What do you think?
Rate this book
Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
Slavery in the South has been documented in volumes ranging from exhaustive histories to bestselling novels. But the North’s profit from–indeed, dependence on–slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now. In this startling and superbly researched new book, three veteran New England journalists demythologize the region of America known for tolerance and liberation, revealing a place where thousands of people were held in bondage and slavery was both an economic dynamo and a necessary way of life.
Complicity reveals the cruel truth about the Triangle Trade of molasses, rum, and slaves that lucratively linked the North to the West Indies and Africa; discloses the reality of Northern empires built on profits from rum, cotton, and ivory–and run, in some cases, by abolitionists; and exposes the thousand-acre plantations that existed in towns such as Salem, Connecticut. Here, too, are eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery far from the Mason-Dixon line–including Nathaniel Gordon of Maine, the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States, who even as an inmate of New York’s infamous Tombs prison was supported by a shockingly large percentage of the city; Patty Cannon, whose brutal gang kidnapped free blacks from Northern states and sold them into slavery; and the Philadelphia doctor Samuel Morton, eminent in the nineteenth-century field of “race science,” which purported to prove the inferiority of African-born black people.
Culled from long-ignored documents and reports–and bolstered by rarely seen photos, publications, maps, and period drawings–Complicity is a fascinating and sobering work that actually does what so many books pretend to shed light on America’s past. Expanded from the celebrated Hartford Courant special report that the Connecticut Department of Education sent to every middle school and high school in the state (the original work is required readings in many college classrooms,) this new book is sure to become a must-read reference everywhere.
Complicity reveals the cruel truth about the Triangle Trade of molasses, rum, and slaves that lucratively linked the North to the West Indies and Africa; discloses the reality of Northern empires built on profits from rum, cotton, and ivory–and run, in some cases, by abolitionists; and exposes the thousand-acre plantations that existed in towns such as Salem, Connecticut. Here, too, are eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery far from the Mason-Dixon line–including Nathaniel Gordon of Maine, the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States, who even as an inmate of New York’s infamous Tombs prison was supported by a shockingly large percentage of the city; Patty Cannon, whose brutal gang kidnapped free blacks from Northern states and sold them into slavery; and the Philadelphia doctor Samuel Morton, eminent in the nineteenth-century field of “race science,” which purported to prove the inferiority of African-born black people.
Culled from long-ignored documents and reports–and bolstered by rarely seen photos, publications, maps, and period drawings–Complicity is a fascinating and sobering work that actually does what so many books pretend to shed light on America’s past. Expanded from the celebrated Hartford Courant special report that the Connecticut Department of Education sent to every middle school and high school in the state (the original work is required readings in many college classrooms,) this new book is sure to become a must-read reference everywhere.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 27, 2005
116 people are currently reading
1007 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
February 13, 2019
Unlike the book on the same subject I read and reviewed just last week, this one is the joint effort of three journalists: Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank. Although I have a profound respect for the work of a genuine historian (as was the case with Professor Greg Grandin with his The Empire of Necessity), I have no less respect for journalists when they do their job well.
As they write in the Preface to Complicity, “(w)e are journalists, not scholars, and want to share what surprised, and even shocked, the three of us. We have all grown up, attended schools, and worked in Northern states, from Maine to Maryland. We thought we knew our home. We thought we knew our country.
“We were wrong,”
I couldn’t agree more. I, too, was born in the North (even if I didn’t grow up here), attended school here, have worked and raised a family here. And I, too, was wrong.
Elsewhere (in the Foreword, on p. xvi), we find: “’(c)omplicity’ is a loaded word, pregnant with complication and irony. Thus it is a word appropriately chosen as the title for this book by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank. In this study of how the North promoted, prolonged and profited from slavery, the authors give a fascinating account of racial inequality in America, revealing that positions do not fall neatly into categories such as North versus South, antebellum versus post-bellum, and virtuous versus complicit. Although Complicity calls attention primarily to slavery, the North and South continued their complicitous relationship with regard to white supremacy into the nineteenth century and the twentieth.”
Perhaps most telling is this quote, just prior to the Foreword, by Harriet Beecher Stowe: “The Northern slaveholder traded in men and women whom he never saw, and of whose separations, tears, and miseries he determined never to hear.”
Moving right along … Please allow me to draw a clumsy historical parallel between an “understanding” of slavery in the early 19th century and an “understanding” of Climate Change in our own century. On p. 33, we find: “(i)t’s hard to accept that in the decades before The Civil War, Northeners did not know something of the horrors of Southern slavery. Abolitionists were doing everything possible to inform the nation in pamphlets and newspapers filled with exclamation-point-studded prose and dramatic italicized words.”
And speaking of “climate change” (or non-change), we find this on p. 63: “(l)aws governing the rights and behaviors of slaves varied slightly from colony to colony, but they were updated in reaction to each new real or perceived threat. The two defining assumptions of all the codes were that blacks were dangerous is groups and that they were, at a basic human level, inferior.”
