
In 1602, the parliament of the Netherlands granted a charter to the Dutch East India Company for a twenty- one year monopoly to implement colonial activities in Asia. The Company was the world’s first multinational corporation in addition to being the first company to issue stock. It held governmental powers and could negotiate treaties, wage war, imprison and execute convicts, coin money, establish colonies and manipulate the host country’s military to accomplish their exploitive objectives. Between 1602 and 1796, the Company dispatched about a million Europeans to engage in the Asian trade. The controlled 4,785 ships and transported over 2.5 million tons of Asian goods. Conversely, all of Europe’s commerce combined employed only 882,412 people (1500 to 1795). The Company’s main competitor, the British East India Company, had 2,690 ships and one-fifth the amount of goods. The Dutch East India Company remained in business for almost 200 years, finally going bankrupt in 1800 when it officially dissolved its business.
Joint stock companies became popular – the British East India Company (1600), the Company of
Adventurers of London (1618) and the South Sea Company. London, Liverpool and Bristol merchants were all active in slave trading until 1807.[586] These corporations competed with the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, all in business to make money regardless of how they did it. Their fundamental vehicle for accumulating wealth was the establishment of colonies and trading posts in the New World where they exploited the physical resources for exportation to Europe and their other colonies. These activities necessitated thousands of African slaves. One of the Company’s founders, William Usselincx, of Amsterdam, said, ““Some people were so vile and slavish by nature that they were of no use either to themselves or to others and had to be kept in servitude with all hardness.” The Company funded his operations by selling shares and through pirating of Spanish and Portuguese ships and pillaging their cargoes.[587]
There were two corporations with similar names, not to be confused with one another – the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. On June 2, 1621, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands granted a charter for a trade monopoly to the Dutch West India Company. The charter allowed the corporation to take jurisdiction over the African slave trade in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The corporation could operate in West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The corporation, with the charter, intended to eliminate competition, especially with the Spanish or Portuguese and the various merchant trading posts. The company was instrumental in the Dutch colonization of the Americas, in New Netherlands (1614-1667) and New Amsterdam (1625). The first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (later named New York), which Peter Stuyvesant ruled, in the year 1654. The Dutch village at the tip of Manhattan Island had a population of less than a thousand.[588]
In early 1654, the Portuguese recaptured Recife from the Dutch and expelled 150 Jewish families of the
“wealthy merchant class,” giving them three months to sell their homes and prepare for their departure.
Max I. Dimont explains the arrival of some of them in New Amsterdam – in May 1654, the Jews of Brazil
set sail in sixteen ships bound for Holland. The wind blew one of the ships, carrying twenty-three
Sephardi Jews, off course. Spanish pirates captured the ship and its cargo, probably the slaves of the
whole group. The Spanish then sank the vessel. The men on a French ship, the St. Charles, witnessed the
event and rescued the twenty-three prisoners. The French took the “penniless Jews” to the nearest port,
New Amsterdam. Currently, more Jews live in New York than any other place on earth, including Israel.
[589]
Peter Stuyvesant (1612-1672), former director of the Dutch West India Company’s colony of Curaçao (1642-1644), and now director of its western affairs, was the last Dutch Director-General of New Netherland (1647-1664) because he ceded the colony to the English in 1664. He had just received a shipment of African slaves from Curaçao. He petitioned the Company’s directors to “exclude further Jewish colonists.”[590] His administration constructed the protective wall on Wall Street and the canal that became Broad Street or Broadway. On July 8, 1654, his superiors at the Dutch East India Company of Holland sent their employee, Jacob Barsimson to New Amsterdam where he arrived on August 22, 1654. During the next decade, others from Holland followed Barsimson and settled on the East Coast, in New Amsterdam and Newport, Rhode Island. Through an official ordinance, Stuyvesant prohibited the Jews from participating in the economy. Therefore, they determined to exploit the people and the resources in the land occupied by the indigenous population, as the ordinances were not applicable to trading with the natives.[591] StuyvesantalsoprohibitedthesaleofliquorandfirearmstotheIndians.
The majority of all American slave trading activity emanated from New England, manned by northern crews.[592] They built the first slave ship in America, Desire, in 1637, not long after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was just the first of many ships used for slave trading.[593] Merchants recognized that the Colonists benefitted from the extra work force. They had to build homes, clear fields, and plant and
harvest crops. Given that the South was more agrarian due to the climate and fertile soil, it was particularly true for that part of the country. Indentured servants and freed prisoners performed those labors for a time but they earned their freedom after seven years. It was much more profitable to kidnap and sell Africans who worked their entire life.[594]
In 1646, Massachusetts had legalized slavery, which would allow anyone to seize any Indian who he judged a manslayer, traitor or conspirator. New Englanders enslaved so many Indians that they started exporting them to Bermuda, Barbados and other Caribbean Islands. This instigated the Yankee slave trade that lasted legally until 1808 and illegally until after Lincoln’s War. Conversely, the Commonwealth of Virginia criminalized the enslavement or deportation of Indians under any circumstances.[595] The General Assembly of Virginia, under Governor Patrick Henry, outlawed the slave trade there on October 5, 1778. This law immediately freed any slave brought into the commonwealth.[596]
Upon arrival in the Southern port cities, the crew transferred the slaves to a location where traders auctioned them off to the highest bidders. The traders took those who were, for some reason, not sold, to Newport where they sold them cheaply as household labor. By 1756, the city of Newport and the surrounding vicinity was home to 4,697 African slaves. The officials in most North American Colonies prohibited slavery and slave trading despite the attempts of the slave traders to legalize slavery in each of the states. Anti-slavery proponents in Philadelphia, Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet attempted to eliminate slavery.
Britain became involved in slave trading during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The newly established triangular trade – slaves from Africa, sugar from the islands and rum from New England – was the basis of British mercantilism. They transported about 2,000,000 Africans to the colonies between 1680 and 1786. Traders transported at least 104,000 slaves just in 1768.[597]
Slavery was a part of New England’s culture for over 200 years. Newport, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts were the two biggest slave ports on the Atlantic coast. They used slaves to build many of the ships that they used to transport even more abducted Africans. New Englanders used their slaves for the most arduous, burdensome, dangerous tasks. Their slaveholders regularly sexually victimized female slaves. Then, industrialization made slavery economically unfeasible. Gradual emancipation, not having ownership responsibility for dozens or even hundreds of people, was not a humanitarian change of consciousness but rather an economic consideration.[598]
In as much as traders sold their captive Africans to people in Spanish colonies, Spain created the Assiento, a document that grants permission to the traders of another country. Britain and Spain had such an agreement beginning in 1713. British officials relinquished these trading rights to the South Sea Company, a British joint stock company founded in 1711. By 1719, the South Sea Company had interesting financial connections to the Bank of England and the British East India Company.
Reverend Cotton Mather (1663-1728), a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, said, “Your servants will be the Better Servants for being made Christian servants.” Christianize them, and they will be “afraid of speaking or doing anything that may justly displeasure you.”[599] Northerners, who portray themselves as moral humanitarians, are equally, if not more culpable for America’s slavery system than the southerners. They enslaved and traded unwary initially friendly Indians for African slaves in the Caribbean Islands.[600] Most of the traders lived in the North. Additionally, several New England insurance companies gained economic status by insuring slaves as property before the surviving captives even arrived in the U.S. They included the Newport Insurance Company, the Bristol Insurance Company, Mount Hope Insurance Company, and the Aetna Insurance Company.[601]
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the emotionally deceptive abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, said
this was slavery the way northerners liked it, “all of the benefits and none of the screams.”[602] Stowe was referring to the fact that the northerners benefited from the slavery at a distance. The shackled slaves in Africa hauled ivory for endless miles and often perished from exhaustion and insufficient sustenance by the time they reached the coast just to supply ivory for New England manufacturers. Then there were the slaves who labored their wretched lives away on a Caribbean sugar plantation to enrich greedy planters and the increasing sugar addiction among “civilized society” which, of course, included the North.
Bertram Wallace Korn, writing for the Jewish Publication Society of America wrote, “Individual Jews, of course, had participated in the development of the institution of slavery, as well as in the discussion of its merits, from the very first. Jewish merchants of Newport, Rhode Island, had been active, before the Revolution, in the well-known ‘triangle trade’ which brought African slaves to the colonies.”[603]
Hayman Levy (1721-1789) helped found the Congregation Mickvé Israel, in 1782. He was a prominent merchant in New York, and was John Jacob Astor’s first employer.[604] Levy claimed to be the leader in western commerce and the largest fur dealer in the colonies.[605] After the Revolution (1775-1783), Levy and Solomon Simson bought some property from Isaac Roosevelt (1726-1794), a member of the New York Provincial Congress, to create a cemetery close to their congregation.[606] Levy imported cheap glass beads, textiles, earrings, and other inexpensive products from Holland and soon began trading with the natives. Nicholas Lowe and Joseph Simon joined Hayman in his trading activities.[607] Levy, Lowe and Simon left New York and set up a distillery in Newport and produced rum and whiskey. Soon, there were twenty-two distilleries in Newport, the site of early slave commerce and east coast trade center for rum, whiskey, and other liquors. Of the 128 slave ships that transported human cargo from Africa, 120 of them were from Newport and Charleston. In addition to the northern traders, individuals in Charleston, South Carolina established rum and whiskey distilleries and began dealing with the African Coast natives, trading rum and whiskey for humans.[608]
Aaron Lopez (1731-1782), a merchant originally from Lisbon, Portugal, was part of the Converso (converted) community of Portugal. To practice Judaism, he, with his family, left Portugal and immigrated to Newport, Rhode Island in 1752 to join his older brother, Moses.[609] In Newport, Lopez established associations with gentiles, including Ezra Stiles, the Congregational minister and allegedly a Freemason. Stiles, who learned the Hebrew language, learned about Kabbalah, made friends with numerous members of Newport’s Jewish community while he lived there. Stiles later became president of Yale College (1778–1795), future home of Skull and Bones. He also became its first professor of Semitics.[610] Stiles, granted George Washington an honorary degree (Doctor of Laws) on April 26, 1781.[611] After the death of his wife in 1762, Lopez married Sarah, the daughter of his business partner, Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. When the Revolutionary War began, Lopez’s business decreased dramatically so he evacuated his family to Leicester, Massachusetts in 1778. During the next four years, he became a key supplier to the American forces. In 1782, Lopez accidentally drowned in Smithfield, Rhode Island leaving behind a grieving wife and fifteen children.[612]
Lopez had become one of the most prominent slave traders during the years from 1761 to 1774. His business accounted for more than 50% of all trading in the country and he became the wealthiest person in Newport, Rhode Island. By 1750, due to numerous individuals engaging in slave trading in the north, one sixth of the population in New York was of African descent. Lopez, who owned thirty ships by the time of the American Revolution, sent ships to the African coast where his captains used rum to intoxicate those they were bargaining with who were associated with the African Agency, an organization that prepared the kidnapped Africans to sale. This agency brought people from the depths of the interior. Contention between the African tribes erupted as they attempted to deal with what was occurring to their tribal communities. The slave traders were simply interested in numbers, not the impact it was making. The
traders exchanged rum, ammunition and weapons to Africans who delivered up captives to the traders.[613]
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, whose family profited from the rental of conscripted Hessian soldiers, also benefited financially from slavery. Despite Rothschild’s overt opposition to slavery, Niall Ferguson received access to archives in Britain that reveal that Nathan Rothschild participated in the slave trade and was part of the slave speculation associated with the Manchester Exchange and later on the London stock exchange. N. M. Rothschild permitted the use of slaves to collateralize slave owner’s debts.[614]
When Congress adopted the Constitution, they rejected Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to outlaw slavery. On March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed a bill to abolish slave trading. The British Parliament banned the importation of slaves and slave trading with the Slave Trade Act of March 25, 1807.[615] On January 1, 1808, officials banned the further importation of slaves into the U.S. Slaveholders supported the prohibition as they viewed the legislation as an opportunity to “artificially inflate the price of their slaves.”[616] Typically, the criminalization or prohibition of anything provides an opportunity for corrupt people, in and out of the government, to make higher profits on numerous activities and commodities, like drugs and alcohol.
