Final Paper For History

Kajal Emmett

Instructor Name

History and Anthropology

22 November 2019

The Institution of Slavery in the United States

The institution of slavery was legal in the territory of the United States, before and after its independence in 1776. It continued till it was officially abolished by the Congress by passing the thirteenth amendment in the US Constitution in 1865 CITATION Nat65 \l 1033 (Archives). Slavery was legally practiced in Colonial British America as a proper institution. Not only that, slaves had next to nothing rights and a great number of responsibilities. They were also bred by their masters like any other animal so that they would be traded as a commodity.

Slavery in Colonial America

The first African was technically introduced in the “New World” by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The name of the slave was Juan Las Canaries, who happened to a crewman on the ship “Santa Maria”. In 1508, a Spanish explorer named Ponce de Leon expanded the trade further by enslaving the indigenous Taino CITATION Abd16 \l 1033 (Rob) population of present-day San Juan, situated in Puerto Rico. In 1513, after it was felt that the local Taino were not enough to suit the increasing demands, the colonizers started to import the first African slaves to Puerto Rico. However, the first slaves on the continental united states arrived form the territories of the colony of Santo Domingo, in present-day Southern Carolina, which was founded by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, Spanish explorer, in the year 1526. Consequently, this colony was unable to survive due to a dispute in the leadership, this allowed the slaves to flee and hide among the natives close-by. Not soon after, the colony was abandoned due to the outbreak of a disease. The first Africans enslaved by the British who arrived in the colony of Jamestown, Virginia were captured from a Portuguese slave ship by British privateers in 1619. Interestingly, they were baptized as per British customs, and treated as indentured servants rather than slaves and were freed after a definite period.

Slavery and Economics

With the sowing of cash crops like cotton and tobacco, the southern states gained new heights of prosperity. Before the beginning of the civil war, the South produced three-quarters of the world's cotton CITATION Timst \l 1033 (Timmons). This makes the historians think that perhaps the slaves were the Southerners' most prized investments, and their "walking" assets. The demand of the slaves was on an all-time high after the invention of the cotton gin. More slaves were required to sow cotton as more cotton meant more supply to the British. The shipping industry was boosted, the ships becoming bigger and better at the art of navigation to increase global trade. New inventions like the steam engine were made, and all the while, the demand for slaves to work the cotton plantations kept on increasing. This made the slaves a legal property which was seen as collaterals to business contracts or as currency to pay existing debts during monetary dealings. As commodities, they became a source of tax for the local governments. Slaves were repeatedly told that they were the lesser children of God and their masters were members of a superior race that where doing God’s noble work as their shepherds, without which they would surely starve.

Slavery and Politics

Even before the declaration of independence from the British crown, slavery had become an issue for the emerging leadership of the US. In 1775, the British governor of Virginia issued a degree that offered freedom to the slaves that would fight with the British Redcoats. This did not have the desired effect but around two thousand Virginian slaves did fight with the British forces which can be considered as a weak response as the slaves were not even shattered around the colonies. Also, at the start of the War of Independence, there were at least two and a half million slaves present in the southern states. As the Americans gained their hard-fought slavery, cracks began to emerge in the leadership. There was a clear division between the northern and the southern states. For southerners, the institution gained a central role, while the Northerners passed a series of laws that abolished slavery in the North. Gradually the numbers of the slaves in the South grew, which compensated their southern white masters for the wartime defections and killings of the slaves. Slavery slowly became the leading dispute among both South and the North as the Southern slaves began to use the Underground Railroad Network to run to the free North. This eventually led to a civil war between the Southern and Northern states which thankfully ended the institution of slavery in 1865.

Works Cited

BIBLIOGRAPHY Archives, National. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery. 31 January 1865. https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment.

Rob, Abdul. "Taíno: Indigenous Caribbeans." 12 February 2016. Black History 365. https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/pre-colonial-history/taino-indigenous-caribbeans/.

Timmons, Greg. "How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South." 2018 31 August. History.com. https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy.