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The Atlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course World History #24

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The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you - Anthony Hazard

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How one piece of legislation divided a nation - Ben Labaree, Jr.

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Picture of slaves working in a cotton field

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Picture of slaves working in a cotton field

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Black slaves played a major, though unwilling and generally unrewarded, role in laying the economic foundations of the United States-especially in the South. Blacks also played a leading role in the development of Southern speech, folklore, music, dancing, and food, blending the cultural traits of their African homelands with those of Europe. During the 17th and 18th centuries, African and African American (those born in the New World) slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations of the Southern seaboard. Eventually slavery became rooted in the South's huge cotton and sugar plantations. Although Northern businessmen made great fortunes from the trade of enslaved peoples and from investments in Southern plantations, slavery was never widespread in the North.

Crispus Attucks, a former slave killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770, was the first martyr to the cause of American independence from Great Britain. During the American Revolution, some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side. After the Revolution, some slaves-particularly former soldiers-were freed, and the Northern states abolished slavery. But with the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, in 1788, slavery became more firmly entrenched than ever in the South. The Constitution counted a slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation in Congress (thus increasing the number of representatives from slave states), prohibited Congress from abolishing the African trade of enslaved peoples before 1808, and provided for the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.

In 1807 Pres. Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that officially ended the African trade of enslaved peoples beginning in January 1808. However, this act did not presage the end of slavery. Rather, it spurred the growth of the domestic trade of enslaved peoples in the United States, especially as a source of labour for the new cotton lands in the Southern interior. Increasingly, the supply of slaves came to be supplemented by the practice of "slave breeding," in which women slaves were raped as early as age 13 and forced to give birth as often as possible.

Laws known as the slave codes regulated the slave system to promote absolute control by the master and complete submission by the slave. Under these laws the slave was chattel-a piece of property and a source of labour that could be bought and sold like an animal. The slave was allowed no stable family life and little privacy. Slaves were prohibited by law from learning to read or write. The meek slave received tokens of favour from the master, and the rebellious slave provoked brutal punishment. A social hierarchy among the plantation slaves also helped keep them divided. At the top were the house slaves; next in rank were the skilled artisans; at the bottom were the vast majority of field hands, who bore the brunt of the harsh plantation life.

With this tight control there were few successful slave revolts. Slave plots were invariably betrayed. The revolt led by Cato in Stono, South Carolina, in 1739 took the lives of 30 whites. A slave revolt in New York City in 1741 caused heavy property damage. Some slave revolts, such as those of Gabriel Prosser (Richmond, Virginia, in 1800) and Denmark Vesey (Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822), were elaborately planned. The slave revolt that was perhaps most frightening to slave owners was the one led by Nat Turner (Southampton, Virginia, in 1831). Before Turner and his co-conspirators were captured, they had killed about 60 whites.

Individual resistance by slaves took such forms as mothers killing their newborn children to save them from slavery, the poisoning of slave owners, the destruction of machinery and crops, arson, malingering, and running away. Thousands of runaway slaves were led to freedom in the North and in Canada by Black and white abolitionists who organized a network of secret routes and hiding places that came to be known as the Underground Railroad. One of the greatest heroes of the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman, a former slave who on numerous trips to the South helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom.

Free Blacks and abolitionism

During the period of slavery, free Blacks made up about one-tenth of the entire African American population. In 1860 there were almost 500,000 free African Americans-half in the South and half in the North. The free Black population originated with former indentured servants and their descendants. It was augmented by free Black immigrants from the West Indies and by Blacks freed by individual slave owners.

But free Blacks were only technically free. In the South, where they posed a threat to the institution of slavery, they suffered both in law and by custom many of the restrictions imposed on slaves. In the North, free Blacks were discriminated against in such rights as voting, property ownership, and freedom of movement, though they had some access to education and could organize. Free Blacks also faced the danger of being kidnapped and enslaved.

The earliest African American leaders emerged among the free Blacks of the North, particularly those of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. Free African Americans in the North established their own institutions-churches, schools, and mutual aid societies. One of the first of these organizations was the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, formed in 1816 and led by Bishop Richard Allen of Philadelphia. Among other noted free African Americans was the astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker.

