Slavery Was Essential For The Economy Of The United States

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

In 1619, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. Their sole purpose was to work the fields picking and farming profitable crops such as cotton and tobacco. It is estimated that between 1700 and 1800 six to seven billion enslaved Africans were brought to the American shore (Slavery). Life as an enslaved African was more than tough, it was appalling. Slaves were prohibited from becoming literate, they were restricted in every aspect, whether it was in movement or behavior, and they were punished severely. Slave masters “took sexual liberties” with enslaved women, which was thought to be a tactic to procreate slaves (Slavery). According to that interpretation, slave masters were fueled to

Life for African American Slaves in the United States greatly differed from that of a typical white citizen. Beginning in 1619, slaves were being forced to the United States from their homeland of Africa where they would be bought and owned by a white man. Many were auctioned off and separated from their families to work on farms on arrival to America. Slaves were brought in for many years from Africa, but in 1808 international slave trade was no longer legal. Domestic slave trade, however, continued and thrived because many slaves were having children and raising families in captivity. There were many restrictions placed on what slaves were allowed to do. In

Slavery is a system in which human beings can be owned by other people and are treated effectively like property in the eyes of the law. Slavery was introduced to the colonies in 1619, at Jamestown, Virginia, where unskilled workers were needed to farm tobacco (“Slavery(Issue)”) . The South needed slaves more due them having a more agricultural lifestyle. However, the North, which was based upon manufacturing and trading and basically no slaves by the time of the Constitution. During that time, indentured servants were more popular due to less expense and danger than the slaves. However, after the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, which established cotton as a lucrative

There were many different points made by the people that thought that slavery was a necessary for America, which included fear, religion, legality, and even economics. Many people in the south knew that their considerable market remained to be slaves, so if slavery happened to be abolished the economy would haul a massive hit and the people in the south were not having that. Slaves were people that the white man was able to manipulate and throw away as easily as a toy, subsequently because of that they would never get rid of it. Many conditions could have stopped slavery, but there were countless obstacles that made it persist for a remarkably long time.

In the early ages of the United States, slavery was a key component in its success in regards to manufacturing for the south. However slavery was a form of horrible labor that blacks had to deal with. They worked long hours in the field, had no freedoms, were not considered citizens, and mistreated by their masters. As time went on slaves began break free from slavery after the civil war and during the reconstruction period where the 13th,14th,and 15th amendments were added to the constitution. During the period of 1775 to 1830, though it was a short time, was a high point for slavery in that change was starting to happen before the civil war.

In the United States, slavery had an overwhelming impact on their political, social, and economical. Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first African slaves were brought into the United States. Reasons were because the tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee fields were expanding which led to increasing the demand for labor. The Atlantic slave trade was an inhuman systematic importation of slaves between the African traders, American planters, and the European merchants bargaining over human lives which led to the Middle Passage. 1675-1775, the slaves were the backbone of monoculture labor and so it was put into law to keep the Africans as slaves. “So prevalent was this Italian-operated slave trade that the word “slave” was derived from the word “Slav,” name for people from Slavic countries” (Williams 3). In both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

The issue of slavery has been in infamous part of American history since it first started in the 1600’s in Jamestown, Virginia. During the colonial era, white male landowners needed help on their land taking care of crops, so they would purchase the African slaves after they arrived by boat and have them work the land as well as other tasks that needed to be done such as tending to

Slavery began when the African American people were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Hundreds and thousands of African Americans were packed into a ship. Men, women, and children were crammed inside in every available space with minimal breathing space. This caused majority of the slaves to contract diseases easily. Slaves were considered as movable property and labor workers. Slaves experienced a strain workload, harsh punishments, and the worry that their family members could be sold at any moment. “During the first half of the nineteenth century, renting out excess slave labor to temporary masters for a few weeks, months, or even years at a time was a common practice among slaveholders in Maryland and throughout much of the upper South” (Polgar, 2011).Agriculture became a large part of the economy for Southern farmers. The great amount of cotton grown during this time produced a need for slave labor during the first half of the 1800s. Slaveholders obtained a huge number of slaves to plant, care for, and harvest their crop. “Children were propelled into adulthood by

Slavery was well established in fifteenth century Africa. The institution took two basic forms. The emerging Atlantic world linked not only peoples but also animals, plants, and germs from Europe, Africa, and the Americans in a Columbian exchange. The first Africans to be brought to North America in 1619. It is unclear whether the slaves came for unpaid labor or servant. Life as a slave meant endless work from sundown to sunrise. They were working six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. The slaves that work on the plantation lived in little shacks with dirt floor and little or no furniture. Slave that worked on large plantations had to worry about the cruel overseers. The overseer was to look out and make sure no slaves ran away and made sure that the slaves were working to their max. The overseers could be cruel at some times. The overseers would whip the slaves if they did something that the overseers didn’t like. The slaves that worked in the house were called domestic

Slavery (the ownership of another human as one’s own property) is one of the oldest traditions in human history. History shows that ancient Rome and Greece valued their wealth upon the number of slaves an individual owned. Their service was to provide slave labor for their owners. As time progressed, slavery began to evolve into something much different– especially in the North American colonies. A new nation was emerging, fueled by a drive for expansion and a growing economy. The United States exploited African Americans through racial slavery to fill the labor shortage and created a system that stripped them of their basic rights, dignity, and created social barriers to ensure their subservience to Southern society.

Slavery was a big part of the U.S income because “Between 1790 and 1860, the amount of cotton that the South Produced rose from one thousand tons a year to 1 million tons a year. In that same period the number of slaves rose from half a million to 4 million”(Zinn 135). The U.S allowed importation of slavery to be legal until 1808 where it was then made illegal. This law was however hardly enforced, it was said that 250,000 slaves were imported between 1808 and 1861. A majority of the slaves were beaten, slashed, and worked out of their minds, causing many of the slaves to revolt. One of the largest revolts was in 1811 that involved 500 slaves but was quickly ended by the U.S Army. There were many revolts in these times but many of the slaves tried to runaway and make their ways up north where it was safer for the blacks.

During the mid 1600’s, slave laws were passed to officiate slavery as an economic custom and to further promote the ideal of slave labor. A slave by the 1700’s is an African American who works for the entirety of his or her life without pay that endures inflicted pain by his or her masters and furthermore is a title that is inherited through generation. To get to point, slaves began to grow weary of their conditions thus leading them to run off and escape their plantations in hopes of getting away from their conditions and be free.

Slavery has been a big part of American history ever since the first slave trade back in 1526, when many Africans set sale to the ‘New World’ from Europe.The reason why Americans looked to purchase slaves is also stated by some historians, “...the Americas looked to Africa as the preferred source of labor because slaves could be procured so cheaply here” (Inikori and Engerman, 30.) After realizing their benefits, they began to ship in more and more slaves from Africa. This was known as the Transatlantic slave trade and it lasted all the way from 1526 to 1867. During this time about a total of 12.5 million slaves had been shipped from Africa in all parts of the

There is no doubt that slavery was the engine of American economic growth. United States of America experienced an economical revolution during the slave era and slavery was one of the main factors that contributed to that. As slavers took African slaves for granted and used them to satisfy their economic purposes. Surely it will make sense. Slave labor benefited the economy in many ways, such as agriculture, construction, slave owners and slave trade.