CHAPTER II.
THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in 1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This instance is highly exceptional.

The millions of African expatriates went against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods.

Earnings came from selling in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item in the trade.
[Footnote 1: U.B.Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed also as vols.

I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142.

This publication will be cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.] The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective sovereign.