Abstract
For the negriers of at least three major Atlantic ports-Nantes, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux-the fateful year 1789 marked the transition from silent practice to strident defense of the slave trade. The businessmen did not mention the slave trade in the spring of 1789 when they helped draft the cahiers de doleances for their Third Estates. By the autumn of the year, however, these and other ports had sent special deputies to the National Assembly to lobby against abolition. Chambers of commerce in these ports were exchanging alarmist letters about agitation among the free blacks of the colonies. The slave traders themselves were so concerned about blocking the application of the Declaration of Rights of Man to freedmen that some of them joined the Club Massiac, thus temporarily suspending their old animosity toward planters. And in at least one instance the slave traders of a port forced a misguided merchant to resign his membership in the Soci6t6 des Amis des Noirs.
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