The fine harbor and
bay of Newport soon attracted commerce from all nations, which heaped
its wharves with riches and made princes and magnates of its
merchants--a position they seemed born to sustain. The Overings,
Bannisters, Malbones and Redwoods kept open house and exercised lavish
hospitality--witness, as told by the Newport _Herald_ of June 7, 1766,
the story of Colonel Godfrey Malbone's feast on the lawn of his burning
mansion, so fine an edifice that its cost had been a hundred thousand
dollars in 1744; but the house taking fire at the time he had invited
guests to dinner, he thus feasted rather than disappoint them, and all
through the long summer night they held high revel and pledged each
other in jovial toasts while the flames of the burning building
illumined these Sardanapalian orgies. Year after year added to the
importance of this city by the sea: year after year the Indies poured
into its warehouses the riches with which Newport, out of its
abundance, dowered New York, Boston and Hartford and ornamented and
enriched the stately homes of its merchants. There is, however, one
blot on its scutcheon--one which darkens the picture of this prosperity
and the means that helped make it--and that is the slave-trade.
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