Free Blacks were among the first abolitionists. They included John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish, who in 1827 founded Freedom's Journal, the first African American-run newspaper in the United States. Black support also permitted the founding and survival of the , a journal begun in 1831 by the white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Probably the most celebrated of all African American journals was the North Star, founded in 1847 by the former slave Frederick Douglass, who argued that the antislavery movement must be led by Black people.

Beginning in 1830, African American leaders began meeting regularly in national and state conventions. But they differed on the best strategies to use in the struggle against slavery and discrimination. Some, such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet, called on the slaves to revolt and overthrow their masters. Others, such as Russwurm and Paul Cuffe, proposed that a major modern Black country be established in Africa. Supported by the American Colonization Society, whose membership was overwhelmingly white, African Americans founded Liberia in West Africa in 1822. Their ideas foreshadowed the development of Pan-African nationalism under the leadership of AME Bishop Henry M. Turner a half century later. However, most Black leaders then and later regarded themselves as Americans and felt that the problems of their people could be solved only by a continuing struggle at home.

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African Americans - Slavery in the United States

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Black slaves played a major, though unwilling and generally unrewarded, role in laying the economic foundations of the United States-especially in the South. Blacks also played a leading role in the development of Southern speech, folklore, music, dancing, and food, blending the cultural traits of their African homelands with those of Europe.

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The first Africans arrived in Virginia because of the transatlantic slave trade. Across three and a half centuries-from 1501 to 1867-more than 12.5 million Africans were captured, sold, and transported to the Americas. While Portugal and Spain were the first European powers engaged in this trade, eventually most of the European powers would get involved. It was as profitable as it was brutal.

The Africans who came to Virginia in 1619 had been taken from Angola in West Central Africa. They were captured in a series of wars that was part of much broader Portuguese hostilities against the Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms, and other states. These captives were then forced to march 100-200 miles to the coast to the major slave-trade port of Luanda. They were put on board the San Juan Bautista, which carried 350 captives bound for Vera Cruz, on the coast of Mexico, in the summer of 1619.

Nearing her destination, the slave ship was attacked by two English privateers, the White Lion and the Treasurer, in the Gulf of Mexico and robbed of 50-60 Africans. The two privateers then sailed to Virginia where the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort, or present-day Hampton, Virginia, toward the end of August. John Rolfe, a prominent planter and merchant (and formerly the husband of Pocahontas), reported that "20. and odd Negroes" were " bought for victuals," (italics added). The majority of the Angolans were acquired by wealthy and well-connected English planters including Governor Sir George Yeardley and the cape, or head, merchant, Abraham Piersey. The Africans were sold into bondage despite Virginia having no clear-cut laws sanctioning slavery.

The Treasurer arrived at Point Comfort a few days after the White Lion but did not stay long, quickly setting sail for the English colony of Bermuda. Prior to leaving port, however, it is possible that 7 to 9 Africans were sold, including a woman named "Angelo" (Angela) who was taken to Captain William Pierce's Jamestown property, which Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists excavated in partnership with the National Park Service. By March 1620, 32 Africans were recorded in a muster as living in Virginia but by 1625 only 23 were recorded. These Africans, scattered throughout homes and farms of the James River Valley, were the first of hundreds of thousands of Africans forced to endure slavery in colonial English America.

A ship "brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes" to Virginia in late August 1619 after capturing them from a slave ship bound for Spanish colonies.

By Richard C. Moore, 2010. Courtesy of Kathryn Knight.
The San Juan Bautista's battle against the two English corsairs, the Treasurer and the White Lion. "Angela" was one of several enslaved Africans brought to Virginia on the Treasurer.

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Visit the real thing at Historic Jamestowne, explore the actual location and active archaeological dig, Jamestown Rediscovery, home of the first successful English settlement.

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Clip: Episode 2 | 3m

Many stakeholders benefited from the cotton economy that fueled slavery's expansion. It increased the number of slaves in America and led to cotton plantations spreading across the Deep South to Texas. As African Americans were uprooted from the Upper South to the Deep South, this created the second largest forced migration in America's history. Learn more in "The Age of Slavery," episode two.

Aired: 10/29/13

Rating: NR

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | The Cotton Economy and Slavery | Episode 2 | PBS

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Many stakeholders benefited from the cotton economy that fueled slavery's expansion.