The first archival object is the records database of all New York slaves by name. A project that is updated frequently, displays names, county, slave identification number, and year they died. There were many who only had one name or other information was unknown. What is surprising was the amount of names in the database; a little over five thousand. The first name I clicked to show in this screenshot was only number 198, and we were still in the A’s. In 1800 the US census told us that in entirety New York had 589k citizens (meaning white wealthy slave owners) and while we assume many didn’t have any slaves by the time the union was formed and the idea of slavery being abolished was on the forefront of everyone’s mind. Of the 5.1 million people in the United States in 1800, 845k of them were slaves. It is still such a horrific concept that all these people, all these names were enslaved peoples. This connects to Phyllis Wheatley because she was taken from her home in West Africa and brought to New England when she was very small. She probably was sold off at auction the moment she got into port, because children go faster and are valued more. She was sold a little before slavery was considered taboo in the north. In fact she probably went through the middle passage as well, however upon her return to America from England where she had accompanied her owner, she found that she was a free slave.

Similar to Ooronoko’s terrible journey in the boat from his native land; slaves also had to endure the middle passage. The middle passage is illustrated in the second archival object, a chart of one of the slave ships that went through the middle passage. The middle passage was the route all “cargo” slave ships passed through. These ships were filled to the brim with slaves, some who have passed away from conditions, or will soon. Scurvy was rampant and the chains would not come off for any reason. Horrific is a common word to describe this ship. Oroonoko’s ship would be considered a transatlantic slave trade even though the ship never docks in North American soil, the boat still goes through the middle passage. Behn writes, “having put ’em, some in one, and some in other lots, with women and children (which they call pickaninnies) they sold ’em off, as slaves, to several merchants and gentlemen; not putting any two in one lot, because they would separate ’em far from each other; nor daring to trust ’em together, lest rage and courage should put ’em upon contriving some great action, to the ruin of the colony.” this is what happens when they dock on land after having come from the middle passage. This particular slave ship was named the Vigilante, which had been intercepted in 1822 in its last voyage carrying 345 slaves from West Africa. Packed to the brim. This illustration was used historically to show the cramped conditions, what the shackles looked like, how the slaves were to lay on their backs, stacked up like potato sacks to be able to fit everyone in the boat.

Earlier in the semester I wrote a reflection upon the similarities between Oroonoko and New York City today. I had written some false information, that I believed there were little to no slaves in New York City because it was part of the north union. I had mistakenly believed there were not many slaves at all when in reality some five thousand slaves at least came through the port.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.