So much for American enlightenment. Or at least for the enlightenment of New England.
On p. 95, we learn that “(a)mong the thirteen original states, only one plunged into the African slave trade in a big way—little Rhode Island.”
But perhaps we can rely on the words of W. E. B. Du Bois to make this somewhat more clear—if not more palatable—to all of us. On pp. 132 – 133: “‘(o)ne cannot, to be sure, demand of whole nations exceptional moral foresight and heroism; but a certain hard common sense … must be expected in every progressive people,’ Dubois wrote. ‘In some respects we as a nation seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the questions and not with us.
“When his classic was reissued a half-century later, on the eve of the civil rights movement, Du Bois wrote that he wished he’d looked more closely at the economics driving the slave trade rather than the laws governing it. Laws codify morality; economics ignore both.”
But what of those two early pillars of American enlightenment, Jefferson and Lincoln?
From pp. 180 – 181: “(a)fter the Revolution—and despite its ideas—this careless, almost oblivious white prejudice against blacks began to harden into an aggressive racist ideology. Yet its first important theorist was none other than the drafter of the Declaration of Independence. In the midst of a long passage on black people in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (who sniffed that [Phillis] Wheatley’s poetry was ‘below the dignity of criticism’) proposed that black inferiority—‘in the endowment of both body and mind’—might be an unchangeable law of nature.”
And on p. 191, we find: “(t)he following year, in one of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln observed that whites and blacks were too different ever to live together as equals. “I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race,” Lincoln said.
But what then—you may well ask—of our Civil War and one of the principal reasons for it? On p. 201, we read: “(t)he Civil War ended slave labor in the United States, but not the idea that black people were inferior and inherently suited to physical labor, that they were made for exploitation and did not mind.”
I don’t mean to trivialize any of this with a mention of the fate of elephants—except for the fact that I believe we have at least as much yet to learn about that noble species as we do about our own. And so, on p. 209, we read: “(s)lavery was outlawed in East Africa in the decade before [Ernst D.] Moore began his career, and the railroads built by England and Germany had started carrying ivory directly from the interior to the coast. Yet human porterage and oppression continued.
“A world campaign against slavery in Africa had been mounted during the decades after the American Civil War, but traders did not want to let go of a lucrative system that had worked for so long, and the priority of the West was to maintain the flow of ivory. Tens of thousands of Americans were buying pianos every year, and pianos required ivory.
“The ivory and slave trades were deeply intertwined. The connection between the number of tusks gathered and human lives destroyed was understood, even in the early years of the ivory trade. The equation first formulated by [David] Livingstone is one modern historians use as well: Five black people were killed or forced into slavery for each elephant tusk that reached the coast. Henry Stanley’s number is higher. He says that for every pound of ivory, someone died.”
And speaking of a leader in Connecticut’s ivory industry…on p. 211, we find: “(t)he aftermath of the Civil War brought with it a new and disabling reality, one with a ripple that reached Africa. The casualties of the United States’ war were so high and communities so devastated that the national priority became the reconciliation of North and South. The other postwar agenda—to create a place in society for millions of freed blacks, most of whom were illiterate and impoverished—was essentially discarded. White America had to heal first.
“In his time, and in the footsteps of earlier Connecticut ivory men, George Cheney translated a natural resource from Africa into a luxury for America, and the black people swept up into that terrible transformation simply did not figure.”
I suspect that most of this review—and the history it pretends to analyze in barest detail—can be summed up by this comment on p. 212 by the author of Out of Africa: ‘I had seen a herd of elephants travelling through dense native forest,’ wrote Isak Dinesen, ‘pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.”
A final word of thanks to Carolina Salguero, owner of the Mary A. Whalen, an historic oil tanker berthed at Portside, here in Red Hook (Brooklyn)—and owner, too, of an extensive library on the history of African Americans. She introduced me to—then lent me—both Complicity and The Empire of Necessity.
RRB
Brooklyn (Red Hook), NY
13 February 2019
As they write in the Preface to Complicity, “(w)e are journalists, not scholars, and want to share what surprised, and even shocked, the three of us. We have all grown up, attended schools, and worked in Northern states, from Maine to Maryland. We thought we knew our home. We thought we knew our country.
“We were wrong,”
I couldn’t agree more. I, too, was born in the North (even if I didn’t grow up here), attended school here, have worked and raised a family here. And I, too, was wrong.
Elsewhere (in the Foreword, on p. xvi), we find: “’(c)omplicity’ is a loaded word, pregnant with complication and irony. Thus it is a word appropriately chosen as the title for this book by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank. In this study of how the North promoted, prolonged and profited from slavery, the authors give a fascinating account of racial inequality in America, revealing that positions do not fall neatly into categories such as North versus South, antebellum versus post-bellum, and virtuous versus complicit. Although Complicity calls attention primarily to slavery, the North and South continued their complicitous relationship with regard to white supremacy into the nineteenth century and the twentieth.”
