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De Bois intended his account to be "a small contribution to the scientific study of slavery and the American Negro". Du Bois kept his account matter of fact, data driven, and almost entirely without emotion, although in her introduction, Saidya Hartman wrote that he later regretted that. Du Bois mainly focused on the political debates about the slave trade in the United States and the various, mostly ineffective, legislative attempts to suppress it.
Each chapter was preceded by a precise list of contents. There were no illustrations except of a diagram that illustrated the legislative history of the Act of 1807 (effective in 1808) which banned the importation of slaves to the United States. He included long quotations from debates. For example, he devoted a full page to quote a speech by [[Peter Early]] a representative from Georgia arguing that African captives brought illegally to the United States after the effective date should be sold and not set free. Early concluded that if such a law were enacted, "The whole people will rise up against it. Why? Because to enforce it would be to turn loose, in the bosom of the country, firebrands that would consume them." As indicated by the title, his book was primarily restricted to the slave trade to the United States and was far more detailed on the political aspects than Mannix and Cowley.<ref>Du Bois 1896, pp. v, 94, 98-99 & 107.</ref><ref>{{Cite web
|first1=Keith |last1=Hulett
|title=Peter Early, 1773-1817
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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, ''Black Cargoes'', pp. 26 & 59{{ndash}}60</ref>
According to Mannix and Cowley, the slave trade then blossomed and continued essentially unabated for nearly three centuries. However, in 1807, Britian and the United States passed legislation banning the slave trade. Britain launched a [[naval blockade]] to suppress the trade by all nations. The British policy came about largely through the moral advocacy of [[William Wilberforce]] in parliament. Unfortunately, the blockade was thwarted by the United States, which refused to allow their ships to be searched. Even though it was technically illegal, the U.S. government did not enforce the ban and it became a major transporter of slaves to the New World. Demand for imported slaves had previously dampened following the [[Haitian Revolution]], during which white plantation owners were slaughtered in 1804. The authors claimed that all states south of Maryland feared a slave rebellion, nevertheless the fear was later overcome by greed. They concluded (as did Du Bois before them) that the invention of the [[cotton gin]] in 1828, which made the processing of cotton far more efficient, led to a vast expansion of cotton plantations and the need for more slaves. Also according to Du Bois slavery was changing from a "family institution to
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, ''Black Cargoes'', pp. 186 & 200</ref><ref>{{cite book
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According to Mannix and Cowley, slavers began to carry an American passenger (called the capitano de bandiera, or captain of the flag) who ostensively took command of the vessel if it was boarded by the English. They claimed that one was a tailor, and another was a grog-shop keeper.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, ''Black Cargoes'', p. 202.</ref> It wasn't until 1862 when the Steward in Lincoln administration [[Lyons–Seward Treaty of 1862|negotiated a treaty]] with the British that allowed their ships to be searched and for violators to be tried in joint British and American courts.<ref>Du Bois 1896, p. 150.</ref>
Mannix and Cowley included many quotations from eyewitnesses to the horrors endured by the slaves and the callous indifference of the slavers. For example, they included a half page quotation from a narrative by George Lydiard Sulivan, a British naval officer in a squadron tasked with suppressing the slave trade in the Indian Ocean.<ref>Mannix and Cowley 1962, ''Black Cargoes'', p. 250.</ref> The last paragraph of the quotation is as follows:
{{Blockquote
|text=In another portion of the square are a number of women, their bodies painted, and their figures exposed with barely a yard of cloth around their hips, with rows of girls from the age of twelve and upwards exposed to the examination of Arabs and subject to inexpressible indignities by the dealers. We saw several Arab slave-dealers around these poor creatures; they were in treaty for the purchase of three or four women who had been made to take off the only rag of a garment which they wore.
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The authors 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, ''Black Cargoes'', p. 287.</ref>
''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 regional transport of slaves within the United States
|first1=Steven |last1=Deyle
|date=October 2009
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[[File:William Blake - Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave - etching in book by John G. Stedman.jpg|thumb|upright|''Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave'' by William Blake after John G. Stedman in Stedman's book.]]
Mannix and Cowley's book and article
|title=Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 1778
|volume=1
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|date=1796
|url=https://archive.org/details/narrativeoffivey01sted_1/page/n431/mode/2up
|access-date=21 June 2024}}</ref> Stedman
{{Blockquote
|text=The first object that attracted my compassion while visiting on a neighboring estate was a truly beautiful Samboe girl of about eighteen, tied up with both arms to a tree, as naked as she came to the world, and lacerated in such a shocking condition by the whips of two Negro drivers that she was, from her neck to her ankles, literally dyed over with blood. It was after receiving two hundred lashes that I perceived her with her head hanging downwards, a most miserable spectacle.
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|access-date=7 June 2024}}</ref>
A review of
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/01/books/human-merchandise-was-big-business.html
|title=Human Merchandise Was Big Business: The Transatlantic Slave Trade, A History. By James A. Rawley. Illustrated. 452 pp. New York: W. W. Norton. $24.95.
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