1. society

This project is funded by the Helen E. Ellis Charitable Trust administered by a grant
from the Westport Cultural Council, the Island Foundation, the New Bedford National
Historical Whaling Park and the Westport Local Cultural Council, a local agency which
is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
The Paul Cuffe 250th Anniversary Committee wishes to express its deepest thanks for the
work of the planning committee and our program sponsors including the following:
Lees Market, Albert Lees, III
New Bedford Historical Society
New Bedford Whaling Museum
New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park
New Bedford Ocean Explorium
Westport Historical Society
Symposium Committee Members
Frank Barrows
Cindy Barber
Norman Barber
Lee Blake
Tony Connors
Carl Cruz
Janine da Silva
Jenny O’Neill
Laurie Robertson-Lorant
Betty Slade
David Sutton
Emily Sutton
William Wyatt
Special thanks to Geraldine Millham for program design and Greg Stone for website
technical assistance.
For further information about this symposium, please contact
Westport Historical Society, 25 Drift Road, PO Box N188, Westport MA 02790
Phone 508 636 6011
A dvd of the symposium is available at Westport Historical Society and symposium papers are
also available through our website: www.westporthistory.com
NOTE: Papers presented by Ray Rickman and Valerie Cunningham are not included in this
publication.
Exploring Paul Cuffe: The Man and his Legacy
A Public Symposium October 3, 2009
Proceedings
Contents
Symposium Schedule
Page 1
Opening keynote address
Lamont Thomas author of "Rise to be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe"
Page 7
Paul Cuffe's Social Networks and Entrepreneurial Success
Marion Kilson scholar, Museum of African American History and author of "Kpele
Lala:Ga Religious Songs and Symbols"
Page 18
The Collaboration of Captain Paul Cuffe and Captain Isaac Cory of Westport
Richard C. Kugler former director New Bedford Whaling Museum
Page 22
Thou Art Often the Companion of my Mind: Cuffe, James Forten and the Portrait of a
Friendship
Julie Winch University of Massachusetts, Boston, author of "A Gentleman of Color: A
Biography of James Forten"
Page 32
The Struggle for Respect: Paul Cuffe and his Nova Scotian Friends in Sierra Leone
David C. Cole former lecturer on Economics, Harvard University, author of "Between a
Swamp and a Hard Place: Developmental Challenges in Remote Rural Africa"
Page 50
If Paul Cuffe Had Lived a Few Years Longer: Sierra Leone and Liberia, as they Might
Have Been
Kevin Lowther former director of Africare, author of forthcoming "The African-American
Odyssey of John Kizell"
Program
8:30 – 9 AM
Coffee and Registration
9:00 – 9:15
Welcome and Introduction
James Russell, President and CEO, New Bedford Whaling Museum
Lee Blake, President, New Bedford Historical Society
9:15 – 9:45
Opening Keynote
Introduction by Carl Cruz, New Bedford Historical Society
Keynoter: Lamont Thomas, author of Rise to be a People: A
Biography of Paul Cuffe.
9:45 – 10:00
Panel Discussion, Q & A
Lavonne Leslie, African American Heritage and Culture Society
Donna McDaniel, Author of Fit For Freedom, Not For Friendship:
Quakers, African Americans and the Myth of Racial Justice
Norman Barber, University of MA Dartmouth
10:00 – 10:15
Break
10:15 – 11:00
Local Relationships and Cuffe
Introduction by Jenny O’Neill, Director, Westport Historical Society
Marion Kilson, Scholar, Museum of African American History, Boston,
Author of Kpele Lala: Ga Religious Songs and Symbols
Paul Cuffe’s Social Networks and Entrepreneurial Success
Richard Kugler, Former Director, New Bedford Whaling Museum.
The Collaboration of Captain Paul Cuffe and Captain Isaac Cory of
Westport
11:00 – 11:15
Panel Discussion, Q & A
Russell Handsman, Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
Paul Cyr, New Bedford Public Library
Donna McDaniel, Author of Fit for Freedom, Not For Friendship:
Quakers, African Americans and the Myth of Racial Justice
11:30 – 12:00
Introduction by Laurie Robertson-Lorant, New Bedford Historical
Society
Speaker: Ray Rickman, Former President of the Rhode Island Black
Heritage Society and Dealer in Rare Books By and About African
Americans
Two Centuries of Books By and About Paul Cuffe
12:00 – 1:30
Lunch
1:30 – 2:15
In the Time of Cuffe
Introduction by Betty Slade, Westport Historical Society
Speaker: Julie Winch, University of MA-Boston, Author of a
Gentleman of Color; A Biography of James Forten.
“Thou Art Often the Companion of my Mind”: Cuffe, James Forten and
the Portrait of a Friendship
Speaker: Valerie Cunningham, Former Director of Black Heritage
Partnerships at University of New Hampshire and Co-Author with Mark
Sammons of Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American
Heritage.
Struggles for Freedom in Seacoast New Hampshire
2:15 – 2:30
Panel discussion, Q & A
Ray Rickman, The Rickman Group
Lavonne Leslie, African American Heritage and Culture Society
Janine da Silva, New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park
2:30 – 2:45
Break
2:45 – 3:30
Rise to be a People - Sierra Leone
Introduction by Cindy Barber, Rotch Jones Duff Museum
Speaker: David Cole, Former Lecturer on Economics, Harvard
University, author of Between a Swamp and Hard Place: Developmental
Challenges in Remote Rural Africa
The Struggle for Respect: Paul Cuffe and His Nova Scotian Friends in
Sierra Leone
Speaker: Kevin Lowther, Former Director of Africare, author of
forthcoming The African-American Odyssey of John Kizell
If Paul Cuffe Had Lived A Few Years Longer: Sierra Leone and Liberia,
As They Might Have Been.
3:30 – 3:45
Panel discussion, Q & A
Norman Barber, University of Massachusetts –Dartmouth
Ray Rickman, The Rickman Group
Janine da Silva, New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park
3:45 – 4:30
Closing
Moderator, Lee Blake, New Bedford Historical Society
Rise to be a Book
Lamont Thomas
I commend the resilient spirit of Westport and New Bedford area natives, Cuffe
descendants, admirers, academics, librarians, merchants, and educators for preparing this
remarkable occasion. And a special thanks to Lee Blake and to her committee. Clearly, the Paul
Cuffe spirit of self-sacrifice and compassion for others is alive and well. My guess is that he is
looking down upon us with approval.
Before proceeding, I’d like to recognize friends of mine who have traveled the
investigative journey into the Cuffe past, my wife Marge, my son Byron and daughter Angela,
Michael and Ann Westgate, Adele Ames, widow of descendant James Ames, Carl Cruz, and
relatives of Eleanor Tripp. Each of you have inspired me in my Cuffe quest.
TWO TITLES, ONE BOOK
Researching, compiling, and interpreting history is political, ever changing, and personal.
This brief talk today illustrates these factors, as I relate stories encountered along the way, for
history is story-telling. His-story, her-story, the winner’s story, the cultural truths from the past.
This talk is my story about the writing and publication of a book with two titles.
Rise to be a People, A Biography of Paul Cuffe appeared in 1986. It sold quickly to
national and university libraries having standing orders for all University of Illinois Press
monographs. Two years later it reappeared in paperback under a new title, one more clearly
identify the subject and a broader theme, hence, Paul Cuffe, Black Entrepreneur and PanAfrican. The only difference between the two editions was a short postscript stating that Paul
Cuffe’s Bible recently had surfaced in Lebanon, CT. Intriguingly, within the Bible were various
hair types that attracted one of the world famous forensic crime investigators, Dr. Henry Lee, of
Connecticut. He alluringly titled the crime laboratory’s investigation: “the Bible case.” That
second edition also sold out.
1
THE CUFFE APPEAL
What really brings us here today? I expect we share the common goal to honor and
explore the life and times of an extraordinary American who arose within the Westport-New
Bedford environs. Each of us comes with his/her private thoughts, memories, perhaps shaped by
our racial and social identities, and those of our descendants. Should an inquiring historian today
in this room, recording device in hand, approached you at the coffee break and ask what brings
you here , how would you reply? Surely, this 250th commemoration has the makings for an oral
history project, perhaps for a senior high school paper, the premise for a college thesis, or a
kickoff for a Masters or PhD dissertation. Your story might contribute to the larger story, for
stories are the ingredients for a people’s history. The Cuffe story is in the genre of people’s
history, in this case of an unknown African-Indian who challenged the racist and culturally
dominant assumptions of the trans-Atlantic world.
Quite innocently and naively I entered into the historical process. As luck - or as the
universal forces directed - I was clearly present at the right time and place. Cuffe’s name
surfaced in the mid-sixties during a dinner conversation in West Hartford, CT. Speaking was
Walter Yates, a black southern doctoral candidate at the Hartford Seminary Foundation who was
researching West African missionary movements. Walter challenged me with two assumptions:
1) that Cuffe had helped found Liberia, the West African asylum for former American slaves;
and 2) that Cuffe was looked down upon by contemporary American Blacks for advocating that
free persons abandon brethren to perpetual slavery by emigrating to Africa. Yates had heard
Mississippi blacks and those elsewhere ridicule “a bad Cuff” in reference to Paul Cuffe.
I was easy bait for the challenge. I needed a master’s thesis topic to complete work at
Trinity College, and if Yates proved correct, the essential primary material lay somewhere within
Massachusetts. Hooked by the assumptions, I very soon found myself seated before a large
brown cardboard box in hot, steamy New Bedford. The Free Public Library attendant had
produced ‘the keys to the kingdom.’
For nearly a month, living in a nearby rooming house, I transcribed scraps of paper,
letters, and the like on to note cards. One master’s thesis later, over the summer of 1969, I
tentatively bore my 75 pp opus to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University where I would
2
research primary sources and formulate, under Barry Beyer’s direction, new high school
curriculums for Project Africa. Also at Carnegie Mellon was Dr. Letitia Brown, a George
Washington University historian who eventually authored a history of blacks within the District
of Columbia. Letitia liked the thesis. She would introduce me to her publisher. In her view, Paul
Cuffe was “a one man civil rights movement.” During those weeks I also met a young doctor’s
daughter exhausted from a course in bio-chemistry. Elated that Letitia would pave the way to
publication and convinced that fame and fortune were just around the block, I suggested that
marrying a famous historian would beat life in her father’s doctor’s office. That summer of 1969
Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. I had too.
Converging historical events propelled the Cuffe process, as they must have for George
Salvadore of Dartmouth who had published his succinct regional biography, Black Yankee
PaulCuffe. European colonialism was then crumbling, as I had witnessed while studying at the
University of London several years earlier. Brilliant, enthusiastic Africans, flush with newfound
freedoms, optimistically foresaw a new day for African nations, not unlike Cuffe who dreamed
of prospering African nations. In the United States, after centuries of unfulfilled promises for
democracy, Black Americans were on the march for a new day. Montgomery marchers, Martin
Luther King, Jr., the common folk, were engaged in both uplifting and tragic struggles that
affected all of multiracial American society.
The fifties and sixties decades blended into the seventies. Alex Haley’s blockbuster Roots
appeared in book form and then came the riveting TV mini-series. The sensational story traced
Kunte Kinte, seized in West Africa, enslaved for the Middle Passage and within the British
colonies, and whose family could be traced into the twentieth century. African family genealogy,
all American genealogy, intensified. Families sought out their own griots in order to resuscitate
the past.
If Paul Cuffe was a ‘one men civil rights movement’, the time was ripe for more research.
And if Alex Haley could trace the roots of Kunte Kinte, why couldn’t I do the same by
investigating the name “Cuffe”?
The truth about most initial assumptions would prove questionable, if not entirely wrong.
Paul Cuffe was not widely disdained for advocating emigration to Africa, he was not involved in
3
the founding of Liberia, existing historical records were not exclusively within a brown paper
box, the Kunte Kinte Roots story had many flaws, Cuffe oral tradition could never be traced by
his name alone, publication would not be a walk in the park, nor would publication lead to fame
and fortune. The good news is that my marriage has lasted, our two children no longer have to
ask “when would it be finished,” and the book’s success has lead to my being here today.
THE SEARCH
Often the historian’s task is to demythologize the past through fresh investigation of new
or the reinterpretation of preexisting evidence. Robert Zenowich, Letitia’s publisher at Atheneum
Press, encouraged me to proceed because he saw promise, but he knew the historian’s craft. He
offered two warnings. One, you have hardly begun rigorous research. The second came as I
exited his office: “Don’t do this for money.” He was right on both accounts.
Reconstruction of the Cuffe narrative would depend upon a 007, Scotland Yard
investigation. What advice would come from existing Cuffe historians? Who were they, what
questions lingered, and where were the golden nuggets? Eventually I discovered abundant
material culture and received essential advice from within the circle of professional historians on
both sides of the Atlantic. Through those contacts we plowed the fields, unearthed the gems, and
reshaped the previous historical narrative.
The most significant body of evidence to reshape the existing narrative came from
England. There the golden nugget was a 225 page leather-bound book in which Friend William
Allen had copied his epistles from England’s philanthropic establishment to Sierra Leone’s black
settlers. It was prophetically engraved “African Correspondence.” Where was it? – in a remote
pharmaceutical plant on London’s East Side. Whose names appeared? Names included William
Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Zachary Macaulay, and John Kizel of Sherbro Island.
Tangible evidence broadened the story throughout London and Liverpool. At the Public
Record Office, where I sat beside an historian examining papers from 11th century Norman
times, Cuffe material was found within treasury, colonial, board of trade, and admiralty papers.
Missionary sources recounted Methodists, Anglicans, and Lutheran conduct in Sierra Leone
along with detailed accounts of individuals who had departed Liverpool in 1811 aboard brig
Traveller for Freetown, Sierra Leone. Important media sources such as the Liverpool Mercury
4
and The Monthly Repository converged to explain an original Delaware memoir of 1807. The
London Times noted that the Traveller was “perhaps the first vessel to ever reach Europe,
entirely owned and operated by Negroes.”
Within the United States surprises were in store. In Washington, DC, the National
Archives abounded with essential documents such as customs records the included crew lists for
his vessels, newspapers announced vessel arrivals and departures. Historical societies had
papers: Chicago, Delaware, Massachustts, Maryland, GA, NC, and Nova Scotia. Public
Libraries, beginning with New Bedford, then the New York Public system, produced key
records, including papers of the American Colonization Society which drew so much support
from Cuffe’s exploits. Family papers and church records helped as well.
KEY HISTORIANS
Letitia Brown helped frame Cuffe within the context of works by WEB DuBois,
particularly Souls of Black Folk. Black Americans had long viewed themselves through the eyes
of others, hence their “double consciousness,” “the veil,” and the conclusion that “the history of
the 20th century is the history of the color line.”
David B Davis, then at Cornell, became one of the most significant teachers on the
subject of slavery in Western Culture and the Trans-Atlantic world. Now in his nineties and at
Yale, he remains the ‘town crier’ for historians of human bondage.