Perhaps most telling is this quote, just prior to the Foreword, by Harriet Beecher Stowe: “The Northern slaveholder traded in men and women whom he never saw, and of whose separations, tears, and miseries he determined never to hear.”
Moving right along … Please allow me to draw a clumsy historical parallel between an “understanding” of slavery in the early 19th century and an “understanding” of Climate Change in our own century. On p. 33, we find: “(i)t’s hard to accept that in the decades before The Civil War, Northeners did not know something of the horrors of Southern slavery. Abolitionists were doing everything possible to inform the nation in pamphlets and newspapers filled with exclamation-point-studded prose and dramatic italicized words.”
And speaking of “climate change” (or non-change), we find this on p. 63: “(l)aws governing the rights and behaviors of slaves varied slightly from colony to colony, but they were updated in reaction to each new real or perceived threat. The two defining assumptions of all the codes were that blacks were dangerous is groups and that they were, at a basic human level, inferior.”
So much for American enlightenment. Or at least for the enlightenment of New England.
On p. 95, we learn that “(a)mong the thirteen original states, only one plunged into the African slave trade in a big way—little Rhode Island.”
But perhaps we can rely on the words of W. E. B. Du Bois to make this somewhat more clear—if not more palatable—to all of us. On pp. 132 – 133: “‘(o)ne cannot, to be sure, demand of whole nations exceptional moral foresight and heroism; but a certain hard common sense … must be expected in every progressive people,’ Dubois wrote. ‘In some respects we as a nation seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the questions and not with us.
“When his classic was reissued a half-century later, on the eve of the civil rights movement, Du Bois wrote that he wished he’d looked more closely at the economics driving the slave trade rather than the laws governing it. Laws codify morality; economics ignore both.”
But what of those two early pillars of American enlightenment, Jefferson and Lincoln?
From pp. 180 – 181: “(a)fter the Revolution—and despite its ideas—this careless, almost oblivious white prejudice against blacks began to harden into an aggressive racist ideology. Yet its first important theorist was none other than the drafter of the Declaration of Independence. In the midst of a long passage on black people in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (who sniffed that [Phillis] Wheatley’s poetry was ‘below the dignity of criticism’) proposed that black inferiority—‘in the endowment of both body and mind’—might be an unchangeable law of nature.”
And on p. 191, we find: “(t)he following year, in one of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln observed that whites and blacks were too different ever to live together as equals. “I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race,” Lincoln said.
But what then—you may well ask—of our Civil War and one of the principal reasons for it? On p. 201, we read: “(t)he Civil War ended slave labor in the United States, but not the idea that black people were inferior and inherently suited to physical labor, that they were made for exploitation and did not mind.”
I don’t mean to trivialize any of this with a mention of the fate of elephants—except for the fact that I believe we have at least as much yet to learn about that noble species as we do about our own. And so, on p. 209, we read: “(s)lavery was outlawed in East Africa in the decade before [Ernst D.] Moore began his career, and the railroads built by England and Germany had started carrying ivory directly from the interior to the coast. Yet human porterage and oppression continued.
“A world campaign against slavery in Africa had been mounted during the decades after the American Civil War, but traders did not want to let go of a lucrative system that had worked for so long, and the priority of the West was to maintain the flow of ivory. Tens of thousands of Americans were buying pianos every year, and pianos required ivory.
“The ivory and slave trades were deeply intertwined. The connection between the number of tusks gathered and human lives destroyed was understood, even in the early years of the ivory trade. The equation first formulated by [David] Livingstone is one modern historians use as well: Five black people were killed or forced into slavery for each elephant tusk that reached the coast. Henry Stanley’s number is higher. He says that for every pound of ivory, someone died.”
And speaking of a leader in Connecticut’s ivory industry…on p. 211, we find: “(t)he aftermath of the Civil War brought with it a new and disabling reality, one with a ripple that reached Africa. The casualties of the United States’ war were so high and communities so devastated that the national priority became the reconciliation of North and South. The other postwar agenda—to create a place in society for millions of freed blacks, most of whom were illiterate and impoverished—was essentially discarded. White America had to heal first.
“In his time, and in the footsteps of earlier Connecticut ivory men, George Cheney translated a natural resource from Africa into a luxury for America, and the black people swept up into that terrible transformation simply did not figure.”
I suspect that most of this review—and the history it pretends to analyze in barest detail—can be summed up by this comment on p. 212 by the author of Out of Africa: ‘I had seen a herd of elephants travelling through dense native forest,’ wrote Isak Dinesen, ‘pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.”
A final word of thanks to Carolina Salguero, owner of the Mary A. Whalen, an historic oil tanker berthed at Portside, here in Red Hook (Brooklyn)—and owner, too, of an extensive library on the history of African Americans. She introduced me to—then lent me—both Complicity and The Empire of Necessity.
