Slavery In America

In North America the Africans were beginning to experience the same fate of the Indians. Hauled through the Atlantic Ocean and crammed in European vessels on the bottom deck with no sunlight or air, many died on the voyage to the New World because of disease and starvation. The English began bringing slaves to their colonies in North America, particularly Virginia in 1619 and like-wise selling them off as servants and slaves.
While the economic profits in the slave trade were great, so were the human losses. At least fifteen million Africans and perhaps many more, became slaves in the New World. About nine hundred thousand were brought in the sixteenth century, three million in the seventeenth century, seven million in the eighteenth century, and another four million in the nineteenth century.

The mortality rate among these new slaves ran very high. It is estimated that five percent died on the way to the African coast alone and then another thirteen percent in transit across the Atlantic and another thirty percent during the three-month "seasoning" period in the Caribbean. So an estimated fifty percent died before even becoming servants.

Eventually as more English settled up along the East coast, including New Amsterdam (New York today) and Massachusetts more slaves were brought in and "seasoned", in other words, taught how carry about everyday chores at the plantation. Unlike the slaves in the Caribbean islands who were brought to dig for gold and cut sugar cane, which the Dutch had brought from Brazil, the slaves in America were brought to provide cheap labor tending the tobacco and cotton fields from sunrise to sunset. Contrary to belief many slaves fought against slavery by stealing from their owners, escaping, starting fires and killing. They broke tools, injured work animals, and pretended to be ill in the field or on the auction block. Sadly, as a last resort, some committed suicide.

By the 1680's the colonies began to convert African slaves and Native-Americans to Christianity. It wasn't until after the American Revolutionary War began, where soldiers where astounded by the Blacks’ courageous and dauntless fighting, that the first Abolition Society was started. By early 1783 Vermont, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had abolished slavery and Virginia had restricted the trading of slaves externally.

Then in 1791, under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the slaves in Haiti began a long and bloody revolt of their own. This resulted in France’s withdrawal from the New World and the selling of Louisiana to the United States. Unfortunately, the Haitian revolution gave new life to slavery inside America.

American plantation owners were faced with a dilemma. The Louisiana Purchase greatly expanded the possibilities of plantation agriculture. This meant a greater need for slave labor. However, many Americans scared that a bloody revolt would occur within their own territories, were reluctant and began second guessing slavery. Just as they suspected, in 1800 slaves revolted in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi and immediately Virginia passed a law forbidding Blacks to assemble between sunset and sunrise.

After a series of events including the Civil War, on January 31, 1865 Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery in the United States.