1642-1807: Approximately 46 percent of all transatlantic slave voyages were organized within the Americas, with slaving ventures setting out from nearly ever…

1642-1807: Approximately 46 percent of all transatlantic slave voyages were organized within the Americas, with slaving ventures setting out from nearly every major Atlantic port in the hemisphere. Brazil was the dominant hub in this system, accounting for more than three-quarters of all captives carried off from the African coast to the Americas. In the United States, more than half of the voyages organized both before and after independence originated in small ports located north of the Chesapeake Bay. This statistical reality underscores that the management of the slave trade was a broad Atlantic enterprise reaching beyond the southern United States.