Christopher Fyfe, then at the University of Edinburgh, was the principle historian of the
British colony of Sierra Leone. He invited me to London, very much as Friend William Allen
had extended an invitation to Cuffe. Our initial meeting was at Britain’s austere Commonwealth
Club, where he introduced himself to every male of African descent before realizing that yours
truly was white. His massive treasure trove of references to British government records were at
my disposal. With Kevin Lowther, speaking later today on John Kizel, I share indebtedness to
Christopher’s largess.
Philip Curtin guided me to the crown jewel letter-copies at William Allen’s Allen &
Hanbury pharmaceutical establishment, today GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s leading
pharmaceutical companies. That repository claims the letter-copy cook is now “lost.”
5
And who has ever worked in the field of American slavery without indebtedness to John
Hope Franklin’s classic From Slavery to Freedom. As editor of the University of Chicago Press,
he showed serious interest in the biography but editor August Meier of Illinois Press finally
published it.
PUBLICATION AND LINGERING QUESTIONS
Upon publication in 1986, Illinois Press submitted the book for a Pulitzer Prize in
biography. The Pulitzer winner for that year, David Garrow, had written a heralded study of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he used newly released FBI tapes recorded during the reign of
J. Edgar Hoover.
And several years ago a phone call came from producers of the public television series
History Detectives. The conversations lead to a program that questioned Cuffe’s whereabouts
during the American Revolution. Occasionally, the program repeats.
Present and future historians are pursuing multiple angles, as illustrated by today’s
presentations. I encourage investigations into his Native American and familial influences: Ruth
Moses, Alice Pequit, Gay Head natives, his wife’s determination not to leave her native land for
Sierra Leone. I remain curious and skeptical about lapses within Cuffe documents, such as a
mysterious gap in his log when in Freetown, plus absence of more evidence of his disdain for
racial mixture. Why is his blackness only probed within a correspondence hidden away in a
Philadelphia archives and not in New Bedford papers? And finally, I wish someone would
further examine the 19th century historiography and the hypothesis of “good Cuff, bad Cuff.”
Was he simply the complementary yin-yang symbol of a American biracial, multiracial society?
WHO WAS PAUL CUFFE?
So after all the research, who was Paul Cuffe? Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, which,
incidentally, mentioned a “Cuff”, asked: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict
myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Paul Cuffe was a Black, a free Black, an African, a free African, a Negro, a free Negro, a
free person of color, an Indian, a native American, a Wompanoag-Pequot Native, a Black
Indian, a British American, an American.
6
He was a Christian, a Friend, a Quaker, a Puritan, God-fearing, a proselytizer,
missionary, civilizer, farmer, shipbuilder, commercial trader, an entrepreneur, industrialist, a
merchant, sailor, whaler, shipmaster, captain, fisherman, navigator, neighbor, a family man, a
son, a father, a brother, an uncle.
He was rebellious, fearless, timid, a dreamer, pragmatic, inconsistent, a protestor,
petitioner, a one-man civil rights movement, an advocate, sagacious, accommodating, inflexible,
conciliating, a conformist, naive, a pawn, tribalistic, a separatist, clannish, provincial, a role
model, an embarrassment, “bad,” a profiteer, a capitalist, thrifty, a Yankee, a social climber, a
name dropper, a ‘shmoozer,’ a salesman, a diplomat, a Federalist, an Anglophile, an
humanitarian, a philanthropist.
He was large. He was multitudes. He was Paul Cuffe.
7
Cuffe’s Social Networks and Entrepreneurial Success
Marion Kilson
What a pleasure it is to participate in this symposium honoring the 250th birthday of the
greatest early African American entrepreneur. I want to thank my Westport colleagues who
helped me find primary and secondary sources as I prepared for the Black Entrepreneurs of the
18th and 19th Centuries exhibitions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Museum of
African American History in Boston. I am grateful to Betty Slade, Norma Judson, and Jenny O’
Neill and especially to Emily Sutton for their contributions to my understanding of Paul Cuffe’s
life and career, as well as to Paul Cyr of the New Bedford Free Public Library. I am also
indebted to Lamont Thomas for his incomparable data-rich biography of Captain Paul Cuffe,
Rise To Be A People.
Today I want to speak briefly about how Paul Cuffe’s social networks contributed to his
remarkable entrepreneurial success within a dangerous geopolitical context and how these social
networks were revealed both during his lifetime and after his death in his probate records.
Born to a self-emancipated African father and a Wampanoag mother on Cuttyhunk Island
in 1759, Paul Cuffe lived most of his life on land in the village of Westport, Massachusetts. In
his youth when he appealed to the Massachusetts legislature for voting rights as a tax payer, he
claimed his Indian heritage; in later life he emphasized his African identity. Paul Cuffe’s
contemporaries described him as “a man of noble personal appearance, tall, portly, and dignified
in his bearing.“i At the time of his death in 1817, Paul Cuffe probably was the most famous
African American on both sides of the Atlantic. Cuffe’s fame derived from his prowess as a
merchant mariner, his entrepreneurial enterprises on land, and his philanthropy at home and
abroad. He was a man of extraordinary personal and social courage, a life-long risk-taker, a
resourceful and resolute entrepreneur, a skillful and indefatigable networker, the patriarch of an
extended family, and an exponent of the Quaker virtues of honesty, thrift, truthfulness,
fulfillment of promises, and hard work.ii
8
Resourceful Entrepreneur: Kinship, Community, and Religious Networks
As a resourceful and courageous black mercantile entrepreneur, Cuffe’s career as a
merchant mariner was of ever increasing scope within a constrained and dangerous geopolitical
context. When he began trading between Westport and Nantucket in 1779, slavery was legal in
the American colonies and continued to be legal in southern states throughout his career. Until
1807 the transatlantic slave trade was legal and continued illegally throughout his life. Ships
with black crews were liable to be seized and their crews sold into slavery. More than once
Cuffe’s ships evaded capture by foreign vessels. Yet Cuffe sailed from Maine to Georgia, from
Savannah to Sweden, from Westport to the West Indies and to West Africa armed with
appropriate documents, well- maintained vessels, and disciplined crews. It took great personal
courage and resolve to venture confidently around the Atlantic Ocean world as Cuffe did.
Moreover, stormy relationships between England and France and the United States impeded
opportunities to pursue his transatlantic maritime ventures—in 1806, for example, his ship was
delayed for three months in Savannah due to a French blockade; in 1808 and during the war of
1812, the United States placed an embargo on trade with England. In fact, when the Traveller
returned from the British colony of Sierra Leone in 1812, she was impounded in Newport until
Cuffe secured the release of his ship with its African cargo.
Paul Cuffe achieved his entrepreneurial success by resourcefully maximizing social
networks based on kinship, community, and religious affiliations. Cuffe built his career as
merchant mariner on his family ties and his Quaker affiliations. Almost without exception, his
ships were commanded by family members and manned by black crews. In his maritime
endeavors, Cuffe’s most important partners were his brother-in-law, Michael Wainer, and
Michael Wainer’s sons. Michael Wainer became Cuffe’s first major business partner as Cuffe
began to trade along the Atlantic coast and to buy ever larger boats in the 1780s but retired to
farm in 1800. Michael’s eldest son Thomas became first mate of Cuffe’s ship the Alpha on its
1806 coastal and transatlantic voyages; he captained other Cuffe ships including the Hero on her
voyage to Portugal and Spain, the Ranger on the coastal trade route, and the Traveller on her
voyage to Sierra Leone in 1810-12. Paul Wainer shipped on the 1806 whaling voyage of Hero
as mate and keeper of the log and Cuffe appointed him captain of the Traveller in 1815. Jeremiah
Wainer captained the Ranger on her coastal trading voyages from 1801 until his death at sea in
9
1805. John Wainer served as first mate on the Traveller’s first voyage to Sierra Leone. Cuffe’s
own sons, Paul and William, who were at least a decade younger than their youngest Wainer
cousins, joined crews on their father’s ships later in his career. The centrality of kinsmen in
Cuffe’s maritime endeavors is reflected in the fact that of the seven crew members on the 1815
voyage to Sierra Leone only one was not a relative of Captain Cuffe.
In his 1839 memoir, Paul Cuffe, Jr. remembered his first voyage in 1806 with his father,
providing a fascinating glimpse of the rhythms and challenges of commercial trading:
… with the novelty attending a sea voyage I was highly pleased. Nothing uncommon
attended this voyage… to Pasamaquaddy, for Plaster of Paris. We made this voyage
down in about 10 days. After loading our vessel, which took two weeks, we again set sail
for Wilmington,… at which port we safely arrived in 16 days, discharged our freight,
took in ballast and 300 bushels of apples, and sailed for Savannah,… where we arrived
…in about twenty days, where we again discharged our freight and reloaded our vessel
with Cotton, Rice, and Logwood. Here we lay three months in making preparation for
sea again. From this place we made out into the broad Atlantic… This was a long,
tedious voyage,…we sailed a great number of days in a northward direction, until we
made the Grand Banks; then we steered away for the northern coast of Scotland, which
we reached in about fifty days. Thence we continued our course… into the Northern Sea,
and made the entrance to the Baltic…thence along the coast of Copenhagen to
Gottenburgh…Here we lay six weeks, sold our lading, and took in a load of iron, steel
and hemp. From thence we sailed for Elsinore…where we took in a number of
passengers for Philadelphia, at which place we arrived after a long passage….During this
voyage we had much rough weather;… we were compelled to throw overboard fifty tons
of iron while on the Grand Banks. During this gale we lost our fore-top-mast, jib-boom
and long boat.iii
On land, Cuffe invested in enterprises that were ancillary to his primary maritime trading
interests. He partnered with family members to build his ships, to run his grist mill, and to farm
his land in Westport and opened a West Indian import store in New Bedford with two sons-in-
10
law. He also partnered with white Quaker neighbors to build ships and to engage in commercial
ventures.
Over the years of his mercantile career Cuffe owned numerous ships. He also built four in
his Westport shipyard between 1796 and 1807: the Ranger, a 60-ton, square sterned schooner;
the 162-ton brig Hero; the 268-ton Alpha; and the 109-ton brig Traveller. In addition to his
relatives, Cuffe employed white craftsmen to assist in ship building and repairing.iv Apart from
the Traveller, Cuffe also shared ownership with relatives and white Westporters. In 1804, Cuffe
owned the Ranger jointly with his nephews, Michael and Jeremiah Wainer; the Hero was owned
! by white Westporter Isaac Cory and his son; ! by Thomas Wainer, and " by Paul Cuffe; the
Alpha initially was owned # by Paul Cuffe and ! by his Quaker neighbor Lemuel Milk and later
was co-owned with Philadelphia Quaker, John James, who bought Cuffe’s share in the ship for
$6,500 in 1815. Although Cuffe often had co-owners for his ships, he always maintained a
controlling interest of at least 50% in his vessels. The one exception to this policy occurred in
1806 when three white merchant mariners from the neighboring town of Dartmouth invited
Cuffe to invest in their schooner, Hope, which traded on the New Bedford to Philadelphia run. v
Cuffe’s Quaker connections gave him entrée to distant markets along the Atlantic coasts
in the United States, in Europe, and in West Africa. Many of his Westport neighbors were
Quakers and Cuffe joined their meeting in 1808. The wealthy Rotch family, Quaker founders of
New Bedford, probably knew Cuffe from his earliest trading ventures between Westport and
Nantucket and provided him with entrée to other affluent Quaker merchants in Providence and
Philadelphia. Quaker commercial and abolitionist connections in England also assisted Cuffe’s
“civilizing mission” to Sierra Leone, through which he sought to prove that profitable trade
without human trafficking was possible between Africa, America, and England.
In times of trouble Cuffe enlisted the assistance of his Quaker network in America and in
England. When customs officials impounded the Traveller in Newport on its return from Sierra
Leone in 1812, Cuffe immediately mobilized his Quaker network in Newport, New Bedford,
Providence, and Philadelphia—gathering letters of support for the release of his brig and her
African cargo from the U.S. District Attorney in Newport, the past Collector of Customs in
Newport, the Governor of Rhode Island, a U.S. senator, the former speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives as well as from prominent Quaker merchants—William Rotch, Jr. in New
11
Bedford, Thomas Arnold and Moses Brown in Providence, and John James in Philadelphia.
John James introduced Cuffe to Samuel Hutchinson with whom Cuffe stayed in Washington and
who accompanied Cuffe to his meetings first with President Madison and then with the Secretary
of the Treasury. The Secretary agreed that Cuffe’s ship and his cargo would be restored to him.
In two weeks time, Cuffe had traveled overland by stage from Newport to Washington and
successfully persuaded the president and his secretary to release Cuffe’s ship, thanks to both his
own resoluteness and his judicious use of Quaker connections. Although the release of the
Traveller is perhaps the most dramatic example of Cuffe’s resourceful use of his Quaker
network to resolve concerns, several others are recorded in his letters over the years.vi
During his lifetime Paul Cuffe experienced not only considerable financial success but
also considerable financial distress. His first voyage to Maryland brought him a $1,000 cargo of
corn for the New Bedford market; an 18-month whaling voyage to southeast African waters
netted Cuffe a profit of $1,700, but the War of 1812 inhibited his commercial ventures and he
took an $8,000 loss on his 1815 voyage to Sierra Leone, because he paid the passage of most of
the 38 African American settlers and he met severe trading restrictions in the colony. Cuffe
achieved a reputation as a resourceful, respected, and reliable business man not only in his home
community of Westport but elsewhere in the Atlantic World.
With the profits garnered from his maritime ventures in trading and whaling Cuffe
invested in real estate and commercial projects in Westport. His first real estate purchase was a
small 35 rod-parcel on the Westport River in 1789 for 4L 18 shillings; his second in 1799 was
40 acres in the same area for $1,000 and his third was the 100 acre homestead farm of Ebenezer
Eddy for $2,500. In 1800, he and two black neighbors purchased a windmill on Westport Point
for $120 to grist grain brought in his ships from mid-Atlantic states. In the last months of his
life, he signed a contract with Quaker Joseph Tripp to establish a salt works. Between 18091816 Cuffe also invested and traded in real estate: Cuffe joined two white Quakers in purchasing
several tracts of land including a cedar swamp, two salt marshes, and two farms for $6,890
which they traded back to the original owner the following year; Cuffe and Michael Wainer
bought a salt marsh for $210; Cuffe expended $13,000 to add open land, a salt meadow and two
farms to his personal holdings. Not only did Cuffe purchase real estate but he loaned money to
Westport neighbors and took mortgages on their land as security. For example, in 1812, he
12
loaned Nathaniel Sowle $158.76; the loan was secured by a mortgage on 31 acres of land and
repaid on time. In 1814, he loaned Burnea Devoll $600 payable in four years and secured by a
mortgage on 48 acres. While he provided mortgages for loans to Westport neighbors, the
prudent Cuffe never mortgaged any of his own land.
Cuffe’s Probate Records and Social Networks
When Paul Cuffe’s will was entered in the Bristol County Probate Court in 1817, the
record of the will took four long pages and the inventory of his real and personal estates another
eight. The total value of the estate was approximately $20,000—the equivalent of $322,000
today.
