Slavery Was Considered Acceptable And Licit

Enslaving a person is an action that is essentially deemed unethical and criminal in many countries, including the United States. However, at one point in American history, the exploitation of slavery was considered acceptable and licit. The existence of slavery was justified by the massive positive benefits reaped by the American economy, particularly in the South from 1619 to 1851 (Horton 7). In an economy so excessively dependent on the use of slaves, the abolition of slavery created fear of severe turmoil in the South, but did not actually cause this turmoil or occur. Slaves were brought to North America antecedent to the emergence of the United States, as well as a substantial period of time prior to the delineation of authorized regulation of slavery. In 1513, Spaniards traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and arrived on the mainland of North America. Creating settlements in the new-found continent, their pursuit of finding free labor became indispensable. Throughout the decades after their discovery of North America, the Spanish shipped over thousands of "both black and white people to make them profitable and productive" (Winch 1). The black and whites could be considered as slaves, however, there is a prodigious divergence between the categories of these slaves, especially with the blacks. During this time period, blacks who had lived in Spain or in the Spanish Caribbean, spoke fluent Spanish, and were free were placed with more profound professions, such as soldiers,