January 17, 2026 • 30 mins
This 2020 episode covers Paul Cuffe, who protested taxation, built wealth for himself in whaling, became a Quaker and used his fortune for the betterment of others. He also advocated creating a colony in Africa for of African ancestry to immigrate to.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Paul Cuffey was born January seventeenth, seventeen fifty nine, or
two hundred and sixty seven years ago today, on the
day this episode is coming out. Our episode about him
came out on February twelfth, twenty twenty, and that is
today's Saturday Classic Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:25):
History Class a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Today's topic was suggested by a friend of mine who
was raised Quaker and who grew up attending meetings at
(00:45):
the same meetinghouse that today's subject helped rebuild in the
eighteen teens. A subject is Paul Cuffey. Sometimes you will
see his name spelled with two e's at the end
of Cuffee, and sometimes with just one. I had never
heard of Paul Cuffey before this conversation, and when my
friends told me about him, I sort of took a
cursory look at things. I was like, Oh, yeah, he
(01:06):
does seem pretty interesting. Months later, after finally moving him
up to the top of the list and getting into
actual research, I became so fascinated that I took a
field trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there is an
exhibit on him at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and
the park next to the museum was named in his honor.
(01:28):
It was not that I needed additional information. I was
just so intrigued by the whole thing. I was like,
I want to go see this exhibit. So we got
in the car we went.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I love it. Paul Coffey was born on January seventeenth,
seventeen fifty nine, on Cuddy Hunk Island, which is off
the coast of Massachusetts in Buzzard's Bay. This is on
the far western end of the Elizabeth Islands, which are
south of New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the mainland and northwest
of the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Paul was the sixth child of ten and the fourth
son born to Kofe Slocum. He was an African man
what's now Ghana and Ruth Moses, who was Wampanog. Koffe
is a name used in the Tweed dialect, which is
spoken by the Akan people for boys born on a Friday,
So if that was the name that was given to
(02:13):
him before he was taken from Africa. He was most
likely from one of the many many subgroups that make
up the Akan people.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Kofe Slocum was enslaved and transported to North America when
he was about ten years old, and in the seventeen
twenties he was purchased by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker from Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
It's not completely clear how Kofe was freed about twenty
five years later. Ebenezer sold Kofe to his nephew John
in seventeen forty two, and according to some accounts, John
(02:42):
freed Kofe about three years later as the religious Society
of Friends became more opposed to slavery. But in other
versions of the story, Kofe was given permission to do
additional work, and he used the money that he earned
in that work to purchase his own freedom, regardless.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
On July seventeenth of seventeen forty six, which was a
year or so after his manumission, Kofe Slocum married Ruth Moses,
and it was relatively common in this part of New
England for African men to marry indigenous women because of
the demographics of slavery in New England, the enslaved and
free African population usually included more men than women. Conversely,
(03:21):
Indigenous communities tended to have more adult women than men
because Indigenous men were more likely to be enslaved or
imprisoned or forced into indentured servitude. This had been the
case for decades by the time Kofe and Ruth married.
For example, after King Philip's War in the late sixteen seventies,
the British enslaved roughly one thousand Indigenous men to Bermuda
(03:44):
and other parts of the Caribbean, while enslaving Indigenous women
and children and keeping them in New England.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
While the Slocum children had both African and Wampanogu ancestry,
among the white community, they were usually considered to be Black.
For their own part, Paul and his siblings referred to
themselves in a number of ways over their lifetimes, referencing
both their African and their Indigenous heritage. This included the
term musty, which was a term used for people of
(04:10):
multi racial ancestry in coastal Massachusetts. It was most often
used to describe people who were both African and Indigenous.
In seventeen sixty one, Kofe Slocum bought one hundred and
sixteen acre farm in Dartmouth and the whole family moved there.
Eleven years later, he died and left the farm to
Paul and his brother John. It was also around this
(04:32):
time that most of Kofe's children changed their last name
from Slocum, which had been the last name of the
people who had enslaved their father, to Cuffee, which is
an anglicization of his first name. Paul Cuffey was only
about thirteen when his father died, and even though he
and his brother had inherited the farm, their father also
had left some debts, so it was not really as
(04:52):
though they suddenly had enough to support the whole family.
The children also hadn't had access to any sort of
formal education on Cuttyhunk Island or in Dartmouth, so Paul,
with the hope of helping to support his family, decided
to go to Sea in seventeen seventy three, with his
brother staying in Dartmouth to manage the farm.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Aside from jobs that mostly involved manual labor, there were
not a lot of occupations open to people of color
in New England at this point, but whaling and other
seafaring work were something of an exception. These were exceptionally
dangerous industries, which meant that shipowners, captains, and others were
usually pretty eager to hire anybody who was willing to
(05:32):
do the work at sea away from society's expectations. Sometimes
crews could be more tolerant. Plus, if members of the
crew could not work together, they put everybody aboard at risk.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
To add to that, the Wampanog people had their own
maritime traditions that predated the arrival of European colonists in
New England. This included drift whaling, which is butchering dead
or dying whales that had washed up on shore, as
well as fishing with harpoons. In the early seventeen hundreds,
as English colonists were establishing a whaling industry in New England,
(06:05):
Wampanog and other indigenous people provided critical knowledge and labor,
including teaching English colonists how to butcher and prepare whales.
Indigenous people's involvement in the early whaling industry in New
England was often at best under coercion. This included things
like being forced into indentured servitude on whaling ships in
(06:25):
order to pay off debts. This could even extend to
the indentured man's children, who were obligated to take on
his indenture if he was killed at sea or if
he incurred further debt. So the whaling industry was simultaneously exploitive,
especially of indigenous and African labor, and also an incredibly
lucrative industry in which it was possible for Indigenous and
(06:46):
African men to rise to a higher rank than they
could in any other line of work. And that is
what eventually happened to Paul Cuffey.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
In his first voyages, he spent his free time at
sea teaching himself to read and write and do a rhythmic,
and he also studied navigation with the more experienced members
of the crew. Shortly after the Revolutionary War started, a
ship that Cuffe was on was captured by the British
and he was imprisoned in New York for three months.