Paul Cuffe’s probate records reveal the importance of his commercial networks and his
concern for the wellbeing of his family and his church. The witnesses, appraisers, and executors
of the will were white Westport and New Bedford business associates and friends. Cuffe’s role
as family patriarch is expressed most fully in his will. His will distributes real and personal
property first to his wife Alice, his children, his grandchildren, his siblings, some of his in-laws
and cousins, and then to the Westport Society of Friends. He further specifies his unmarried
daughters’ rights to live in their mother’s house before and after her death as long as they are
unmarried. To his beloved wife he left all his household goods except two desks, a bookcase,
and his books; he also left her their dwelling house, one half of all his lands and livestock, and
all the family provisions on hand, one hundred dollars, and all the profits from his salt works or
$100 annually should the salt works fail. He left to his daughter Mary Phelps another house and
land; to his son Paul his maple desk and half his clothing, the farm that he had inherited from his
father, $500 to be invested and the income used for the support of Paul’s family and a 25% share
in the brig Traveller; to his son William he gave another plot of land of c. 40 acres and $300 to
build a house on the land, a 25% share in the brig Traveller, his walnut desk and book case, his
dictionary, and 50% of his clothing; to his four other daughters he left each a 1/8 interest in the
Traveller, and to his two orphaned granddaughters, he left each $50 to be given to them when
they became 21 years old. To his siblings and a few “cousins”, he gave $10 outright or $ 6
annually, though “should they…make bad use of the money…I request my executors to pay
them in provision or cloathing, and such things that may be for their comfort.” Any residue of
his estate was to be divided equally among his six living children, though his executors were
13
instructed to retain sufficient funds to ensure that the annual payments mentioned in the will
could be made.
In addition to his family Paul Cuffe remembered the Society of Friends in Westport,
leaving fifty dollars to “be paid over to their treasurer, by my executors, according to the
direction of the monthly meeting.” Cuffe’s parents are said to have adhered to Quaker principles
though they were not Quakers. Cuffe joined the Westport Meeting and assumed Quaker dress in
1808. He obtained traveling letters from the Meeting before embarking on his voyages to Sierra
Leone and his trip to Washington to meet with President Madison. He contributed his services to
the Meeting as an active member of various financial, investigative, and building committees and
as the principal financial contributor to the building in 1813 of the sparely elegant Meeting
House in the graveyard of which Paul Cuffe and his wife are buried.
Paul Cuffe’s will reveals that he had considerable durable property, that the well-being of
his immediate and extended family and his church were his primary concerns, and that he was a
careful and insightful planner for their future prosperity.
The inventory of Cuffe’s estate discloses his complex relationships with Westport
neighbors, his commercial interests, and his personal acquisitions. His real estate included not
only the land and buildings mentioned but a six-acre woodlot, two meadows, and a cedar swamp.
The total value of his real estate was assessed at $4,119. The most valuable item in his personal
estate was the brig Traveller, assessed at $1,800, the next was his share of the salt works on
Joseph Tripp’s land $800, then there were the thirty-three notes and obligations, primarily
mortgages on land, that were owed to his estate by black and white Westport residents that
totaled approximately $4,158 and revealed a web of obligation among kin and neighbors to one
of the most affluent members of the Westport community. The inventory of his numerous
possessions discloses traces of his entrepreneurial endeavors as merchant mariner, shipbuilder,
and farmer. Among the items assessed are iron hoops, old rigging, charts, fish hooks, whale
lancets, half pint French tumblers, African peppers, casks of varnish, timbers and boards, saws
and planes, scythes and plough shares, oxen, hens and lambs. His household items included a
large looking glass, 6 Windsor chairs, trunks and chests, beds, bolsters, pillows, quilts, sheets,
large plates and small plates, pitchers and teapots, cream pots and sugar bowls, skillets and
kettles, knives and forks. His wearing apparel that was to be divided between his two sons was
14
also itemized. Finally there is his library of books that this self-educated man treasured—his
Bible, his two-volume dictionary, a concordance, as well as books and pamphlets on history, art,
and other topics.
His appraisers assessed his personal property as totaling $14,022.57. They
also noted additional obligations owed to him in Sierra Leone. Perhaps the appraisers did not
enter these obligations in their summation, because they thought that they were less likely to be
met than those closer to hand in Westport. Paul Cuffe’s will and the inventory of his estate
reveal aspects of his life concerns and achievements but fail to convey the full texture of his
remarkable life journey.
Conclusion
Paul Cuffe achieved his entrepreneurial success through his effective mobilization of
members not only of his extended Afro-Indian family but of his religious community within
Westport and across the Atlantic world. But as remarkable as that ability was, even more
significant was the philosophy that underlay his prudent, shrewd, courageous, and resourceful
business acumen. At the end of an 1816 letter to a fellow merchant mariner, he appended this
“watch word”:
In experience I have ever found when I attended to my business I seldom suffered
loss. I have found it to be good to make choice of good companions. I have ever found
it not to be profitable for me to sit long after dining and make a tipling habit of wine
and other liquors. These very people who adopt these practi[ce]s when they see a
sober steady man, they will put business in his way.vii
Paul Cuffe became a model of integrity and entrepreneurial success not only in his own time but
in ours. And so we honor the continuing salience of his achievements today.
i
Ricketson: 255
Cuffe articulated his precepts for living in an 1816 letter of advice to his nephew Thomas Wainer: “See to this
before it is too late: Look about thyself—awake to industry, deal honestly, live frugally, and…prohibit thyself from
unnecessary expenses. I am a member of the Society that are combined for the purpose of discouraging
intemperance, therefore, I take the liberty of inquiring of thee whether thou makes use of intoxicating liquors—if so,
my candid advice to you is to take up a firm resolution and leave off making any kind of use of them unless for
sickness. Confine thyself at home. Understand me all business must be attended to, but do not go after strange flesh;
ii
15
love mercy, walk humbly, and fear God. Observe the above advice and I believe thee will get along well and be
comfortable here and be happy hereafter. (Wiggins:485-6)
iii
Cuffe, Jr:3-4. Paul Cuffe, Jr. erroneously states that this voyage took place in 1808.
iv
For example, the account book of David Lake, a white carpenter from Tiverton, RI shows that Cuffe paid Lake for
repairing the Ranger in 1806 with cash, sugar, and lottery tickets. (David Lake Account Book, 1805-07, Rhode
Island Historical Society Library, MS.
v
Principal sources of information: Thomas, passim; Loomis, Chapter 3, and Putney, “Pardon Cook…”, 47-54.
vi
In 1811, when the British Navy tried to press into service Cuffe’s young African apprentice into service in
Liverpool, Cuffe enlisted prominent Quaker merchants and abolitionists to write to the Admiralty for the young
man’s release. Cuffe traveled to London where he went with famed Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson to the
Admiralty. There he discovered that the youth’s release had already been ordered. (Sherwood:174-176)
vii
Wiggins: 467.
Bibliography
--------The History of Prince Lee Boo, to which is added, The Life of Paul Cuffee, A Man of Colour, also,
the account of John Sackhouse, the Esquimaux. (Dublin: C. Crookes, 1820).
Allinson, W. J., “A Brief Memoir of Paul Cuffee,” The Non-Slaveholder V, 12 (1850): 265-269,
Armistead, Winston. Memoir of Paul Cuffe, A Man of Color. (London: Edmund Fry, 1840).
Bristol County Probate and Family Court
Paul Cuffe’s Probate Records
Cordeiro, Brock N. “Paul Cuffe: A Study of His Life and the Status of His Legacy in ‘Old Dartmouth,”
(UMB-MA History Thesis, 2004).
Cuffe, Paul, [Jr]. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe[Jr.], A Pequot Indian. [1839]
(Westport, MA: Cuffee’s Bookcase, 1979).
Dartmouth Town Records, 1814-1815.
Devlin, Edward W. A Man Born on Purpose: Captain Paul Cuffe of Westport. (Westport Historical
Society, 1997).
Devlin, T. “The Search for Cuffe’s Windmill,” (MS, Westport Friends Meeting House, n.d.).
Diamond, Arthur. Paul Cuffe. (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989).
Farr, James. “A Slow Boat to Nowhere: The Multi-Racial Crews of the American Whaling Industry,”
Journal of Negro History 68, 2 (Spring 1983):159-170.
Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionists in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. (Amherst: U. Mass. Press, 2001).
Harris, Sheldon H. “An American’s Impressions of Sierra Leone in 1811,” Journal of Negro History
47, 1(Jan. 1962):35-41.
Howard, H. P. A Self-Made Man, Capt. Paul Cuffe (1913)
Kaplan, Sidney. The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770-1800. (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1973).
Lewis, Harold D. “Cuffe, Paul,” in Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston (eds.) Dictionary
of American Negro Biography. (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1982), pp.147-148.
Loomis, Sally. “Captain Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) and His Work,” MS, nd.
Malloy, Mary. “From Boston Harbor We Set Sail”: A Curriculum Unit on African-American Mariners
And Maritime Communities in Massachusetts. (Sharon, MA: Kendall Whaling Museum, 2001).
McKissack, Patricia C. and Frederick L. McKissack, Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of AfricanAmerican Whalers. (NY: Scholastic Press, 1999).
National Archives and Records Administration, Waltham, MA
Manifest for Traveller and Crew List, 1810 voyage to Sierra Leone
New Bedford Free Public Library
Disbursement on Brig Traveller—bill of stores/Act. Sales Cargo of Brig Traveller—1817, Cuffe
Reel 1: 457, 458
16
Manifest for Ranger, Cuffe Reel 1:191.
New Bedford Store: cost of goods sold, Cuffe Reel 1:485.
Putney, Martha S. “Richard Johnson: An Early Effort in Black Enterprise,” Negro History Bulletin 45
(April-June 1982): 46-47.
-------“Pardon Cook, Whaling Master,” Journal of Afro-American Historical and Genealogical
Society (Summer 1983): 47-54.
-------Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War. (NY:
Greenwood Press, 1987).
Rhode Island Historical Society Library
Francis family of Providence and Warwick, R.I. MS426
David Lake Account Book, 1805-07, MS.
Ricketson, Daniel. The History of New Bedford. (New Bedford, 1858).
Salvador, George Arnold. Paul Cuffe, The Black Yankee, 1759-1817. (New Bedford: Reynolds-DeWalt
Printing, Inc., 1969.
Sherwood, H. N.“Paul Cuffe,” The Journal of Negro History , VIII,3 (April 1923): 153-229.
Thomas, Lamont D. Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1986.
Town of Westport
Paul Cuffe’s tax records for 1807, 1808, 1811, 1813, 1814,1815, 1817
Vital Records of Westport, Massachusetts to the year 1850.
Westport Quaker Meeting House
Document: Agreement between Paul Cuffe and Joseph Tripp to establish salt works, dated
April 21, 1817.
Wiggins, Rosalind Cobb. Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letter, 1808-1817: A Black Quaker’s “Voice
from within the Veil.” (Washington, D.C., Howard University Press, 1996).
Woodson, C. G. “The Relations of Negroes and Indians of Massachusetts,” Journal of Negro History 5,1
(Jan. 1920):45-57.
17
The Collaborations of Paul Cuffe and Isaac Cory
Richard C. Kugler
The subject of my remarks this morning concerns a number of little known enterprises
that were carried out by Paul Cuffe and Isaac Cory. (In the interest of complete disclosure, I
should acknowledge that Isaac was my great-grandfather seven generations back.) Neither he
nor Cuffe was born in Westport, with Cuffe’s father arriving by way of the Newport slave
market, where he was purchased by a Slocum of Cuttyhunk, an offshore island within view of
Westport. On Cuttyhunk, Paul’s father was permitted to work for others and thereby earn not
only his freedom but sufficient funds to buy a shoreline farm in Westport of approximately 120
acres, to which he moved his family.
Cory’s path to Westport was different. His ancestors were among the early settlers of
Rhode Island, having accompanied the religious dissenter Anne Hutchinson when she and a
small group of followers sought religious freedom in the colony of Rhode Island, perhaps giving
rise to the old saw that “if you’ve lost your religion, you’ll find it in Rhode Island.” There is no
evidence, however, that Isaac found his, as there is no reference in any of his papers to church
attendance or affiliation, a fact that I mention only because of the almost universal tendency of
his biographers to designate him as a Quaker. He lived on Aquidneck Island where he and his
wife’s family, the Cadmans, operated ferry services across the Sakonett River to Tiverton, Rhode
Island. Or at least they did so, until December 8, 1776, when a force of 8,000 British regulars
occupied Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island. Most of the inhabitants of the island fled
across the Sakonnet River to the mainland shore, which then included within its bounds the
territory that would become the town of Westport. Once established there, Isaac Cory built, or
acquired and outfitted, several relatively small craft known, for some unknown reason, as
“shaving mills.” Propelled by oars and a single sail, they were armed with swivel guns, small
arms, cutlasses, and espontoons, the latter being short pikes. Commissioned to cruise against
the enemies of the United States, they did their part in harassing British naval operations along
the coasts of New England, earning their owners considerable sums for goods taken, as awarded
by the admiralty courts set up in New London, Connecticut.
18
On May 5th in 1790, the Westport town meeting considered a proposal submitted by Isaac
Cory to give him and others liberty to set a school house on the highway near the southeast
corner of George Brightman’s land. Cory found his most ardent supporter in Paul Cuffe for
what was to be an integrated school for blacks, whites, and Indian children. The school may not
have been sustainable, being without financial support from the town, which did not officially
establish town-supported schools until 1797.
In 1802, in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Cory and Cuffe jointly built and
owned a two-masted vessel for the merchant service, 75 feet in length, and launched with the
name Hero. For the brig’s maiden voyage, Issac Cory was designated her master, but he in fact
remained at home. Paul Cuffe assumed the role of sailing master, with Thomas Wainer as his
first mate. One of Cuffe’s sons was in the crew as were seven others. (The shipping paper is
among the documents on exhibit here.) The vessel sailed on February 16th for Wilmington,
North Carolina, and then proceeded on to the West Indies with a cargo of trade goods.
For Hero’s second voyage, Cory and Cuffe added a third mast to the brig, thereby
converting her into a bark, which they intended to use as a whaler. For her fourth voyage, Cory
and Cuffe set forth the following orders on September 8, 1810:
“The Bark Hero being ready to sail on a whaling voyage to the westward of Cape Horn,
we appoint thee, William Bearns, master, [and] recommend that thee proceed to sea on the first
wind that the pilot may think safe. Thou will make the best of thy way round Cape Horn in order
to obtain a cargo of sperm oil, not refusing to take said cargo in whatever part of the sea thou are
favored with the opportunity.
“Thou are fitted for a two years voyage and should return home so as not to overreach
that time, oil or no oil. When at the westward of Cape Horn we advise thee to make the first of
thy cruise to the windward from latitude 40 to 36 degrees south [i.e., off the central coast of
Chile], but this we leave to thy judgment.
“On thy return, when approaching America, thou will endeavor to keep clear of
Nantucket Shoals, sailing in with Long Island and making harbor at Newport or on Tarpaulin
Cove and give us notice, or get into New Bedford. If it should be moderate, heave to at the
mouth of the Bay and send a boat in [to Westport] and we will send a pilot out.
