response 3 questions about the atlantic slave trade (History)

The Atlantic Slave Trade: 1400s to 1808, Part 2

6. Writing Slavery in the Atlantic Colonies

Spanish and French law, which was based on Roman law, had precedents for the concept of slavery.

The Spanish crown had outlawed Indian slavery during the 1550s, and the French never tried to implement Indian slavery on a large scale.

But in English law, slavery of Christian Europeans had been outlawed during the 1300s.

In England there were no laws or traditions allowing for lifetime enslavement or for making the status inheritable.

The English crown gave settlers permission to write laws governing slavery in the Atlantic colonies.

This process began in Virginia during the middle of the 1600s, when colonists began importing large numbers of African slaves to replace indentured servants.

In 1662 the colonial government in Virginia passed a law declaring that from that year forward, children would be “bound or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

The 1662 law made no mention of race, but by that period, English colonist were only enslaving black people.

The 1662 law linked blackness, birth, and slavery, making it appear to be something congenital or inherited naturally.

In reality of course the opposite was true; slavery was a social construct.

The colonial government passed another law in 1667 stating that Christian baptism would no longer alter the conditions of servitude.

In 1669 the colonial government passed another law declaring that the death of a slave during punishment “shall not be accounted a felony.”

Virginia’s colonial government passed several more laws in the following years, until 1705 when Virginia’s colonial government assembled the laws into one single collection of slave laws.

This collection of slave laws served as the model for other southern colonies, such as the Carolinas and Georgia.

7. Slavery and the Colonial South

Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were slave colonies in which wealthy landowners operated plantations where thousands of slaves harvested cash crops, such as tobacco, rice, and later, cotton.

These were the basic elements of society in the “colonial South”.

Before the 1730s most slaves in the colonial south were imported slaves from Africa.

English colonists called these slaves “saltwater slaves” because they were transported across the Atlantic Ocean.

English colonists in the colonial South would also sometimes purchase slaves from French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.

Slaves born in the colonial south were called “country-born” slaves by English colonists.

In England’s Caribbean colonies where sugar was the main crop, 1 out of every 3 African slaves died every 3 years, mostly because sugar cane requires round-the-clock care, but also because the Caribbean’s tropical climate was the perfect breeding ground for diseases and parasites, such as Malaria.

In places like Virginia and the Carolinas, the climate is more temperate and there are fewer diseases.

The work in the colonial south was also different because tobacco and even rice does not require such close attention.

As a result, slaves in the colonial South lived longer than slaves in English colonies the Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados).

After the 1730s the number of imported, “salt-water” slaves transported to the colonial south was offset by the population of self-sustaining, “country-born” slaves born in the colonial South.

The natural increase had balanced the sex ratio among slaves, which further encouraged population growth.

Colonists in the colonial South began to realize that they stood to benefit from the health and fertility of their slaves.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, also wrote the following about his slaves: “I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man on the farm…[because] what she produces in an addition to capital.”

During the 1730s English settlers from Virginia started moving south along the Atlantic coast, to settle North Carolina and South Carolina by establishing rice plantations along the coast.

Later in the 1750s settler from North Carolina and South Carolina moved further south along the Atlantic coast to settle Georgia, also by establishing rice plantations along the coast.

By the 1750s about 80% of slaves in the colonial South were “country born.”

But, just because there were more “country-born” slaves does not mean that colonists stopped importing “salt-water” slaves to the colonial South.

Shipping records show that during 1641-1790, English slave ships brought 127,520 enslaved Africans to the colonial South.

Main ports of entry for slaves included Charlestown in South Carolina, and later New Orleans in Louisiana.

Historians have estimated that 1 out of every 5 ancestors of African Americans in the United States today arrived through Charlestown.

By 1770 there were nearly 90,000 slaves laboring on rice plantations on the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia.

8. Slave Resistance

Slaves understood that in the absence of any other channels to freedom, violence represented one possible avenue to freedom.

Slaves frequently ran away from plantations and established settlements in the forests or deeper inland away from coastal plantations, but slave owners and militias periodically organized expeditions to hunt down runaway slaves.

Slave revolts represented the possibility of breaking away completely through violence.

The first notable slave rebellion in the English colonies occurred in New York in 1712.

23 slaves armed themselves with guns, swords, and axes and vowed to take revenge on their owners for “hard usage.”

They attacked several buildings in the heart of New York, killed 9 colonists and burned down other buildings.

The New York militia surrounded the slaves and 6 slaves committed suicide; the rest were hanged or burned at the stake.

In 1741 New York authorities discovered what they believed was another plot by slaves to revolt.

The city authorities burned alive 13 black leaders, hanged another 18 more, and sold 80 to slavery in the Caribbean.

The authorities also executed a family of colonists and a Catholic priest accused of providing weapons to the slaves.

In the South there were several failed revolts throughout the 1700s.

There were revolts on plantations in 1704, 1720, and 1730.

In 1738 a series of revolts broke out in South Carolina and Georgia that paved the way for a bigger rebellion in 1739, called the “Stono Rebellion.”

The Stono rebellion was the largest rebellion in the English colonies.

It was named after the Stono River, where 60 slaves who were originally from the Congo organized themselves into a fighting force and attacked plantations in the area.

They were able to kill 25 whites before a local militia intercepted them.

A battle ensued in which most of the slaves were killed or captured (and later executed), but not before they killed 20 members of the white militia.

9. Ending the Atlantic Slave Trade in the USA

In 1808 US Congress met to have a special session about the Atlantic slave trade.

The result was that Congress banned the importation of enslaved persons from Arica.

But it was still legal to purchase enslaved persons of African descent already in the USA.

This ensured that the southern states still purchased and perpetuated the enslavement of millions of persons of African descent.

A main reason why Congress voted to ban the slave trade was because northerners wanted to limit the voting power of slave (southern) states in Congress.

As per the 1787 Constitution southern states were able to count slave votes (although slaves themselves could not vote).

Responses (Due Monday April 6):

Why did European religious and civil authorities allow the enslavement of persons of color and non-Christians during the 1400s?

Which European nation initiated the enslavement of persons of African descent in the 1400s?

What were “county-born” slaves and why did English colonists hold them in high value?

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