Once he got out of prison, he went back to
(07:15):
the family farm for a while, but soon he built
a small open boat of his own and then started
using it to run supplies through the British blockade. He
ran the blockade repeatedly between seventeen seventy seven and seventeen
eighty three, both sides in the Revolutionary War tried to
recruit black soldiers, and by that point Cuffe was about
(07:36):
the right age to join up. But he never took
a side in the war, at least in terms of
active fighting. What he did do was protest taxation, and
we're going to get into that after we first have
a sponsor break. As we've talked about on the show before,
(08:00):
one of the issues involved in the American Revolution was taxation,
including taxes that British colonists in North America found to
be egregious, and the idea that colonists were being taxed
but they didn't have any representation in parliament. And that
second idea had another application to free black people in Massachusetts.
They had to pay taxes, but they did not have
(08:22):
the right to vote at all.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Paul and John Cuffey were of the opinion that under
the Constitution of Massachusetts, taxation and the rights of citizenship
were inextricably connected. If they couldn't vote, they were not
being treated as citizens, so they also should not be taxed.
Paul Cuffey stopped paying taxes in seventeen seventy eight. By
seventeen eighty he owed more than one hundred and fifty
(08:45):
pounds in back taxes. That year, John and Paul Cuffee
filed a petition along with three other free black men,
and it read, in part quote, we being chiefly of
the African extract, and by reason of long bondage and
hard slavery, we have been deprived of enjoying the profits
of our labor, or the advantage of inheriting estates from
(09:05):
our parents. As our neighbors, the white people do. We
have been and are now taxed, both in our polls
and that small pittance of a state which, through much
hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain
ourselves and families with all. The petition went on to
say that without tax relief, these circumstances would reduce them
to begging and cause them to be a burden on others,
(09:27):
before saying quote, we apprehend ourselves to be aggrieved in
that while we are not allowed the privilege of freemen
of the state, having no vote or influence in the
election of those that tax us, Yet many of our color,
as is well known, have cheerfully entered the field of
battle in the defense of the common cause.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Their petition for tax relief was denied and Paul Cuffey
was briefly jailed. Walter Spooner, who was a member of
a prominent family in Dartmouth, helped arrange the terms of
Cuffey's release and a reduction in the amount of tax
that he owed. So this petition was not immediately successful,
at least in terms of getting some tax relief for them,
but it is credited with the black men getting the
(10:08):
right to vote in Massachusetts under the same terms as
white men in seventeen eighty three. On February twenty fifth,
seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey married an Indigenous woman named
Alice Abel Peaquit or Peaquot, who had been previously widowed.
They went on to have several children together. Sources mentioned
seven or eight, including two sons and four daughters who
(10:29):
were still living when their father wrote his will. Alice
is normally described as being Wampinogg. Her late husband had
been Peaquot. Also in seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey established
a shipping business with his brother in law, Michael Wayner.
Wayner was Wampinogg and was married to Cuffee's sister Mary
(10:50):
in seventeen eighty nine. As their business grew, Wayner bought
some riverfront property and they established a shipyard there. At
this point, Cuffey was wearing a lot of hats, including
bill building, ships, trading, and whaling. He eventually started captaining
his own vessels, and while his first voyages were beset
by hazards like pirates and shipwrecks, he persevered until he
(11:11):
started to turn a profit. He also bought a farm
in Westport, Massachusetts, where he and his family lived, and
over time he bought other homes and farms elsewhere in
New England. Over the next decade or so, Paul Cuffey
became one of the wealthiest people in Westport. He may
have been the wealthiest person of color anywhere in the
United States while he was living, and he consistently used
(11:32):
his wealth to help other people, especially other people of color.
The captains and crews of his ships were always black
and indigenous men, and that was actually something that made
their work even more dangerous because they were trading with
parts of the world where slavery was still being practiced,
including the American South In seventeen ninety seven, Cuffey proposed
(11:53):
the establishment of an integrated school in Westport.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
When the town leadership couldn't come to a consensus about
it that was probably influenced by racism. Cuffey built the
school on his own property with his own money, and
that school opened in seventeen ninety nine, with its students
including about fifteen children who were part of Cuffee's immedia
and extended family, as well as any other child who
wanted to attend, regardless of their race. Cuffey also supported
(12:20):
a smallpox hospital in Westport, and in eighteen hundred he
bought a gristmill.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
In eighteen oh eight, Cuffey formally joined the religious Society
of Friends by becoming a member of the Westport Monthly Meeting.
His family had been connected to Quakers ever since he
was a child. The Quakers had enslaved his father like
that's complicated, but like they had been part of the
Quaker community in a lot of ways. This was the
first time that he was documented as actually becoming a
(12:47):
member of a meeting. To be clear, though Quaker meetings
had not been integrated when he was a child, The
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was the first to formally allow black
members in seventeen ninety six. A few years later, after
joining the meeting, Paul became part of the committee that
planned and oversaw the construction of the new meeting house. Eventually,
(13:07):
he also became the first black person to attend the
New England Yearly Meeting. Throughout all of this, Cuffey was
still working as a sea captain, traveling all around the Atlantic.
Along the way, he made extensive connections among the black, white,
and indigenous communities of New England, as well as with
British abolitionists, and in all of his work he was
focused on providing jobs, support and opportunities for other people
(13:31):
of color, along with overall philanthropy. He also had a
reputation for being incredibly scrupulous in all of this. In
the words of the Reverend Peter Williams Junior, in a
tribute to Cuffey that he wrote after his death, quote,
he was so conscientious that he would sooner sacrifice his
private interests than engage in any enterprise, however lawful or profitable,
(13:52):
that might have a tendency, either directly or indirectly, to
injure his fellow men. For instance, he would not deal
in ardent spirit nor enslaves, though he might have done
either without violating the laws of his country and with
great prospects of pecuniary gain. By eighteen oh six, Cuffey's
property was valued at about twenty thousand dollars, which made
(14:13):
him the wealthiest person in Westport. By eighteen oh nine,
when he turned fifty, he owned multiple sailing vessels, including
a ship and two brigs, as well as multiple houses, farms, land,
and the mill, and he turned some of that wealth
to an even more ambitious focus, making it possible for
people of African descent to immigrate to Africa. We'll have
(14:34):
more on that. After another quick sponsor break in the
early eighteen hundreds, Paul Cuffe started thinking about the idea
of making it possible for Africans and people of African
descent and the United States to resettle in Africa, specifically
(14:57):
in what was then the British colony of Sierra.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
As a super quick recap, which means we got to
back up a little bit, there were free and enslaved
black soldiers on both sides of the American Revolutionary War.
