64 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and EnslavementLaurens brokered the sale of Africans in Charleston
in arrangement with Richard Oswald, one of the wealthi-
est merchants in London. Oswald was the principal owner
of Bunce (Bance) Island, the largest British slave castle on
the Rice Coast of West Africa in what is now Sierra Leone,
a region where rice has been grown for hundreds of years.
Laurens received ships from ports around the Atlantic that
had stopped at Bunce Island to load a cargo of Africans
from Oswald’s operations and would advertise the arrival of
those vessels with their expected contents, selling the cargo
on commission. Oft en the ships would be loaded with rice
and local goods for payment due the vessels’ owner. Lau-
rens also sent his own slaving vessels to Bunce Island to
return to Charleston, advertising their human cargo as pos-
sessing the skills and knowledge necessary for rice produc-
tion. In 1764, Henry Laurens boasted that he had sold the
cargo of his ships for higher prices than anyone else in the
colony. Th is joint venture made both Oswald and Laurens
extremely wealthy men.
By 1769 Laurens ended his participation in the busi-
ness of importing Africans as an involuntary workforce for
the rice plantations of the Lowcountry. His explanation was
that he no longer had a business partner for the operation.
However, in 1776, he wrote to his son regarding his am-
bivalence about slavery and reportedly began to make plans
to manumit his slaves. Many historians argue that Laurens
wrote this letter aft er receiving his copy of the Declaration
of Independence and used this statement to his son as evi-
dence that Laurens was expressing opposition to slavery—
and was one of the only men of the lower South to express
such an opinion. While a few members of Laurens enslaved
populations may have received their freedom, he still was in
possession of almost 300 slaves as late as 1790.
See also: American Revolution; Bunce Island; Carolinas;
Jay, John; Rice Cultivation; Sierra LeoneJane M. AldrichBibliography
Hamer, Philip M., et al., eds. Th e Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968–2003.
McDonough, Daniel J. Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens:
Th e Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots. Selinsgrove, PA:
Susquehanna University Press, 2000.
Mercantini, Jonathan. Who Shall Rule at Home?: Th e Evolution of
South Carolina Political Culture, 1 748– 1 776. Columbia: Uni-
versity of South Carolina Press, 2007.
Sellers, Leila. Charleston on the Eve of the American Revolution.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934.uphold their rights and either won or purchased their own
freedom based on the legal precedents of the Partidas.
Elements of the Siete Partidas remained in force in
Florida, Louisiana, and Texas even aft er these territories
went from Spanish to American possession. Th e Partidas
continue to undergird basic law in Spanish America and
the Philippines.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Hispaniola
Christina Proenza-ColesBibliography
Blackburn, Robin. Th e Making of New World Slavery. New York:
Verso, 1997.
Burns, Robert I., ed. Las Siete Partidas. Translated by Samuel Parsons
Scott. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1999.
Tannenbaum, Frank. Slave and Citizen: Th e Negro and the Ameri-
cas. New York: Vintage Books, 1946. Reprint, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1992.
Laurens, Henry
Henry Laurens (1724–1792), who rose from the son of an
immigrant Huguenot to one of the wealthiest men of the
elite planter class in the Carolina Lowcountry, is remem-
bered as a merchant, a statesman active in the colonial as-
sembly, a militia leader during the Cherokee Expositions in
the 1760s, a patriot and president of the Continental Con-
gress during the American Revolution, and a diplomat at
the Treaty of Paris. Laurens should also be remembered as
one of the most successful brokers of enslaved Africans in
the Carolina Colony.
Forming a commercial partnership with George Aus-
tin in 1747 (Austin and Laurens) and adding George Ap-
pleby to the fi rm in 1759 (Austin, Laurens, and Appleby),
the fi rm handled the traditional goods shipped in the re-
gion: exporting rice, indigo, deerskins, and naval stores and
importing wine, textiles, rum, sugar, and Africans. By 1760
Laurens had acquired enough wealth to establish himself
as a planter of rice and indigo, holding four plantations in
South Carolina, including Mepkin, Wambaw, Wrights Sa-
vannah, and Mount Tacitus; and two in Georgia, Broughton
Island and New Hope—as well as multiple lots of land in the
cities of Charleston and Savannah. In 1762 he dissolved his
shipping partnerships and continued trading on his own.