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According to Mannix and Cowley, in the 16th century, slavers were unapologetic{{ndash}}slavery was just an accepted practice. It was justified on the basis of religion. Africans were seen as benefiting by conversion to Christianity. The "racial excuse was seldom used". The racial aspect surfaced in the 17th century. Initially in Virginia, for example, "Negros had been regarded as servants indentured for life, their children were born free and were also reared in the true faith". However, in many cases planters refused to let them go. So they came up with a new excuse based on race and the bible. They argued that the Negros were the children of Ham or Cannan and claimed that slavery was a biblical practice based on Noah's curse: "And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Genesis IX, 25). Some slave owners even claimed that Negros were not human and so could not become Christian.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, pp. 26 & 59{{ndash}}60</ref>
The slave trade then blossomed and continued unabated for nearly three centuries. However, in 1807, Britian and the United States passed legislation banning the slave trade. Britain launched a campaign to suppress the trade by all nations. However as noted in a Negro History review, it was thwarted in this effort by the United States, which refused to allow their ships to be searched. Even though it was technically illegal, the US government did not enforce the ban and it became the chief transporter of slaves to the New World.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, pp. 186 & 205{{ndash}}208</ref>
Although Rhode Island was not highlighted by Mannix and Cowley, it became the center of the American slave trade in the 18th century. A triangular trading route was developed. Small "clippers" were loaded with rum distilled in Rhode Island. Mannix and Cowley described them as the "whippets of the sea" (rather than greyhounds). The fast ships were able to elude the British patrols and sail further up African rivers than larger ships. It also allowed the slavers to load a shipment of slaves quickly so as to reduce sickness among the crew and slaves alike. They then sailed to the West Indies where slaves were exchanged from molasses, which was carried back to Rhode Island to make more rum, which could be sold at a profit and used for further trade. In a treatise on the subject Jay Coughtry concluded that this scenario was correct in outline however he noted that "Returning slavers, however, did not carry enough syrup to supply even the local African fleet with sufficient rum for the first leg of the slaving voyages, let alone furnish a surplus for domestic consumption and coastwise exports".<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, pp. 186 & 200</ref><ref>{{cite book
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|access-date=20 June 2024}}</ref>}}
In another example, they included a quotation from George W. Howe, a medical student who shipped in 1859 with an illegal slave ship. Howe purported it be the last slaving ship. The authors commented that it was one of the best descriptions of the morbid melancholy that often affected slaves during the Middle Passage.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, p. 120.</ref>
They concluded that, "What [the slave trade] had produced in Africa was nothing but misery, stagnation, and social chaos . . . In the Western Hemisphere, besides introducing a vigorous new strain of immigrants, it had created the plantation system, it had opened vast areas to the cultivation of the four great slave crops{{ndash}}sugar, rice, tobacco, and cotton{{ndash}}and it had also encouraged the fatal and persistent myth of Negro inferiority". It took the American Civil War to effectively end the trade in about 1865.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, p. 287.</ref>▼
The quoted paragraph is as follows:
{{Blockquote
|text=Notwithstanding their apparent good health, each morning three or four dead would be found, brought upon deck, taken by arms and heels, and tossed overboard as unceremoniously as an empty bottle. Of what did they die? and always at night? In the barracoons it was known that if a negro was not amused and kept in motion, he would mope, squat down with his chin on his knees and arms clasped about his legs, and in a very short time die. Among civilized races it is thought impossible to hold one’s breath until death follows; it is thought the Africans can do so. They had no means of concealing anything, and certainly did not kill each other. The duties of the Camisas were also to look after the other negroes during the day, and when found sitting with knees up and head drooping, the Camisas would start them up, run them about the deck, give them a small ration of rum, and divert them until in a normal condition.
|author=George W. Howe (1890)<ref>{{cite magazine
|first1=George W. |last1=Howe
|url=https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Slavery/AfricansOnSlaveBoatBI.htm
|via=HathiTrust
|magazine=[[Scribner's Magazine]]
|title=The Last Slave-Ship
|pages=113{{ndash}}128 [quotation: 123{{ndash}}124]
|date=July 1890
|access-date=June 21, 2024}}</ref>}}
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''Black Cargoes'' focused on the slavers and the human cargo that was carried from Africa to the New World. It did not include substantive discussions of re-capture slaves returned to Africa or the transport of slaves within the United States from the upper south to the lower south and from the south to the west which became the dominant form of forced relocation of slaves after the Revolutionary War.<ref>{{cite journal
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