slave trade in his book, The Selling of Joseph. Interestingly, a male slave could be
hired out for more than a white woman could make in wages, and so slaveholding
was especially desirable for widows and single women who could afford the in-
vestment. ³ Although Yankee slave-trading vessels supplied the enormous labor
needs of the West Indies and the southern colonies of British North America, at
home in New England slaveholdings remained relatively small. Thus, the black
population of New England during the colonial period was never more than
16,000 people. In colonial Massachusetts the black population rose from 200 in
1676 to 2,000 by 1720, and to over 5,000 by the time of the Revolution. Yet,
blacks never accounted for much more than 2 percent of the colony's population
in the eighteenth century. In New England, blacks tended to reside in the largest
cities, and since urban seaports offered considerable laboring opportunities for
masters to employ their slaves, by the mid-eighteenth centuryBoston had a major
concentration of blacks. By 1754 more than half of Massachusetts' nearly 2,700
black adults lived in Boston and the surrounding Suffolk County. Numbering just
over 1,500 at midcentury, black Bostonians constituted roughly 10 percent of the
city's population. ⁴

As colonial Boston huddled close to the seafront wharves, so did the residences
of most of the blacks. Boston blacks were generally the slave servants of wealthy
white merchant families or were laborers in the commercial establishments that
crowded the docks. A few slaves were employed in skilled trades, but often laws
enacted at the insistence of white artisans limited the use of slaves in areas that
might put them in direct competition with skilled white workers. Even after such
laws disappeared, tradition prevented most blacks, slave or free, from entering
skilled trades. Blacks were engaged in virtually every industry in New England;
slaves were likely to work in shipbuilding and seafaring, both of which were im-
portant to the Boston economy. At mid-eighteenth century, over three-quarters
of the colony's blacks resided in the counties of Suffolk, Essex, and Plymouth,
counties with significant maritime and commercial activity. Twenty percent of the
male slaves in Suffolk County were owned by masters with direct connection to
the sea -- mariners, shipbuilders, or fishermen. Well into the nineteenth century,
large proportions (often as much as half) of the crews of whaling ships were black,
and coastal and Atlantic trading vessels were manned by interracial crews. ⁵

Slavery in the Puritan commonwealth was distinct from its southern counter-
part in many important ways. Although New England slaves were held at a status
below that of indentured servants, they generally possessed more rights and legal
protections than southern plantation slaves. They were more than "inventory,"
having the right to own property, to receive trials, and to sue in the courts. Yet
they were less than free persons, since their families were often separated, they
had little control over their labor, and their tenure as servants was for life. ⁶ Since
most Boston slaves worked and often lived in close contact with their masters,
master-slave relationships were likely to be strongly paternalistic. This paternal-
ism and the relatively small numbers of slaves often made their lot somewhat bet-

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