People chose sides for a variety of reasons, but When
it came to enslaved people, it often involved a promise
of freedom in exchange for their military service.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
For the most part, though this did not work out
as planned. On the patriots side, many enslaved people were
not given their promised freedom after the war ended, and
on the loyalist side, people were free, but they were
also regarded as traders to the United States. They could
not stay in the US and were forced to leave.
Many of them wound up in Nova Scotia or in
(15:40):
British Territory in the Caribbean. At the end of the war,
there were at least fourteen thousand black loyalists seeking refuge
in British Territory, and Britain did not really have a
plan for this. Most black loyalists arrived with nothing. Those
who hadn't been enslaved generally lost all their property due
to confiscation laws. Spread racism also meant that Britain's white
(16:02):
society was not generally open to the idea of integration.
Whether black loyalists wanted to assimily with British society is
a whole other question. Much of this also applied to
enslaved people in Britain who had been freed after Lord
Mansfield's decision in Somerset versus Stuart in seventeen seventy two.
So in seventeen eighty six in Britain, a plan was
(16:24):
proposed to resettle all these people in Africa, under the
idea that it would be removing a burden from the
British public. This plan was approved by the British government
and by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.
That organization had initially been established to provide relief for
people from the Indian subcontinent, but that work had been
(16:45):
expanded to also include people of African descent.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The first attempt to establish a colony in Sierra Leone
failed for many reasons, including illnesses and deaths during transport,
bad weather once they arrived in West Africa, a lack
of preparation intos applies, and the fact that the British
hadn't made any kind of treaty or other arrangement with
the local people of Sierra Leone regarding this colony. Yeah,
(17:08):
they really were kind of like, we want to remove
all of you from our society. We're dropping you off
in Africa. Like that was nearly the extent of it.
Was not planned well.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Even so, though in seventeen ninety one the Sierra Leone
Company was established to try again. This time around, abolitionists
did travel to Sierra Leone to try to establish good
relationships with the local people and then also to mediate
between the locals and the colony. But the British government
was really viewing this as a chance to make money,
(17:41):
basically to start a plantation that used free Africans and
people of African ancestry as labor, with the Sierra Leone
Company in charge of it. More than one thousand free
people were transported to Sierra Leone the following year, and
Britain had to offer a lot of incentives to convince
most people to go. Over All, the people that were
being resettled had never been to Africa before, and many
(18:04):
had justifiable concerns about the possibility of being captured and
sold back into slavery in Africa. At the same time,
there were for sure, some people who either genuinely wanted
to go to Africa or who thought that it was
their best option. This included some people who had been
born somewhere in Africa and wanted the chance to go
back home. It also included people who thought that racism
(18:27):
and white supremacy were so entrenched where they were that
they might have a better chance at a good life
somewhere else in the US.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
One of the people of color interested in this idea
was Paul Cuffey. In eighteen ten, he discussed it with
the Westport Friends Meeting, saying that he had been thinking
about it for a few years at that point. In
eighteen eleven, at the encouragement of British abolitionists, he visited
the colony of Sierra Leone for himself to see what
conditions were like and to make recommendations for how to
(18:56):
improve it.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
By the time Cuffey got to Sierra Leone, the Sierra
Leonned Company had been dissolved to sum it up there
had been problems. They were removed of that responsibility. The
colony was under British control. It had a population of
about three thousand people. There were nearly a thousand black loyalists,
who were usually referred to as Nova Scotians. There were
(19:18):
more than eight hundred Jamaican Maroons and about one thousand
people who had been taken from captured slave ships, and
there were also about one hundred local Africans living in
the colony.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Although all of these people were African or of African ancestry,
otherwise many of them didn't have much in common. Black
Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons had both arrived from the Americas,
but they had vastly different backgrounds and experiences. People who
had been on captured slave ships represented a diversity of
African nations and languages, so on top of ongoing issues
(19:51):
with things like organizations, supplies, weather, and relationships with the
local people, there was also a big cultural and language
bear issue among the people being resettled at the colony.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Some of the descriptions of Cuffey's work in Sierra Leone
really focus on its missionary angle, and the idea of
spreading Christianity in Africa was a factor in all this,
but a much bigger part of it was Cuffey's very
consistent focus on trying to elevate and provide opportunities for
other people of color. The Transatlantic slave trade had devastated
(20:25):
the existing social structures and economies of hundreds of African
nations and peoples, and Cuffey thought that through things like agriculture, whaling, lumber,
and other industries, the nations and peoples of Africa could
try to undo that damage, and that all of them
collectively could become a global economic power. And he thought
(20:46):
that a colony made up of people of African ancestry
could be an important part of that economic system, bringing
in labor and resources to help everyone involved lift each
other up. He spent his time in Sierra Leone talking
to people who were actually affected by immigrating, both the
colonists themselves and the local people. He also did practical
(21:06):
work like surveying sites for a sawmill and figuring out
how the colony could harvest their own salt rather than
buying it from white merchants. And he also founded the
Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, which was a mutual aid
society headquartered in Freetown to assist quote the black settlers
of Sierra Leone and the natives of Africa generally in
the cultivation of their soil by the sale of their produce.
(21:30):
He also worked extensively to build connections among all the
different colonists and the leadership of the local African nations.
Although Cuffy had the support of British abolitionists in all
this work, British merchants who effectively had a monopoly on
trade with Sierra Leone. Saw it as threatening, they started
spreading false and negative propaganda about him, and when he
(21:53):
arrived in Liverpool from Sierra Leone in August of eighteen eleven,
his apprentice, Aaron Rodgers, was a rested and imprisoned, something
that this same group of merchants had conspired to have done.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
As a side note, before Britain abolished its participation in
the slave trade, Liverpool had been a major slave poort.
