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As a social and economic institution, slavery originated in the times when
humans began farming instead of hunting and gathering. Slave labor became
commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome. Slaves were created through the capture
of enemies, the birth of children to slave parents, and means of punishment.
Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct
cultures, religions, and languages.
Most originated from the coast or the
interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved
peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa. Slavery
became of major economic importance after the sixteenth century with the
European conquest of South and Central America.
These slaves had a great impact
on the sugar and tobacco industries. A triangular trade route was established
with Europe for alcohol and firearms in exchange for slaves. The slaves were
then traded with Americans for molasses and (later) cotton. In 1619 the first
black slave arrived in Virginia. The demands of European consumers for New World
crops and goods helped fuel the slave trade.
A strong family and community life
helped sustain African Americans in slavery. People often chose their own
partners, lived under the same roof, raised children together, and protected
each other. Brutal treatment at the hands of slaveholders, however, threatened
black family life. Enslaved women experienced sexual exploitation at the hands
of slaveholders and overseers.
Bondspeople lived with the constant fear of being
sold away from their loved ones, with no chance of reunion. Historians estimate
that most bondspeople were sold at least once in their lives. No event was more
traumatic in the lives of enslaved individuals than that of forcible separation
from their families. People sometimes fled when they heard of an impending sale.
During the 17th and 18th century enslaved African Americans in the Upper South
mostly raised tobacco.
In coastal South Carolina and Georgia, they harvested
indigo for dye and grew rice, using agricultural expertise brought with them
from Africa. By the 1800s rice, sugar, and cotton became the South's leading
cash crops.
The patenting of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made it
possible for workers to gin separate the seeds from the fiber some 600 to 700
pounds daily, or ten times more cotton than permitted by hand. The Industrial
Revolution, centered in Great Britain, quadrupled the demand for cotton, which
soon became America's leading export. Planters' acute need for more cotton
workers helped expand southern slavery.
By the Civil War, the South exported
more than a million tons of cotton annually to Great Britain and the North. An
area still called the “Black Belt”, which stretched across Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, grew some 80 percent of the nation's crop. In parts
of the “Black Belt”, enslaved African Americans made up more than three-fourths
of the total population.
Even though slavery existed throughout the original
thirteen colonies, nearly all the northern states, inspired by American
independence, abolished slavery by 1804. As a matter of conscience some southern
slaveholders also freed their slaves or permitted them to purchase their
freedom. Until the early 1800s, many southern states allowed these emancipations
to legally take place.
Although the Federal Government outlawed the overseas
slave trade in 1808, the southern enslaved African American population continued
to grow. By 1860 some 4 million enslaved African Americans lived throughout the
South. Only Southern states believed slavery to be a major, and essential,
economic factor. Whether on a small farm or a large plantation, most enslaved
people were agricultural laborers. They worked literally from sunrise to sunset
in the fields or at other jobs. Some bondspeople held specialized jobs as
artisans, skilled laborers, or factory workers. A smaller number worked as
cooks, butlers, or maids.
Slavery became an issue in the economic struggles
between Southern plantation owners and Northern industrialists in the first half
of the 19th century, a struggle that culminated in the American Civil War.
Despite the common perception to the contrary, the war was not fought primarily
on the slavery issue. Abraham Lincoln, however, saw the political advantages of
promising freedom for Southern slaves, and the Emancipation Proclamation was
enacted in 1863.
This was reinforced after the war by the 13th, 14th, and 15th
amendments to the US constitution (1865, 1868, and 1870), which abolished
slavery altogether and guaranteed citizenship and civil rights to former slaves.
Following the Civil War, Southern states passed laws called Black Codes. A Black
Code was a law which limited or restricted a certain activity or way of life for
the African Americans. Mississippi banned interracial marriages with the threat
of certain death if the law was broken. Other codes restricted where the Blacks
could own land.
All were attempts to keep the government from giving the forty
acres of land to former slaves. Since a majority of the Southern population was
made of Blacks, whites feared they would eventually take over. This led to the
brutal killings of many Blacks by the KKK and other white supremacist groups.
Blacks who tried to exercise power were either killed or had some other form of
physical action taken against them.
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