“Intent to make them slaves”: Enslaved Africans in Maine and Their Resistance in the Mid-19th Century

Maine vessels, seamen, merchants, and investors were heavily engaged in the foreign illegal slave trade by the 1830s. Dr. Kate McMahon, of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, joins us to discuss three cases: ship Transit (1838), brig Dunlap (1838), and brig Porpoise (1845). This talk will focus on the enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States by Mainers between the 1830s and 1865, and the myriad of ways in which they navigated the complicated legal system of the U.S. while making their own freedom.