19
Wishing you a quick passage, successful voyage and safe return.”
Isaac Cory and Paul Cuffe
This voyage certainly did not go well, as we read in a letter to Captains Cuffe and Cory
from Captain Bearns in Coquimbo, Chile, on June 30, 1812:
“Capts. Cuffe and Cory—
“I will inform you that I have got Better than I was when Capt. Joy left this port for thine.
I was Blind & my eye was attended with a very hard pain & Capt. Joy said he would write every
particular to you Concerning the Bark Hero.
“The Bark was so bad I could not Cruise on the weather Coast. I got my last Whale the
13th of February at the Galapagos Islands, which filled the Bark. My men was some scurvied, &
I tried to get to Tombes & had light airs & calms & a very strong NW current & Rain, which
carried me in the Latitude of 5 [degrees] 30’ North. I found it impossible to get into Tombes,
then I tried for Coquimbo. I was 73 days in North Latitude and my men getting very Bad with
the Scurvy. When I reached this Port, there was but Four men that could come on deck, which
was my Mate and Charles G. Head and they was sick.
“I had been confined to my Cabin 12 days before I got to this Port. When I was coming
in I was becalmed with a very High swell heaving on the Rocks & thick with fog. I let go both
Anchors and brought her up. Previous to this I got the Sick men all in the boat, one died getting
him in the boat, which was a Spanish man. I carried all on shore & sent off 18 men to tow the
Bark. The Spaniards kept us all out of Doors one Day & one Night in the fog and cold which
was very bad for us. Isaac Harte departed this Life in four hours after he got on Shore, but the
Rest have got well & I am much better.
“The Bark is very rotten, the tops leaving the Bottom, it was impossible to get her Home
or get her Repaired. There was a Survey of five Captains and some Spaniards and they
condemned her. I shipped by Capt. Fitch, Ship Mars, 219 bbls. of oil, and by Capt. Pinkham,
Ship Alliance, 480 bbls. I have lost oil by Leaking & turned up 750 bbls & now I have but 699.
I sold the Bark for 4,000 dollars, but there is Duties & a number of charges more to be paid out
of that. . . .
20
“The American Consul is a Spanish man and he is trying to take the advantage of me &
the Rest of the Captains. I have had much trouble with him concerning the Bark & settlement
but I have bound him by Writing.
“It is very hurtful to my eye to Write or I Should Write more particulars. I cannot see
with one eye & the other is very weak & in much Pain in my eye and temple.
Yours, etc.
Wm. Bearns
The final collaboration of Isaac and Paul, that I know of, involves not whales,
but sheep. This episode begins during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, when his ambassador to
Spain and Portugal sent to his care at the White House, a flock of about 40 Merino sheep, which
were considered to have the finest wool of any breed. These Merinos were put out to graze on
the White House lawn, setting off one of those crazes that erupt from time to time in the history
of our nation. In this case, even hard-headed entrepreneurs like Cory and Cuffe took the plunge,
sending Cuffe’s brig Traveller to Spain, where their agent acquired 87 merinos. Carried back to
Westport, they divided the flock, selling some for inflated prices, while keeping the rest for their
own use as breed stock. The wool was used by weavers who lived among them. (The Merino
wool coverlet shown here is one of several that descended in the Cory family and is still usable
to the present day, with little sign of wear and tear.)
This brings me to the end of the collaboration of Paul Cuffe and Isaac Cory as I know
them. Still, the answer to one question eludes me, namely how did Cuffe enter into these
partnerships with Cory knowing, as he surely did, that Isaac himself owned two black slaves—
one named Jupiter, the other Glasgow—who were left to him in his father’s will. Their last
names were “Cory” and they were apparently treated with respect. Both of them were married
twice and, in the case of Jupiter, Cory provided him with a cottage to reside in the dunes of
Horseneck Beach. Glasgow remained mostly in Rhode Island, where he married and had
children. Beyond that, there seems little chance of learning more about these two black Corys,
except to suggest that they were set free in 1780 and 1783, and offer further testimony to the
magnanimous and forgiving nature of Paul Cuffe, the noble man we honor today.
21
“Thou Art Often the Companion of My Mind”: Paul Cuffe, James Forten, and the Portrait of
a Friendship
Julie Winch
My goal in this presentation is not to cover the same ground so ably covered by this
morning’s speakers and by those you will hear later this afternoon. I am not going to focus on the
story of Paul Cuffe’s pioneering efforts with regard to African resettlement. Fascinating though
that is, I do not intend to discuss it, except in passing, nor in talking about Cuffe’s friend James
Forten do I propose to explore his own on-again off-again response to that great undertaking.
What I want to do is to step back for a brief time and look at the personal dimension – the
relationship between these two remarkable men as documented in some two dozen letters, half of
them housed in this building and the other half in the New Bedford Free Public Library. Were
there other letters? There almost certainly were, for the friendship between Paul Cuffe and James
Forten endured for more than two decades. Either those letters – and there were probably a good
many of them -- were lost over the course of two centuries, or they remain to be found. Whatever
the case, they are not available. We have what we have – but the correspondence that has come
down to us is and remains invaluable for what it tells us about these two men and the
circumstances in which they found themselves.i
There has been a tendency in recent years, as there was in their own day, to lump Paul
Cuffe and James Forten together. And yes, there were certain similarities. Both were freeborn
men of color, and they were fairly close in age: Forten was the younger of the two by seven
years. Both had been captured at sea during the War for Independence, Cuffe on a whaler and
Forten on a privateer, and both had suffered imprisonment. Both made their living from seafaring
after the war, one as a ship’s captain and the other as a master sail-maker. Moreover, both were
deeply spiritual men. There, though, the similarities end. Paul Cuffe was the son of an African
man and a Native American woman. At least on his father’s side, James Forten had to look back
several generations to find that direct link with Africa. His father had been born free in
Philadelphia. His grandfather had been born in the city and had toiled for years as a slave before
acquiring his freedom. It was James Forten’s great-grandfather who had been enslaved and
brought to Pennsylvania by either Dutch or British traders shortly after William Penn’s own
arrival.
22
Regional differences also played a role in shaping the characters and attitudes of these
two men. Paul Cuffe had been born on Cuttyhunk in the Elizabeth islands of New England, and
James Forten on Third near Walnut Street in Philadelphia, a short stroll from Independence Hall.
Although educated at the Friends’ African School in Philadelphia – and able to say that some of
his best friends were Friends – Forten was no Quaker but a lifelong Episcopalian. Paul Cuffe
was, of course, a convert to Quakerism.
How, where and when did Paul Cuffe and James Forten become acquainted? Almost
certainly their first meeting took place in Philadelphia. Except for his time as a privateer and then
a prisoner (1781-82), and a fairly brief period after the Revolution when he sailed to England on
a merchantman, Forten never ventured far beyond the city of his birth. Not so Paul Cuffe, who
roamed much further afield. Cuffe was in the City of Brotherly Love as early as 1793 to sell a
cargo of whale oil and bone, and buy ironwork for a schooner he was planning on building. If he
used his visit to inquire about sails -- a vital component, after all, of his new vessel -- he might
have taken a walk down by the Delaware to inspect a few of the sail-lofts and have been
surprised to encounter white sail-maker Robert Bridges’ foreman. No semi-skilled sailor hired to
help sew canvas when the loft was coping with a rush of orders, and no mere apprentice or
journeyman, although he had been both, by 1793 James Forten was Robert Bridges’ right-hand
man and designated successor. For Cuffe, who knew only too well the realities of racial
discrimination, the young man of color with such bright prospects was a remarkable find. Either
on that visit or on a later one the two met, talked, and became fast friends.
Captain Cuffe was often in Philadelphia for trade and to converse with his fellow
Quakers, a good many of whom were merchants like himself. But they were white men. Cuffe
visited with them and enjoyed their company. He also took the time, though, to make
connections within the city’s burgeoning free community of color, and some of those
connections were made through James Forten. No, Philadelphia was not the haven so many black
people expected to find as they fled enslavement in Maryland or Virginia, prevailed on owners to
free them, or hoarded the money to buy their liberty, but it was better than what they were
leaving behind. Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Law (1780) and the changing economic
climate which made slave labor less attractive financially, at least in Philadelphia, meant that
legal or de facto freedom was the status of the majority of black urban dwellers by the 1800s and
23
1810s. Black churches flourished, a black Masonic Lodge came into being, and black schools
and mutual support societies cropped up from one end of the city to the other. It was very
different indeed from Westport…and certainly from Cuttyhunk.
In 1798, Robert Bridges retired and James Forten took over the sail-loft. By dint of hard
work and useful connections, he thrived. Whenever one of Cuffe’s vessels was in port, he did
running repairs to its canvas. He worked on the Resolution, the Alpha and the Traveller.ii He
knew Cuffe’s nephew, Paul Wainer, who part-owned the Resolution and sometimes captained
her for his uncle. And through Cuffe he almost certainly increased his circle of acquaintance
among Quaker ship-owners and merchants. If Forten provided Cuffe with introductions to
influential people of color such as ministers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, Cuffe returned
the favor by making Forten known to his contacts among the city’s white Quaker elite.
Of the two men, James Forten was arguably the better writer, but then he had had more
early education than his friend, and, situated as he was in what was for many years the nation’s
intellectual capital, he had advantages that Paul Cuffe did not. He managed to acquire and read
many more books, and he also indulged in a passion Cuffe might have frowned upon. Until the
Southwark Theatre closed, and the newer, more fashionable theatres in center city Philadelphia
enacted policies of rigid segregation, James Forten enjoyed going to plays. That literary, and
even theatrical turn, emerges in some of his letters. For example, in February of 1815 he gave
Cuffe a vivid word-picture of “the great joy that was manifested [sic] by all classes of Society”
in Philadelphia when the news arrived that the war with Britain was over – “indeed the peopul
for some time appeared to be all most frantic.” And he conjured up a winter scene, with the
Delaware, as he said, “all frozened over” and “Sleighs & Sleds…passing & repassing
constantly.”iii But if Paul Cuffe’s literary skills were less well developed than James Forten’s,
and his handwriting less elegant, his sentiments were no less sincere. “[D]ear James thou art
often the companion of my mind,” was the postscript to one letter, and “I am thy ashured friend”
was how he ended many of them. James Forten closed his letters with “your ever affectionate
friend and well wisher.”iv
Although Paul Cuffe and James Forten were fairly close in age, generationally there was
a gulf between their families. With a widowed mother to support and a business to build up,
James Forten delayed marriage well past the typical age for men in the post-Revolutionary era.
24
In 1803, when he wed for the first time, he was almost 37. His wife, Martha, died less than a year
later. He did not immediately remarry, as so many widowers did, once a brief period of
mourning was over. To begin with, since his and Martha’s union had been childless, he was not
faced with the need to find someone to raise a motherless infant. And he had another crisis to
cope with in addition to the loss of Martha. His sister suddenly found herself a widow, and she
turned to James to help her raise her four children. Not until he had made suitable arrangements
for them could he think about marrying again. But eventually he did. His second wife was
Charlotte Vandine, a woman half his age, who was of African, Dutch and Native American
ancestry. The couple married in 1805. Their first child, a daughter, Margaretta (named for
James’s mother, Margaret), was born in 1806, and over the next two decades they had eight more
children. Paul Cuffe married far earlier. He was 24 in 1783 when he and 28-year-old Alice
Pequit wed. And when James and Charlotte Forten were welcoming their children into the world,
the Cuffes were already grandparents.
One especially touching aspect of the Cuffe-Forten letters is the evidence they provide of
the father-daughter relationship that developed between Paul Cuffe and Charlotte Vandine
Forten. She was, after all, younger than his firstborn, Naomi. Their friendship was cemented by,
among other things, a love of reading. In October of 1815, for example, Paul Cuffe was contrite.
Charlotte had received him most kindly on his recent visit to Philadelphia, “and I did not her the
favour of bid[d]ing far[e]well.” Worse, when he returned to Westport and unpacked, he
discovered he had inadvertently taken a book she had loaned him. He was mortified, and most
insistent that she buy herself another copy at his expense.v On another occasion, when she had,
according to her husband, “been very ill with the sore throte” – and it is worth remembering that
strep throat could kill in an era before antibiotics – she was on the mend and longed to see her
old friend. “[S]he thought during her indisposition,” James wrote to Paul, ”could she but have
sene you it would have made her well.”vi
The two families, the Cuffes and the Fortens, were known to each other, even if it was
only through their letters and the visits of Paul Cuffe to the Forten home. When tragedy struck,
they offered one another what solace they could. In the autumn of 1814, for example, hearing
from James Forten that his six-year-old daughter had succumbed to hydrocephalus, Cuffe wrote:
“I with thee hope we may always keep in remembrance that we are to Die Sooner or Later and
25
my desire is that we maybe prepared to meet thee [sic] final period.”vii The passing of Cuffe’s
“loving and effectionate [sic] Sister” brought condolences from James Forten and his family,
along with the pious hope that, great though Cuffe’s loss was, “I know that you are sensible that
your loss is her gain,” since she had died strong in her Christian faith.viii The death of the Cuffes’
eldest daughter, Naomi, followed soon thereafter by the passing of her husband, left Paul and
Alice to raise their two orphaned granddaughters. Cuffe wrote to Forten of the sorrow he and his
wife had had to bear – a sorrow that was offset by their delight in their “promising” young
charges.ix The families shared each other’s anxious moments – Charlotte’s severe illness one
autumn, and Alice’s tendency to be afflicted with respiratory problems every winter.x They
shared each other’s joyful events as well. In the spring of 1816, for instance, James Forten wrote:
“I am happy to let you know that it has pleased Divine Providence, to bless us with a nother
Daughter, on last Sab[b]ath day. Charlotte is as well as can be expected, and Joines me in love to
you and family.”xi They constantly asked to be remembered to one another’s families. On one
occasion, when sending his love to Charlotte and the children, for instance, Paul Cuffe added:
“[T]ell them I often see them in a contemplate V[i]ew.”xii
Paul Cuffe and James Forten were very much family men. They cared deeply about their
wives and their children, but their concern extended to their other kinfolk as well. As I have
already noted, the plight of his widowed sister, Abigail Forten Dunbar, had forced James to delay
marrying again, and even after his marriage to Charlotte he accepted that Abigail and her
children needed his help. He housed them, found apprenticeships for the boys, and married his
niece off to one of his journeymen. Paul Cuffe watched over the doings of his own kith and kin.
Generally he approved of the way they conducted themselves. Brother-in-law Michael Wainer
was a much-valued partner, and nephew Paul Wainer a credit to the family. Alas, the same could
not be said about every member of the Cuffe clan. John Marsten, Cuffe’s nephew by marriage,
had abandoned his young wife, Mary Wainer, the daughter of Paul Cuffe’s sister, and headed off
to sea. Of course, sea-faring was the norm among the Cuffe men, but Paul Cuffe sensed that
Marsten did not intend to return home anytime soon. He had heard the young man was in
Philadelphia. Could James Forten find him and talk some sense into him? Forten did his best. He
tracked down Marsten and passed on Cuffe’s message that he needed to take care of his family.
