When And How Did Slavery Begin History Essay

Slavery started around the 1600s and Africans were being shipped to north America as slaves. Slaves were then put to work in plantations or in mines while some became servants. The majority of slaves could make money to buy their way to freedom. Some of the slaves could get married, testify in court, and own property legally. During the 1600s African Americans started becoming slaves in the American colonies. There were more slaves in the south because they had large plantations where cotton grew and other crops that had to be taken care of and the north didn’t need much slaves.

During the 1800s plantation workers were called field hands because they picked and planted cotton. This job was the longest because they worked from sunrise to sunset. Slaves that worked in their masters home were called servants, they cooked and did laundry. Lots of other slaves were trained to do other work; They were trained because the whites didn’t want them to learn how to read and write, they thought that it would encourage them to run away.

Slaves masters were very different, some slaves were treated well as being given money or gifts for doing so well and others were treated poorly by being punished. Slaves that were working in the mines or farms were overworked and punished terribly. The ones that were working as servants were treated as a member of the family. Some slaves were sometimes lucky because they were freed when their master died, leaving behind the will, leading them to be free. They created their own language and music and their religion helps them get through the rough times. Most slaves religion was African and Christian beliefs.

The underground railroad was what the slaves tried to use to escape to freedom. The underground railroad was a code name for the slaves because they used it as a secret way to escape. They would hide during the day and moved at night so they wouldn’t be caught. The majority of the slaves went to the north because if they was found they would be sent right back to their masters. The slave states had one third of the south’s population which was about four million slaves by 1860. The economic fact of high prices slaves in the 1860s is that it had created incentives for southern farmers to find substitutes for free labor and mechanize agriculture. Capitalism, individualism, and racism was an economic factor. Slaves were very profitable during the years of slavery. More than half the African slaves in America were employed on the sugar plantations . The invention of cotton gin in 1793 gave slavery a new life in the United States. The slave shift economy from the upper south (Virginia and Maryland) to the lower south was given by a comparable shift of the enslaved African population to the lower south and west. Every plantation economy is part of a larger national and international political economy. The American and shipping industries were dependent on the slaves producing cotton.

The cotton plantation economy had expanded throughout the southern region. Slaves were used to purchase many things and one of them was paying debts. The ownerships of slaves gave British men power and wealth. Slavery produced political power and defined political interests for individuals and the state. The British have proved less reliable in defending white supremacy than slaveholders would have liked.

In 1676 when the Bacon’s Rebellion occurred the upper class whites feared the alliance between the indentured servants and the enslaved Africans. In the 1680s Virginia started to seek into buying a large number of Africans. Africans had been transplanted to the Charleston area as slaves by the time African American revolution had about 100,000 Africans. Their population had 90 percent of African Americans and the cultivation of rice and slavery spread westward into Georgia in the 1750s. The colonies started out banning slavery, but since the white planters ignored the ban in 1776 the colonies found out the of lure profits so their population had more blacks then whites living in their society.

The low countries which are Carolina and Georgia attempted to use Native Americans as slaves. The process in which Virginia used turned away from the use of indentured servants in favor of slavery was that Virginia wasn’t a stretch, their was a color code because the whites were able to blend with society and the African Americans were not. The price of slaves, their were economic and slavery reasons. In 1662 Virginia legalized the enslavement of black Africans; the condition of enslavement was passed down from generation to generation. The impact on humanity and on the world economy was simple, it dictated that Africans were easier to keep in servitude. Virginia was going to increase their wealth with tobacco.

Tobacco exports in Britain had failed by 30 percent. Many people had to serve five to seven years if they were indentured servants. The English sugar islands turned to slavery as their primary labor source because England had a great protestant nation in Europe, which had actively engaged them into the slavery. Early Carolina functioned as a colony of a colony by providing naval stores such as pine tar resins to waterproof ships and food such as cattle for the west Indian islands. The English settlers had started to enslave regions Native Americans in large numbers and sold them in the slave trade and also using them as laborers.

In South Carolina there were 3,000 African slaves and 1,400 Native American slaves. Smallpox and yellow fever killed lots of Native Americans and there was no way in getting enough European indentured servants to provide the colony with persistent labor. In 1777 Vermont banned slavery and in 1779 New Hampshire did the same. John Hopkins funded the anti-slavery movement and usually people that believed in religion joined the abolitionists movement. The south lessened their enthusiasm in slavery during the late 1700s. In 1787 Virginia removed legal individual strengths on individual manifestation. 1773 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; The industrial Revolution produced the cotton gin which separated the seeds from the cotton fiber. Economics changed the policy so slavery was beginning to be favorable.

In 1819 there was eleven free states and eleven slave states. By 1860 there was over 3.9 million slaves in America. August 1791 black slaves turned on their captors and thousands of white planters were killed on Island San Domingo. In 1776 during industrial revolution many people in the north outlawed slavery. The African slave trade occurred in 1788 where they were kidnapped and sold to become a slave. When they were in the process of being sold the buyer examine them and see if they are healthy with no disease. If they are accepted by the purchaser then they are boarded on the ship.

When the captors didn’t have enough food to feed the slaves they pick out the weak ones and throw them overboard. The weak ones were not fed they skipped them by leaving them to watch the others eat right next to them. The African slaves were illegally taken as slaves to work on plantations or be indentured servants. While on the ship the Africans are chained down from neck to toes without their clothes. Most of them were whipped to death and treated poorly. In the 1820s the American colonization established a colony to free slaves. Hedi is the only successful slavery in the world.

Citations

1. “Slavery.” Oracle ThinkQuest Library. Web. 23 July 2010. <http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112391/slavery.htm>.

2. “How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy.” Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News. Web. 23 July 2010. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html>.

3. Slavery in America. Web. 23 July 2010. <http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm>.

4. 26, September. Slavery in America. Web. 22 July 2010. <http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_rice.htm>.

5. “African Slave Trade, 1788.” EyeWitness to History – History through the Eyes of Those Who Lived It. Web. 23 July 2010. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slavetrade.htm>.

6. Keene, Jennifer D., Saul Cornell, and Edward T. O’Donnell. Visions of America: a History of the United States. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.

7. “Slavery.” Lecture. Professor Michael Vasicek, 21 July 2010. Web. 23 July 2010.