A Slave Society
In the beginning, slavery was a very profitable commodity, but it was no more than that. Slavery was no more about human rights than the sugar trade was. It was categorized in trade with gold, iron, ivory and textiles and dismissed just as easily. However, as time passed, morals and ideals changed and communities shaped within the slave population. A new light was shed on the African-American people, a light that would change the way the world would look at them forever. The movement of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas was the largest forced migration in world history. This brutal chapter in American history began with the Portuguese in the fifteenth century and did not end in the US until 1807. It is estimated that in the four centuries of slave trading, slave ships transported upwards of 10 million Africans to the Americas. Slave trade was by no means limited to the Portuguese though. All the nations of Western Europe participated in trade including the Dutch, Holland and even the English. The actual capturing of the slaves was left up to the Africans themselves though. As one African sold into slavery said, "I must own to the shame of my own countrymen." Most Africans were enslaved though warfare in which armies w
And so it was that most African-Americans were forced to live their lives in servitude. Most of this labor took place in the colonies of the Upper South and slave numbers were expanding at around double the rate of the general population. The only question was how were the slaves to survive? Would there be a sense of community within them? In 1860, the slave population had grown to more than 4 million because of natural increase, or births. Slavery was an integral part of Southern life and wealthy Southerners who had made their fortune from the sweat, blood and tears of those African-American slaves working their tobacco, indigo, rice and cotton fields were not eager to give it up. It was believed that Africans were the only people who could be forced to work day after day and at a rapid and brutal pace efficient enough to keep up with the inexhaustible international demand for cotton. However, it was not only the Africans that were thinking of freedom. While the slave trade made Europe and America stronger, it made Africa weaker. In 1700, slaved accounted for only 11 percent of the colonial population. As rice and indigo were two of the most valuable commodities exported from the mainland colonies of North America, a boom in these two crops depended on the growth of African slavery. Most of the Africans transported to North America arrived during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, southern legislatures were unwilling to write steps toward emancipation into law, instead depending on the charity of individual slave owners. Whatever their dreams, most slaves knew they would never escape. In 1793 though, attitudes changed about slavery with the invention of the cotton gin. When plantations expanded to the Americas in the eighteenth century, the demand for slaves increased, and the raids extended deeper into the inner parts of Africa.
Common topics in this essay:
North America,
Carolina Georgia,
Holland English,
,
Upper South,
Gabriel's Rebellion,
Atlantic Americas,
North Slavery,
Surely American,
Europe America,
north america,
eighteenth century,
slave trade,
south carolina georgia,
fictive kinship,
carolina georgia,
sense family,
freed slaves,
american history,
slave owners,
slave population,
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Acceptance Essays