Marsten promised to head back to his wife as soon as he could, but he explained that he was a
little short of cash. Could Forten make him a short-term loan? Of course, he would pay him back.
26
Alas, when the loan became due Marsten had disappeared. “He has completely deseaved me,”
Forten was obliged to confess to his old friend. He believed Marsten had gone to sea again, and
promised to let Cuffe know on what ship and where he was bound as soon as he could find out.xiii
Cuffe, who had endured plenty of forced absences from home over the years, was disheartened.
“I am persuaded the Longer a man is from his family the more a Stranger he will becom[e] unto
them, unless he is directed by the right Spirit.”xiv His anxiety over Marsten persisted. If James
could not get him to return home could he at least prevail upon him to write to his wife?xv
Paul Cuffe and James Forten were astute businessmen, constantly watching the state of
the market. Through 1814 they commiserated about the war with Britain. It was costing them
and the nation financially – “all merchantabile business seems to wear a gloom of Death,” Cuffe
wrote.xvi It was wrecking their plans for links with Britain’s colony of Sierra Leone. Worst of all,
for two men of strong religious faith who knew from their own sufferings just what war meant,
conflict of any kind, whether between individuals or nations, was something to be avoided.
Over the years James Forten handled a great many business arrangements for Paul Cuffe,
and not just those relating to his “African Enterprise,” although admittedly he played a vital role
in recruiting emigrants in Philadelphia and helping them settle their affairs before they set sail
for Sierra Leone. At his friend’s request he also tried to find people with certain specific skills
(for instance, setting up and managing a rice mill) that Cuffe thought were needed in the colony.
He had white business acquaintances of his own, for example, iron merchant Thomas Ash,
whom he described as “a very greate friend,” and he did his best to put them in touch with
Cuffe.xvii There were other matters of a more delicate nature. A white Quaker friend of Cuffe’s,
John James, once very wealthy but now virtually bankrupt, was truly to be pitied – although
Forten could not refrain from a little moralizing, observing, “wonderful are thy afflictions o
Lord.”xviii His own losses, as he mentioned to Cuffe, prevented him from coming to John James’s
aid, but Cuffe himself intervened, using Forten as an intermediary. He sent a draft for $50 drawn
on a New York banking house, with instructions that Forten was to get the money to the James
family without bringing Cuffe’s name into the business. He had no wish to embarrass an old
friend. As he observed, “my wishes are to do no hurt.”xix
Anxious to be regarded as a man of good standing in the business community, James
Forten appreciated the need to have his word taken as his bond. So many deals were concluded
27
with a handshake. So much in the world of commerce in this era depended on an individual’s
good name. If Forten cared about his own standing, he also cared about Cuffe’s, and he hurriedly
issued a warning when it seemed Cuffe’s reputation was in danger. An unpaid bill for work done
on the brig Alpha by a ship’s carpenter in Philadelphia needed taking care of at once because (so
Forten had heard) the man thought Cuffe meant to cheat him and was talking about suing. He
cautioned: “[S]uch a step in this City w[h]ere your credit and carracter stands so very high”
would be disastrous to Cuffe personally and to “the good cause.”
The preservation of his good name became a major concern of Paul Cuffe’s towards the
end of 1816. He was appalled to discover that a wily imposter was going the rounds. The man
had turned up in New Bedford claiming to be the son of African American churchman Richard
Allen, whom Cuffe had been introduced to by James Forten on one of his trips to Philadelphia.
“Ralston Allen,” as the imposter called himself, had told people he was himself an ordained
minister, and he actually preached – Cuffe did not say how effectively – to a group of African
Americans in the town. He was no minister of the Word, though, but “a great Secundal.” After
his sojourn in New Bedford, the confidence man headed for Boston, where he passed himself off
as Paul Cuffe’s brother-in-law. Because the Cuffe name meant something in the white business
community, the man was able to talk one merchant out of a considerable quantity of goods –
presumably by saying that he should send the bill to Captain Cuffe in Westport -- only to have
his scheme thwarted at the last moment when the merchant made a couple of discreet inquiries.
From Boston the villain made for Albany, New York, where he tricked an overly-trusting farmer
out of a horse and a suit of clothes. Decently attired and provided with a means of transportation,
he headed south. He made use of Cuffe’s Quaker network in Pennsylvania and Maryland,
transforming himself into no less a personage than Paul Cuffe himself and getting hospitality
from various Friends who believed his story that he was on his way to Washington to present a
memorial to Congress with “plans for Civilizing Africa.” One man who had actually met Cuffe
became suspicious and interviewed the so-called Paul Cuffe, who hastily changed his tune,
saying first that he was Cuffe’s son and then his son-in-law. He had gotten out of Maryland
without being thrown in jail, but Cuffe had every reason to believe he was doubling back to
Philadelphia. Would James Forten please be on the look-out and take appropriate action? Cuffe
concluded his letter: “[B]ewere of wolves in Sheeps Clothing are the advice of thy affectionate
and ever wellwishing friend.”xx
28
In fact, James Forten needed no such warning. His letter detailing the doings of the
imposter crossed in the mail with Paul Cuffe’s own letter. The false Cuffe had been arrested in
York, Pennsylvania, where he identified himself as John Cuffe. The man had had the temerity to
write to Cuffe’s white acquaintance, John James, in Philadelphia – the same John James Cuffe
had helped out of his financial difficulties. John James gave the letter to Forten, and he
forwarded it to Cuffe, explaining: “[T]he Signeter of the letter is John Cuffe, son of the old
celebrated Captn Cuffe. [W]e knew you had no son of that name.”xxi
Paul Cuffe wrote back to thank James Forten for his letter and to say that the self-styled
John Cuffe had had the nerve to write to him reiterating his claim to be his son and had asked for
Cuffe’s help to get him out of jail. Cuffe, usually a merciful man, was not softened by his pleas.
He replied to the man, expressing his hope “that he might not be permit[t]ed to go out again to
de[c]eive the nations until the thousand years Should expire.” Not surprisingly, he added, “I have
heard nothing more from him since.”xxii
The false Cuffe sat in jail and served what the real Cuffe regarded as a well-deserved
sentence, but there were other people who were in trouble and distress through no fault of their
own, and both Cuffe and Forten reached out a hand to help them. In March of 1817, for instance,
Forten dashed off a letter to Cuffe describing the plight of one Cuffe Johnson. A couple of years
previously, the young man had sailed with Cuffe before shipping out from Boston with a white
captain. The captain, one William Yeabe, took him to New Orleans, where he sold him as a
slave. The man’s complexion (“very black”) and his way of speaking led Forten to believe that
he “is an African by burth,” perhaps someone his old friend had met on one of his ventures to
Sierra Leone. Could Cuffe help? The sailor’s free papers were on file in New Bedford and
recorded in Boston. The matter was urgent. Cuffe Johnson was in Philadelphia with his master
(who had presumably bought him legitimately), but how long they would stay Forten had no
idea.xxiii Given the urgency of the matter, Forten was somewhat surprised when he heard nothing
from Cuffe. He expected a letter by return. What could be the matter? It was not like Cuffe to
ignore something as important as this.xxiv
When a letter finally came, it gave James Forten and his family their first inkling that
Paul Cuffe’s health was failing. He described to them “a Very seveer turn” he had suffered when
he was away from home. It lasted eight hours, during which time “I under went as much as
29
human nature was capabul of endureing.” He found comfort, though, in his faith: “[M]ay we be
prepared for sud[d]en death and the Lords visitation.”xxv James immediately wrote back, but he
was worried, and Charlotte even more so, when, after a prolonged silence, they received another
letter from Cuffe. It was from him, but they could immediately see it was not in his handwriting.
He had had to dictate it from his sick-bed because by July of 1817 he was too weak to hold a
pen. James Forten hurriedly wrote back to express his own and Charlotte’s concern. She was
even more anxious than he was. “[S]he think[s] you must be very ill indeed.”xxvi
Within a matter of a few weeks their worst fears were justified. On September 10 Rhode
Cuffe wrote to inform them of what they would soon learn from the press announcements – and
Paul Cuffe’s passing was reported in newspapers from New England to as far south as the
nation’s capital. She wrote: “It has pleased Almighty God to remove from this transitorial world
my affectionate and venerable father.” She supposed James and Charlotte had been aware of her
father’s condition. He had not been well since February, but he had borne his affliction with
great fortitude and a confidence that his “work has gone before hand to judgment.” Shortly
before he died, he had gathered his family around him and “described to us in a wonderful
manner his view of the celestial city…saying he longed to be gone to join with Moses and the
lamb in the Eternal Song.” Although they knew the state of his soul, his death had left a great
void in their family. Alice Cuffe sent her love, and there was a reference to a gift from her to the
Fortens that her husband had delivered on what turned out to be his last visit to Philadelphia.
Alice hoped “at some future day to visit your region Should health and strength permit it.”xxvii
Alice Pequit Cuffe died in 1819 without that visit having been paid, but the ties between
the two families endured. Paul and Alice’s daughter, Ruth, was widowed with young children,
and she wed a former resident of Philadelphia, Richard Johnson. Johnson had been a sailor, and
may well have known James Forten during his days in the Quaker City. In New Bedford he
prospered, becoming a merchant and in time a ship-owner. Johnson was himself a widower with
several children when he and Ruth married. When it came time to apprentice Ruth’s son,
Shadrach, and Richard’s son, Ezra, there was no question about what trade they would learn and
where and under whose guidance they would learn it. The two teenagers were sent to
Philadelphia to board with James and Charlotte Forten and master the “mysteries” of sail-making
in the Forten loft.xxviii The bond forged between Paul Cuffe and James Forten – the bond formed
30
most likely by a chance meeting on the wharves along the Delaware River and cemented by
shared ideals and aspirations – endured for decades.
i
The biographical information on James Forten is from my book, A Gentleman of Color:
The Life of James Forten (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
ii
See, for instance, Forten to Cuffe, Sept. 20, 1816, Old Dartmouth Historical Society
Library (hereafter ODHSL). I have retained the original spelling throughout.
iii
Forten to Cuffe, Feb. 15, 1815, New Bedford Free Public Library (hereafter NBFPL).
iv
Cuffe to Forten, Aug. 6, 1814, ODHSL; Cuffe to Forten, Jan. 8, 1817, NBFPL
v
Cuffe to Forten, Oct. 22, 1815, ODHSL.
vi
Forten to Cuffe, Jan. 25, 1817, NBFPL.
vii
Cuffe to Forten, Sept. 23, 1814, ODHSL.
viii
Forten to Cuffe, July 25, 1817, NBFPL.
ix
Cuffe to Forten, Jan. 27, 1815, ODHSL. New Bedford Mercury, April 6, 1810, July 8,
1814.
x
Forten to Cuffe, Sept. 20, 1816, ODHSL; Cuffe to Forten, March 1, 1817, NBFPL.
xi
Forten to Cuffe, Apr. 6, 1815, ODHSL
xii
Cuffe to Forten, Jan. 8, 1817, NBFPL.
xiii
Forten to Cuffe, Jan. 5, 1815, NBFPL
xiv
Cuffe to Forten, Sept. 23, 1814, ODHSL.
xv
Cuffe to Forten, Dec. 15, 1814, ODHSL.
xvi
Cuffe to Forten, Dec. 15, 1814, ODHSL.
xvii
Forten to Cuffe, April 14, 1817, NBFPL.
xviii
Forten to Cuffe, Jan 5, 1815, NBFPL.
xix
Cuffe to Forten, Jan. 29, 1815, ODHSL.
xx
Cuffe to Forten, Jan. 23, 1817, NBFPL.
xxi
Forten to Cuffe, Jan. 25, 1817, NBFPL.
xxii
Cuffe to Forten, March 1, 1817, NBFPL.
xxiii
Forten to Cuffe, March 4, 1817, NBFPL.
xxiv
Forten to Cuffe, April 14, 1817, NBFPL.
xxv
Cuffe to Forten,March 1, 1817, NBFPL.
xxvi
Forten to Cuffe, July 25, 1817, NBFPL.
xxvii
Rhoda Cuffe to Forten, Sept. 10, 1817, NBFPL.
xxviii
Winch, Gentleman of Color, 89.
31
The Struggle for Respect:
Paul Cuffe and His Nova Scotian Friends in Sierra Leonei
David C. Coleii
Paul Cuffe had, over the years, earned the respect and admiration of many of his
contemporaries who had come to know him. Leading citizens of New Bedford, Westport and
Providence counted him as their friend and partnered with him in business ventures. But when
he ventured out of this circle of acquaintances he often had to prove once again his legitimate
claim for respect. The well-known story of his encounter with a prejudiced fellow-passenger in
the stage coach on his way home from meeting with President Madison and other leading
government officials, is but one of what must have been an endless number of challenges to his
legitimacy and worth as a human being.
Prominent Quakers and Abolitionists who knew him, or knew of him, in North America
and England sought him out in 1807 to help rescue their troubled effort to establish a viable
colony in Sierra Leone that would provide a model for “civilizing” Africa. When he finally
traveled to Sierra Leone in 1811 to investigate the possibilities, he found an existing community
of “freed slaves” who had been enticed with promises of freedom and respect, but then had, over
a period of two decades, been subjected to mistreatment, broken promises, outright suppression
and execution of some of their leaders for having struggled to achieve their legitimate rights.
Paul Cuffe quickly befriended these “Nova Scotians” - actually slaves from America who
had gained their freedom during the Revolutionary War, spent eight years in a kind of semislavery in Nova Scotia, and then been taken voluntarily to Sierra Leone to populate a new
British-sponsored settlement in 1791. He recognized in them the same yearning for freedom and
equality that motivated him, and he sought to collaborate with them in advancing that cause. He
also encountered the prejudices and domination of white English officials, merchants and slave
traders who sought to frustrate these efforts and keep the black settlers “in their place.”
Cuffe worked with the Nova Scotians to organize a Friendly Society and to draw up a
petition that he carried to London in the summer of 1811 to present to British officials. He also
sought support in London from the African Institution - a group that was committed “to
32
stimulating trade with Africa, without itself trading, to promote African education and improved
farming methods, and to be a watch-dog against the slave trade.”iii
Cuffe was very warmly received in England by both government officials and members
of the African Institution. He was granted special rights to trade with Sierra Leone and
encouraged to continue working with the black settlers there. When he returned to Sierra Leone,
he was much less warmly welcomed by the white English officials and traders, but he continued
his efforts to “buck up” the Nova Scotians.
Similarly, when he returned to the United States, despite some difficulties with local
customs agents, he was applauded for his efforts on behalf of African development, and
promised support from many quarters.
Although Cuffe had intended to return to Sierra Leone in 1812 to continue his efforts,
war between the United States and Great Britain forced a postponement for four years. When he
did return in 1816, taking with him 38 black settlers, he was older, and less vigorous.
Meanwhile developments in Sierra Leone had weakened the position of the Nova Scotians, and
the British colonial administration had initiated new programs that enhanced white authority.
