Slavery In Colonial America

The development of early colonial America used slaves for labor because labor was scarce. Slaves played a growing role in creating the necessary labor force needed to provide economic development of the New World. While Spanish and Portuguese slavery existed, the British found it more profitable using Africans to work on plantations in agriculture and farming. They worked in fields producing bulk crops such as tobacco, sugar, cocoa, cotton, and coffee. By the latter half of the 17th century, the demand for agricultural slaves increased to keep up with market demands. While slavery existed in the British colonies, the idea of indentured servants quickly became popular to all of the developing colonies because it was inexpensive. Indentured

During the seventeenth century, a Dutch ship carrying African slaves posed to be a solution to the shortage of labor. Slavery became widespread throughout the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first permanent colony used African-Americans to settle in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 (History.com Staff, 2009). Jamestown struggled economically until discovering a lucrative source of revenue from tobacco. As tobacco grew in profitability; so did the need for more tobacco farms, slaves, and land. Meanwhile, the idea of using indentured servants grew as a means in the development of the English colonies because proved to be cost effective. As a result, the labor force largely consisted of indentured servants during the seventeenth century. Indentured servants were laborers who exchanged several years of labor for a paid passage to America and some land. While, these prearranged terms seemed to be fair on the surface; in many cases were not the

Masters could whip and beat servants for bad behavior and extend original labor terms for indentured servants. Slaves were treated like property by their masters and stripped of any dignity and honor. Families were torn apart and sold away into slavery (Slavery in the United States, 2014). They often worked in inhumane conditions from sun up to sun down, with little food, substandard housing with unsanitary environments, and were subjected to cruel punishments. Without any legal rights, they could not protest for their mistreatment. Over time, racial divides grew between blacks and whites, causing a high volume of racial tension and