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Slavery In Early Colonial America

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Between the years of 1670 and 1750, the enslaved population in the northern colonies remained at a steady number. In the southern colonies, population of enslaved African Americans increased from 15 percent to almost 40 percent of the total population. Slave labor allowed southern farmers to plant and harvest more crops without having to pay for labor, leading to the emergence of the wealthy planter-class that defines the antebellum south. Without the labor of enslaved people, this planter class would not have amassed exorbitant sums of wealth. Having slaves allowed these families to become even wealthier, helping them buy more slaves. Plantation owners would purchase slaves from the region of the West Africa that had experience growing rice …show more content…

The obvious similarity was that both practices saw someone of a lower social class serving someone of a higher class. However, slavery was very different in many ways. Slavery was involuntary, hereditary and lifelong: you couldn’t earn your way out of slavery, and the servitude was passed through generations, as your children would be slaves as well. Additionally, slaves were generally brought in from faraway places, such as Africa, meaning that slaves were of a different race and nationality than those whom they served. Early slavery began largely as an economic institution. Colonists in early America needed labor to produce an economic profit. In the southern colonies, the need was much greater, as the climate and region was much more suited to rice, cotton, and other staple crops that required a large workforce. Slavery still existed in the northern colonies but to a much lesser degree than in the south. Throughout the 1600s and into the 1700s, slavery grew in strength in the colonies, as it was increasingly given legal …show more content…

The conditions in the Caribbean were horrible, and many slaves who remained there died of disease. Of those slaves who were brought to the American colonies, the population was able to grow on its own, as the slaves did not die as quickly from disease and terrible work conditions. With the American Revolution, great changes came to North America. The British colonies became states and an American nation. Whereas the years leading up to the revolution saw slavery gaining increasingly greater legal protection in the south, the institution became weaker in the north as abolitionists, who sought to end slavery, began to grow in number and northern states began passing laws to either restrict or abolish slavery. This early abolition movement was rooted in religious groups, mostly located in the

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With slavery on the rise in Virginia during the colonial period, many questions may arise concerning this point. For example, one may ask: What were the working conditions like? What was the average work hours? How were their living conditions? With most of the slaves at the colonial period in Virginia working on tobacco fields, the land on which they farmed quickly became infertile.

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Slaves cost twice as much as indentured servants, they had little economic benefits. Chesapeake planters owned more indentured servant, then slaves. In the late 1600’s the slave population grow slowly. That chanced in 1670 when more and more slaves were imported in to North America. By 1700 the African population in Chesapeake stood at 22%.

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Although New England had a lesser amount of slaves than Southern colonies. Southern colonies had 61.9% higher slavery rate than Middle colonies. Southern colonies had 9,467,986 slaves. Southern colonies heavily depended on slaves for plantation and farming purpose

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By the first part of the 17th century the English had established several major colonies in the New World. This however was not done without unique hardship and the colonists found themselves facing problems that they could never have imagined. In the 17th century, as colonial America grew, it experienced tension politically and socially as well as in other areas such as religion and economics, as such, the social tension combined with economic growth gave way to hysteria in New England, in particular the witchcraft controversy in Massachusetts. The main reason for political tension in the colonies at this time was twofold.

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Similar to the way that the thirteen colonies in America were under the constricting grips of the English rule, the slaves in the colonies were in a coinciding situation, this time with the Americans on the authoritative side of things. Throughout the 1600’s and certainly tens, if not hundreds of years prior, there were slaves in the colonies, or what the colonies once were. Even though all throughout history there have been slaves to some degree, the slave population in the now American colonies increased greatly in the later decades of the 1700’s. Many factors led up to the dramatic increase, including reduced migration, which occurred when the wages for English workers went up, leading to a smaller supply of immigrants to work in the colonies,

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Slavery grow rapidly in the southern colonies than the northern colonies for the reason that southern colonies slave work year round to grow crop like rice, they have the ideal season for work year round that the northern colonies didn’t have. For example on page 75 “ Unlike cultivating wheat or corn in the north, growing rice demanded backbreaking year- round labor, slave had to clear the swampy lowlands in winter, build dykes to keep seawater out of the fields, and plant rice in shallow trenches in the spring. In late summer, the harvested the crop. In the fall, they pounded the rice kernels with wooden mortals and pestles. Come wintertime they turned the soil to prepare it for a new round of planting.

