Meantime another slave-ship had come to Virginia — the Fortune, Captain Grey, of London. While on the coast of Africa she had fallen in with an Angola ship loaded with slaves,and had captured her. The slaves were carried to Virginia and exchanged for eighty-five hogsheads and five butts of tobacco, which were sold in London. This was in 1630.
That the Dutch introduced African slaves as soon as they obtained a foothold in America need not be said to those who are familiar with the history of New York. They tried, at first, after the custom of the times, to enslave the aboriginal inhabitants, but the task was found so harassing and unprofitable that they soon sought supplies of blacks from Africa. In fact enslaving red men led to such trouble that a wall was built across the lower end of Manhattan Island, where Wall street is now found, to keep red lovers of liberty from driving the Dutch slave-catchers over the Battery beach into the bay.
The first formal mention of negro slaves in the Dutch Manhattan documents is found in the thirtieth clause of the Charter of Liberties and Exemptions of 1629. It says: "The company will use their endeavors to supply the colonists with as many blacks as they conveniently can." The New Project of Liberties and Exemptions of a later date says "the Incorporated West India Company shall allot to each Patroon twelve Black men and women out of the prizes in which Negroes shall be found." Unquestionably the first slave-ships in the trade to Manhattan Island were privateers, as the first slaver in Virginia was, or they were men-of-war.
Just when the first slaver reached New York is not