The struggle for equality and respect for the former slaves, initiated by the Nova Scotians and
encouraged by Paul Cuffe, was eclipsed by white colonial domination that set the pattern for
Africa for the next century and a half.
Several recent studies have greatly enriched our understanding of the early settlement
efforts in Sierra Leone.iv This paper draws upon these studies to try to provide a better
understanding of the interaction between Paul Cuffe and the various other groups involved. It
also attempts to clarify the objectives and the struggles, especially of Paul Cuffe and the leaders
of the Nova Scotians, to achieve those objectives.
Some History
Those who are not familiar with Africa’s history in the early 18th Century may be
inclined to think of it as a continent inhabited by primitive tribes largely untouched by the
outside world. In fact, European and American ships had been visiting the ports of western
Africa since the 16th Century and had built up trading posts, often managed by Westerners or
33
children of interracial marriages. In the early years the trade had consisted mainly of
commodities - timber, ivory and handicrafts being exchanged for manufactured goods. But in the
latter 17th Century and throughout the 18th Century African exports had shifted mainly to
humans who were exchanged for rum and fancy textiles. The slave trade was well organized,
permeating many interior regions and had become a significant aspect of the local culture along
with the tribal hierarchies that managed it. Thus, there had been much interaction between the
local peoples and especially their tribal leaders along the African Coast, on the one hand, and the
Western commercial traders, agents and shippers, on the other, prior to initiation of resettlement
efforts in the late 18th Century. Resettlement of freed African slaves was a new activity, but it
was occurring in places where there had been a long history of slavery-oriented interaction
between the native populations and Europeans.
African resettlement activities were an outgrowth of the American Revolutionary War.
The British had offered freedom to slaves in the rebelling colonies who would cross over to areas
of British control. When the British lost the war, the freed blacks faced re-enslavement if they
had remained in the United States, so many of them were moved to Nova Scotia or found their
way to England where they often ended up as indigents on the streets of London and other cities.
Sierra Leone was seized upon as a suitable space for resettling these displaced persons, as
Botany Bay was selected as a locus for prisoners who could no longer be shipped to the North
American colonies.
The original group of settlers sent from England to Sierra Leone in 1787 included no one
who had any prior knowledge of the conditions or the peoples into which they were intended to
merge.v The original proponent of this settlement was Henry Smeathman, an amateur botanist
who had spent three years along the West African coast, 1771-1774, collecting specimens for a
British museum at Kew Gardens.vi In 1785 Smeathman “had told the Committee investigating a
possible convict station in West Africa that convicts (presumably mostly white) would die there
at the rate of a hundred a month.”vii The next year, in advising the Committee for the Black Poor
in London, viii
“he painted a land of immense fertility, perfectly healthy for those who lived temperately,
where the soil need only be scratched with a hoe to yield grain in abundance, where
livestock propagated themselves with a rapidity unknown in a cold climate, where a hut
34
provided adequate shelter at all seasons. He stressed the commercial advantages of a
settlement which would repay initial outlay by opening new channels of trade. The
Committee were impressed and recommended his plan to the Treasury.”
Smeathman’s recommendation to the Committee to push ahead with a settlement plan for blacks
seems to have been based primarily on his hope to resolve personal debt problems rather than the
welfare of the settlers. But, according to Fyfe, many African domestic servants as well as
destitute Loyalists and sailors were sold on the plan and determined to go nowhere else, and that
“a native of Sierra Leone then in London had assured them the people there would receive them
joyfully.”
The Committee, despite many doubts, acquiesced and proceeded with the plan.
Smeathman in the meantime had died and was replaced as leader of the expedition by a friend,
Joseph Irwin, who had no prior experience or special knowledge of Sierra Leone.ix The one
person who had some relevant knowledge, Olaudah Equiano, a freed West African slave who
later published his abolitionist autobiography, Equiano’s Travels, was first appointed
commissary for the trip, but then dismissed because he accused Joseph Irwin of cheating.x A
black man’s word did not equal a white man’s.
The leader of the expedition that finally sailed from Plymouth with 411 passengers on
April 8, 1787, was a naval officer with no previous experience in Sierra Leone. His instructions
were “to take the settlers to Sierra Leone, acquire a settlement from the chiefs, land the stores,
and stay in the river to help them as long as provisions and crew’s health allowed. If the chiefs
refused, he was to go on down the coast till he found some more accommodating.”xi
Captain Thompson and his fleet of three ships arrived in Sierra Leone in May 1781 and
purchased a tract of land twenty miles square from a local Temne chief, and the settlers named it
Granville Town after Granville Sharp. But before they could build even temporary housing the
rainy season began, washing out any cleared lands and bringing diseases that wiped out 86
immigrants by September. At that point Captain Thompson departed for home, his crews having
remained healthy by staying on board the ships and having ample supplies.
35
Attrition of the settlers continued until in December 1789, when a new Temne chief, in
retaliation for the burning of one of his villages by a British naval crew, burned the settlement at
Granville Town to the ground. As Peterson describes it, “the first settlement had become in
reality the victim of climate, disease, poor soil, and the political vicissitudes of life constantly
threatened on one hand by European ship captains and on the other by the local population.”xii
These were all circumstances, or conditions, that might have been anticipated prior to launching
the settlement plan.
The second wave of settlers, from Nova Scotia, who arrived in Sierra Leone in March
1792, was not much better prepared for the vicissitudes that they were to encounter.xiii The
leader of the expedition, John Clarkson, an erstwhile naval officer, had never been to Sierra
Leone. An ardent abolitionist and brother of Thomas Clarkson, he went to Nova Scotia to meet
with prospective settlers and arrange their passage to Sierra Leone. Although he tried to present
a balanced picture of the risks and dangers of the venture, the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick were so eager to get out from under the semi-slavery to which they were being
subjected that they flocked to sign up. Nearly 1,200 boarded the 15 ships that sailed out of
Halifax on 15 January 1792.
Before leaving England for Nova Scotia, John Clarkson had discussed with the leaders of
the Sierra Leone Company the terms that he might offer to the settlers. Key among them were
allotments of land for houses and farms and absence of quit-rents on those lands. He had also
been led to believe that the Company would send directives to their agents in Sierra Leone to lay
out those allotments and assemble tools and materials with which to build shelters. He promised
these terms to the potential settlers in Nova Scotia, but the Company failed to come through on
any of them.
The Black Loyalists had established strong, religious-based communities in Nova Scotia
with charismatic leaders mostly engaging in exuberant ceremonies that mixed African and
Christian elements. Clarkson was very successful in establishing strong links with these
religious leaders and many of them came to see him as a kind of Moses leading them out of
Egypt to the promised land. When he became ill on the long voyage to Sierra Leone and was
believed to have died, but then miraculously recovered, the belief in his divine powers was
reinforced.
36
Upon arriving in Sierra Leone, Clarkson received letters from the Directors of the Sierra
Leone Company asking him to take on the role of superintendent and stay for some months, if
not indefinitely, to get the settlers established. He agreed to do so primarily because of his
commitment to help the Nova Scotians get established.xiv
Clarkson stayed on until the end of the year (1792) and accomplished much. He
established cordial relations with the local African leaders thereby reinforcing rights to use the
land. By and large he treated the Nova Scotian settlers with respect and thereby won their
admiration and devotion. He also established his authority over the British staff and, despite
their many failings, got them to preform their duties at a modest level. He began the process of
distributing land and never raised the issue of quit-rent. Although many persons, both white and
black, had died during those first nine months, the mood of the community, after surviving the
first rainy season and entering the more comfortable dry season, was generally upbeat.xv
The fundamental problem was that what Clarkson had done and promised, to gain the
support of the Nova Scotians and the local African leaders, was clearly at cross purposes with
what a new set of Sierra Leone Company directors in London wanted. Their objectives were to
establish a commercially viable plantation system run by British officials using local Africans as
laborers. To the extent that the Nova Scotians were allotted any land for their own production,
they should pay quit rent to the Company.
When Clarkson left Freetown he promised to return
and resume his role as a benevolent head of the community. But upon reaching England he
quickly discovered that the Company directors were displeased with his failure to advance the
interests of the Company over the interests of the settlers and did not intend to send him back to
Sierra Leone. In the meantime those who had replaced him in directing affairs in Freetown,
supposedly on a temporary basis, reversed many of his policies, stopped land distribution and
undermined those vestiges of local authority for the blacks that had carried over from the original
settlers.xvi
The third wave of settlers in Sierra Leone was a group called “Maroons”. These were
former slaves who had escaped from Spanish owners in Jamaica and moved up into the
mountains in 1655 when the British displaced the Spanish rulers. The Maroons established their
37
own social and political organization and resisted outside control for 140 years.xvii They became
very skilled guerilla fighters to defend their independence. The British authorities tricked one
group of them into surrendering in 1795, then rounded them up and shipped them off to Nova
Scotia, where they too had a miserable existence for a five years, after which 550 of them agreed
to be moved on to Sierra Leone. They arrived just in time to help the British authorities in Sierra
Leone put down a rebellion by the freed slaves who had been shipped from Nova Scotia to
Freetown in 1792. The Maroons stayed on in Sierra Leone, some of them making up a kind of
local militia to support the authorities.
A fourth group of settlers in Sierra Leone arose after the British outlawed British subjects
from commanding slave ships across the Atlantic in 1807. The British Navy was charged with
enforcing this law and when they captured such slave ships and “rescued” the slaves, they were
rewarded financially. The “freed” slaves were brought into British colonial ports, such as
Freetown, and “apprenticed” as servants and laborers or enlisted into a kind of local militia. The
designers of this policy had perhaps anticipated that it would put a stop to the slave trade which it
did not. Instead many slave ships were captured, their masters and crew brought before local
courts and their freed passengers absorbed one way or another into the local society. “By the end
of 1811 (the year Paul Cuffe first visited Sierra Leone), 1991 slaves had been captured
(recaptured) and deposited in Freetown.”xviii
The total population of the Sierra Leone Colony in 1811 consisted of 28 Europeans, 982
Nova Scotians, 807 Maroons and 100 Africans, plus approximately 1,000 recaptured Africans
and a military garrison of unknown number, giving an approximate total of 2,900 plus the
garrison. Aside from the 100 Africans, who had presumably never been enslaved, the population
was 1% European and 99% ex-slaves from America and Jamaica, via Nova Scotia, plus the
recaptures. This was the mix of non-native peoples that Paul Cuffe confronted on his first trip to
Sierra Leone in 1811.
Issues of Governance
The first settlers from England in 1787 were sent out with the most unrealistic and
conflicted rules of governance perhaps ever concocted. Granville Sharp, the prime sponsor of
the expedition had spelled out his plan in a document entitled, A Short Sketch of Temporary
38
Regulations (Until Better shall be Proposed) for the Intended Settlement on the Grain Coast of
Africa near Sierra Leone. As Peterson states:xix
“The basis of Sharp’s thinking on the subject of a perfect society in West Africa was that
natural man could be civilized through reason alone. His scheme for the government of
the Province of Freedom, therefore, was intended ‘for a race of men supposed to be
uniformly open to the persuasions of reason’.
The community, which was to be entirely self-governing, was to be divided equally into
tithings and hundreds. The tithings were groups of ten families each of which elected
annually a leader, the tithingman. Every ten tithingmen elected annually an hundredor,
and together the tithingmen and hundredors were to form the necessarily minimal
government of the settlement. Their function was primarily to keep order, so in them was
vested the judicial power of the province. Such a government was preferred by Sharp
because its simplicity guaranteed that all men were capable of understanding and
participating in it.”
Slavery was prohibited in the Province of Freedom. The economic basis was to be free labor.
Many of the initial settlers sent to Sierra Leone in 1787 were ex-slaves recruited (rounded
up) from the streets of London and other English cities. Many were illiterate and they had no
prior sense of community to bind them together and give some texture to the idealized form of
governance that Sharp had conceived. They did, upon arriving in Sierra Leone, organize
themselves into the specified groups, but their main concern was simple survival. The English
officers who accompanied them provided little leadership or protection and had no interest in
implementing Sharp’s ideals. After two years, when the colony was attacked and burned by a
local tribe, those who could escaped into the bush.
Back in London the promotors of the colony requested, and were granted, a new charter
as the Sierra Leone Company in 1791. They sent an agent, Alexander Falconbridge, who had
some previous experience in West Africa, to Sierra Leone where he was able to collect together
forty-eight of the former residents of Granville Town and bring them together in a new
settlement. He remained there with the settlers for six months assisting them in planting crops
and building shelters.xx His favorable reports to the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company led
39
them to look for a new group of settlers. Fortuitously at about this time Thomas Peters, a leader
of the Freed Blacks in Nova Scotia, arrived in London and met with Granville Sharp. He had
heard of the settlement in Sierra Leone and working together with Sharp he petitioned the
government to resettle the black refugees from Nova Scotia in Sierra Leone.xxi
Although the system of governance that Sharp had conceived had not worked with the
first group of settlers from England, it did resonate with the second group from Nova Scotia.
They were already bound together in strong religious communities led by charismatic pastors.
They were also strongly committed to the ideas of freedom and self-governance, which had been
so egregiously denied them in the United States and Nova Scotia. John Clarkson encouraged
their organization of the tithing and hundredor groups and endeavored to deal with their religious
and political leaders in a fair and respectful way.
But he was unwilling to cede real power to the Nova Scotians and this led to conflict with
Thomas Peters, who saw himself as “at the head of the people”.xxii
As Pybus describes the situation:
“It was he (Peters) who was elected to go to England to petition the government on their
behalf; he had garnered the support of the British government; he had marshaled Nova
Scotia’s black refugees to emigrate. Yet on arrival in Sierra Leone, Clarkson was
appointed governor and Peters was denied any role in the administration of the new
settlement. Clarkson’s rancorous response (to Peters) was prompted by fear that Peters
believed that he, not Clarkson, should have been the appointed governor.”
It was not just Peters who sought stronger self-government by the blacks. Clarkson received
petitions and letters from various groups indicating “they wanted a greater say in the
management of their affairs, and they wanted to have their own elected representatives keep
order and resolve disputes.”xxiii Peters died in the midst of that first rainy season, and Clarkson
hoped that his strange notions as to their rights, would die with him, but they did not.
As it turned out, Clarkson was more inclined to respect and provide some
accommodation for the settlers demands for respect and self-rule than any of his successors.xxiv
After his departure relations between the succeeding governors (William Dawes, Zachary
40
Macaulay and Thomas Ludlum) and the settlers deteriorated culminating in the revolt in 1800
that was put down with the help of the freshly arrived Maroons. One cause of the tension that
led to the revolt was the conflicting pressures from the directors in London to collect quit-rents
and limit the powers of the settlers who, in turn, were demanding legislative and judicial powers
to protect their promised rights and control their own colony. Another was that the Governors
found the Nova Scotians “upity” and their religious ceremonies improper. Several attempts by
Anglican ministers to draw them into more proper observances had been rebuffed and the
ministers had left the colony. After the revolt, some of Nova Scotian leaders were executed and
others were expelled.
