American Slavery

Slavery in the Americas began shortly after the first European settlers arrived in the New World. In some areas Native American slave labor was used at first, but soon the Europeans began to import slaves from Africa. Several European nations became engaged in a profitable slave trade in Africans. An especially barbarous aspect of the slave trade was the passage from Africa to America on overcrowded, poorly supplied vessels and the consequent disease and death. From the early 16th century to the mid-19th century, about 15 million Africans were transported to the New World.

The first Africans were brought to what is now the United States in 1619. They were not slaves but indentured servants. However, it was not long before Africans were being brought in as slaves. Slavery existed in both the North and the South during the colonial period. However, it was the introduction of large-scale cotton farming in the South after the Revolutionary War that made slavery profitable.

Only a minority of Southern whites, less than one-fourth, held slaves, and most of them owned only one or two. Large-plantation owners were the exception, although as a class they dominated social, economic, and political life in the pre-Civil War South. Not all slaveholders were white; some Indians had black slaves, and even some free blacks held slaves. At the time of the Civil War, there were about four million slaves—approximately one-third of the population of the slaveholding states.

Slavery varied from place to place. Not all slaves labored on plantations; some worked as domestic servants, skilled artisans, and factory hands. For the vast majority, however, bondage meant submission and degradation. It was a physically and psychologically brutalizing experience. In general, blacks' existence as human beings was given no recognition. They had little or no protection under the law and little hope of emancipation. There were few slave revolts, but many thousands of slaves fled the South.

A complicated set of laws grew up to safeguard the property interests of slaveholders. Slavery gradually became a highly emotional political issue in the North-South struggle for power that was taking place in the national government. The importation of slaves after 1808 was forbidden by the U.S. Congress. Abolitionist agitation began early in the 19th century. However, it was the defeat of the South in the Civil War that resulted in the abolition of slavery by the 13th Amendment in 1865. Although the blacks were freed, the racism accompanying slavery persisted.

Indigenous people were enslaved in South America in the early period of European colonization. Gradually, Africans replaced them. Millions of blacks were transported as slaves to the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English colonies, especially to the West Indies and Brazil. The first were brought in 1502, to the island of Hispaniola.

Most blacks labored on plantations in tropical areas. Slave codes provided that the slave was not the absolute property of the owner, but the slave's treatment was not markedly better than that of the slave in the Southern United States. However, manumission generally was easier and was encouraged by some governments. Hispaniola was the first to abolish slavery in the Western Hemisphere, in 1793; Brazil was the last, in 1888.