The arrival of Cuffee's ship, which with its captain and
crew entirely made up of freemen of African descent, caused
enough comment and curiosity that it was covered in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
With the help of prominent British Quakers, Cuffey eventually got
his apprentice released from prison and he returned to the
United States. However, back in eighteen oh seven, President Thomas
Jefferson had signed the Embargo Act into law. This came
out of the Napoleonic Wars, when both Britain and France
had each implemented punitive trade restrictions and were both harassing
(22:46):
American ships at sea. When Cuffee arrived back in the
United States On April nineteenth of eighteen twelve, carrying a
cargo of goods from Sierra Leone. He was found to
be in violation of that Act, and his ship and
goods were seized.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Cuffey's response was to petition President James Madison for its release.
On May second, eighteen twelve, he met with both Madison
and the Secretary of the Treasury, making him probably the
first African American to meet with a sitting president. His
goods were ultimately released, and he also discussed his ideas
for African colonization with the President while he was there.
(23:22):
Cuffy's plan at this point was to start arranging a
round trip voyage between New England and Sierra Leone about
once a year. It would carry Africans and their descendants
to Sierra Leone, and it would return with African goods
to trade with North America and Europe. But the War
of eighteen twelve started not long after that meeting with
the President and interrupted that plan. Apart from the inherently
(23:46):
more dangerous sea travel during the war, there was no
way he could make this three pronged trade route work
if two of the prongs were at war with each other.
He tried to get exceptions to the various embargoes that
were in place and care with this project, but that
was denied, so for a time he turned his attention
more toward advocating for colonization from within the United States.
(24:09):
In eighteen twelve, he visited major cities in the US,
including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City to establish branches
of the African Institution. This is what had replaced the
Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade in Britain after
slavery had been abolished there. He was really focused on
getting a movement for colonization started led by Africans and
(24:29):
people of African descent for themselves to allow people who
wanted to emigrate to do so. At first, his efforts
looked pretty promising. Prominent black leaders in the cities that
he visited supported his plan and became involved with the
African Institution. Then, on December tenth, eighteen fifteen, he departed
for Sierra Leone aboard his brig called the Traveler. On
(24:50):
board the Traveler were thirty eight people, including two families
that were headed by people who had been enslaved and
taken to the United States from what's now Senegal and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cuffey was supposed to
have some funding from the African Institution in London for this,
but that didn't pan out, and only eight of the
people aboard the Traveler were able to pay their own way,
(25:12):
so Cuffey paid for the rest himself at a cost
of about five thousand dollars. This is believed to be
the first time that a group of African Americans emigrated
from North America to Africa through a venture that was
run by and for black people.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
In spite of this promising start, though, Cuffey's efforts fell
apart pretty quickly, the American Colonization Society was established in
the United States in eighteen sixteen. On its surface, this
organization had some of the same goals as what Cuffey
was doing, But while Cuffey was focused on giving people
choices and on empowering both the colonists and the local
(25:49):
people of Sierra Leone, a lot of the people who
were involved with the American Colonization Society were not. Some
of the organization's leaders were of a mindset similar to Cuffe's,
but others included people like Henry Clay, who thought that
the colonization movement would quote rid our country of a
useless and pernicious, if not dangerous, portion of its population.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
There had always been supporters of this colonization idea who
were motivated by racism. Even among staunch abolitionists, there were
people who thought that free black people could never be
part of white society, and so removing them to Africa
was the best for everyone concerned. But as the colonization
movement grew, it also drew the attention of slave owners,
(26:32):
who found the free black population to be a threat
to the institution of slavery. Some in the colonization movement,
including both abolitionists and slave owners, started to advocate for
the idea of freeing people only if they agreed to emigrate.
Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin summed the situation up this way,
quote Many of us were opposed to making colonization a
(26:55):
condition of freedom, believing it to be an odious plan
of expatriate concocted by slaveholders to open a drain by
which they might get rid of free negroes and thus
remain in more secure position of their slave property. They
considered free negroes a dangerous element among slaves.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
We had no objection to free negroes going to Africa
of their own free will, but to compel them to
go as a condition of freedom was a movement to
which we were conscientiously opposed and against which we strongly contended.
When the vote was taken, the motion was carried by
a small majority. We feel that the slave power had
got the ascendancy in our society and we could no
(27:37):
longer work with it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Cuffy really tried to distance his project from the colonization movements,
racist elements and motivations, but in spite of those efforts,
by eighteen seventeen he had lost a lot of his
support in the black community in the United States. In
January of eighteen seventeen, attendees at a meeting of the
African Institute in Philadelphia were nearly unanimous and their opposition
(28:01):
to the idea of colonization. They issued a resolution that read,
in part quote, whereas our ancestors, not by choice, were
the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we
their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings
of her luxuriance soil which their blood and sweat manured,
and that any measure or system of measures having tendency
(28:24):
to banish us from her bosom would not only be cruel,
but in direct violation of those principles which have been
the boast of this republic. Philadelphia businessman James Forton, who
had supported Cuffey's work earlier on and had been part
of the African Institution there, also withdrew his support. He
co authored a statement in August of eighteen seventeen which said, quote,
(28:46):
the plan of colonizing is not asked for by us,
we renounce and disclaim any connection with it.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
By this point, Cuffey had become seriously ill, and he
knew that he was dying. He gathered his family on
August seven teenth of eighteen seventeen to say goodbye, and
he died on September seventh of that year. His funeral
was held the following day at Westport Friends Meeting House,
and he was buried in its burial ground. Today there's
a monument to Paul Cuffee at the Westport Meetinghouse which reads,
(29:15):
quote in memory of Captain Paul Cuffey, Patriot, navigator, educator, philanthropist, friend,
A noble character.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Although the idea of colonization had fallen out of favor
with most of the black community. When Cuffee died, the
American Colonization Society continued on, and Liberia was established as
a colony for Black Americans in eighteen forty seven. Some
of the people who had gone to sier ear Leone
aboard the Traveler eventually moved there.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Today, Paul Cuffee is often described as a forerunner in
the Pan African movement. This movement is rooted in the
idea that everyone of African descent has some common interests
and is united by their African ancestry, regardless of whether
they're living in Africa or elsewhere. It's not an idea
that can really be credited to one individual, specific person,
(30:04):
but it's often traced back to people like Henry Sylvester Williams,
who established the Pan African Association at the end of
the nineteenth century, and Web du Bois and his contemporaries
who organized the first Pan African Congress in nineteen hundred,
So he was kind of presaging their ideas by almost
a century. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
(30:30):
If you'd like to send us a note our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Paul Cuffey was born January seventeenth, seventeen fifty nine, or
two hundred and sixty seven years ago today, on the
day this episode is coming out. Our episode about him
came out on February twelfth, twenty twenty, and that is
today's Saturday Classic Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:25):
History Class a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Today's topic was suggested by a friend of mine who
was raised Quaker and who grew up attending meetings at
(00:45):
the same meetinghouse that today's subject helped rebuild in the
eighteen teens. A subject is Paul Cuffey. Sometimes you will
see his name spelled with two e's at the end
of Cuffee, and sometimes with just one. I had never
heard of Paul Cuffey before this conversation, and when my
friends told me about him, I sort of took a
cursory look at things. I was like, Oh, yeah, he
(01:06):
does seem pretty interesting. Months later, after finally moving him
up to the top of the list and getting into
actual research, I became so fascinated that I took a
field trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there is an
exhibit on him at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and
the park next to the museum was named in his honor.
