Samuel Hodges, Jr., and the Symbiosis of Slave and "Legitimate" Trades, 1810s-1820s

In fact scarcely a hundred pounds of Tobacco or Powder that is sold but what sooner or later is used for purchasing slaves though it may go through half a dozen hands first (Enoch Richmond Ware, informed that several slave vessels were loading in the Pongo River).1 During the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, western African commerce was transformed by three developments. The schooner Kelton's cargo and salvage was confiscated by the Portuguese commandant of the island, Aniceto Antonio Ferreira, and sold through the agency of Manuel António Martins, his son-in-law and the acting American consul for the Cape Verde Islands.3 The possibility of collecting the reparations claimed by Captain Wales likely contributed to the impecunious Hodges' decision to accept the consular appointment.\n44 In a second communication to the Foreign Office on the same date, Clarke pleaded that he had sacrificed his private concerns to his nation's interests, "as all the European Portuguese view me as a spy on their conduct, relative to the slave trade."