slavery in the united states
Slavery in the United States
began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia in 1607 and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery, much labor was organized under a system of bonded labor known as
indentured servitude.
This typically lasted for several years for white and black alike, and it was a means of using labor to pay the costs of transporting people to the colonies. By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American incarnation of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. In part because of the Southern colonies' devotion of resources to tobacco culture, which was labor intensive, by the end of the 17th century they had a higher number and proportion of slaves than in the north.
From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of the present United States. Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves. The majority of slaveholding was in the southern United States where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal. Of all 1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states, 393,967 held slaves (roughly one in four), amounting to 8% of all American families. Most slaveholding households, however, had only a few slaves. The majority of slaves were held by planters, defined by historians as those who held 20 or more slaves. The planters achieved wealth and social and political power. Ninety-five percent of black people lived in the South, comprising one-third of the population there, as opposed to 2% of the population of the North.
The wealth of the United States in the first half of the 19th century was greatly enhanced by the labor of African Americans. But with the Union victory in the American Civil War, the slave-labor system was abolished in the South. This contributed to the decline of the postbellum Southern economy, though the South also faced significant new competition from foreign cotton producers such as India and Egypt, and the cotton gin had made cotton production less labor-intensive in any case. Northern industry, which had expanded rapidly before and during the war, surged even further ahead of the South's agricultural economy. Industrialists from northeastern states came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and some aspects of political affairs. The planter class of the South lost power temporarily. The rapid economic development following the Civil War accelerated the development of the modern U.S. industrial economy.
Twelve million black Africans were shipped to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Of these, an estimated 645,000 (5.4% of the total) were brought to what is now the United States. The overwhelming majority were shipped to Brazil The slave population in the United States had grown to four million by the 1860 Census.
Colonial America
The first record of African slavery in Colonial America occurred in 1619. A Dutch ship, the
White Lion
, had captured 20 enslaved Africans in a battle with a Spanish ship bound for Mexico. The Dutch ship had been damaged first by the battle and then more severely in a great storm during the late summer when it came ashore at Old Point Comfort, site of present day Fort Monroe in Virginia. Though the colony was in the middle of a period later known as "The Great Migration" (1618-1623), during which its population grew from 450 to 4,000 residents, extremely high mortality rates from disease, malnutrition, and war with Native Americans kept the population of able-bodied laborers low . With the Dutch ship being in severe need of repairs and supplies and the colonists being in need of able-bodied workers, the human cargo was traded for food and services.
In addition to African slaves, Europeans, mostly Irish, Scottish, English, and Germans, were brought over in substantial numbers as indentured servants, particularly in the British Thirteen Colonies. Over half of all white immigrants to the English colonies of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries consisted of indentured servants. The white citizens of Virginia, who had arrived from Britain, decided to treat the first Africans in Virginia as indentured servants. As with European indentured servants, the Africans were freed after a stated period and given the use of land and supplies by their former owners, and at least one African American, Anthony Johnson, eventually became a landowner on the Eastern Shore and a slave-owner. The major problem with indentured servants was that, in time, they would be freed, but they were unlikely to become prosperous. The best lands in the tidewater regions were already in the hands of wealthy plantation families by 1650, and the former servants became an underclass. Bacon's Rebellion showed that the poor laborers and farmers could prove a dangerous element to the wealthy landowners. By switching to pure chattel slavery, new white laborers and small farmers were mostly limited to those who could afford to immigrate and support themselves.
The transformation from indentured servitude to racial slavery happened gradually. There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. However, by 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant to slavery.
In 1654, John Casor, a black man, became the first legally-recognized slave in the area to become the United States. A court in Northampton County ruled against Casor, declaring him property for life, "owned" by the black colonist Anthony Johnson. Since persons with African origins were not English citizens by birth, they were not necessarily covered by English Common Law.
The Virginia Slave codes of 1705 made clear the status of slaves. During the British colonial period, every colony had slavery. Those in the north were primarily house servants. Early on, slaves in the South worked on farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton became a major crop after the 1790s. In South Carolina in 1720 about 65% of the population consisted of slaves. Slaves were used by rich farmers and plantation owners with commercial export operations. Backwoods subsistence farmers seldom owned slaves.
