From the Beginning...
What we are seeing now is part of the recurring systemic problem of racism in the United States which has deep roots that reach to every corner of our country. Despite Maine’s location in the furthest northeast hinterlands, and its problematic position (both historically and today) as one of the least diverse states in America, Maine’s story is inextricably linked to the history of race in America. We are going to use this opportunity to share some of this history in Maine, starting at the very beginning—statehood. To build a strong future, we must start with addressing the cracks in the foundation. Knowing Maine’s history is part of our role in fighting systemic racism.
At the founding of the United States all of the land that is now Maine was a district of the State of Massachusetts. While some coastal elites balked at Bostonian control, it was generally uncontested by the vast majority of Mainers for the first twenty or so years of district-ship. That all changed with the War of 1812 where the Massachusetts governor, Caleb Strong, refused to send troops to support Maine’s efforts against the British. As a result much of Eastern Maine was occupied for the duration of the war.
Following the war, pressure mounted for statehood, and after a series of votes, a consensus for Maine’s statehood was reached in 1819. This still required ratification by Congress, which was already in political turmoil over the potential statehood of Missouri—a slave state that would have upset the balance of eleven free states and eleven slave states. Almost immediately the fate of Maine—a free territory since 1783—was linked with that of Missouri in what would become the Missouri Compromise: the addition of one state was conditional on the addition of its counterpart. As such, the vote for Maine’s statehood can be seen in one of two ways: either as an immoral vote for the continued expansion of slavery in America, or as a much needed counterbalance to the growth of slavery in America.
In fact, this moral dilemma meant that in the end, of the seven delegates representing the District of Maine in Congress, only two voted for statehood, while the other five preferred remaining with Massachusetts to expanding slavery in the south. In the end it didn’t matter, with the Missouri Compromise passing by a narrow margin, and Maine achieving statehood on March 15th, 1820.
While it could be easy to commend our state’s moral high-ground from these earliest days, the history is far more complex. Yes, Maine did allow Black citizens the right to vote from day one of statehood (Native Americans however were not always allowed to vote, a problem that persisted until at least the 1930s if not later), but often the deeper ties to slavery were ignored or overlooked. Maine’s economy, perhaps more than any other free state at the time, was deeply linked to, and dependent on products from plantations.
Prior to 1808, when the slave trade was outlawed, Maine shipbuilders and owners were deeply involved in the “triangle trade”—the sale of raw materials from the Americas to Europe, the purchase of finished products in Europe which were then traded for slaves in Africa, who were then brought back to the Americas and sold. So, many Maine merchants duplicitously profited off the slave trade while simultaneously finding it morally repugnant as a concept. Once this was outlawed, Maine still benefitted financially from slavery. Maine was the largest producer of cotton fabric in the north, with all of the cotton coming from slave plantations in the south. Maine was also the largest exporter of firewood to the Caribbean, and Maine timber fueled much of the production of molasses and rum from the sugarcane plantations there.
While technically a “Free State”, Maine, like the rest of the United States (and Europe for that matter) has a complicated history of profiting off the backs of enslaved Black workers, even while decrying slavery at home.
This piece is an excerpt, edited for this moment, from an upcoming project that we look forward to sharing with you — but for now we are continuing to use our platform to elevate and amplify Black stories, new and old. Thank you for your patience as we navigate this year.
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