The reason I love business is because of the freedom it can offer to those involved. Unlike humans, the market doesn’t care about race, religion, or creed. There is a certain freedom to that. Marc Benioff calls business the “greatest platform for change.”


I read the biography of Frederick Douglass, and I was fascinated by the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Frederick Douglass had escaped to New Bedford from slavery and was able to find good employment. New Bedford was comprised of a higher percentage of African-Americans than any other city in the Northeast at that time, mostly due to the exploding whaling industry, of which New Bedford was the epicenter.


Whaling was the first industry dominated by the United States, and it provided employment that was more welcoming to people of all races. Money flooded the city from the profits of whaling oil and innovation from mostly Quaker merchants. The city actually became the richest city per-capita in the entire US during the 1850’s. I find it inspiring that a group of people could innovate and create an industry so fast, and then use their wealth for good things like ending slavery and racial diversity. 


One of the shining merchants at this time was named, Paul Cuffe, who would become the first free African-American to visit the White House and have an audience with a sitting US president. Cuffe was a great businessman because of his versatility and steadfastness in the midst of conflict. 


He began his career at age 16 when he was hired as a common hand on a whaling voyage to Mexico. On his third voyage, he was captured by the British during the Revolutionary war and held in prison in New York for three months. He was soon released and returned to his Massachusetts home where his family ran an agriculture business.  


At the age of 18, tax collectors came to his family demanding they pay back taxes. Cuffe was enraged by this because blacks weren’t even given the privelage of voting at this time. Cuffe’s father had died when he was only 13 years-old, so an unjust tax burden was very upsetting. Cuffe and his brother refused to pay the taxes, and were thrown in jail. They protested, and were eventually were influential in passing a Massachusetts law affording African-Americans the right to vote.


Cuffee eventually gathered enough wealth to purchase ships and a shipyard. He became extremely successful and wealth, and he quickly became a target for abolitionists who needed funds for their operations. Abolitionists in the US and England were constantly trying to get him to fund different initiatives, as he was a deep believer in the cause. He was influential in attempts to build various freed-slave communities in Sierra Leone, Africa, but perhaps no abolition effort was quite so influential as Cuffe outpacing his peers, both white and black, as a successful businessman.


During one scene, Cuffe took his ships on a successful cargo trip from the US to Sierra Leone. They continued their commercial voyage to Liverpool, England, which was the epicenter of the slave trade in the 1700s. Cuffe’s employees and sailors were free-black, and they came into the Liverpool port teeming with black slaves oppressed by a system of injustice. Newspapers of the time wrote about the injustice of the scene, and it was influential in England being the first European country to abolish slavery.

 
Cuffee’s wealth and life are incredibly inspiring because all odds were against him as a black man in a race-based slave society. He didn’t allow imprisonments and wars to get in the way of the power of his character, and he stood his ground in difficulty. 


When he returned from that trip to England, the US and England were in the war of 1812 (age 53), and Cuffee’s ships were seized by the US government saying they had illegal cargo. Cuffee demanded a meeting with the US president at the time, James Madison, and refused to meet with anyone of a lower rank until Madison gave his cargo back to him. 


I’ve found entrepreneurs and business folks often are so head down in their business concerns, they often don’t have time to offer advice to those around. However, Cuffe did offer some brief advice on a fulfilling life I found in this book I found, and I think it is helpful for everyone seeking to have an honorable business. His advice is to seek: 

  • Sobriety and steadfastness
  • Early care towards the youth and molding young minds. 
  • Be brought up to industry: Do Duties with faithfulness.