(01:28):
It was not that I needed additional information. I was
just so intrigued by the whole thing. I was like,
I want to go see this exhibit. So we got
in the car we went.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I love it. Paul Coffey was born on January seventeenth,
seventeen fifty nine, on Cuddy Hunk Island, which is off
the coast of Massachusetts in Buzzard's Bay. This is on
the far western end of the Elizabeth Islands, which are
south of New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the mainland and northwest
of the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Paul was the sixth child of ten and the fourth
son born to Kofe Slocum. He was an African man
what's now Ghana and Ruth Moses, who was Wampanog. Koffe
is a name used in the Tweed dialect, which is
spoken by the Akan people for boys born on a Friday,
So if that was the name that was given to
(02:13):
him before he was taken from Africa. He was most
likely from one of the many many subgroups that make
up the Akan people.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Kofe Slocum was enslaved and transported to North America when
he was about ten years old, and in the seventeen
twenties he was purchased by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker from Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
It's not completely clear how Kofe was freed about twenty
five years later. Ebenezer sold Kofe to his nephew John
in seventeen forty two, and according to some accounts, John
(02:42):
freed Kofe about three years later as the religious Society
of Friends became more opposed to slavery. But in other
versions of the story, Kofe was given permission to do
additional work, and he used the money that he earned
in that work to purchase his own freedom, regardless.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
On July seventeenth of seventeen forty six, which was a
year or so after his manumission, Kofe Slocum married Ruth Moses,
and it was relatively common in this part of New
England for African men to marry indigenous women because of
the demographics of slavery in New England, the enslaved and
free African population usually included more men than women. Conversely,
(03:21):
Indigenous communities tended to have more adult women than men
because Indigenous men were more likely to be enslaved or
imprisoned or forced into indentured servitude. This had been the
case for decades by the time Kofe and Ruth married.
For example, after King Philip's War in the late sixteen seventies,
the British enslaved roughly one thousand Indigenous men to Bermuda
(03:44):
and other parts of the Caribbean, while enslaving Indigenous women
and children and keeping them in New England.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
While the Slocum children had both African and Wampanogu ancestry,
among the white community, they were usually considered to be Black.
For their own part, Paul and his siblings referred to
themselves in a number of ways over their lifetimes, referencing
both their African and their Indigenous heritage. This included the
term musty, which was a term used for people of
(04:10):
multi racial ancestry in coastal Massachusetts. It was most often
used to describe people who were both African and Indigenous.
In seventeen sixty one, Kofe Slocum bought one hundred and
sixteen acre farm in Dartmouth and the whole family moved there.
Eleven years later, he died and left the farm to
Paul and his brother John. It was also around this
(04:32):
time that most of Kofe's children changed their last name
from Slocum, which had been the last name of the
people who had enslaved their father, to Cuffee, which is
an anglicization of his first name. Paul Cuffey was only
about thirteen when his father died, and even though he
and his brother had inherited the farm, their father also
had left some debts, so it was not really as
(04:52):
though they suddenly had enough to support the whole family.
The children also hadn't had access to any sort of
formal education on Cuttyhunk Island or in Dartmouth, so Paul,
with the hope of helping to support his family, decided
to go to Sea in seventeen seventy three, with his
brother staying in Dartmouth to manage the farm.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Aside from jobs that mostly involved manual labor, there were
not a lot of occupations open to people of color
in New England at this point, but whaling and other
seafaring work were something of an exception. These were exceptionally
dangerous industries, which meant that shipowners, captains, and others were
usually pretty eager to hire anybody who was willing to
(05:32):
do the work at sea away from society's expectations. Sometimes
crews could be more tolerant. Plus, if members of the
crew could not work together, they put everybody aboard at risk.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
To add to that, the Wampanog people had their own
maritime traditions that predated the arrival of European colonists in
New England. This included drift whaling, which is butchering dead
or dying whales that had washed up on shore, as
well as fishing with harpoons. In the early seventeen hundreds,
as English colonists were establishing a whaling industry in New England,
(06:05):
Wampanog and other indigenous people provided critical knowledge and labor,
including teaching English colonists how to butcher and prepare whales.
Indigenous people's involvement in the early whaling industry in New
England was often at best under coercion. This included things
like being forced into indentured servitude on whaling ships in
(06:25):
order to pay off debts. This could even extend to
the indentured man's children, who were obligated to take on
his indenture if he was killed at sea or if
he incurred further debt. So the whaling industry was simultaneously exploitive,
especially of indigenous and African labor, and also an incredibly
lucrative industry in which it was possible for Indigenous and
(06:46):
African men to rise to a higher rank than they
could in any other line of work. And that is
what eventually happened to Paul Cuffey.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
In his first voyages, he spent his free time at
sea teaching himself to read and write and do a rhythmic,
and he also studied navigation with the more experienced members
of the crew. Shortly after the Revolutionary War started, a
ship that Cuffe was on was captured by the British
and he was imprisoned in New York for three months.
