New York soon had had the largest colonial slave population north of Maryland. From about 2,000 in 1698, the number of the colony's black slaves swelled to more than 9,000 adults by 1746 and 13,000 by 1756. Between 1732 and 1754, black slaves accounted for more than 35 percent of the total immigration through the port of New York. And that doesn't count the many illegal cargoes of Africans unloaded all along the convoluted coast of Long Island to avoid the tariff duties on slaves. In 1756, slaves made up about 25 percent of the populations of Kings, Queens, Richmond, New York, and Westchester counties.
Slaveholding concentrated in New York City, where by 1691 competition from slave labor had driven white porters out of the market houses and where by 1737 free coopers were complaining of "great numbers of Negroes" working in their trade.
The slave trade became a cornerstone of the New York economy. As with Boston and Newport, profits of the great slave traders, or of smaller merchants who specialized in small lots of skilled or seasoned slaves, radiated through a network of port agents, lawyers, clerks, scriveners, dockworkers, sailmakers, and carpenters.
Slavery in New York