Largely because of these troubles, in 1808 the Sierra Leone Company was dissolved by
an act of Parliament and all property in Freetown transferred to the Crown, as well as all
authority in Sierra Leone, making it Britain’s first permanent colony in Africa. The former
Sierra Leone Company directors in London, having lost their authority over the colony,
regrouped themselves as the Africa Institution committed to promoting commerce and
civilization in Africa and providing continuing advice on British colonial policy there.
The successive governors of the new Colonial administration were caught between the
conflicting demands from London to hold down costs on the one hand, and the need to
accommodate the rapidly increasing inflow of recaptured slaves on the other. Initially the
governors dealt with this in accordance with the law by recruiting some into military service and
sending them elsewhere for training, and by indenturing others to local citizens, especially the
white overlords, thus passing on their maintenance costs. As the absorptive limits of these two
outlets were reached, the recaptures were increasingly pushed out into the surrounding
hinterlands with minimal help or control from the authorities. There they became, or at least
were perceived a threat to the lives and property of the older settlers.
An unusual solution to this dilemma was arrived at over a period of several years and
Paul Cuffe had an unexpected hand in it. On his return trip from London to Freetown in 1811 he
brought with him a Methodist minister and three Wesleyan schoolmasters to take over direction
of Methodist activities in Freetown. The minister soon died and his replacement was rejected by
the Nova Scotian Methodist community so the four English Methodists turned their attention to
the so-called Liberated Africans and set about organizing them into local communities centered
41
around education and religion. This model was soon taken up by the Church Missionary Society
(CMS), an unofficial group of the Church of England which represented its more evangelical
element.”xxv
Over the period from 1811-12 to 1816, under both Governors Maxwell and MacCarthy,
the Church Missionary Society built up an effective system of local administration among the
Liberated Africans. With London’s approval, Governor MacCarthy defined the parishes into
which the Liberated Africans were located and assigned a CMS missionary to each. This system
largely relieved the colony government of both the cost and the responsibility for providing
services and maintaining order in these communities.xxvi
The Nova Scotians, with whom Paul Cuffe was most directly associated on his three trips
to Sierra Leone, had been to a significant extent marginalized by these developments. They had
been beaten back in the rebellion of 1800 and some of their leaders either executed or forced out
of the territory of the colony into the surrounding tribal villages. The Maroons had played an
important role in suppressing that rebellion and thereby gained an influential role with the
Colony authorities. Finally the many recaptured slaves were being channeled into new villages
with white missionaries taking on the religious, educational and governance roles in those
communities. Thus the Nova Scotians, who had accounted for by far the largest segment of the
population during their first decade of settlement in Sierra Leone, had become a much smaller
and less influential segment twenty years later in 1811, and their expectations of self-rule and a
significant role in the governance of the colony had been submerged under white dominance of
the colonial administration at the center and the increasing government-sanctioned missionary
role in the new rural settlements. White traders also dominated commercial activity.
Paul Cuffe’s Response
When Paul Cuffe arrived in Sierra Leone in March, 1811, he sought at the outset to meet
with Governor Columbine, to make contact with nearby local tribal chiefs, and to build relations
with the leaders of the Nova Scotian groups.xxvii As Sidbury suggests, he probably heard quite
different assessments of the history and current conditions in Sierra Leone from the Governor
and from the Nova Scotians. To the tribal chiefs he gave gifts of religious and historical books
rather than rum and trinkets.
42
Cuffe clearly identified most closely with the positions of the Nova Scotians, although he
criticized them as being “too prone to idleness, too fond of liquor and too inclined toward
(religious) doctrinal disputes.”xxviii Nevertheless he worked with their leaders to draw up a
petition to the Governor and to Parliament urging that Africans from English colonies and
America be encouraged to come to Sierra Leone to engage in agriculture, commercial trade and
whaling.
This document is interesting on several counts. First, although many of the Nova
Scotians had initially engaged in farming, by this time a number of them had taken up
commercial activities, often employing local natives, or recaptured slaves to work on their
farmlands. By moving into commerce they were more directly challenging the white traders
who had dominated that field from the beginning. Paul Cuffe found the white traders
uncooperative and offering low prices for the goods that he had imported. Consequently he dealt
mainly with the Nova Scotians. The fact that the petition called for opening up trading
opportunities for Africans, both those already in Sierra Leone as well as those who might
respond to the invitation, was a direct challenge to the White trading community. It is not
surprising, therefore, that a representative of the White traders “wrote a scathing denunciation of
Cuffe to Zachary Macaulay in London, saying that he had never known a more unprincipled,
mercenary individual, that Cuffe was no better that a slave trader.”xxix
Despite this message, Paul Cuffe was warmly received in England and given every
courtesy by the leaders of the African Institution and government officials. One experience
demonstrated his resolve and sense of self-worth. When a British Royal Navy ship impressed a
young member of his crew in Liverpool, Cuffe proceeded directly to London and, with the help
of influential friends, obtained his release.
From England Cuffe sailed back to Sierra Leone and set about organizing his Nova
Scotian friends into a Friendly Society that “would serve as the catalyst for the development of
an African People to be counted among the historians’ nations, and it would keep records of its
actions to ensure that future historians would be able to reconstruct the story of that nation’s rise
and progress.”xxx He also bought a house to serve as a permanent base in Freetown and signed
43
over his power of attorney to Dave Edmonds, the Nova Scotian who had become his most trusted
friend in the colony.”xxxi
In February 1812, Cuffe sailed from Freetown for home “to build the third leg on which
his African vision would stand.” xxxii Here again he encountered an antagonistic reception when
Newport customs agents seized his ship because it was carrying cargo from a British colony,
which commerce had been outlawed during Cuffe’s absence. Once more he headed directly to
the seat of power and, with help from his respecting friends met with President Madison, the
Secretaries of State and Treasury who released his ship. Sidbury also states that “in Washington
he cemented his status as the nation’s most prominent man of color.”xxxiii
On his return trip to Westport he stopped in various cities along the way and met with
supporters of the Sierra Leone project, giving talks about Sierra Leone and distributing his Brief
Account of the Settlement and Present Situation of the Colony of Sierra Leone in Africa. He was
attempting to generate both financial support and potential recruits for settlement. He “began
organizing voluntary societies in port cities to serve as African American allies of the Friendly
Society and as nodes in a mostly black Atlantic commercial system.xxxiv Another function of
these societies was “to screen and recruit people of good character who might want to travel to
Sierra Leone.”
The War of 1812 with England put a damper on these activities. Initially Cuffe sought
permission from Congress to continue trading with Sierra Leone, but this was denied. Most New
England states were opposed to the war but southern states supported it, and southern
representatives were not inclined to give special permission for a black man to engage in trade
with an enemy colony.
After the war ended in 1814 both the American and British governments continued to
impose trade restrictions that prevented Cuffe from resuming his efforts to build profitable
trading relations among America, Africa and England. Finally, in December, 1815 he was able
to sail from Westport for Freetown on his ship, Traveler, with a commercial cargo and 38 men,
women and children in 9 families who had signed on to settle there. He was not able to raise
funds from the African Institute or other sources to support the cost of these settlers so ended up
paying for their travel and an initial stake of supplies himself. They were mainly farmers rather
44
than persons with mechanical or other skills. He helped them get settled for two months and
then sailed home with a cargo of African commodities. The trip was very costly for him
financially, and perhaps physically.
Paul Cuffe’s Purpose
Sidbury concludes that Paul Cuffe “worked to bring an African people into being, so that
they could participate in the expansion of liberty through commerce and selfdetermination....Their ‘country’, or nation-state, was almost surely going to be the Sierra Leone
that he foresaw emerging from colonial dependence as an autonomous black polity. It would
serve as the crucial base from which blacks would become independent merchants, navigators,
and finally legislators, a base from which the next generation of black children would disprove
assertions that ‘people of coulour are not caperable of business,’ by showing that they could
perform ‘upon a level with our neighbours the white Brother....Two things mattered: a place
where freed slaves could live in societies controlled by black people, and the creation of a
commercial network ‘between America and Africa and between England and Africa,’ which
would bring back together people separated by slavery and the history of warfare that had
prevented them from rising into the community of nations.”xxxv
These great hopes, that resonated as strongly in the latter half of the 20th Century as they
did in the early 19th, were undercut in Sierra Leone at that time by the continued dominance of a
white-led colonial government, white traders, white missionaries who organized the resettlement
villages, and the exclusion of blacks in their own “country” from positions of responsibility and
respect that had been so easily promised to them by well-meaning benefactors as inducements to
get them back to Africa.
45
References
Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail.
Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1997. (Paperback)
Braidwood, Stephen J.. Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’ Blacks and the
Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786-1791. Liverpool University Press, 1994.
Campbell, James. Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005. New
York, The Penguin Press, 2006.
Campbell, Mavis C.. The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796, A History of Resistence,
Collaboration & Betrayal. Granby, Mass. Berfin & Garvey Publishers, 1988.
Campbell, Mavis C.. Back to Africa: George Ross & the Maroons, From Nova Scotia to Sierra
Leone. Trenton, Africa World Press, 1993.
Clifford, Mary Louise. From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American
Revolution. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Co. 1999.
Cole, David C. and Richard Huntington. Between a Swamp and a Hard Place: Developmental
Challenges in Remote Rural Africa. Cambridge, Harvard Institute for International
Development, 1997.
Devlin, Edward W. A Man Born on Purpose: Captain Paul Cuffe of Westport, Mariner,
Educator, African-American, 1759-1817. Westport, Mass. Westport Historical Society, 1997.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Edited by Vincent Carretta.
London, Penguin, 2003.
Fyfe, Christopher. A History of Sierra Leone. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, 1962.
*Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. Amherst, Univ. of Mass. Press, 2001.
46
Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812.
Chapel Hill, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1968.
Peterson, John. Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone 1787-1870. London, Faber and
Faber, 1969.
Pybus, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Rovolution and
Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.
Rawley, James A. with Stephen D. Behrendt. The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, revised
edition. Lincoln, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Rappleye, Charles. Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American
Revolution. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Salvador, George. Paul Cuffe, The Black Yankee, 1759-1817. New Bedford, Reynolds-DeWalt
Printing, Inc. 1969.
Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution. New
York, HarperCollins, 2006. (Paperback).
Sherwood, H. N. “Paul Cuffe.” Journal of Negro history 8 (1923): 153-229.
Sidbury, James. Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic.
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Thomas, Lamont D. Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe. Urbana and Chicago, Univ.
of Ill. Press, 1986.
Thomas, Lamont D. Paul Cuffe: Black Entrepreneur and Pan-Africanist. Urbana and Chicago,
Univ of Ill. Press, 1988. (Paperback version of previous citation.)
Wiggins, Rosalind Cobb. Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letters, 1808-1817: A Black Quaker’s
“Voice from within the Veil”. Washington, Howard Univ. Press. 1996
Wilson, Ellen Gibson. The Loyal Blacks. New York, Capricorn Books. 1976.
47
Wilson, Ellen Gibson. John Clarkson and the African Adventure. London, MacMillan Press,
1980.
Winch, Julie. A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten. Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2002.
i
I want to express my appreciation to Lee Blake for introducing me to New Bedford’s Black history and
for organizing this symposium, to Betty Slade for also helping to organize the symposium and
commenting on this paper, to Kevin Lowther for his suggestions as to useful sources, and to James
Sidbury, for his recent book and for helping Kevin Lowther and me track down a missing document.
ii
My perspective on the challenges to promoting development in rural Africa is inevitably colored by my
own experience, at the same age as Paul Cuffe but 160 years later, in a remote part of Sudan. While it
was much easier for me than for Paul Cuffe to travel between Massachusetts and Africa, many of the
issues on the ground that we both confronted so many years apart seem very similar.
iii
Fyfe, Christopher. A History of Sierra Leone. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, 1962. p. 105.
iv
Wilson, Ellen Gibson. Loyal Blacks. New York, Capricorn Brooks, 1976. Wilson, Ellen Gibson. John
Clarkson and the African Adventure. London, MacMillan Press, 1980; Thomas, Lamont D. Rise to Be a
People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe. Urbana and Chicago, Univ. of Ill. Press, 1986; Braidwood, Stephen
J.. Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’ Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone
Settlement 1786-1791. Liverpool University Press, 1994; Clifford, Mary Louise. From Slavery to
Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Co.
1999; Campbell, James. Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005. New York,
The Penguin Press, 2006; Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American
Revolution. New York, HarperCollins, 2006. (Paperback); Pybus, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom:
Runaway Slaves of the American Rovolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston, Beacon Press,
2006; Sidbury, James. Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic.
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
v
The discussion in this section draws heavily on Braidwood and on Pybus, Chs. 5 and 7.
vi
Peterson, John. Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone 1787-1870. London, Faber and Faber,
1969. p.17. Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown, p.70 claims that “an eminent English Quaker doctor and
abolitionist, Dr. John Fothergilll, sent Smeathman to Sierra Leone in 1771 to examine the possibility of
establishing plantations there using black labor from England.”
vii
Fyfe, History, p. 15.
viii
Ibid.
ix
Ibid, p. 16.
x
Peterson, Province of Freedom, p.23.
xi
Fyfe, p.19.
xii
Peterson, p.27.
xiii
This section draws heavily on Pybus, Chs. 9 and 11.
xiv
Ibid. p. 80
xv
Ibid. p. 127
xvi
Ibid. Chap. 9.
xvii
The most extensive discussion of the Maroons and their role in Sierra Leone that I have found is in C.
Fyfe, History, Chs. III and IV. See also Schama, Rough Crossings, pp. 390-97, where he describes the
Maroon history as “a strange, sad epic”. Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica ,1655-1796, provides
an interesting history of these ex-slaves before they came to Sierra Leone.
xviii
Fyfe, History, p.114.
48
xix
Peterson, p.21.
Peterson, p.27.
xxi
Pybus, p. 149.
xxii
Pybus, p. 153 ff.
xxiii
Ibid.
xxiv
This process of deterioration is aptly described in Pybus’ Chap. 11, entitled, “Promises Unfulfilled in
Sierra Leone,” and Wilson, The Loyal Blacks. Chap. 15, entitled, “The Pursuit of Promises” and Chap 19,
entitled, “The Law of the Settlers.”
xxv
Peterson, p. 63.
xxvi
Ibid. p. 80.
xxvii
This section relies heavily on Thomas, Chs. 7-9, and Sidbury, pp. 145, ff
xxviii
Sidbury, p. 151.
xxix
Thomas, p. 55. Macaulay, an ex-Governor of Sierra Leone, much disliked by the Nova Scotians, had
returned to London and taken up the position of honorary secretary of the African Institute.
xxx
Sidbury, p. 154.
xxxi
Ibid. p. 155.
xxxii
Ibid.
xxxiii
Ibid.
xxxiv
Ibid. p. 160.
xxxv
Ibid. pp. 163-4.
xx
49
If Paul Cuffe Had Lived a Few Years Longer:
Sierra Leone and Liberia, as They Might Have Been
Kevin G. Lowther
What if Paul Cuffe had lived a few more years and been able, as he hoped, to be of use to
his brethren in Africa? In revisiting the early history of Sierra Leone and the American
colonization movement, I have concluded that Cuffe’s death in 1817 was untimely not only for
his family, but for the economic and political development of West Africa’s Windward Coast.