Some of the British colonies attempted to abolish the international slave trade, fearing that the importation of new Africans would be disruptive. Virginia bills to that effect were vetoed by the British Privy Council; Rhode Island forbade the import of slaves in 1774. All of the colonies except Georgia had banned or limited the African slave trade by 1786; Georgia did so in 1798 - although some of these laws were later repealed.
The British West Africa Squadron's slave trade suppression activities were assisted by forces from the United States Navy, starting in 1820 with the USS
Cyane
. Initially, this consisted of a few ships, but relationship was eventually formalised by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 into the Africa Squadron.
1776 to 1850
Second Middle Passage
As the nation expanded west, so did the cultivation of cotton and the institution of slavery. Historian Peter Kolchin wrote, "By breaking up existing families and forcing slaves to relocate far from everyone and everything they knew" this migration "replicated (if on a reduced level) many of horrors" of the Atlantic slave trade. Historian Ira Berlin called this movement the Second Middle Passage. Characterizing it as the "central event” in the life of a slave between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that whether they were uprooted themselves or simply lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free."
Although complete statistics are lacking, it is estimated that 1,000,000 slaves moved west from the Old South between 1790 and 1860. Most of the slaves were moved from Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Originally the points of destination were Kentucky and Tennessee, but after 1810 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas received the most. In the 1830s, almost 300,000 were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving 100,000 each. Every decade between 1810 and 1860 had at least 100,000 slaves moved from their state of origin. In the final decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were moved. Michael Tadman, in a 1989 book
Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South
, indicates that 60-70% of interregional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In 1820 a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance to be sold south by 1860.
Slave traders were responsible for the majority of the slaves that moved west. Only a minority moved with their families and existing owner. Slave traders had little interest in purchasing or transporting intact slave families, although in the interest of creating a "self-reproducing labor force" equal numbers of men and women
The United States will wake up tomorrow to find that its next Chief Executive is an African-American whose forebears are actually and traceably from Africa rather than obscured in the debased lineage of slavery.
In Manassas, VA where the Confederacy won the first major battle of its war to preserve slavery, Barack Obama held the last rally of his campaign to become President of the United States.
The prospect that in a matter of hours an African American could be elected president of the United States has triggered a complex set of emotions for many black people. For a people first brought here centuries ago in chains, thrown together by the imprecise lens of skin color and systematically subjugated long after slavery was abolished. . .
States Right (not slavery) led to the formation of the CSA. Will the Socialst States of America which will replace the United States of America become the catalist for another group of states to leave the union. Which ones, when and with an anti military president, what will happen?
Now it appears that Obama will be our next president. Surely electing a black president should indicate that the citizens of the United States have moved sufficiently past the racist attitudes of slavery, that we can no repeal affirmative action across the board.
NB
asks:
"After slavery ended in 1865 what inequalities prevailed toward African Americans in both the north and the South?What is the enduring problems of black-white relation in the U.S. today?"
Alliete replies:
'I think that is a problem of "heritage" more than a real visible problem.People get in their blood that because they are black they have to be always "fighting" against discrimination and all that. They have in their history or heritage the old stories about slavery and that the white ones are against them. I think is more in the mind of the people than a real thing. Yes, you find rude people out there that think they are superior being white (another "heritage" thing) and unfortunately there not to much that you do about. And all this is something passed from generation to generation. To answer directly I would say that the enduring problem is inside the head of every black or white person. Nothing more. The opportunities are there for all (school, universities, degrees, work, etc).'
Tim B replies:
'I agree with the first two answers in certain respects. Jim Crow and Separate but Equal definitely hindered political and economic progression for many African American families. Decades of this government sanction oppression limited economic opportunities for many families. This, in turn resulted on many African American families losing male role models due to either incarceration or death.This, in turn, has resulted in a systematic decline in the family structure in the African American community.'
Flying High
asks:
"Was slavery in the United States more a political system than an economic one?"
lpkm replies:
'economic, they didn't even consider blacks human.'
Eduardo A replies:
'Economic. You bring in people from other countries to work for free, after you buy them of course and you dont pay them, give them scraps for food and sell whatever it is you had them working on and you increase your profits tenfold...Of course it was political later in the Civil War...'
jpbofohio replies:
'The only reason for the slavery was economic. The politics then protected the economic interests.'