RRB
Brooklyn (Red Hook), NY
13 February 2019
August 5, 2009
This is history for people who do not read history and have little intention to change. The authors are reporters who were horrified to find slavery existed in Connecticut. After that startling discovery, they proceeded to establish that slavery was common in America. Next, they made the equally startling discovery that Northerners profited from both the slave trade and dealing with slaveholders. I feel that this was news to educated people is the most upsetting part of the book.
This book attempts to be several things at once. First, the book wants to expose slavery in Northern America. The first five chapters present an account of this. The author’s wishing to make their abhorrence of slavery clear, never missing a chance to “flog a dead horse”. That very few are in favor of slavery never seems to occur to them. The second part of the book deals with the international slave trade and New England and New York’s role. In the years prior to the Civil War, New York City has very close ties to the South and to an illegal international slave trade. The chapter on kidnapping and selling free Blacks is one of the best in the book. The last part of the book overreaches trying to prove Northern complicity in “race science” and the Ivory Trade. By this time, most readers of history will have serious doubts about the book and recognize they are reading for enjoyment not solid information.
The book will appeal to those who wish to prove their anti-slavery credentials, those who wish to show America to be a raciest society and Lost Cause Tradition adherents. This last group will use the information to say there was “no difference” between North & South on slavery.
The book is not footnoted. Notes, based on direct quotes, may be found in a notes section. These notes are so poor as to be useless. The best they do is direct you to the bibliography, where you find the majority of books are contemporary works. The major value of this book is in being a quick read and inexpensive.
This book attempts to be several things at once. First, the book wants to expose slavery in Northern America. The first five chapters present an account of this. The author’s wishing to make their abhorrence of slavery clear, never missing a chance to “flog a dead horse”. That very few are in favor of slavery never seems to occur to them. The second part of the book deals with the international slave trade and New England and New York’s role. In the years prior to the Civil War, New York City has very close ties to the South and to an illegal international slave trade. The chapter on kidnapping and selling free Blacks is one of the best in the book. The last part of the book overreaches trying to prove Northern complicity in “race science” and the Ivory Trade. By this time, most readers of history will have serious doubts about the book and recognize they are reading for enjoyment not solid information.
The book will appeal to those who wish to prove their anti-slavery credentials, those who wish to show America to be a raciest society and Lost Cause Tradition adherents. This last group will use the information to say there was “no difference” between North & South on slavery.
The book is not footnoted. Notes, based on direct quotes, may be found in a notes section. These notes are so poor as to be useless. The best they do is direct you to the bibliography, where you find the majority of books are contemporary works. The major value of this book is in being a quick read and inexpensive.
January 30, 2012
I read this book a few years ago, and found myself thinking about it last night, after watching a couple of episodes of a television series on the American Revolution that my husband is very into at the moment. This book contains facts which may be shocking to many (such as the fact the Rhode Island was the state with the largest slave trade) but isn't quite as surprising to those who have studied the history of economics and who know how deeply the slave trade was embedded into the worldwide economy, not just our own nation's economy, before, during, and after our country's founding. I thought this book was an honest, earnest look at how not just one subset of people, states, or historical factors can be, in essence, blamed for participation in slavery. I do remember that the author did get slightly diverted from the primary topic in one or two chapters, which made the book slightly longer than it needed to be -- and I did disagree with her assertion that Darwin's theories helped somehow bring about thought processes that "reduced" or contradicted racism -- otherwise, I would have given this book 5 stars.
September 7, 2023
An important, although somewhat uneven, book about the role slavery played in northern industrial growth. From the triangle trade (molasses/rum/slaves) to the need for cotton to feed the New England textile mills to the Fugitive Slave Act to plundering elephants for ivory piano keys, the North was heavily involved in businesses that encouraged, or at least benefited from, the enslavement of others. The book does seem to hop around a lot to the point of disconnection, and most of northern influence occurs in the 17th and 18th centuries, but these are areas that are so often ignored when discussing slavery as we usually consider it a "southern problem."
David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
President, The Lincoln Group of DC
David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
President, The Lincoln Group of DC
August 11, 2020
This is a great book that debunks the myth that the North did not contribute to slavery. It pulls at a lot of threads that weave together the greedy and inhumane system of winks and nods that allowed Northerners to technically say they didn't promote slavery. It's also very readable and great to recommend to those who are less enthusiastic about history monographs.
May 23, 2019
We don't usually read about the Northern states' role in slavery, but this book shows how the textile mills in the North made cloth using cotton harvested by slave labor. With full knowledge of this, they profited from slavery, allowing it to continue. This book underscores the idea that the wealth in this country was not created in a just manner, but at the expense of others, a fact many would like to ignore. It was interesting to read that Vermont was the first state to become slave-free.
January 6, 2010
Do you think you know a little about the depredations imposed upon African Americans. Read this book, and I assure you that you will learn something new about the cruelty of our American "extractive" culture. You'll come to appreciate just how much of our wealth was created through forced labor. You'll learn about the "scientific" suppositions about race in the 19th century that combined with religious prejudice indicted people of African descent as inherently sub-human - and you'll likely be surprised about how many of these prejudices are still extant. Lastly, this books serves as a reminder about "how much history we assume we know is shaped by forgotten or ignored facts."
