Was the American Stock exchange started from trading in Slaves?

[Muad'Dib]

In a particularly nasty debate between Walter Williams and a Proponent of Slavery reparations on Fox News, the pro-reparations woman stated that the stock exchange was based on the auctioning of slaves. She also said that between 100 and 80 million slaves were transported to America, and that pretty much everything American was built buy or on the backs of slaves. I don't want to make light of the cruel treatment of slaves centuries ago, but is there any basis to this? Or is it another "fact" made up to support a cause (the 5 mill lesbian moms, wife beating on Super Bowl Sunday, etc.)

[lno]

From some brief research online, I think that she's partially right, but grossly overestimates the role slavery played in the creation of what is now the NYSE.

It was in 1791, under a buttonwood tree at the base of Manhattan, where the beginnings of the now New York Stock Exchange started. Forty years prior, merchants and brokers gathered under a tile roof in lower Manhattan to auction off a wide variety of commodities. During these initial 40 years the group was known as "The Royal Exchange". They primarily traded in wheat, tobacco, cotton, sugar, and sometimes even in slaves. Selling of shares of stock of a company was not common in those days as there were few businesses worthy of public investments in the Colonies at the time.
Saying "primarily wheat and sometimes slaves" doesn't seem to be "based on slaves".

Hie on over to google and search for "stock market" +slaves.

[Derleth]

Well, seeing as how the NYSE was always in New York, never a bastion of slavery, and seeing as how slaves were primarily used for large-scale agricultural work, something that was never a major business in the North, I would have a tough time believing that the NYSE was 'based on the slave trade'.

[Zarathustra]

During these initial 40 years the group was known as "The Royal Exchange". They primarily traded in wheat, tobacco, cotton, sugar, and sometimes even in slaves.

I could see that the first four items would be major imported or exported commodities, but wasn't slave trading (from Africa) outlawed around 1808 or so?

[MEBuckner]

Well, seeing as how the NYSE was always in New York, never a bastion of slavery, and seeing as how slaves were primarily used for large-scale agricultural work, something that was never a major business in the North, I would have a tough time believing that the NYSE was 'based on the slave trade'.
Colonial New York, under both the Dutch and the English, was a major center of the slave trade. Attitudes towards slavery began to shift in the Northern states around the time of the revolution, but that didn't happen overnight by any means. Slavery wasn't officially abolished in New York State until 1827. See The New York State Freedom Trail Commission Report: Historic Background (Africans in the Americas: 1500-1865) (http://www.oce.nysed.gov/freedom%20trail/ftbkgrnd2.htm):
...A slave market soon was constructed at Wall Street and the East River. From the start of the English occupation, a commercially profitable slave system became a common goal of both government and private interests. English-controlled New York also developed elaborate slave codes to control and restrict the behavior of enslaved Africans. For the first time in the colony’s history, the Laws of 1665 confirmed the existence of slavery as a legal institution....

The slave trade became one of the cornerstones of New York’s commercial prosperity in the eighteenth century. Slave auctions were held weekly, and sometimes daily at markets throughout New York City....

[Doug Bowe]

Originally posted by Zarathustra
During these initial 40 years the group was known as "The Royal Exchange". They primarily traded in wheat, tobacco, cotton, sugar, and sometimes even in slaves.

I could see that the first four items would be major imported or exported commodities, but wasn't slave trading (from Africa) outlawed around 1808 or so?

Export was banned on January 1, 1808.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/statutes/slavery/sl004.htm