American Slavery

The institution of slavery in America is a wound in history that still festers in modern American society. So pervasive and ingrained in American society and economics, beginning with the nation's creation, it took the American Civil War to eradicate. What were the origins of American slavery? How was American slavery affected by the American Revolution? Did the slaves ever fight back? How did slavery influence the early American republic? And how did American slavery end?

Origins of American Slavery and Native American Slavery in the Colonies

Slavery began in North America with the Spanish in the 1500s, attempting to enslave the Americas' indigenous populations. However, Spain abolished the enslavement of indigenous peoples in 1542. A century later, as the English began to expand their colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, they too began to enslave indigenous populations. Native American slavey in the colonies was relatively short-lived, ending in the early 1700s due to rapidly declining indigenous populations from disease and warfare and a lack of necessary skills with consumer crops such as sugarcane and rice.

Though the English attempted enslavement of indigenous tribes, in 1619, the first African slaves were brought to the colony of Jamestown. During this time of early colonization, slavery was not necessarily permanent and not specifically about race. As mentioned, slaves included indigenous peoples, Africans, populations from the Caribbean islands, and indentured servants from England and Europe. However, incrementally over the colonial period, to be a slave meant to be black. This was caused by the demand for enslaved labor in the colonies, especially in the South, the access to the Atlantic slave trade, religious implications, and expanding status laws and codes in the colonies defining who could and could not be a slave.

With the expansion and solidification of the Triangular trade networks across the Atlantic between the colonies, England, Europe, and Africa, access to African slaves increased, and their cost decreased. The fifty years leading up to the American Revolution (1760 to 1783) saw nearly ten times the number of African slaves brought to the colonies than in the first decades of British colonization.

Fig. 1 Map showing the percentage of slaves in each of the 13 American Colonies

Slave Rebellions

As the number and percentage of the population of enslaved Africans increased in America, so did the number and frequency of slave rebellions. Slave rebellions happened often, but few - usually the successful or ones dealt with most harshly - are the slave rebellions known. This is because of a few factors, most slaves were not literate (in many colonies and states, it was illegal to educate slaves) so white enslavers would have only recorded rebellions. White enslavers would not have the incentive to record slave rebellions or spread the news about them for fear of inciting other slave riots and uprisings. Nevertheless, there are several famous and infamous slave rebellions throughout American history:

Fig. 2 NYC Slave Revolt

Fig. 3 A woodcarving print from 1831 depicting the Nat Turner Rebellion

American Revolution: Slavery

It is through the American Revolution that the hypocrisy of American Slavery takes root. Before the war broke out between the Americans and the British, the rhetoric used by the American Patriots on liberty, natural rights, and individual freedoms rang true to many of the enslaved peoples in the colonies.

During the war, the British and the Americans offered individual emancipation to entice slaves to fight for their side. The British offered freedom to any slaves who would leave their masters to fight alongside them. The British promise also had the effect of causing unrest among the slaves, in turn causing issues for the enslavers. Many slaves would run away from their plantations during the war seeking freedom.

The Americans also offered freedom for service in the Army. George Washington established a policy that any slave who fought with the Americans would be freed. Some states established policies of paying owners for their slave’s freedom in return for the slave’s service in the military.

Fig. 4 George Washington

It is through these actions that the hypocrisy of American Slavery was born. That a nation founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would also allow states to uphold the institution of slavery. Though never directly addressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or the U.S. Constitution, these documents also did not address universal freedoms and rights.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade

Though never directly addressed, slavery was indirectly addressed in the U.S. Constitution. To find a solution to the issue of representation of the states in Congress, the Three Fifths Compromise was struck. This allowed three-fifths of the slave population of a state to be counted towards the state's total population, thus increasing the number of representatives the state would be allotted in the House of Representatives. In return for this compromise that greatly benefited the southern states, the South agreed to a federal prohibition of the importation of slaves by 1808.

The legal importation of slaves stopped in 1808, but the number of enslaved people in America grew through domestic growth. After the prohibition of importing new slaves, plantation owners turned towards breeding and selling their slaves. Even with limited illegal smuggling of new slaves, domestic growth saw a rapid increase in the number of slaves in the United States.

The American Revolution and the abolition of the slave trade influenced several northern states who moved to ban slavery in their territory. By the 1810s and 1820s, most northern states had abolished slavery. It created a political environment in Congress that pitted northern senators and Congressmen who were abolitionists against the pro-slave south.

American Slavery: Summary

The institution of slavery in the United States, has its roots in North America well before the nation existed. The most divisive and reprehensible policy and institution in American history, slavery is arguable also the most influential. Slaves built the United States. Though the north abolished slavery before the south, the northern industrial centers relied on the textiles and crops of the south, labored by slaves. Slaves were used to build the infrastructure of the nation, including the early railroads, national road networks, and government buildings.

The United States, through debate and policy, had several instances in which slavery could have been addressed and abolished, but instead, compromises were found. From 1820 to 1860, national politics teetered on these compromises until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the main cause: slavery, and how the view on this practice permeated every of part of American society: its economics, politics, and culture. It took a war that lasted four years to eradicate the institution of slavery from the nation. Through the emancipation proclamation during the war, and the requirement for Confederate states to ratify the 13th Amendment during Reconstruction, slavery ended in practice in the United States. It would take decades to centuries to heal the wounds of slavery, and arguably, the nation is still working through the effects of slavery to this day.