September 10, 2017
Three journalists from The Hartford Courant have researched the North's participation in slavery. Mills, rum and molasses, shipping, and the ivory trade all relied on slave labor and yet we have the perception that the Northern states were the good guys. This book clearly presents how interconnected the economies of the United States were and how no one is blameless.
This is well written and very interesting. It is of special interest to me as many of the examples are local.
This is well written and very interesting. It is of special interest to me as many of the examples are local.
January 8, 2011
It's interesting to go back and read true history. This book did a great job at examining how deep slavery was entrenched into our entire society, and how so many attempted to keep it that way.
August 5, 2017
The book is a fine example of what non-academic history can do well. Based mostly on secondary sources, but also on published primary documents (and even a few manuscripts), it documents the ways in which the Northern British colonies and then Northern American states were complicit in the slavery system--mostly through economics. Slavery was legal in Northern colonies/states till the early 19th (in the early 18th century, South Carolina had the highest slave population in the colonies, but New York was second) but also provided the life blood of the early British colonies in the North. New England's economy in the early colonial period depended upon supplying timber and other raw materials to the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean, which ran on slave labor. In the 19th century, when cotton became the South's main crop, it was New York shipping that brought it to the rest of the world; so important was the export of cotton to New York City's economy that its mayor actually suggested that the city secede with the South at the outset of the Civil War, a vignette with which Farrow begins the book.
Much of what the book covers is known to historians, but the investigative efforts of the authors turned up nuggets that were surprising to me. For example, I knew how much the Northern colonies/states depended upon slavery at second hand, but was unaware how much the financial industry was implicated in it. Most Southern planters bought slaves on credit, provided for by Northern banks; when their cotton and/or slaves were transported, it was Northern firms which provided insurance for their property. Nor was I aware of the slave pirates that operated out of New York City in the 19th century, after the slave trade was abolished, who took slaves from Africa to other countries in the Southern hemisphere, such as Brazil and Cuba. Likewise I had never heard of the "other underground railroad," the gangs in the North who would capture free blacks and sell them into slavery. Incredibly, the book even documents two instances in which Southern slave owners actually cooperated with Northern authorities to apprehend some of these gangs.
My interest in the book was spurred by a desire to give my American history courses something counter-intuitive yet easy to read. The authors' journalistic skill make "Complicity" a quick read, and are therefore very suitable for high school or undergraduate courses. My only real quibble with the book is that its subtitle is misleading. It ought to be about how the "Northeast" was complicit in slavery. Yes, the "North" was indeed complicit in slavery, but not all of these states were equally complicit, and the book demonstrates this. Almost its entire focus is on four colonies/states: New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The Upper Midwestern states, in particular, are left out, and for good reason: they were mostly populated by small farmers who were the least dependent upon the slave economy of the South. There was a reason that the this was the bastion of the "Free Soil" party in antebellum period, and that produced Lincoln. Historians have become more sensitive in recent years to the fact that the South was not monolithic, and stress its regional and class differences. More awareness of these with regards to the North would have been helpful in "Complicity." But on the whole, "Complicity" delivers on the goods.
Much of what the book covers is known to historians, but the investigative efforts of the authors turned up nuggets that were surprising to me. For example, I knew how much the Northern colonies/states depended upon slavery at second hand, but was unaware how much the financial industry was implicated in it. Most Southern planters bought slaves on credit, provided for by Northern banks; when their cotton and/or slaves were transported, it was Northern firms which provided insurance for their property. Nor was I aware of the slave pirates that operated out of New York City in the 19th century, after the slave trade was abolished, who took slaves from Africa to other countries in the Southern hemisphere, such as Brazil and Cuba. Likewise I had never heard of the "other underground railroad," the gangs in the North who would capture free blacks and sell them into slavery. Incredibly, the book even documents two instances in which Southern slave owners actually cooperated with Northern authorities to apprehend some of these gangs.
My interest in the book was spurred by a desire to give my American history courses something counter-intuitive yet easy to read. The authors' journalistic skill make "Complicity" a quick read, and are therefore very suitable for high school or undergraduate courses. My only real quibble with the book is that its subtitle is misleading. It ought to be about how the "Northeast" was complicit in slavery. Yes, the "North" was indeed complicit in slavery, but not all of these states were equally complicit, and the book demonstrates this. Almost its entire focus is on four colonies/states: New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The Upper Midwestern states, in particular, are left out, and for good reason: they were mostly populated by small farmers who were the least dependent upon the slave economy of the South. There was a reason that the this was the bastion of the "Free Soil" party in antebellum period, and that produced Lincoln. Historians have become more sensitive in recent years to the fact that the South was not monolithic, and stress its regional and class differences. More awareness of these with regards to the North would have been helpful in "Complicity." But on the whole, "Complicity" delivers on the goods.