By 1788, Astor was the Master of the Holland Lodge No. 8 in New York City, a lodge with ties to the Illuminati. Astor, a Freemason, apparently had some special connections with the Brits as he also made a fortune selling opium into China in association with Britain’s East India Company. Baring Brothers had adapted the company as a vehicle for the opium trade with Astor in New York and a network in Philadelphia, Boston and other cities. Astor leveraged his drug profits into real estate in Manhattan, which laid the foundation for one of America’s largest fortunes.[617] President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin allowed Astor to evade the embargo imposed on ships in order to get his furs to England.
Jefferson insinuated that Virginia slave owners were progressing towards equality and emancipation. Astor understood that equality was unattainable for a man without property. Liberty, he thought, enabled a humble man the opportunity to advance but to allow a common worker a voice in political affairs was improper. Many politicians shared his view and deliberately designed state constitutions to maintain control “in the hands of property.” This concept was deeply entrenched in the Illuminati movement, a vehicle for enlightenment, of John Jacob’s youth. The Illuminati believed in compassionate dictatorship by illustrious people. By the time, John Jacob moved to London, the Bavarian government had banned the Illuminati. However, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Gallatin, George Clinton, and John Jacob Astor reportedly were all Illuminati.[618]
Africans were purportedly more suitable and could withstand the heat, disease and the labor required to raise and process sugar cane in the island tropics, a simply preposterous notion. Africans supposedly survived circumstances under which white men and even the indigenous natives died. Of course, Africans died also – about a third of them died during their first two years in captivity. Coffee, tobacco, indigo, and sugar plantations used about 90% slave labor prior to 1820. Slave-labor products comprised the largest economic enterprise by the end of the 17th century, all driven by the British, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and later the New Englanders who transported and traded shackled Africans, unfortunate enough to have been captured. With the growing addiction for sugar, traders seized over 6,000,000 Africans who they took to plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America.[619]
Traders chained traumatized captives together and force-marched for weeks through the bush to the coast. Many became ill, exhausted and unable to continue. Those who faltered were whipped and left to die. Of those who came from the interior, nine out of ten perished before they ever arrived in America. At least 1,000,000 Africans arrived in America each year leaving millions who perished during their forced exodus. At the coast, agents began their incessant bargaining while examining the human booty, checking
for broken bones, sickness, evaluating age and gender, and other characteristics that determined the price. The typical price on the coast was between $20 and $40; traders re-sold them for $2,000.[620]
The ship’s crew branded the captives with a hot iron to identify them as property, as if they were cattle. Traders split up devastated families among the numerous ships, unsure of their destination or if they would ever re-unite. Some captives attempted to escape by jumping into the sea as their captors rowed them out to the ship. Some drowned while others were re-captured and had their legs chopped off as a warning to others who thought about escape. The crew segregated men, women and children within the ship. Men and women, in their separate locations in the hold of the ship, lay chained, enduring for at least three months, in the indescribable filth and the stench of human excrement. Inevitably, many captives sickened and died and were thrown in the sea, pregnant women gave birth; younger women were repeatedly raped by the captain and the crew.[621]
During the Atlantic slave trade, they imported more than 75% of all slaves before 1810. The cotton industry was only in its early stages in 1810 in the U.S. The huge increase in the slave trade, of 5.7 million, which occurred in the eighteenth century, was not because of the tobacco imports into Europe during that period. It was not cotton or tobacco that triggered the greatest demand for slaves; it was sugar, an extremely labor-intensive cash crop. Between 60% and 70% of all seized Africans worked in the sugar colonies.[622]
Slave Status before the War
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