As the New World started to grow and the colonies grew bigger in numbers the country truly started taking its shape. While the country grew bigger we saw a change in the type of labor needed for some of the crops that America was producing. Things have shifted when indentured servants were finishing their sentences and the landowners were required to provide them land as a “freedom due” (Alan Taylor). As time went on landowners needed a more efficient form of workers and required someone more skilled in farming than some of the indentured servants. This would lead to slave labor becoming more of an option in America. For these landowners, slave labor was an ideal way of labor for their crops. These owners wanted slave labor for many reasons some being the fact that the enslaved laborers had a better idea of how to work and grow the crops. Along with that the biggest incentive for hiring slave labor was receiving 150 acres of land for every imported slave that they obtained (Alan …show more content…
This would cause a destabilization within the system of slavery because many landowners relied on these slaves to help with the crops and whatever else was needed for the farm. But it was the constant dehumanization, the slave’s strong ability to read and write, and ability to “blend in” with their environment that helped caused the destabilization in slavery.
Landowners went to incredible lengths to dehumanize the slaves and make them feel as if they were lesser of a human than they were. With lashing and the terrible conditions that these people were put through it caused them to become more and more separated from them and the owners. The biggest piece of slavery and dehumanization would be not allowing the slaves to have proper literacy and education. These things caused the slaves to leave the owners and run away to a better
The use of labor came in two forms; indenture servitude and Slavery used on plantations in the south particularly in Virginia. The southern colonies such as Virginia were based on a plantation economy due to factors such as fertile soil and arable land that can be used to grow important crops, the plantations in the south demanded rigorous amounts of labor and required large amounts of time, the plantation owners had to employ laborers in order to grow crops and sell them to make a profit. Labor had become needed on the plantation system and in order to extract cheap labor slaves were brought to the south in order to work on the plantations. The shift from indentured servitude to slavery was an important time as well as the factors that contributed to that shift, this shift affected the future generations of African American descent. The history of colonial settlements involved altercations and many compromises, such as Bacons Rebellion, and slavery one of the most debated topics in the history of the United States of America. The different problems that occurred in the past has molded into what is the United States of America, the reflection in the past provides the vast amount of effort made by the settlers to make a place that was worth living on and worth exploring.
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slavery was cruelty at its best. Slavery is described as long work days, a lack of respect for a human being, and the inability for a man or a woman to have gainful employment. The slaves were victimized the most for obvious reasons. Next on the list would be the families of both the slave and slave owners. At the bottom of the list would be the slave owners. Slavery does in fact victimize slaves, slave owner and their families by repeating the same cycle every generation.
There are many aspects contributing to the rise of slavery and decline of indentured servitude. The beginning of slavery started when Columbus invaded Hispaniola and enslaved the Arawaks . This was the first time people thought to enslave people against their will for labor. Hard labor and diseases nearly killed off their race, essentially concluding that they were no longer available candidates for labor. Indentured servitude was used as bait to lure people into enslavement and eventually began to fade due to multiple historical events, such as The Bacon Rebellion . African Americans became an easy target because they were less prone to diseases and their bodies were capable of such intense and difficult labor. As slavery began to rise in popularity certain laws were passed through Congress that supported slavery.
Slavery was a practice in many countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, but its effects in human history was unique to the United States. Many factors played a part in the existence of slavery in colonial America; the most noticeable was the effect that it had on the personal and financial growth of the people and the nation. Capitalism, individualism and racism were the utmost noticeable factors during this most controversial period in American history. Other factors, although less discussed throughout history, also contributed to the economic rise of early American economy, such as, plantationism and urbanization. Individually, these factors led to enormous economic growth for the early American colonies, but collectively, it left a social gap that we are still trying to bridge today.
Railroads opened new areas as settlement and stimulated the mining and manufacture. At the same time, the telegraph appeared. It brought uniform price of the country. Because of these improvements, many people migrated to west. The market revolution and westward expansion heightened the nation’s sectional divisions. The most dynamic feature of the American economy in the beginning of the nineteenth century was the rise of the Cotton Kingdom. But the increasing demand of cotton lead to larger number of slaves. For white people, westward expansion was a chance to get more freedom, but for black people, it means that they would have less freedom and their families will be broken. In the north, Market Revolution turned it to commercial system. Farmers focus on producing crops and livestocks. In some industries, the factory superseded traditional craft production. Both men and women could earn money by taking jobs from factories. Market Revolution changed the time concept of Americans. In cities, time of work and relax is divided clearly. Early New England textile mills largely relied on female and child labor.