March 1, 2024
Like the three authors of this book--all of them veteran writers for The Hartford Courant newspaper's Sunday magazine -- I had for years felt a bit smug that as a Northerner, I was (by extension) on the "good" side of the fight over slavery. (Actually, my family didn't come to the US until 1912-1937, so I could be even more smug about my lack of direct complicity.)
Then, after I started volunteering for the New-York Historical Society, I learned, to my horror, of New York City's huge role in financing the slave trade.
This book expands that horrific education, to explore more of the Yankee North's wide-ranging complicity:
New England's famous textile mills relied on endless Southern cotton. MidAtlantic and New England carpenters built the ships that sailed the deadly Middle Passage, and Rhode Island's distilleries made rum from the sugar that enslaved people harvested in the Caribbean. Connecticut was the center of the 19th century ivory industry, which killed millions of African people (and also slaughtered the elephant population so cavalierly that now the species is endangered). Not only that, the elite of New York City business and politics sympathized with the South for decades. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood even suggested that the city should secede from the US and join the Confederacy.
Why? Money. Cotton, rum, and ivory were obscenely profitable, as was the leasing and selling of ships, and insuring and financing this vast network. Some of the leaders of these industries considered themselves abolitionists or anti-slavery, yet when it came to the sourcing of their raw materials, they shut their eyes.
In short, this book is an important eye-opener, even for people who have studied history.
It's also very readable, probably because it's written by journalists, not academics.
My only criticisms are ones that are too typical of nonfiction:
1. The narrative loops around and repeats too much, probably because many readers will dip in and out, rather than going straight from Page 1 to The End. So the authors may feel they need to keep reminding readers and filling them in.
2. TMI. How many examples of bloody ivory caravans or textile mills do we need?
Then again, you don't need to read every word of this book to feel its impact.
Then, after I started volunteering for the New-York Historical Society, I learned, to my horror, of New York City's huge role in financing the slave trade.
This book expands that horrific education, to explore more of the Yankee North's wide-ranging complicity:
New England's famous textile mills relied on endless Southern cotton. MidAtlantic and New England carpenters built the ships that sailed the deadly Middle Passage, and Rhode Island's distilleries made rum from the sugar that enslaved people harvested in the Caribbean. Connecticut was the center of the 19th century ivory industry, which killed millions of African people (and also slaughtered the elephant population so cavalierly that now the species is endangered). Not only that, the elite of New York City business and politics sympathized with the South for decades. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood even suggested that the city should secede from the US and join the Confederacy.
Why? Money. Cotton, rum, and ivory were obscenely profitable, as was the leasing and selling of ships, and insuring and financing this vast network. Some of the leaders of these industries considered themselves abolitionists or anti-slavery, yet when it came to the sourcing of their raw materials, they shut their eyes.
In short, this book is an important eye-opener, even for people who have studied history.
It's also very readable, probably because it's written by journalists, not academics.
My only criticisms are ones that are too typical of nonfiction:
1. The narrative loops around and repeats too much, probably because many readers will dip in and out, rather than going straight from Page 1 to The End. So the authors may feel they need to keep reminding readers and filling them in.
2. TMI. How many examples of bloody ivory caravans or textile mills do we need?
Then again, you don't need to read every word of this book to feel its impact.
April 7, 2023
"Slavery has been identified in the national consciousness as a Southern institution. The time to bury that myth is long overdue. Slavery is a story about America, all of America. The nation's wealth, from the beginning, depended upon the exploitation of black people on three continents. Together, over the lives of millions of enslaved men and women, Northerners and Southerners shook hands and made a country." (from the introduction) Partners in this shameful industry are politicians, journalists, and worst of all, educators, especially in the North, who refused to be honest about the complicity of their states' in the wealth-producing scheme. They can't hide now. This book, fully annotated, exposes the role of businesses above the Mason-Dixon line that knowingly profited from the slave trade.
1790 First US Census: Connecticut and Rhode Island-3500 slaves, Pennsylvania-3700, New York- more than 20,000 black slaves.
The New England Sea Trade business began in 1631 with regular trips to West Indies slave plantations.
"Slavery was the ultimate source of the commercial economy of 18th century New England." Beginning in 1808 Rhode Island launched 1000 trips to Africa, bringing back at least 100,000 slaves.
The Southern slaves worked the fields; the Northern slaves produced the products. Partners in an industry that did not stop even after it became a crime.
Even the 'Great Liberator' showed his racist ideology. "I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (Lincoln in his debates with Stephen Douglas)
If you have not investigated the entire scope of slavery, you won't see the big picture. This book is a great place to start if you want the whole portrait.
1790 First US Census: Connecticut and Rhode Island-3500 slaves, Pennsylvania-3700, New York- more than 20,000 black slaves.
The New England Sea Trade business began in 1631 with regular trips to West Indies slave plantations.
"Slavery was the ultimate source of the commercial economy of 18th century New England." Beginning in 1808 Rhode Island launched 1000 trips to Africa, bringing back at least 100,000 slaves.
