Myth 2:
Slavery was a Southern problem only

THE TRUTH:  Because Portsmouth was a successful seaport in the infamous “Triangle Trade” with the West Indies, merchants here in the North also bought and sold human slaves. The first known enslaved man in Portsmouth arrived in chains aboard a ship from Guinea in 1645. Africans were traded as cargo, sometimes in ships built on the PiscataquaRiver. By the mid-1700s most of the city’s wealthy families had Black slaves or freed servants. The New England industrial economy, particularly the cotton trade, continued to depend on southern slavery for cheap labor even as northerners decried the practice. Social discrimination was prevalent in the North for a century after the Emancipation Proclamation.  

SEE MORE: Today Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail markers placed around the city honor famous African-Americans like newspaper printer Primus Fowle and Revolutionary War hero Prince Whipple, both enslaved men. Walk the self-guided Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail that tells the story of African Americans in NH’s only seaport. 

CONTINUE TO MYTH #3