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While slavery was a major part of colonial life in the Southern colonies, it was not as prevalent in New England, but that is not to say that it did not exist in New England. Slavery was not as necessary in the New England Colonies as it was in the South, but some in New England did own slaves. The stories of these slaves are few and far between due to the fact that it was not seen as such a major component of the history of New England as it was in the other colonies. The Puritans of New England arrived with a burden that they placed upon themselves to create the perfect colony, that other would have to emulate, has the city upon the hill. This created a stressful situation for the Puritans because they were under the conception that if they

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The end of the fifteenth century is attributed as the time period in which Christopher Colombus “discovered” the Americas. Although he was allegedly the first European to have reached these unknown lands at the time, many sought to reach the new world, for a variety of reasons. Most of those people could be divided in two: the settlers and the conquerors. In North America, there were more of the former, people looking for a new home where they could rebuild their families and lives. In Meso-America, however, the goal was to exploit the lands in order to produce and extract new goods which they could trade.

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Slavery in North America lasted for about two hundred and forty five years. Slaves were brought into America to relieve the labor demand. The Americans started growing lucrative crops, such as tobacco, cotton, sugarcane,and indigo, and soon learned that it was very difficult to grow for themselves and bought African slaves to work on the plantations. Sadly, slavery majorly affected the development of the United States in a positive way.

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Plenty of sunshine and rainfall, the warm temperature and the rich soil contributed to the plantation of cash crops such as rice, sugar and indigo in North Carolina and South Carolina, and Tobacco in Maryland and Virginia. The broad land and plantation enlarged the needs of human labor. As African slaves entered the southern American, land owners soon found them to be the fittest laborer to do the hard job in large farm land. They could stand the humid weather, obey the orders the landlords gave to them and they also had strong ability to do the hard tasks in farms. Also, the

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In the seventeenth century life was harsh for the southern colonies. Many were killed due to diseases on the Chesapeake land, and families were so small that the men outnumbered the women. The tobacco economy used the American servants for hard labor, who wanted to become landowners and become wealthy in the future. Slaves soon began to be imported from Africa in the late 1600s, and became important for the economy. In the South, slaves died fast, but soon the numbers of them expanded by reproduction, and later they developed an African-American way of living.

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White settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas, began to force original Native Americans further west and they moved in and established plantations in the now freed regions. The South was filled with the production of cotton, and it was controlled by plantation agriculture. As the cotton-based economy rose so did slavery, as slaves were needed to work on the plantations.

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Immigration in Colonial America Colonial America was a place full of opportunities. Many foreigners who realized this decided to move there. Although many foreigners decided to move to Colonial America, some never had any intentions on going to America. Many of them were sent to America because they were forced or sold into slavery. Since many of the other countries did not support religious freedom or treat the citizens fairly, the foreigners decided to leave.

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Lastly, with the expansion of the country to the west and into what we now know as Texas drove the need for more slaves to work the land. With the decrease of demand for tobacco and rice, plantations turned to the new crop cotton. In 1800 less than half a million bales of cotton

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When the Natives were killed from diseases, the decrease of the population decreased labor work and made it hard for the Europeans to produce enough products to satisfy their needs. They thought the best solution to this problem was to have other people-indentured slaves- do the work, and surely, they did. Millions of Africans were forcefully migrating to America and slavery rapidly expanded, especially in the south. In fact, it became a way of life, and slaves were working day and night producing and growing crops for the southerners to profit from, such as the production of cotton. The cotton industry skyrocketed, and the southerners relied on the slaves to produce cotton and other product to keep their businesses running.

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