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AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY - THE FINANCIAL IMPACT OF SLAVERY 1

American Economic History - The financial Impact of Slavery

African men and woman were shipped as cargo on slave ships to the United State to be sold for the sole purpose of working the land for the white man cultivating tobacco, wheat and cotton. In Virginia tobacco was beneficial and in the long run when ranchers found the dirt was prime for developing tobacco it turned into the first lucubrate farms in the south. The plants flourished in the hotness and dampness of the Virginia which lead to development in the economy. The slave labor workforce was one of the most dynamic economic and social processes in American history that generated enormous amounts of revenue due to the high volume of growth in textiles and raw materials in the South, however this was not just a political issue it was also an unjustly human rights issues .

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Subjugation in Americas began when African slaves were brought to the North American province of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 in slave ships. Slave ships were expansive cargo ships that were changed over with the end goal of transporting Africans to America to be workers without rights. An expected 15 million Africans were transported to the Americas somewhere around 1540 and 1850. To expand their benefits slave shippers conveyed the same number of slaves as was physically conceivable on their boats. By the seventeenth century slaves could be acquired in Africa for about $25 and sold in the Americas for about $150. After the slave-exchange was announced illicit, costs went much higher. Indeed with a passing rate of 50 for every penny, dealers could hope to make colossal benefits from the exchange (Slavery in America, 2014).

On the slave ship Africans had no power over their lives. For a large portion of the day, slaves were kept and put beneath deck without natural air. On occasions when the slaves were allowed to go above deck were attached to one another in shackles to keep them from attempting to escape. The slavers controlled what the slaves consumed, drank. The diet consisted of rice, bean and 24 ounces of water a day. Many that attempted to rebel were flogged within an inch of their life. Those that did not survive were thrown overboard (Cugoano, O. - 1787, January 1).

Tobacco

Amid the pioneer period in the United States, tobacco was the prevailing slave-delivered item. Gathered in Virginia and Maryland, tobacco ranches holders used the biggest rate of African slaves. Tobacco assumed a critical part in the economy of the United States since the frontier period. As interest rose in Europe, tobacco turned into the most imperative American horticultural fare of the late eighteenth century. High tobacco taxes in England helped lead to the American Revolutionary War. Therefore, the tobacco business helped fundamentally to the financial development of the United States through a significant part of the nineteenth and twentieth century's.

The developments of tobacco pushed westward up the James River expanding economy of scale in the south. However the money related prizes of tobacco creation were large to the point that numerous conventional agriculturists joined the development so as to expand their funds. High tobacco taxes in England helped lead to the American Revolutionary War (Tobacco on State Economics, 2012). Because of the quickly developing tobacco fields there was a more noteworthy requirement for extra slave required to work the area, this profited ranchers by delivering more tobacco to offer. In 1618 the Virginia Company, edgy for laborers joined the headlights’ framework with a specific end goal to offer landowners as an issue to pull in slaves to work the area.

Timeline: (1612-1776), (Salmon, n.d): Source: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

· July 20, 1613 - Captain Robert Adams of the Elizabeth delivers samples of John Rolfe's tobacco to England.

· 1617 - Twenty thousand pounds of John Rolfe's tobacco arrives in England.

· 1618 - Approximately 40,000 pounds of John Rolfe's tobacco arrives in England, twice the amount shipped the year before.

· 1619 - The General Assembly passes the first tobacco inspection law, which orders all low-quality tobacco brought to the Jamestown inspection site to be burned.

· 1623 - The General Assembly amends its 1619 tobacco inspection law to allow for select men in each Virginia settlement to condemn low-quality tobacco.

· 1632 - In an attempt to prevent overproduction, the General Assembly reduces the number of tobacco plants a single settler can grow to 1,500.

· 1633 - The General Assembly chooses five tobacco inspection sites: Cheskiack, Denbigh, James City, Shirley Hundred Island, and Southampton River in Elizabeth City.

· 1650 - Edward Digges plants Orinoco tobacco seeds in the sandy soil of the York River. The light-colored, aromatic leaf, known as "sweet-scented" tobacco, soon becomes the most popular tobacco in London.