Once he got out of prison, he went back to
(07:15):
the family farm for a while, but soon he built
a small open boat of his own and then started
using it to run supplies through the British blockade. He
ran the blockade repeatedly between seventeen seventy seven and seventeen
eighty three, both sides in the Revolutionary War tried to
recruit black soldiers, and by that point Cuffe was about
(07:36):
the right age to join up. But he never took
a side in the war, at least in terms of
active fighting. What he did do was protest taxation, and
we're going to get into that after we first have
a sponsor break. As we've talked about on the show before,
(08:00):
one of the issues involved in the American Revolution was taxation,
including taxes that British colonists in North America found to
be egregious, and the idea that colonists were being taxed
but they didn't have any representation in parliament. And that
second idea had another application to free black people in Massachusetts.
They had to pay taxes, but they did not have
(08:22):
the right to vote at all.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Paul and John Cuffey were of the opinion that under
the Constitution of Massachusetts, taxation and the rights of citizenship
were inextricably connected. If they couldn't vote, they were not
being treated as citizens, so they also should not be taxed.
Paul Cuffey stopped paying taxes in seventeen seventy eight. By
seventeen eighty he owed more than one hundred and fifty
(08:45):
pounds in back taxes. That year, John and Paul Cuffee
filed a petition along with three other free black men,
and it read, in part quote, we being chiefly of
the African extract, and by reason of long bondage and
hard slavery, we have been deprived of enjoying the profits
of our labor, or the advantage of inheriting estates from
(09:05):
our parents. As our neighbors, the white people do. We
have been and are now taxed, both in our polls
and that small pittance of a state which, through much
hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain
ourselves and families with all. The petition went on to
say that without tax relief, these circumstances would reduce them
to begging and cause them to be a burden on others,
(09:27):
before saying quote, we apprehend ourselves to be aggrieved in
that while we are not allowed the privilege of freemen
of the state, having no vote or influence in the
election of those that tax us, Yet many of our color,
as is well known, have cheerfully entered the field of
battle in the defense of the common cause.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Their petition for tax relief was denied and Paul Cuffey
was briefly jailed. Walter Spooner, who was a member of
a prominent family in Dartmouth, helped arrange the terms of
Cuffey's release and a reduction in the amount of tax
that he owed. So this petition was not immediately successful,
at least in terms of getting some tax relief for them,
but it is credited with the black men getting the
(10:08):
right to vote in Massachusetts under the same terms as
white men in seventeen eighty three. On February twenty fifth,
seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey married an Indigenous woman named
Alice Abel Peaquit or Peaquot, who had been previously widowed.
They went on to have several children together. Sources mentioned
seven or eight, including two sons and four daughters who
(10:29):
were still living when their father wrote his will. Alice
is normally described as being Wampinogg. Her late husband had
been Peaquot. Also in seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey established
a shipping business with his brother in law, Michael Wayner.
Wayner was Wampinogg and was married to Cuffee's sister Mary
(10:50):
in seventeen eighty nine. As their business grew, Wayner bought
some riverfront property and they established a shipyard there. At
this point, Cuffey was wearing a lot of hats, including
bill building, ships, trading, and whaling. He eventually started captaining
his own vessels, and while his first voyages were beset
by hazards like pirates and shipwrecks, he persevered until he
(11:11):
started to turn a profit. He also bought a farm
in Westport, Massachusetts, where he and his family lived, and
over time he bought other homes and farms elsewhere in
New England. Over the next decade or so, Paul Cuffey
became one of the wealthiest people in Westport. He may
have been the wealthiest person of color anywhere in the
United States while he was living, and he consistently used
(11:32):
his wealth to help other people, especially other people of color.
The captains and crews of his ships were always black
and indigenous men, and that was actually something that made
their work even more dangerous because they were trading with
parts of the world where slavery was still being practiced,
including the American South In seventeen ninety seven, Cuffey proposed
(11:53):
the establishment of an integrated school in Westport.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
When the town leadership couldn't come to a consensus about
it that was probably influenced by racism. Cuffey built the
school on his own property with his own money, and
that school opened in seventeen ninety nine, with its students
including about fifteen children who were part of Cuffee's immedia
and extended family, as well as any other child who
wanted to attend, regardless of their race. Cuffey also supported
(12:20):
a smallpox hospital in Westport, and in eighteen hundred he
bought a gristmill.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
In eighteen oh eight, Cuffey formally joined the religious Society
of Friends by becoming a member of the Westport Monthly Meeting.
His family had been connected to Quakers ever since he
was a child. The Quakers had enslaved his father like
that's complicated, but like they had been part of the
Quaker community in a lot of ways. This was the
first time that he was documented as actually becoming a
(12:47):
member of a meeting. To be clear, though Quaker meetings
had not been integrated when he was a child, The
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was the first to formally allow black
members in seventeen ninety six. A few years later, after
joining the meeting, Paul became part of the committee that
planned and oversaw the construction of the new meeting house. Eventually,
(13:07):
he also became the first black person to attend the
New England Yearly Meeting. Throughout all of this, Cuffey was
still working as a sea captain, traveling all around the Atlantic.
Along the way, he made extensive connections among the black, white,
and indigenous communities of New England, as well as with
British abolitionists, and in all of his work he was
focused on providing jobs, support and opportunities for other people
(13:31):
of color, along with overall philanthropy. He also had a
reputation for being incredibly scrupulous in all of this. In
the words of the Reverend Peter Williams Junior, in a
tribute to Cuffey that he wrote after his death, quote,
he was so conscientious that he would sooner sacrifice his
private interests than engage in any enterprise, however lawful or profitable,
(13:52):
that might have a tendency, either directly or indirectly, to
injure his fellow men. For instance, he would not deal
in ardent spirit nor enslaves, though he might have done
either without violating the laws of his country and with
great prospects of pecuniary gain. By eighteen oh six, Cuffey's
property was valued at about twenty thousand dollars, which made
(14:13):
him the wealthiest person in Westport. By eighteen oh nine,
when he turned fifty, he owned multiple sailing vessels, including
a ship and two brigs, as well as multiple houses, farms, land,
and the mill, and he turned some of that wealth
to an even more ambitious focus, making it possible for
people of African descent to immigrate to Africa. We'll have
(14:34):
more on that. After another quick sponsor break in the
early eighteen hundreds, Paul Cuffe started thinking about the idea
of making it possible for Africans and people of African
descent and the United States to resettle in Africa, specifically
(14:57):
in what was then the British colony of Sierra.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
As a super quick recap, which means we got to
back up a little bit, there were free and enslaved
black soldiers on both sides of the American Revolutionary War.