ShaamAnsu replies:
'When slavery in the US first came into being...it was more economic. The political issues arose later.'
cheesussinclair replies:
'Economic, cotton was a MAJOR cash crop for the south, and the fact that they didn't have to pay for their labor helped make America the richest country in the world at the time.'
paperback_writer2003 replies:
'Economic, chiefly because large scale cotton and sugar plantations would have proven unworkable without massive amounts of very chief labor. I don't think there were ever political considerations because slaves were not considered to be politically franchised. Essentially, slaves were considered to be nothing more than a beast of burden or a piece of machinery.'
Helter Skelter
asks:
"I'm doing an essay on the history of slavery in America. There's so much information out there and it's really hard to fit it into only two pages. I'm having trouble finding good informational sites on my topic. I don't want anything confusing or majorly long. Something that's actually understandable and states facts etc. etc.Could anybody give me some links?From a reliable source, please."
mtnglo replies:
'Slavery in the AmericasMyth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United StatesFact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South AmericaMyth: Slavery played a marginal role in the history of the AmericasFact: African slaves were the only remedy for the labor shortages that plagued Europe's New World dominions.Fact: Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco; slaves taught whites how to raise such crops as rice and indigo.Myth: Europeans arrived in the New World in far larger numbers than did Africans.Fact: Before 1820, the number of Africans outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1.Myth: The first slaves arrived in what is now the U.S. in 1619Fact: Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida at least a century before 1619 and a recently uncovered census shows that blacks were present in Virginia before 1619.Slave CultureMyth: The slave trade permanently broke slaves' bonds with Africa.Fact: Slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World.Myth: Plantation life with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality, made it difficult for Africans to construct social tiesFact: African nations persisted in America well into the 18th century and even the early 19th century.Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters' systems of naming.Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children "day names" (after the day they were born) and "name-saking," such as naming children after grandparents.Myth: Slaveholders sought to deculturate slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African culture.Fact: While deculturation was part of the "project" of slavery, in fact African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.Fact: Slaves adapted religious rites and perpetuated a rich tradition of folklore.Economics of SlaveryMyth: Slavesholders lost money and were more interested in status than moneymaking; slaves did little productive workFact: Slaves worked longer days, more days, and more of their lifeMyth: Slavery was incompatible with urban life and factory technologyFact: Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities and in various kinds of manufacturing and crafts.Myth: Slaves engaged almost exclusively in unskilled brutish field labor.Fact: Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort.Fact: Masters relied on slaves for skilled craftsmanship.ReligionMyth: West and Central Africans received their first exposure to Christianity in the New World.Fact: Catholic missionary activities began in the central African kingdom of Kongo half a century before Columbus's voyages of discovery and Kongo converted to Catholicism in 1491. A sizeable community of African Christians developed around Portuguese settlement.Myth: Priests and missionaries were primarily responsible for converting slaves to Christianity.Fact: In Latin America, slaves were instructed not by European clergy but by African Christians, who spread a specifically African interpretation of Christianity.Myth: Upon arrival in Latin America, slaves were given hasty instruction in a complex foreign religion in a language they could barely understand.Fact: A certain number of slaves were baptized Christians and others were familiar with Christianity.Myth: The Catholic Church did not tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with traditional African religions.Fact: In Kongo and in Latin America, the Church did tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with African religions, allowing Africans to retain their old cosmology, understanding of the universe, and the place of gods and other divine beings in the universe.Myth: Before the Civil War, the Southern churches were highly segregated.Fact: In 1860, slave constituted about 26 percent of the Southern Baptist church membership.Myth: Slave Christianity was essentially a "religion of docility."Fact: Christianity was dual edged and marked by millennialist possibilities; whites could not prevent black preachers from turning Christianity into a source of self-respect and faith in deliverance.ResistanceMyth: Slaves were brainwashed and stunned into submission and rarely resisted slavery.Fact: Resistance took a variety of forms ranging from day-to-day resistance, economic bargaining, running away and maroonage, and outright rebellionsTask