· 1663 - Discourse and View of Virginia, which puts forth Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley's prescriptions for improving the English colony, is published in London. Berkeley describes tobacco as a "vicious ruinous plant" and calls for a diversification of the economy.

· Autumn 1664 - Edward Digges and other men representing Virginia's planters testify before the Privy Council about depressed tobacco prices, and Digges recommends that Charles II take steps to reduce tobacco production in the colonies and encourage production of silk, flax, naval stores, and potash.

· 1680 - The General Assembly passes an act that creates port towns as places for tobacco inspection warehouses (called rolling-houses).

· 1682 - A group of frustrated planters in Gloucester, Middlesex, and New Kent counties cuts down tobacco seedlings at several hundred plantations in an attempt to raise the price of tobacco.

· 1688 - A bumper crop of Virginia tobacco—measuring more than 18 million pounds, the largest crop produced in a single year to date—causes prices to fall to a penny a pound.

· 1704 - A shipment of several thousand hogsheads of tobacco is sent to England and yields no return, an effect of the overproduction of Virginia tobacco.

· May 1730 - The General Assembly passes "An Act for amending the Staple of Tobacco; and for preventing Frauds in his Majesty's Customs," outlining a controversial plan for the inspection of tobacco before it goes to market.

· 1755 - A severe drought devastates Virginia agriculture, resulting in a reduced harvest of corn and tobacco.

· 1776 - Planters turn to growing food crops, especially wheat, in support of the Revolutionary War effort. Tobacco production drops from 55 million pounds to 14.5 million pounds.

Just as the tobacco fields were beginning to deplete the textile industry in Great Britain began to explode which lead to a great demand for cotton clothing internationally. The banks and shipping companies made millions of dollars due to transshipping of cotton after Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin.

Cotton

Eli Whitney's (1793) invention of the cotton gin was a machine was designed to separate the fiber from the seed. The cotton fiber would then be sold to make clothes that would be shipped to Europe. The Cotton Gin gave servitude new life between 1800-1890. Cotton fields extended from South Carolina and Georgia then spread to recently colonized area like Mississippi. "This movement of the slave economy from the upper South (Virginia and Maryland) to the lower South purchased about extra African slaves to the lower South and West. 1.8 million Of the 2.5 million subjugated Africans utilized in agribusiness in the United States. (How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy, 2010).

The measure of slaves developing in the South possessed by the white man was an expansive piece of the prudent, national and universal political impact in America. By the 1830 cotton was the establishment of the pre-war southern economy. As the cotton estate economy developed in the South banks and money related organizations in the Northeast would supply advances and speculations to buy slaves and land. This permitted the white man to buy more slaves which helped develop their monetary and political impacts in the United States.

The white man's most prominent resource was his slaves, dark men and lady were frequently used to secure credits to buy move slaves and more land with a specific end goal to make the white man rich and now and again affluent. This would in the long run turn into the source of assessment income for nearby and state governments and also create an expense imposed on slave deals.

The Three-Fifths Compromise greatly augmented southern political power. In the Continental Congress, where each state had an equal vote, there were only five states in which slavery was a major institution. Thus the southern states had about 38 percent of the seats in the Continental Congress. Because of the 1787 Three-Fifths Compromise, the southern states had nearly 45 percent of the seats in the first U.S. Congress, which took office in 1790.

It is ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government. Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents.

Over the long term, the Three-Fifths Compromise did not work as the South anticipated. Since the northern states grew more rapidly than the South, by 1820, southern representation in the House had fallen to 42 percent. Nevertheless, from Jefferson's election as President in 1800 to the 1850s, the three-fifths rule would help to elect slaveholding Presidents. Southern political power increasingly depended on the Senate, the President, and the admission of new slaveholding states ("3/5 Compromise," 1787).

References

How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy. (2010). Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html

Jones, E., & Salmon, J. (ND). Tobacco in Colonial Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tobacco_in_Colonial_Virginia#start_entry

Salmon, E. J. (N.D). John Rolfe. Retrieved from http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rolfe_John_d_1622

Slavery in America. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

The Three-Fifth Compromise. (1787). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm?smtid=3&psid=163