Race was a very important factor in American slavery. In other nations, slaves would be of the same race as their master. An ex-slave could re-enter society with their past forgotten and be accepted once again. On the other hand, American slavery was closely connected to racial differences that led to racial segregation and discrimination. Master and slave could physically be distinguished from one another, which ultimately distinguished one as human and the other as chattel.
Slavery allowed the American economy to flourish for over 300 years. It allowed many Southern states to grow at a furious pace without significantly diversifying their economy. The South relied on the harvesting of cash crops such as tobacco and cotton, which were very labor intensive. Without much cheap labor, slaves were relied on to harvest the crops; this provided enormous value to farmers and plantation owners in the region. However, the institution of slavery was challenged in the 18th century by decades of Enlightenment thought, newfound religious ideals, and larger abolitionist groups. After the American Revolution many states would ban the practice of slavery completely and only a few would maintain the “peculiar institution”.
The goals of slave owners were to make their slaves dependent on them. Slaves were not allowed to learn to read or write, their movement and behavior was constantly restricted. There were many masters that took sexual liberties with enslaved women, and they would reward obedient slave behaviors with favors. Meanwhile, rebellious or misbehaved slaves were brutally punished. Strict hierarchy amongst the slaves made it less likely to conspire against their masters and helped keep them divided from one another. Slave marriages did not have any legal basis, however slaves did marry and have large families. Most of the slave owners did encourage this, but they wouldn’t hesitate to separate slave families for sale or
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
Slave owners not only broke slave families up, but they also tried to keep all the slaves illiterate. In the book slave owners thought, "A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach a slave how to read, they would become unmangeable and have no value to his master." Masters thought that if a slave became literate then they would rebel and get other slaves to follow them. Also masters lied to slaves saying learning would do them no good, only harm them. They tried using that reverse psychology to make it seem like what they were doing was right.
One of the largest uses of slave labor was in the southern plantations. Virginia's economy depended greatly on the production of tobacco. However, the problem being that tobacco plants required thousands of workers to produce the extensive amount that was being exported . Without the use of slave labor, there would not have been enough man power to fuel the plantations.
Some of the earliest records of slavery date back to 1760 BC; Within such societies, slavery worked in a system of social stratification (Slavery in the United States, 2011), meaning inequality among different groups of people in a population (Sajjadi, 2008). After the establishment of Jamestown in 1607 as the first permanent English Chesapeake colony in the New World that was agriculturally-based; Tobacco became the colonies chief crop, requiring time consuming and intensive labor (Slavery in colonial America, 2011). Due to the headlight system established in Maryland in 1640, tobacco farmers looked for laborers primarily in England, as each farmer could obtain workers as well as land from importing English laborers. The farmers could then use such profits to purchase the passage of more laborers, thus gaining more land. Indentured servants, mostly male laborers and a few women immigrated to Colonial America and contracted to work from four to seven years in exchange for their passage (Norton, 41). Once services ended after the allotted amount of time, th...
The debate over the economic advantages of slavery in the South has raged ever since the first slaves began working in the cotton fields of the Southern States. Initially, the wealth of the New World was in the form of raw materials and agricultural goods such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco. The continuing demand for slaves' labor arose from the development of plantation agriculture, the long-term rise in prices and consumption of sugar, and the demand for miners. Not only did Africans represent skilled laborers, but also they were a relatively cheap resource to the South. Consequently, they were well suited for plantation agriculture. Whi...
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
The need for slaves was important around the early seventeenth century due to the increasing European demand of lucrative crops such as tobacco. Slavery became so profitable within a few short decades that the ethics surrounding slave ownership quickly changed. Furthermore, as rice plantations became more prominent in the eighteenth century, the demand for African slaves continued to increase. As author Judith Carney describes in her book Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, rice was not a crop that most Europeans knew how to grow, and therefore slaves often had to tutor planters in growing the crop, bringing added importance and need for African slaves to the area. The slave trade grew so drastically in the seventeenth century that by the turn of the century, many areas had more Africans than whites. Carney further exemplifies this in her book by explaining that in 1670, the first settlers that arrived in South Carolina had about 100 black slaves. By 1708, it was documented that slaves outnumbered the whites.13 This drastic change in population demonstrates the increased need and perceived importance of slavery in America at that time.