The Market Revolution Of The African-American Slavery In The United States

When the first nineteen slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, an institution that would last more than two hundred years was created. These first slaves were treated more like how the indentured servants that came to the New World from England were. However, as time passed and the colonies grew larger, so did the institution of slavery. Even after the importing slaves internationally was banned in 1807 by Congress, the internal slave trade expanded exponentially. The growth and durability of slavery persisted until the end of the Civil War, a time period greater than the entire existence of the United States. The institution of slavery was not only able to endure through two hundred fifty of turbulent change in America, but it was able to advance. This is due to the mindsets of slavery as a “necessary evil” and a “positive good” coupled with the dependence on them for such a large portion of the economy. These factors can be observed in the narratives written by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.

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 the essay "The Evolution of Slavery in Colonial America," author Jon Butler examines the growth of the slave practice in the land which would become the United States. As the European nations began exploring North America, they overtook the native populations of the areas and turned them into unpaid laborers. However, these people were not enough to supply landholders with sufficient aid. To make up the necessary numbers, plantation owners utilized indentured servants and then a number of slaves imported from Africa. Indentured servants were people who would be taken from the Old World to the New in order to start a new life. However, since they would not have the necessary funds to pay for their transportation, their journey would be funded by either a manufacturer or a plantation owner and their debt would be paid off by working for their benefactor. Slaves were not given this opportunity. These were people who were taken from their homes and families and forced into labor by threat of violence or death. This practice did not begin in the United States, but America was still allowing slavery well into the 19th century, long after other nations had come to the conclusion that slavery was inhumane and brutal.

The earliest form of slavery in North America can be traced back to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. There, they were called the “Twenty and Odd” and considered servants rather than slaves. Though little is known about this infamous event, this ‘trade’ continued of capturing Africans from Africa and bringing them to the colonies of Britain. The usage of slaves increased and were often used as field laborers on plantations, house workers, blacksmiths

The slave trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)

Everyone has their own understanding of what slavery is, but there are misconceptions about the history of “slavery”. Not many people understand how the slave trade initially began. Originally Africa had “slaves” but they were servants or serfs, sometimes these people could be part of the master’s family. They could own land, rise to positions of power, and even purchase their freedom. This changed when white captains came to Africa and offered weapons, rum, and manufactured goods for people. African kings and merchants gave away the criminals, debtors, and prisoner from rival tribes. The demand for cheap labor was increasing, this resulted in the forced migration of over ten million slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade occurred from 1500 to 1880 CE. This large-scale event changed the economy and histories of many places. The Atlantic Slave Trade held a great amount of significance in the development of America. Africans shaped America by building a solid foundation for the country.

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

Slavery in america began in the 17th century in Virginia. Slaves were being transported to america through the triangular trade. The triangular trade was a process in which africans were captured and traded for rum and other goods from england to africa. Slaves were packed in an unsanitary and crowded ship, they were treated poorly. The 18th century was the busiest period for the slave trade. More than 6 million africans were enslaved and transported to the new world. Document C illustrates how slavery spread throughout the united states, document c also shows that slavery in the north had decreased, it was mostly due to the fact that they were industrializing and they didn’t need slaves. The south, however used slaves because they were agricultural. they produced a lot of cotton, and many other cash crops and needed slaves to work their farms.

Starting with the Atlantic slave trade in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, in which slaves were brutally transported in the middle passage from Africa to America, slavery had an important role in the American economy, but differed in volume by region. However, as the colonies declared their independence in 1776, a gradual anti-slavery movement began in the North as many formed negative opinions about the Southern “Peculiar Institution” of a slavery-based economy. Various issues and ideas from 1776 to 1852 caused this gradual Northern abolitionist movement: political intervention, economic inabilities and threats, social anxieties and intervention, and fundamental moral ideas respectively reflect the thesis.

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

The Atlantic Slave trade began to pick up speed with the development of colonies by the Spanish and then the English, which were used to expand the mercantilist countries empires and power. African slaves began to be seen as a necessity once the Native American population plummeted and Spanish Creoles refused to do the hard work to supply their home country with the needed raw materials. Europeans were unwilling to provide the heavy menial labor required to successfully build a colony, making it “necessary to acquire negro slaves” (Document 1). Creoles and other European settlers forced slaves to “work too hard” and gave “them too little to eat” which weakened slaves and caused many to die off (Document 1).

The earliest signs of human bondage can be found in Ancient Rome where slaves were used for a large array of professions. Likewise, the slavery found in colonial North America had slaves included in every facet of the region’s economy. Colonial North America quickly grew dependent on African race-based slavery as the backbone to its economy. The first African Americans arrived to the New World near the coast of Jamestown in 1619 in the Chesapeake region (Clark-Pujara, 9/19). It was the first region to establish a society with slaves. One could say that African race-based slavery in the Chesapeake region developed because of the region’s economic dependence on tobacco production, scarcity of white indentured servants, increasing longevity for African Americans in the New World, and colonists establishing slave laws and codes.

Established in the latter part of the 15th century, slavery was first introduced by Portuguese tradesman as an economic force based on free labor. In the course of 400 years, 600,000 slaves were brought to North America from Africa. With the adaptation of technology such as the Cotton gin became prominent in the agricultural regions of America, the slaves became an established economic factor. The market for free labor was territorial as over 90% of the total slaves were in the South. The Reconstruction period demonstrated the nation’s attempts to resolve social and political issues in postbellum America. While the Reconstruction era did contribute positively to blacks, the movement failed to bring about equality or basic human rights. Under

Slavery, a corrupt period of time for African Americans continues to haunt our nation 's history till this day. Slavery initially started in 1691, when African Americans were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The main motive behind the forced migration of African Americans was for them to forcefully aid in the production of lucrative and profitable crops, such as tobacco. After the forced migration, slavery becomes a common practice throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. As time went by, African American slaves played a crucial role in the development of the economic foundations of the new nation and soon began to assimilate to the American culture.

“It was otherwise in the Chesapeake, the colonies of Virginia and Maryland. There, the legal institution of slavery grew out of economic opportunism and evolving social custom.” However, racism was involved as well in these areas. The British North Americans again resorted to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, bringing in the labourers necessary to grow their crops; no matter how inhumane. “Economic need drove the tobacco planters to import large numbers of enslaved Africans in the late seventeenth century.” Working on these plantations was not an easy life, and the travelling conditions that these people went through were