Slavery has appeared in many forms throughout its long history. Slaves have served in capacities as diverse as concubines, warriors, servants, craftsmen, tutors, and victims of ritual sacrifice. But in North America slavery was a whole different existence. This essay will focus on African American slavery.
Africa..
We know Africans practice slavery and they were just as brutal as the Europeans were. According to John Barbot a eye witness and a French agent for the French Royal African Company. Said “.Those sold by the Blacks are for the most part prisoners of war, taken either in fight, or pursuit, or in the incursions they make into their enemies territories; others stolen away by their own countrymen; and some there are, who will sell their own children, kindred, or neighbors”..(John Barbot). He also claims “The kings are so absolute, that upon any slight pretense of offences committed by their subjects, they order them to be sold for slaves, without regard to rank, or possession…” (John Barbot). They were so brutal to each other John Barbot thought they would have a better life in America. “That the fate of such as are bought and transported from the coast to America, or other parts of the world, by Europeans, is less deplorable, than that of those who end their days in their native country”.. (John Barbot). (1)
(1)Source: John Barbot, "A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea," in Thomas Astley and John Churchill, eds., Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1732).
First Slaves..
1619 was the arrival of Africans to Jamestown. A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in 1619. The Africans became indentured servants, similar in legal position to many poor Englishmen who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America. (2) Since there were few workers The Virginians of 1619 were desperate for labor, to grow enough food to stay alive (Zinn,23 )some slaves were allowed to be free after many years of service. In the Americans, slavery was based on the plantation, an agricultural enterprise that brought larger numbers of workers under the control of a single owner.(Foner 95). By 1680 even though the black population was small notions of racial difference were well entrenched in the law.
(2) http://www.preservationvirginia.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=6
The Plantations
Slavery in the new world was rather different from slavery in Africa. American slavery was what one might call industrial slavery. Slave labor was needed to produce labor intensive crops such as sugar cane, tobacco and later cotton. So slaves worked in gangs in the fields, with a overseer with a whip to keep them working. Slaves were mostly used for sugar plantations house servants, on tobacco farms in Virginia, and later the cotton industry in the Southern States. (3) Many slaves tried to fight for there freedom. From the beginning, the imported black men and women resisted their enslavement. (Zinn, 28). As they were very hard workers
who took pride in there African culture but were forced to live a life without much freedom, separated from there families, the creation of disunity between the slaves, and the cruel punishment that took place (Zinn 29).
Emancipation.
The first real steps toward emancipation in revolutionary America were the "freedom petitions" in
arguments for justice presented to New England's courts. in the 1770s by enslaved African-Americans. Some of the slaves tried to sue the courts for "illegally detained in slavery." Throughout the revolutionary period, petitions, pamphlets, and sermons by blacks expressed amazement that the whites did not understand what they wanted since so many whites fought for freedom against the forces of evil and injustice. One slave proclaimed "We have no property! we have no wives! no children! no country!".(Foner 224) . Blacks demonstrated just how much they sought to redefine what American freedom in fact represented. It would not be until the emancipation proclamation of 1863 that black Americans were no longer slaves, but many other laws such as Jim crow laws and other laws passed by trade unions to keep black Americans oppressed for many years in the south and north. Still the African Americans pressed on and where making great strides in housing integration and career advancement before the 1964 civil rights act.
Sources:
"Give Me Liberty". Eric Foner
"People's History Of The United States". Howard Zinn
(2) http://www.preservationvirginia.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=6
(3) http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/distance_arc/locke/locke-slavery-lec.html