My premise is this: Cuffe’s standing at home and with English supporters, as well as his
commercial skills and New England practicality, would have helped Sierra Leone’s struggling
black entrepreneurs to compete with the dominant European merchants. Cuffe’s prestige and
African experience also would have guided the American colonization movement to a safe haven
in the Sherbro region of modern-day Sierra Leone. Together, these developments would have
promoted the emergence of more ethnically coherent nations than the Sierra Leone and Liberia
of today.
During his final year and a half, Cuffe was well aware of the obstacles in his path. His
first voyage to Africa in 1811-1812 was a commercial squib; his second and last, four years later,
was a financial sacrifice. He had to subsidize passage and subsistence for several of the nine
African-American settler families. When he returned home in 1816, he was owed large sums by
merchants and others in Sierra Leone.
It was a somewhat exasperated Cuffe, in August of 1816, who asked a friend in Boston to
inform the people of color that he would not be taking new settlers to Sierra Leone in the fall.1
Cuffe had raised expectations. Boston blacks, in particular, had responded eagerly. Now
everything was on hold. In effect, Cuffe said, there would be no voyage until the African
Institution in London secured a license for him to trade with Sierra Leone.
50
He also hoped that body would provide financial support for new African-American
settlers. Cuffe had committed substantial assets to blazing a path to Africa. He understood the
enormous cost involved if hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of African-Americans determined
to follow in his wake. Others—not Cuffe—would have to bear this cost.
By late 1816, the American Colonization Society had been formed and interested parties
began peppering Cuffe for advice regarding Sierra Leone. As the year drew to a close, however,
Cuffe was concerned that he had heard nothing from William Allen, his abolitionist ally in
London. He wrote Allen, suggesting that he come to England to forge a way forward.2 But when
Cuffe’s health began to deteriorate, he must have sensed that he was unlikely ever to see England
or Africa again.
In Sierra Leone, the Friendly Society—which Cuffe and several black settlers had started
in 1812—also was doing poorly.3 This was to have been the vehicle through which legitimate
commerce—as an antidote to the slave trade—could be promoted between the colony and free
black communities in America. In England, Allen and the influential African Institution likewise
saw in the society a means to encourage agricultural development in Sierra Leone and a
profitable trade with England.
From the start—as Cuffe himself conceded—the Friendly Society lacked coherence. Its
motive force was John Kizell, a former slave and one of the so-called “Nova Scotian” settlers.
But Kizell was based down the coast in the Sherbro—not far from where he had been born—and
unable to exert sustained leadership in Freetown, where most members resided. More important,
the society lacked reliable access to shipping which would have allowed it to compete with the
European merchants. The latter monopolized trade through its control of cargo space, as well as
credit.
Cuffe’s unheralded arrival in Freetown in early 1811 was a grain of sand in Sierra
Leone’s oyster, from which a pearl might have formed. The British governor—a naval
commander named Edward Columbine—was impressed with Cuffe’s business acumen. The
English traders were slow to recognize the African-American as a legitimate competitor. But
when they learned that he had been invited to meet with the African Institution in London and to
carry goods legally to England, they attempted vainly to sabotage him. When he met Cuffe in the
51
summer of 1811, William Allen quickly perceived in him the answer to his prayers. “The present
opportunity for promoting the civilization of Africa through the means of Paul Cuffee, should
not be lost,” he enthused. “He seems like a man made on purpose for the business.”4
Cuffe confronted several hazards in advancing his Sierra Leone plan. There was the
inherent expense, the enmity of Freetown’s white merchants and the noxious influence of the
slave trade. The War of 1812 had foreclosed partnership with the British colony for the duration.
Then a post-war economic slump depressed commerce on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nonetheless, a healthy and proactive Paul Cuffe would not have abandoned his African
designs. To begin with, Cuffe almost certainly would have been drawn into more direct contact
with the American Colonization Society. The decision by Congress in early 1817 to encourage
voluntary emigration of free blacks to Africa was a watershed moment, which Cuffe’s pioneering
visits to Sierra Leone had helped make possible. The next step was to identify a suitable location
for a settlement.5
With the Monroe Administration refusing, on principle, to become involved in a colonial
venture, the society scrambled for means to send an exploratory mission to Sierra Leone. By
mid-1817, the colonization society had already enlisted Reverend Samuel Mills and Ebenezer
Burgess, a college math instructor, to scout the Sherbro region and negotiate for land with the
inhabitants. Had Cuffe been well—and had the society provided modest funding—it is arguable
that Cuffe would have offered to take Mills and Burgess to Sierra Leone in his own brig, the
Traveller. They would probably have proceeded first to England to solicit the advice and
endorsement of the African Institution and British authorities.
Mills and Burgess, in fact, did sail directly to England in late 1817. They met with Allen
and other notables of the African Institution—no doubt commiserating over Cuffe’s recent death.
According to Allen, the two Americans spoke of “many thousands” of free blacks coming to
Sierra Leone—a figure consistent with the 20,000 being rumored in Freetown.6
Had Cuffe accompanied Mills and Burgess, he would have had an opportunity to develop
with the African Institution a strategy to nourish their mutual interest in the Friendly Society. He
would also have fostered closer ties between the American colonizationists and potential allies in
52
England. Sailing on to Sierra Leone, Cuffe would have introduced Mills and Burgess to the
governor—Charles MacCarthy—and to the Friendly Society members.
MacCarthy and the white merchants were opposed to an American settlement in the
Sherbro. MacCarthy despised American republicanism; the merchants feared American
competition. By the time Mills and Burgess actually arrived in March of 1818, however, the
British Government was concluding that it had no pretext to block an American initiative on the
coast.7
Cuffe was widely respected in England, where he would have discussed the
establishment of a shipping link between the Friendly Society and Britain. Allen had earlier
suggested to Cuffe that he sell the Traveller in England and buy an English-registered ship to
carry goods between the colony and Britain. With shipping assured, the Friendly Society would
have had greater incentive to produce agricultural goods for the English market.
As a businessman and mariner, Cuffe understood oceanic commerce. His participation in
developing a freight service dedicated to the Friendly Society would have encouraged Allen and
other adherents to the African cause to invest in such an undertaking. They had already created a
separate body to conduct trade in Africa and had a financial stake. Having their own brig—
commanded by Cuffe—would have been a logical and feasible next step.
In these circumstances, Cuffe probably would have begun spending extended periods in
Sierra Leone. Only by doing so could he have fulfilled his African mission. Had he devoted
quality time in Sierra Leone, beginning in 1818, Cuffe would have instilled greater financial
discipline among the Friendly Society members and helped to loosen white merchants’
stranglehold on the import-export trade. The African Institution, in the meantime, is unlikely to
have ended its support to the heavily-indebted society, as it reluctantly did the following year.
The re-invigoration of an emergent black business sector in Sierra Leone also has to be
considered in the context of colonization. When the first African-American settlers arrived in
early 1820, Sierra Leone’s European traders resolutely opposed their being rooted anywhere near
the colony. A more vigorous and assertive black business community—led by Kizell, whom
Mills had described as a “second Paul Cuffe”—would have welcomed a nearby American
settlement.
53
Kizell and Cuffe were age-mates and fellow entrepreneurs. Kizell had been sold into
slavery at thirteen. He was shipped, in 1773, from the coastal Gallinas region of today’s Sierra
Leone to Charleston, served with British and loyalist forces in the Revolution and ultimately
returned to Africa with more than 1,100 former slaves after ten wilderness years in Nova Scotia.
Kizell ultimately settled as a trader in the Sherbro.
Cuffe and Kizell met in Freetown in early April 1811. They appear to have taken quickly
to each other. Cuffe would have seen in Kizell a fellow businessman, a devout Christian, and
someone who agreed that legitimate commerce would drive out the slave trade. Both believed
that blacks in America were ordained to play a crucial role in Africa’s revival.
Cuffe’s focus was to raise the level of civilization in Africa. He believed that a select
cadre of African-American farmers and mechanics—persons with real skills—was needed.
Kizell believed that black people belonged in Africa and that all blacks in America would return
to the motherland if a way opened.8 Although Cuffe, in his last year, was supportive of largescale emigration to Africa—linked to the manumission of slaves in the southern states—he never
openly embraced Kizell’s vision of a mass exodus of black Americans.
Mills and Burgess, escorted by Kizell to the Sherbro in 1818, palavered with the chiefs
for land on which to settle the first wave of African-American colonists. Cuffe would have been
there, too, if he had been alive to carry Mills and Burgess to Africa. His involvement in this early
stage of colonization would have been critical in the events to come.
Even with Kizell’s help, Mills and Burgess secured only a general promise from the
Sherbro chiefs that land would be made available to African-American settlers. Mills died on his
way back to the United States. Burgess, now the colonization society’s lone source of firsthand
knowledge of the Sherbro, strangely had no visible hand in planning the pioneering voyage one
year later.
This was a fatal disconnect. Had Cuffe accompanied Mills and Burgess, he would almost
certainly have remained actively engaged with the colonization society after his return to the
United States. This would have facilitated better planning and timing, which was rushed by the
society in late 1819 when President Monroe finally sanctioned a naval mission to intercept
American slavers in West Africa. African-Americans were to be “hired” to build a receiving
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station for recaptured slaves, but the real purpose was transparent: to begin colonizing free
blacks far from American shores.
Cuffe would have insisted that Kizell be kept informed and instructed to prepare for their
arrival. In the event, Kizell heard nothing until the first settlers arrived in early 1820, just as the
rains were about to begin. A third of the settlers and all three white agents were dead within
months. Negotiations for land on the Sherbro mainland aborted. Kizell was widely blamed—
unfairly, I maintain—for this unhappy ending. Joined by fresh emigrants, the survivors in early
1822 raised the American flag at Mesurado, further down the coast in what would become
Liberia.
Governor MacCarthy may have been anti-republican, but he was essentially pragmatic in
his dealings with Cuffe in 1816, with Mills and Burgess in 1818, with the colonization society
agents in 1820 and with U. S. naval officers in the early 1820s. Had the Americans settled in the
Sherbro, MacCarthy would have sought ways in which the British and American colonies could
cooperate, especially in containing the slave trade.
Therein lies the historical rub for Sierra Leone. With the African-American colonists
established at Mesurado, instead of the Sherbro, the American navy’s anti-slave trade squadron
began focusing on its part of the coast. Slave trading was consequently displaced northward and
intensified in the Sherbro and Gallinas regions of modern-day Sierra Leone, where it thrived in
the 1820s and 1830s. Had the Americans settled in the Sherbro, the American navy would have
suppressed the slave trade in that quarter. In concert with the British, they might have had similar
success in the nearby Gallinas.9
A growing American settlement in the Sherbro might have competed with British
economic interests, but these two nodes of colonial influence could have operated, informally yet
in tandem, to promote agricultural development and exports in lieu of slaving. They would also
have connected the interior more directly to the two coastal colonies and hastened integration of
the hinterland respectively with British Freetown and American Sherbro.
Under this scenario, the British would probably have focused on the Temne country to
the immediate north and east of Freetown. The Americans would have concentrated on the
Mende-dominated south of modern-day Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone today thus would be more or
55
less coterminus with its Northern Province, and possibly include parts of the Republic of
Guinea.. Liberia would occupy Southern Province and perhaps part of Eastern Province—
godfathered, in effect, by Paul Cuffe.
Sierra Leone, as we know it, might have been largely spared another quarter century of
continued depredation by the slave trade. It would have come to independence free of the northsouth, Temne-Mende and urban-protectorate rivalries which took root during the 19th century
and endure today.
Sherbro-qua-Liberia could have become an equally compact Americo-Mende state. The
Americans’ arrival in the early 1820s coincided with Mende expansion into the Sherbro and the
consolidation of Mende influence over much of today’s Southern Province. The Mende—less
dependent on the slave trade than the indigenous people who tried to expel the American
colonists at Mesurado—probably would have accommodated an African-American presence. A
Sierra Leonean authority on Mende history, who has reviewed this paper, finds this plausible.10
Another venerable Sierra Leonean, who has recorded his family’s long history in the
Sherbro and the neighboring coastal region, also regards this alternative history as credible.
Sierra Leone might have been spared ethnic tensions which, he laments, continue to bedevil his
benighted land.11
Sierra Leoneans have a Krio phrase to express the futility of defying fate: In the face of
any difficulty, they say, “How for do.” It is a statement of fact, not a question.
Paul Cuffe was anything but fatalistic. He believed that people had the power of choice
and redemption. His death punctuated West African history with a question mark. Would the
future have been very different, had Cuffe returned to Sierra Leone during these formative years?
No question.
56
Abbreviations
NBFPL – New Bedford (Mass.) Free Public Library.
NA – National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew
Endnotes
1. Cuffe to Jedediah Morse, August 10, 1816, Cuffe Papers (NBFPL).
2. Cuffe to William Allen, December 19, 1816, Cuffe Papers (NBFPL).
3. William Allen, journal entry for January 5, 1817, Life of William Allen, With Selections from his
correspondence, Volume I. London: Charles Gilpin, 1846, 312-3. “I also wrote to the ‘Friendly Society,’” Allen
recorded, “which I fear is not doing well.”
4. Allen, July 30, 1811, Life of William Allen, 139.
5. The U. S. Senate and House on February 11, 1817, jointly resolved to authorize the president “to enter
into a convention with . . . Great Britain, for receiving into the Colony of Sierra Leone, such of the people of the free
people of colour of the United States, as, with their own consent, shall be carried thither. . . .” This was reported in
the Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser of August 23, 1817.
6. “Two Africans,” writing in the April 25, 1818, edition of the Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser,
claimed to have seen “private letters from America” which projected 20,000 African-American settlers. CO271/2
(NA).
7. In response to a query from Governor MacCarthy to the Colonial Department, a Privy Council official
wrote on April 25, 1818, that “the Lords of this Committee do not see how the Americans can be prevented from
forming an establishment on the Coast of Africa, if they shall think fit to do so.” CO267/48 (NA).
8. Reverend Samuel J. Mills quoted Kizell in the journal he kept during his visit to the Sherbro in early
1818. See Gardiner Spring, Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, London, 1820, pp. 141-2.
9.Two British commissioners, writing to the Foreign Office on April 29, 1823, reported that the slave trade
had “considerably diminished” between Cape Mount and the Gallinas. “The American settlement at Mesurado,
although not possessing strength to impose any direct restraint, has by its mere presence and object a strong
contracting influence and the armed Schooner employed in connection with it . . . [is having] effect.” See
FO84/21/88 (NA).
10. Professor Arthur Abraham, Virginia State University, in emails to the author, July 8 and September 2,
2009. Abraham cautions that, had they settled in the Sherbro, the African-American colonists might still have lorded
57
over their hosts in ways similar to the Liberian experience, leading eventually to open conflict. I am indebted to
Professor Abrahams for his critique of this paper as it evolved.
11. Peter L. Tucker, personal conversation with author, August 18, 2009. See Tucker’s The Tuckers of
Sierra Leone, 1665-1914, self-published in London, 1997.
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