A closer look at sea captain Cuffe’s colonial aspirations, Quaker ties

Dear Editor,

Ted Langston Chase’s article on Paul Cuffe, an African American who, despite the odds, became successful in his own shipping business in the 1800s, was a valuable feature for Black History Month (“Sea captain Paul Cuffe made waves in business,” Feb. 7, 2008). Learning about Cuffe reminds us that there have always been those who have been able to go beyond all the disadvantages that have been the lot of people of color in our history. Cuffe became a highly respected businessman and frequent correspondent with wealthy and influential people of European descent, not just in New England, but also along the eastern seaboard and in some circles in England, particularly as he pursued their support for his vision of a colony in Africa.

A few items in the article bear closer examination, especially Cuffe’s vision for a colony in Africa. Although the colonization movement was at its height in the early 1800s when Cuffe was seeking support for his plans, his vision differed radically from the larger movement, the purpose of which was to rid the country of the free people of African descent for fear they would instigate revolt among their enslaved brothers and sisters.

As historian Rosalind Wiggins put it, Cuffe’s plan for Sierra Leone was to create an agricultural and commercial economy that would promote “trade in goods, rather than humans.” Cuffe and his supporters believed that the colony would not only give opportunities to new settlers, but would also, by growing cotton and products to sell in the United States, undercut the Southern economy and in the end make slavery less profitable.

Cuffe sent only one ship of freed people to Africa in 1815, a voyage for which he paid most of the passage for the 38 travelers himself. His hopes for another voyage were waylaid first by the ending of the War of 1812 and then by his own illness. Cuffe’s dream was supported by a number of wealthy ship-owners in Pennsylvania, some of whom were Quaker, although James Forten, the wealthiest African American in the city, was incorrectly identified in the article as a Quaker. Forten did, however, have many close relationships with Quakers, and his daughters and granddaughters were active in the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society with many Quaker women.

Cuffe himself had practiced Quaker ways and attended Friends meetings well before 1808, the year he became a member of the Westport meeting; in fact, his father and mother attended the Dartmouth meeting and had brought their children up according to Quaker principles. Cuffe loaned money to the Westport meeting when they needed to build a new meetinghouse and was in time repaid.

By 1785 Quakers had, after 100 years of struggle, finally removed from their membership ranks those who refused to free those they enslaved. Yet as much as Friends believed that no man had a right to own another, they faced yet another struggle in understanding the relationship between freedom and social and political equality. Cuffe and his family were accepted more widely than others, yet sat in the balcony of their meetinghouse, as was the custom in most churches of the time. Similarly, while Cuffe is buried in the meetinghouse burial grounds, the site is noticeably separated from the others.

Donna L. McDaniel
Southborough
Co-author of the forthcoming “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans and the Myth of Racial Justice”