People chose sides for a variety of reasons, but When
it came to enslaved people, it often involved a promise
of freedom in exchange for their military service.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
For the most part, though this did not work out
as planned. On the patriots side, many enslaved people were
not given their promised freedom after the war ended, and
on the loyalist side, people were free, but they were
also regarded as traders to the United States. They could
not stay in the US and were forced to leave.
Many of them wound up in Nova Scotia or in
(15:40):
British Territory in the Caribbean. At the end of the war,
there were at least fourteen thousand black loyalists seeking refuge
in British Territory, and Britain did not really have a
plan for this. Most black loyalists arrived with nothing. Those
who hadn't been enslaved generally lost all their property due
to confiscation laws. Spread racism also meant that Britain's white
(16:02):
society was not generally open to the idea of integration.
Whether black loyalists wanted to assimily with British society is
a whole other question. Much of this also applied to
enslaved people in Britain who had been freed after Lord
Mansfield's decision in Somerset versus Stuart in seventeen seventy two.
So in seventeen eighty six in Britain, a plan was
(16:24):
proposed to resettle all these people in Africa, under the
idea that it would be removing a burden from the
British public. This plan was approved by the British government
and by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.
That organization had initially been established to provide relief for
people from the Indian subcontinent, but that work had been
(16:45):
expanded to also include people of African descent.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The first attempt to establish a colony in Sierra Leone
failed for many reasons, including illnesses and deaths during transport,
bad weather once they arrived in West Africa, a lack
of preparation intos applies, and the fact that the British
hadn't made any kind of treaty or other arrangement with
the local people of Sierra Leone regarding this colony. Yeah,
(17:08):
they really were kind of like, we want to remove
all of you from our society. We're dropping you off
in Africa. Like that was nearly the extent of it.
Was not planned well.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Even so, though in seventeen ninety one the Sierra Leone
Company was established to try again. This time around, abolitionists
did travel to Sierra Leone to try to establish good
relationships with the local people and then also to mediate
between the locals and the colony. But the British government
was really viewing this as a chance to make money,
(17:41):
basically to start a plantation that used free Africans and
people of African ancestry as labor, with the Sierra Leone
Company in charge of it. More than one thousand free
people were transported to Sierra Leone the following year, and
Britain had to offer a lot of incentives to convince
most people to go. Over All, the people that were
being resettled had never been to Africa before, and many
(18:04):
had justifiable concerns about the possibility of being captured and
sold back into slavery in Africa. At the same time,
there were for sure, some people who either genuinely wanted
to go to Africa or who thought that it was
their best option. This included some people who had been
born somewhere in Africa and wanted the chance to go
back home. It also included people who thought that racism
(18:27):
and white supremacy were so entrenched where they were that
they might have a better chance at a good life
somewhere else in the US.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
One of the people of color interested in this idea
was Paul Cuffey. In eighteen ten, he discussed it with
the Westport Friends Meeting, saying that he had been thinking
about it for a few years at that point. In
eighteen eleven, at the encouragement of British abolitionists, he visited
the colony of Sierra Leone for himself to see what
conditions were like and to make recommendations for how to
(18:56):
improve it.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
By the time Cuffey got to Sierra Leone, the Sierra
Leonned Company had been dissolved to sum it up there
had been problems. They were removed of that responsibility. The
colony was under British control. It had a population of
about three thousand people. There were nearly a thousand black loyalists,
who were usually referred to as Nova Scotians. There were
(19:18):
more than eight hundred Jamaican Maroons and about one thousand
people who had been taken from captured slave ships, and
there were also about one hundred local Africans living in
the colony.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Although all of these people were African or of African ancestry,
otherwise many of them didn't have much in common. Black
Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons had both arrived from the Americas,
but they had vastly different backgrounds and experiences. People who
had been on captured slave ships represented a diversity of
African nations and languages, so on top of ongoing issues
(19:51):
with things like organizations, supplies, weather, and relationships with the
local people, there was also a big cultural and language
bear issue among the people being resettled at the colony.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Some of the descriptions of Cuffey's work in Sierra Leone
really focus on its missionary angle, and the idea of
spreading Christianity in Africa was a factor in all this,
but a much bigger part of it was Cuffey's very
consistent focus on trying to elevate and provide opportunities for
other people of color. The Transatlantic slave trade had devastated
(20:25):
the existing social structures and economies of hundreds of African
nations and peoples, and Cuffey thought that through things like agriculture, whaling, lumber,
and other industries, the nations and peoples of Africa could
try to undo that damage, and that all of them
collectively could become a global economic power. And he thought
(20:46):
that a colony made up of people of African ancestry
could be an important part of that economic system, bringing
in labor and resources to help everyone involved lift each
other up. He spent his time in Sierra Leone talking
to people who were actually affected by immigrating, both the
colonists themselves and the local people. He also did practical
(21:06):
work like surveying sites for a sawmill and figuring out
how the colony could harvest their own salt rather than
buying it from white merchants. And he also founded the
Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, which was a mutual aid
society headquartered in Freetown to assist quote the black settlers
of Sierra Leone and the natives of Africa generally in
the cultivation of their soil by the sale of their produce.
(21:30):
He also worked extensively to build connections among all the
different colonists and the leadership of the local African nations.
Although Cuffy had the support of British abolitionists in all
this work, British merchants who effectively had a monopoly on
trade with Sierra Leone. Saw it as threatening, they started
spreading false and negative propaganda about him, and when he
(21:53):
arrived in Liverpool from Sierra Leone in August of eighteen eleven,
his apprentice, Aaron Rodgers, was a rested and imprisoned, something
that this same group of merchants had conspired to have done.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
As a side note, before Britain abolished its participation in
the slave trade, Liverpool had been a major slave poort.
