The commissions were issued "by the Grace of God," divine guidance was implored for the captain who was to swap fiery rum for stolen children, and prayers were not infrequently offered for long delayed or missing slavers.

George Dowing, a Massachusetts clergyman, wrote of slavery in Barbadoes: "I believe they have bought this year no less than a thousand negroes, and the more they buie, the better able they are to buie, for in a year and a half they will earne _with God's blessing_, as much as they cost." Most of the slaves brought from the coast of Guinea in New England vessels were deported again--sent to the southern States or to the West Indies for a market.

The climate and the industrial conditions of New England were alike unfavorable to the growth there of slavery, and its ports served chiefly as clearing-houses for the trade.

Yet there was not even among the most enlightened and leading people of the colony any moral sentiment against slavery, and from Boston to New York slaves were held in small numbers and their prices quoted in the shipping lists and newspapers like any other merchandise.
Curiously enough, the first African slaves brought to Boston were sent home again and their captors prosecuted--not wholly for stealing men, but for breaking the Sabbath.

It happened in this way: A Boston ship, the "Rainbow," in 1645, making the usual voyage to Madeira with staves and salt fish, touched on the coast of Guinea for a few slaves.