SystemOne of two plantation labor systems. Under the task system, slaves were assigned several specific tasks within a day. When those tasks were finished, slaves could have time to themselves to spend however they wished. Slaves who worked in rice and long staple cotton plantations, in the naval stores industry, or in skilled labor positions worked under the task system. The benefits of this system for slaves included less supervision, more autonomy and more free time.Gang SystemWherever tobacco, sugar or short stable cotton grew, slaves worked in large groups or gangs under the strict supervision of white overseers or black drivers from dawn to dusk. Close supervision meant less autonomy and less free time.Trash GangsMany boys and girls performed light agricultural labor, sweeping yards, clearing dried cornstalks from fields, chopping cotton, carrying water to field hands, weeding, picking cotton at a slower pace, feeding work animals, and driving cows to pasture.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Slavery and the Law in Virginia1662 Negro women's children to serve accounting to the condition of the mother. 1667 An act declaring the baptism of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage. 1669 An act about the casual killing of slaves....If any slaves resist his master (or other by his master's order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be attempted felony. 1670 No Negroes nor Indians to buy Christian servants. 1672 An act for the apprehension and suppression of runaways, Negroes and slaves....If any Negroe, mulatto, Indian slave, or servant for life, runaway and shall be pursued by the warrant or hue and cry, it shall and may be lawful for any person who shall endeavour to take them, upon the resistance of such Negro, mulatto, Indian slave, or servant for life, to kill or wound him or them so resisting....And if it happen that such Negroe, mulatto, Indian slave, or servants for life doe dye of any wound in such their resistance received the master or owner of such shall receive satisfaction from the public.... 1680 An act for preventing Negroes' Insurrections. Whereas the frequent meeting of considerable numbers of Negroe slaves under pretence of feasts and burials is judged of dangerous consequence...it shall not be lawful for any Negroe or other slave to carry or arm himself with any club, staff, gun, sword, or any other weapon of defense or offense, not to goe or depart from his master's ground without a certificate from his master...and such permission not to be granted but upon particular and necessary operations; and every Negroe or slave so offending not having a certificate...[will receive] twenty lashes on his bare back well laid....If any Negroe or other slave shall absent himself from his master's service and lie hid and lurking in obscure places...it shall be lawful...to kill the said Negroe or slave.... 1682 An additional act for the better preventing insurrections by Negroes....No master or overseer knowingly permit or suffer...any Negroe or slave not properly belonging to him or them, to remain or be upon his or their plantation above the space of four hours at any one time.... 1691 Virginia voted to banish any white man or woman who married a black, mulatto, or Indian. Any white woman who gave birth to a mulatto child was required to pay a heavy fine or be sold for a five year term of servitude. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------HistoriographyAfrican HistoriographyWalter RodneyThe slave trade contributed to Africa's depopulation, to the increased use of slaves within Africa, to the development of more predatory political systems, and to a greater gap between rich and poor.John FageRejected the argument that slave exports led to serious depopulation and contended that the slavetrade contributed to political centralization and economic growth.Mier and Kopytoff Argue that African slavery was one of a series of relationships, like marriage and parentage, that involve rights in persons; argued that African slaves gradually ceased to be aliens and eventually were incorporated within the kinship system.John Thornton Africans were co-architects of the Atlantic world.New World HistoriographyEric WilliamsRacism was the result and not the cause of slavery; slave economies were a major source of capital for the industrial revolution; abolition came when slave economies were declining in profitability; abolition was driven more by economic interests than by philanthropy.Frank TannenbaumCompared to British colonists, Latin Americans were less tainted by racial prejudice, were more lenient in their treatment of slaves, and extended religious and legal protections involving families and physical cruelty.Carl DeglerDemographic necessity led the Portuguese in Brazil to promote freedmen and mula'
Feisty replies:
'This site keeps it pretty simple:'
Black Sheep Squadron & Pappy Fan
asks:
"I, like many users of the internet, was not alive between 1650 and 1865. In fact, I was not born until after 1960. Therefore, I am unclear regarding what apology I owe to anyone who lived at that time, or to the ancestors of anyone who lived at that time.I am a Third Generation citizen of the United States. My grandparents immigrated legally from England and Canada. My grandfather actually came through Ellis Island. Since no one in my family tree was present in the United States prior to 1920, do I owe Blacks an apology? If so, for what?"
~10~ replies:
'i don't want anything!'