The arrival of Cuffee's ship, which with its captain and
crew entirely made up of freemen of African descent, caused
enough comment and curiosity that it was covered in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
With the help of prominent British Quakers, Cuffey eventually got
his apprentice released from prison and he returned to the
United States. However, back in eighteen oh seven, President Thomas
Jefferson had signed the Embargo Act into law. This came
out of the Napoleonic Wars, when both Britain and France
had each implemented punitive trade restrictions and were both harassing
(22:46):
American ships at sea. When Cuffee arrived back in the
United States On April nineteenth of eighteen twelve, carrying a
cargo of goods from Sierra Leone. He was found to
be in violation of that Act, and his ship and
goods were seized.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Cuffey's response was to petition President James Madison for its release.
On May second, eighteen twelve, he met with both Madison
and the Secretary of the Treasury, making him probably the
first African American to meet with a sitting president. His
goods were ultimately released, and he also discussed his ideas
for African colonization with the President while he was there.
(23:22):
Cuffy's plan at this point was to start arranging a
round trip voyage between New England and Sierra Leone about
once a year. It would carry Africans and their descendants
to Sierra Leone, and it would return with African goods
to trade with North America and Europe. But the War
of eighteen twelve started not long after that meeting with
the President and interrupted that plan. Apart from the inherently
(23:46):
more dangerous sea travel during the war, there was no
way he could make this three pronged trade route work
if two of the prongs were at war with each other.
He tried to get exceptions to the various embargoes that
were in place and care with this project, but that
was denied, so for a time he turned his attention
more toward advocating for colonization from within the United States.
(24:09):
In eighteen twelve, he visited major cities in the US,
including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City to establish branches
of the African Institution. This is what had replaced the
Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade in Britain after
slavery had been abolished there. He was really focused on
getting a movement for colonization started led by Africans and
(24:29):
people of African descent for themselves to allow people who
wanted to emigrate to do so. At first, his efforts
looked pretty promising. Prominent black leaders in the cities that
he visited supported his plan and became involved with the
African Institution. Then, on December tenth, eighteen fifteen, he departed
for Sierra Leone aboard his brig called the Traveler. On
(24:50):
board the Traveler were thirty eight people, including two families
that were headed by people who had been enslaved and
taken to the United States from what's now Senegal and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cuffey was supposed to
have some funding from the African Institution in London for this,
but that didn't pan out, and only eight of the
people aboard the Traveler were able to pay their own way,
(25:12):
so Cuffey paid for the rest himself at a cost
of about five thousand dollars. This is believed to be
the first time that a group of African Americans emigrated
from North America to Africa through a venture that was
run by and for black people.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
In spite of this promising start, though, Cuffey's efforts fell
apart pretty quickly, the American Colonization Society was established in
the United States in eighteen sixteen. On its surface, this
organization had some of the same goals as what Cuffey
was doing, But while Cuffey was focused on giving people
choices and on empowering both the colonists and the local
(25:49):
people of Sierra Leone, a lot of the people who
were involved with the American Colonization Society were not. Some
of the organization's leaders were of a mindset similar to Cuffe's,
but others included people like Henry Clay, who thought that
the colonization movement would quote rid our country of a
useless and pernicious, if not dangerous, portion of its population.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
There had always been supporters of this colonization idea who
were motivated by racism. Even among staunch abolitionists, there were
people who thought that free black people could never be
part of white society, and so removing them to Africa
was the best for everyone concerned. But as the colonization
movement grew, it also drew the attention of slave owners,
(26:32):
who found the free black population to be a threat
to the institution of slavery. Some in the colonization movement,
including both abolitionists and slave owners, started to advocate for
the idea of freeing people only if they agreed to emigrate.
Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin summed the situation up this way,
quote Many of us were opposed to making colonization a
(26:55):
condition of freedom, believing it to be an odious plan
of expatriate concocted by slaveholders to open a drain by
which they might get rid of free negroes and thus
remain in more secure position of their slave property. They
considered free negroes a dangerous element among slaves.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
We had no objection to free negroes going to Africa
of their own free will, but to compel them to
go as a condition of freedom was a movement to
which we were conscientiously opposed and against which we strongly contended.
When the vote was taken, the motion was carried by
a small majority. We feel that the slave power had
got the ascendancy in our society and we could no
(27:37):
longer work with it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Cuffy really tried to distance his project from the colonization movements,
racist elements and motivations, but in spite of those efforts,
by eighteen seventeen he had lost a lot of his
support in the black community in the United States. In
January of eighteen seventeen, attendees at a meeting of the
African Institute in Philadelphia were nearly unanimous and their opposition
(28:01):
to the idea of colonization. They issued a resolution that read,
in part quote, whereas our ancestors, not by choice, were
the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we
their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings
of her luxuriance soil which their blood and sweat manured,
and that any measure or system of measures having tendency
(28:24):
to banish us from her bosom would not only be cruel,
but in direct violation of those principles which have been
the boast of this republic. Philadelphia businessman James Forton, who
had supported Cuffey's work earlier on and had been part
of the African Institution there, also withdrew his support. He
co authored a statement in August of eighteen seventeen which said, quote,
(28:46):
the plan of colonizing is not asked for by us,
we renounce and disclaim any connection with it.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
By this point, Cuffey had become seriously ill, and he
knew that he was dying. He gathered his family on
August seven teenth of eighteen seventeen to say goodbye, and
he died on September seventh of that year. His funeral
was held the following day at Westport Friends Meeting House,
and he was buried in its burial ground. Today there's
a monument to Paul Cuffee at the Westport Meetinghouse which reads,
(29:15):
quote in memory of Captain Paul Cuffey, Patriot, navigator, educator, philanthropist, friend,
A noble character.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Although the idea of colonization had fallen out of favor
with most of the black community. When Cuffee died, the
American Colonization Society continued on, and Liberia was established as
a colony for Black Americans in eighteen forty seven. Some
of the people who had gone to sier ear Leone
aboard the Traveler eventually moved there.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Today, Paul Cuffee is often described as a forerunner in
the Pan African movement. This movement is rooted in the
idea that everyone of African descent has some common interests
and is united by their African ancestry, regardless of whether
they're living in Africa or elsewhere. It's not an idea
that can really be credited to one individual, specific person,
(30:04):
but it's often traced back to people like Henry Sylvester Williams,
who established the Pan African Association at the end of
the nineteenth century, and Web du Bois and his contemporaries
who organized the first Pan African Congress in nineteen hundred,
So he was kind of presaging their ideas by almost
a century. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
(30:30):
If you'd like to send us a note our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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