The Southern slaves worked the fields; the Northern slaves produced the products. Partners in an industry that did not stop even after it became a crime.
Even the 'Great Liberator' showed his racist ideology. "I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (Lincoln in his debates with Stephen Douglas)
If you have not investigated the entire scope of slavery, you won't see the big picture. This book is a great place to start if you want the whole portrait.
March 19, 2023
Totally destroys the myths that the Northern US states were morally superior because they didn't engage in the slave trade. All states had slaves in the early days (NY was the slavery leader before King Cotton emerged with slave revolts & all that came it. She shows that even when northern abolitionists called for the end of slavery, they never believed that Blacks were humans equal to them & never viewed an integrated society as possible. The first Black laws were authored in the north. Also, Farrow meticulously documents evidence showing that virtually the North's entire economy was derived from using slave-produced products (NY harbor's #1 export was slave-grown cotton & New England textile factories were the #1 market for Southern slave-grown cotton), slave trading (Rhode Island ships & crews conducted 90% of the slave ship voyages by US ships), served as the breadbasket for Caribbean slave economies (Connecticut, NY & RI farms), US financial interests blossomed with the land speculation, plantations & slave financing schemes which gave. New England dominated the ivory market (Connecticut driven by capitalists who professed to be abolitionists in the US) whose greed caused more African enslavement & death than almost any other industry. If you want to understand the economic debt this nation owes to the free labor buritally secured on the backs of slaves, this book is a must.
October 25, 2020
Enslavement has been woven into all corners of the fabric of America since her inception. The sooner white people accept this, the sooner we can heal our racial and geographic divides and work towards justice and reconciliation.
Our rationalizations about our participation in the injustices of yesteryear have so much to teach us about how we can fight the destruction and injustice that confront us today. As with most things, Baldwin summed up a lot of this more beautifully than anyone:
“[White people] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it”-James Baldwin
“White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer, merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” -James Baldwin
Our rationalizations about our participation in the injustices of yesteryear have so much to teach us about how we can fight the destruction and injustice that confront us today. As with most things, Baldwin summed up a lot of this more beautifully than anyone:
“[White people] are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it”-James Baldwin
“White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer, merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” -James Baldwin
August 24, 2021
It was a beautiful paddle from Russell Landing on Haw Creek to Bull Creek Fish Camp on Dead Lake. After food and libations, talk turned to the differences of growing up in the north vs. the south.
Our trip leader, Greg Pflug, listened somewhat patiently to those of us being a little self righteous about never experiencing segregation. He suggested that the north was extremely complicit in slavery while publicly denouncing the practice. Please read the book Complicity he says.
It took me a few years for it to come up on my list and I must say it made my shoes pinch, a lot. The book was not written to rewrite history nor to slap hands, it was simply written to set a few records straight.
Those cotton mills (also a form of labor abuse) depended heavily on the slave trade…
Rum factories depended heavily on the slave trade…
Piano key makers depended heavily on slave trade…
And all the supporting industries.
The generational wealth built on the backs of millions of slaves is a fact. All that unpaid labor…
Our trip leader, Greg Pflug, listened somewhat patiently to those of us being a little self righteous about never experiencing segregation. He suggested that the north was extremely complicit in slavery while publicly denouncing the practice. Please read the book Complicity he says.
It took me a few years for it to come up on my list and I must say it made my shoes pinch, a lot. The book was not written to rewrite history nor to slap hands, it was simply written to set a few records straight.
Those cotton mills (also a form of labor abuse) depended heavily on the slave trade…
Rum factories depended heavily on the slave trade…
Piano key makers depended heavily on slave trade…
And all the supporting industries.
The generational wealth built on the backs of millions of slaves is a fact. All that unpaid labor…
April 20, 2022
What differentiates a list of facts from a history book is a narrative, and it is fascinating to me that three! journalists! who should understand the significance of narrative! did not or could not write a cohesive narrative. The closest this book gets to its subtitle - how the North promoted, prolonged, and profited from slavery - is the first chapter about New York City and the mills of New England. After that, it’s just a collection of stories about racism in the North. The final chapter, while fascinating in its own right, doesn’t even deal with American slavery! It is technically correct about how Connecticut specifically and Americans generally benefitted financially from slavery in Africa regarding the ivory trade, but that feels like an entirely different topic - national benefits from global slavery vs the northern United States benefitting from slavery in the southern US. Overall a disappointing read.
March 7, 2020
I had some prior knowledge from school of the famous triangle of molasses-rum-slaves engineered by New England traders, but this book uncovers fascinating information including slave markets on Wall Street, slave plantations in the North, a reverse underground railroad which fostered the capture of free blacks and their sale as "captured" slaves back in the slave states, and a general reveal of how even the seemingly least likely industries or people really did make money based on the slave trade or products produced by slave labor. Most stunning was the expose of the slave labor underpinnings of wealth and power in America, and how much of the history we think we know is shaped by forgotten or ignored facts. A reminder that the economic engine runs all. An inconvenient truth indeed.