ReallyStoopidGirl replies:
'i am not planning on any apologies for owning of people i never owned. I also will not apologise for anything else I did not do. who is telling you you owe apologies? Consider the source of where you are getting these odd ideas.Muhammed owned blacks and used them for sex and also for fetching of proper bottom wiping materials ..he also called them "raisinheads". Islam STILL owns black peoples today as slaves. Black people owned and sold one another long before white people ever existed. ( see Egyptian / Chaldean and other groups before history was written but was recorded in pictures ( Africaan ) history ) Blacks TODAY in many Africaan countries still own one another by force and violence. If you do not believe me, feel welcome to travel to the Sudan and watch little black girls being raped by practicing Islamic black men. In other words.. white people were not the first to own slaves. Blacks owned one another etc etc etc. Mankinds history is far older than the history of white people. If white people owned slaves and then gradually recognized the evil of it and gave it up by forcing one another to give it up as a practice..I say that is a good thing. Since whites learned to own people from the example of other people ... perhaps other people should look at their own history and rethink this stupid "blame game". It accomplishes nothing but to make the blamers look ridiculous. Me personally? I hate slavery and think it entirely wrong and evil ...nor would I ever own anyone ever...NOR would I ever belong to or sanction any religion which allows and encourages its practice.If such ridiculous lies are being taught in American schools these days.. carefully consider that you have been lied to by your own school system and then take a very long look at who is running the school systems and reject them. Stop pretending you know what you are talking about and stop simply accepting the word of some school official and start studying as though your life and the lives of others depend on the truth.'
merrywhiterose replies:
'No one currently alive should apologize for things done by our ancestors. Besides, my ancestors wouldn't have thought it was immoral at the time. So, what we do today should be apologized for by our great-great-great grandkids? I don't think so! Blacks were not the only slaves in the U.S. Some races of whites were slaves, also. Most blacks in the U.S. don't even have slave ancestry, but they still use it as a reason for not going out and getting jobs, or being productive, or expecting gov't support. Blacks need to DEAL WITH IT, IT HAPPENED. I will NOT apologize.'
christopher4270 replies:
'It's stupid to ask people to apologise for a wrong committed hundreds of years in the past and therefore beyond anyone's control. The mere fact that enslavement of blacks in that sense has long been abolished, tells you that this was a regretful period in mankinds history.'
Poppy V replies:
'Cool off dude..I am not black and i understand what you are saying but why would you think they cared about your apology anyways? I think the government needs to apologise for Jim Crow laws (maybe they did) that were in affect from after slavery until the 1960's remember that? your family never faught in the revolution but there were Blacks that did...yet your family came over and didn't have to sit in the back of a bus...use seperate facilities use the back entrance ect...ect...no your family took all that for granted.'
Andreal R replies:
'that's funny, i don't remember anyone really asking for one! maybe you are confused about our people demanding that we not work as slaves or demanding that we have equal rights as white people, or we are treated equally as whites. but no i don't expect an apology. even those who are in the slave owner ancestry, i don't expect one from anybody. my ancestors,who by the way were slaves and had interracial children from the overseers who raped them, fought for my freedom so i would not go through what they went through. that was my top reason for going to college and received my bsn in nursing. because i know they would never have that chance in their day. good question, though.'
Lefty
asks:
"There are places here in the United States where slavery is alive. One of these is Oriental Massage Parlors. How can they get away with this?"
jrmy replies:
'W#hat?'
Bu Ang replies:
'"There will be no tyrants, if there are no slaves"'
rockandroll58-79 replies:
'There is no slavery in the USA. What are you smoking, must be pretty good stuff.'
jjwannaplay replies:
'what are you talking about? Have you had a few beers already today?'
Aikei-chan replies:
'.................................................wtf?if slavery is being conducted the government doesnt know. they can get away with it because 1) its most likely monetary dept written off with taxes and such and 2) paying off cops. the world revolves around money'
TheBystander replies:
'...because some people do not know their rights or by force of circumstances too afraid to complaint or revolt. The oppress also might not know that their "employer" are taking advantage of their ignorance or meekness.'
french_horn_playa_066 replies:
'wow i never knew that. i guess people are afraid of speaking up have them black mailed u know or bribe the peple or the police'
Sinthyia replies:
'There is all kinds of slavery in the US and some is still legal. While those are the illegal ones, they flourish because of the people being harmed are afraid or unwilling to go to the police. But there are other forms that are legal, such as to certain religions, their jobs, lifestyles, etc.'
trouble replies:
'I believe you are referring to someone that is in the country illegally and afraid to go to the authorities because they don't want to be deported. Sad but true.'
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