FACTBOX: New England's historic links to slave trade

(Reuters) - A Brown University exhibit on the Ivy League school's links to the 18th century slave trade also shows how slavery flourished in New England, in contrast to the region's later role as emancipator of slaves.

It follows a "Slavery and Justice" report by Brown in October that acknowledged its co-founders used money from the slavery of Africans to build the school.

The following are five facts about the 18th century slave trade in New England.

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* The first slaves in New England were Native Americans, captured in conflicts with European settlers such as the 1637 Pequot War and exchanged in the West Indies for African slaves who were shipped back and sold in New England. The first enslaved Africans entered Rhode Island sometime after 1638.

* More than 1,000 slave voyages were mounted by ships leaving ports in Rhode Island, which dominated North America's share of the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century, carrying more than 100,000 Africans into slavery.

* Brown University, the seventh-oldest U.S. university, was built with contributions by people who owned slaves or traded in Africans, including the original Brown family.

* Four brothers in the Brown family -- Nicholas, Joseph, John and Moses -- were not major slave traders but owned slaves and invested in the trade, which the university said "permeated every aspect of social and economic life in Rhode Island, the Americas and indeed the Atlantic world" at the time.

* Rhode Island and other New England regions slowly emerged as leading voices against slavery in the unfolding national debate, helped by the campaigning of Moses Brown. The southern Rhode Island port city of Newport passed one of the first anti-slave trade resolutions in U.S. history.

Source: Brown University's Committee on Slavery and Justice.