January 1, 2021
Excellent book with extensive research into the foundations of slavery in America and how the American economy grew significantly as a direct result of domestic and foreign slavery. The authors also highlight fundamental questions of morality vs profits and show repeatedly how profits ruled the day as slavery and their businesses thrived, all the while playing the game of putting on the abolitionist. This will be an astonishing read for many people who, when they think of slavery, they only think of the confederate states. I will say that there were occasions when the author's Northern mindset showed some prejudicial assumptions. Old, ingrained beliefs are hard to let go of. I will forever think of Complicity whenever I see a piano.
Read
January 20, 2021I can’t explain adequately how much I learned from this book. I don’t tend to read a lot of history, so I was concerned this might be too dense for me, but the journalistic approach made the text as accessible and interesting as it was informative. Complicity uncovers the truth about how much the Northern states relied on and supported slavery—from New York’s governing of the cotton trade, to a Philadelphian’s invention of race science, to Connecticut’s once thriving ivory trade. Rebellion and violence as a result of slavery leaves huge blood spots on the North’s history. The only drawback to me was the minimal presence of Black journalists in the research and writing of the book. Still, it’s both fascinating and horrifying and definitely worth a read.
May 10, 2020
Gets better near the end
The book is somewhat disjointed in the beginning, hopping between different narratives without much preamble. Not much of the information is new, but just gathered together in one volume. The true saving grace of the book is the final section. There it lays out the massive cost in lives, both African natives and elephants, to supply the demand for piano keys in the 19th and 20th centuries. Fascinating stuff. A note to the e-publisher, making the text a different size/font in the illustration’s captions would greatly improve the readability.
The book is somewhat disjointed in the beginning, hopping between different narratives without much preamble. Not much of the information is new, but just gathered together in one volume. The true saving grace of the book is the final section. There it lays out the massive cost in lives, both African natives and elephants, to supply the demand for piano keys in the 19th and 20th centuries. Fascinating stuff. A note to the e-publisher, making the text a different size/font in the illustration’s captions would greatly improve the readability.
June 26, 2023
Pretty good start, middling middle, and weak finish. Some quality anecdotes and analysis of antebellum America's economy, however, I think the book's message faltered when it pivoted after the Civil War. [Spoilers ahead]
The authors make the mistake of looking at slavery in a narrow definition of only occurring in Africa after the Civil War and make no mention of that terrible, key clause in the Thirteenth Amendment. Perhaps the authors avoided this discussion deliberately, but to omit even a single mention or touch on the ramifications to this day is hard to understand
The authors make the mistake of looking at slavery in a narrow definition of only occurring in Africa after the Civil War and make no mention of that terrible, key clause in the Thirteenth Amendment. Perhaps the authors avoided this discussion deliberately, but to omit even a single mention or touch on the ramifications to this day is hard to understand
February 6, 2018
Unsurprisingly, I never learned about anything included in this book about the North's investments in slavery in my 16 years of education in Massachusetts. How we view and understand history (and thus the present) is based not only on what we're taught, but also was is left out. This is a quick read, and should be required of everyone--New Englanders, who self-righteously paint themselves as always having been on the right side of history, in particular.
February 9, 2020
Remember how were all told how the south made its money from slaves, but the north made its money from noble pursuits like ship building, shipping, textiles, and insurance?
Well the ships were for catching and transporting slaves. Also for transporting sugar processed by slaves, and cotton picked by salves to the north where they could be processed into textiles and rum. And the northern insurance agencies sold slave insurance to the slave owners in the south.
Well the ships were for catching and transporting slaves. Also for transporting sugar processed by slaves, and cotton picked by salves to the north where they could be processed into textiles and rum. And the northern insurance agencies sold slave insurance to the slave owners in the south.
September 6, 2020
There's a lot of important history in this book. History that's been overlooked. Well researched, well written, and chock full of illustrations, this is a book worth reading if you have an interest in the subject. The one thing I really took away from reading this book was just how important slave labor was to the incredible economic growth of America. Overall a very important book that needed to be written.
January 14, 2019
Great read. Would recommend high school and college level students to learn the full story of the U.S. invlovement with slavey. This piece of history is not specific to the South as we have been previously taught to believe.
The book was well written and kept me engaged as a reader.
The book was well written and kept me engaged as a reader.
September 18, 2021
this book is,,, the most revealing piece of art & history I’ve read in a long time. Strongly, STRONGLY recommended for any white/non-Black person person living outside of the South who thinks they have an inherent moral superiority in the face of U.S. and global slavery and racism.
January 10, 2023
Didn't contain as big of smoking guns as I expected, but still had plenty of them. Definitely something us Northerners need to read to keep us humble, as the North isn't as noble or valiant as the history books often present it as.
October 4, 2018
Eye opening book on how slavery built America
December 9, 2018
Excellent book! A complete take down of the treasury of counterfeit virtue.
September 4, 2019
#thisIsAmerica
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews