1774: "we will wholly discontinue the slave trade...

…and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."

Of course that clause in the Articles of Association, adopted 20 October 1774, wasn't a commitment to abolish slavery. The First Continental Congress was looking for ways to hit the British Empire in the pocket book. Between 1699 and 1807, 5199 slaving vessels were among the 12,013 clearances from British ports.

Or maybe more. Three British cities were the most heavily involved in the slave trade: London, Bristol, and Liverpool. According to research for a biography of Josiah Wedgewood, during the 18th century more than 5000 slaving voyages set sail from Liverpool alone -- perhaps one half the British slave-trading market. The profits of this trade financed a part of England's industrial investment. Between 1750 and 1800, annual profits rose from 200,000 British pounds to over one million.

Daniel Defoe (the author of Robinson Crusoe), while boasting of British prosperity and liberty, acknowledged that nothing "could be so great a Blow to Trade in general, as the Ruin of the African Trade in particular."

In 1790, seven years after American independence was formally recognized, British investment in slaving voyages exceeded 1.5 million pounds a year, returning 150,000 pounds annual profit. Alongside cotton, coal, sugar, tobacco and salt, slave ships may have been one seventh of the total tonnage from Liverpool in the second half of the 18th century.

Slave ships at the West Indian docks in Liverpool.

Slaves were among the many commodities the colonies agree not to import from Great Britain. On October 14, the congress resolved not to import "any goods, wares or merchandize whatsoever... from Great-Britain or Ireland; nor will we, after that day, import any East India tea from any part of the world; nor any molasses, syrrups, paneles, coffee, or piemento, from the British plantations, or from Dominica; nor wines from Madeira, or the Western Islands; nor foreign Indigo."

But there were other rumblings across the colonial landscape. As early as February 1774, the Massachusetts assembly passed a bill to suppress the slave trade. Under instructions from London, Governor Hutchinson refused to sign it, as did his successor, General Gage.

The previous February 23, the assembly of Rhode Island passed an act providing for the gradual extinction of slavery in that state. All children born of slave mothers after the 1st of March were to be free, and the towns were to pay the cost of their rearing. The next year this charge was laid upon the ownere of the mothers.

While the colonies were still debating whether to convene a congress, on May 17, a meeting of the freeman of Providence, Rhode Island, resolved in favor.

The same meeting resolved concerning six negroes, who, their owner dying intestate, had become the property of the town, that:

"It is unbecoming the character of freemen to enslave the said negroes" renounced their claim, and took them under their protection.

They also petitioned the assembly "as personal liberty is an essential part of the natural rights of mankind" to forbid the futher importation of slaves, and declare all born after a certain time free.

Rhode Island's policies were not consistent over the subsequent twenty years. Rhode Island merchants had been heavily invested in transporting slaves to the West Indies and to Charleston and Savannah. But property rights in human beings as chattel property were becoming less certain. Cracks were beginning to appear in systems of slavery and servitude.

Georgia, where slavery was prohibited until 1751, when King George II ordered that the inhabitants be allowed to purchase slaves, did not initially join the Continental Association. As late as February 1775, South Carolina resolved to "have no trade, commerce, dealings or intercourse win the said colony of Georgia." In May, the full Continental Congress passed the same resolution.