Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Directions: Click on each link below for information to help you answer the questions
that follow.
Timeline – The Atlantic Slave Trade
A. In what year were African slaves first reported in the New World?
B. What happened with slavery in the years 1640 – 1680?
C. What legislation was passed in Congress on March 22, 1794?
D. What happened related to the slave trade in 1807?
E. What happened in 1820?
Triangular Trade
F. Where did goods to America in what became known as the triangular trade?
G. How did it get its name?
H. What products were carried to Africa and traded for slaves?
I. What products were shipped to Great Britain from America?
J. History estimates that how many Africans died on the voyage to America?
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
K. The Middle Passage
What part of the triangular trade route was the Middle Passage? Describe the
journey.
Development of Slavery
1. How did the nature of slavery change between 1600 and 1700?
2. Why was control over slaves so important for whites?
Put your cursor over the map to find:
3. How many slaves were transported annually in 1680? By the 18th century?
4. What colony did slavery first become recognized as a legal institution?
5. Almost half of all slaves arrived in America at what port?
Colonial Population and Slavery
5. What percentage of the colonial population had slaves?
6. How did southerners feel about slaves?
7. Why did southerners have slaves?
8. What industries existed in the North?
9. What role did the slave trade play in these industries?
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
10. What percent of all slaves in America lived in Virginia and Maryland?
11. What occupations did slaves perform in the North and South?
11. What were slave codes?
The Myth of the Docile Slave and Slave Resistance
12. What is meant by “the myth of the docile slave?”
13. Did slaves accept slavery?
14. List four ways in which slaves resisted.
Influence of Africa and African American Culture on Colonial Cultures and Today
15. List two ways African culture has influenced the United States today.
16. List at least five ways African culture found its way into Colonial America.
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
Timeline: The Atlantic Slave Trade
1502
First reported African slaves in the New World.
1640-1680
Beginning of large-scale introduction of African slave labor in the British Caribbean
for sugar production.
1791
The Haitian Revolution begins as a slave uprising near Le Cap in the French West
Indian colony of Santo Domingo and leads to establishment of black nation of Haiti in
1801.
1793
Waves of white refugees pour into U.S. ports, fleeing the insurrection in Santo
Domingo.
1794
The French National Convention emancipates all slaves in the French colonies.
March 22: U.S. Congress passes legislation prohibiting the manufacture, fitting,
equipping, loading or dispatching of any vessel to be employed in the slave trade.
1795
Pinckney's Treaty establishes commercial relations between U.S. and Spain.
1800
May 10: U.S. enacts stiff penalties for American citizens serving voluntarily on
slavers trading between two foreign countries.
1804
January 1: The Republic of Haiti is proclaimed. The hemispere's second Republic is
declared on January 1, 1804 by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Haiti, or Ayiti in
Creole, is the name given to the land by the former Taino-Arawak peoples, meaning
"mountainous country."
1807
British Parliament bans the Atlantic slave trade.
Great Britain converts Sierra Leone into a crown colony.
1807
U.S. passes legislation banning slave trade, to take effect 1808.
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
1810
British negotiate an agreement with Portugal calling for gradual abolition of slave
trade in the South Atlantic.
1815
At the Congress of Vienna, the British pressure Spain, Portugal, France and the
Netherlands to agree to abolish the slave trade (though Spain and Portugal are
permitted a few years of continued slaving to replenish labor supplies).
1817
September 23: Great Britain and Spain sign a treaty prohibiting the slave trade:
Spain agrees to end the slave trade north of the equator immediately, and south of
the equator in 1820. British naval vessels are given right to search suspected
slavers. Still, loopholes in the treaty undercut its goals. Slave trade flows strongly,
1815-1830. Slave economies of Cuba and Brazil expand rapidly.
In the Le Louis case, British courts establish the principal that British naval vessels
cannot search foreign vessels suspected of slaving unless permitted by their
respective countries -- a ruling that hampers British efforts to suppress the slave
trade.
1819
U.S. and Spain renew commercial agreements in the Adams-Onis Treaty.
U.S. Congress passes legislation stiffening provisions against American participation
in the slave trade.
Britain stations a naval squadron on the West African coast to patrol against illegal
slavers.
1820
May 15: U.S. law makes slave trading piracy, punishable by the death penalty.
The U.S. Navy dispatches four vessels to patrol the coast of West Africa for slavers.
This initial campaign lasts only four years before the Americans recall the cruisers
and break off cooperation with the British.
1824
Great Britain and the U.S. negotiate a treaty recognizing the slave trade as piracy
and establishing procedures for joint suppression. But the Senate undercuts the
treaty's force in a series of amendments, and the British refuse to sign.
1825
The Antelope case: A U.S. Revenue Cutter seizes a slave ship, the Antelope, sailing
under a Venezuelan flag with a cargo of 281 Africans. The U.S. Supreme Court hears
the case and issues a unanimous opinion declaring the slave trade to be a violation
of natural law, meaning it can be upheld only by positive law.
But the ruling sets only some of the Africans free, holding that the U.S. could not
prescribe law for other nations and noting that the slave trade was legal as far as
Spain, Portugal, Venezuela were concerned. So the vessel is restored to its owners,
along with those Africans designated by the court as Spanish property (numbering
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
39).
1831
A large-scale slave revolt breaks out in Jamaica -- brutally repressed.
1833
Great Britain passes the Abolition of Slavery Act, providing for emancipation in the
British West Indies -- set to take effect August 1834. (Following emancipation, a 6
year period of apprenticeship is permitted.)
1835
June 28: The Anglo-Spanish agreement on the slave trade is renewed, and
enforcement is tightened. British cruisers are authorized to arrest suspected Spanish
slavers and bring them before mixed commissions established at Sierra Leone and
Havana. Vessels carrying specified equipment articles (extra mess gear, lumber,
foodstuffs) are declared prima-facie to be slavers.
1837
Britain invites the U.S. and France to create an international patrol to interdict
slaving. The U.S. declines to participate.
1838
In the British West Indies, most colonial assemblies have introduced legislation
dismantling apprenticeships. Laws against vagrancy and squatting attempt to keep
the social and labor system of the plantation economy intact, with varying results.
1839
January: Nicholas Trist, U.S. Consul in Havana, recommends that the administration
dispatch a naval squadron to West Africa to patrol for slavers, warning that the
British would police American vessels if the U.S. did not.
June 12: The British navy brig Buzzard escorts two American slavers, the brig Eagle
and the schooner Clara, to New York City to be tried as pirates. Two more arrive
several weeks later, and another pair later that Fall.
The Amistad is seized off Long Island and taken to New London.
(Fall) U.S. federal officers arrest several vessel owners in Baltimore implicated by the
British as slave traders. Several schooners being built for the trade are seized as
well.
Turner's The Slave Ship (also known as Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and
Dying -- Typhoon coming on) goes on display at the Royal Academy in London.
1841
Nicholas Trist is dismissed as U.S. Consul in Havana, amid allegations he connived
at, or at any rate took no effort to suppress, frequent illegal sales of U.S. vessels to
Spanish slave traders.
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
Triangular Trade
The early days of the American economy were filled with trade routes stretching
across the Atlantic in seemingly all directions. As with trade between European
countries, the goods coming into and out of America tended to be part of a pattern.
The money paid for one set of goods would be used to pay for another set of goods,
and so on. Also at this time, goods were traded for each other, in a barter system.
In early American settlement, goods came from two main sources: England and
Africa. This came to be known as Triangular Trade.
A typical shipment of goods from Great Britain would consist of any or all of beads,
cloth, hardware, rum, salt, or weapons. The shipment would go to Africa, where the
goods would be traded for people who were enslaved.
A ship leaving Africa for America would contain hundreds of enslaved people, tightly
packed in horrific conditions for the journey to their new "home."
Once in America, the ship would unload the slaves and take on any or all of
molasses, rum, sugar, or tobacco and then head to Great Britain, completing the
Triangle. (It should be said here that not all ships made this giant triangular trip.
Many ships did no more than sail back and forth from America to Africa and vice
versa or from England to Africa and vice versa. The description of the Triangular
Trade deals more with the goods as a whole.)
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
Some of the ships coming to America sailed straight to ports along the Eastern
Seaboard, although some stopped in the Caribbean or Brazil, where large slave
plantations were.
The number of Africans shipped as slaves to America has been conservatively estimated
at 10 million. That number doesn't include the thousands who died along the way. Some
estimates have concluded that 15 to 25 of every 100 Africans died on those voyages. The
practice of slavery had a history of hundreds of years. It was made illegal in America in
1807, although it continued in small part for many years after that.
Triangular Trade Route – The Slave Trade
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
The Middle Passage
c.1600 – 1800
For weeks, months, sometimes as long as a year, they waited in the dungeons of the slave
factories scattered along Africa's western coast. They had already made the long,
difficult journey from Africa's interior -- but just barely. Out of the roughly 20 million
who were taken from their homes and sold into slavery, half didn't complete the journey
to the African coast, most of those dying along the way.
And the worst was yet to come.
The captives were about to embark on the infamous Middle Passage, so called because it
was the middle leg of a three-part voyage -- a voyage that began and ended in Europe.
The first leg of the voyage carried a cargo that often included iron, cloth, brandy,
firearms, and gunpowder. Upon landing on Africa's "slave coast," the cargo was
exchanged for Africans. Fully loaded with its human cargo, the ship set sail for the
Americas, where the slaves were exchanged for sugar, tobacco, or some other product.
The final leg brought the ship back to Europe.
The African slave boarding the ship had no idea what lay ahead.
Africans who had made the Middle Passage to the plantations of the New World did not
return to their homeland to tell what happened to those people who suddenly disappeared.
Sometimes the captured Africans were told by the white men on the ships that they were
to work in the fields. But this was difficult to believe, since, from the African's
experience, tending crops took so little time and didn't require many hands. So what were
they to believe? More than a few thought that the Europeans were cannibals. Olaudah
Equiano, an African captured as a boy who later wrote an autobiography, recalled . . .
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper
boiling, and a mulititude of black people of every description chained together,
every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer
doubted of my fate and quite overpowered with horrow and anguish, I fell
motionless on the deck and fainted. . . . I asked if we were not to be eaten by those
white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair?"
The slaves were branded with hot irons and restrained with shackles. Their "living
quarters" was often a deck within the ship that had less than five feet of headroom -- and
throughout a large portion of the deck, sleeping shelves cut this limited amount of
headroom in half.4 Lack of standing headroom was the least of the slaves' problems,
though. With 300 to 400 people packed in a tiny area5 -- an area with little ventilation
and, in some cases, not even enough space to place buckets for human waste -- disease
was prevalent. According to Equiano, "The closeness of the place, and the heat of the
climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely
room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that
the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought
on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died."
Faced with the nightmarish conditions of the voyage and the
unknown future that lay beyond, many Africans preferred to die. But even the choice of
suicide was taken away from these persons. From the captain's point of view, his human
cargo was extremely valuable and had to be kept alive and, if possible, uninjured. A slave
who tried to starve him or herself was tortured. If torture didn't work, the slave was force
fed with the help of a contraption called a speculum orum, which held the mouth open.
Despite the captain's desire to keep as many slaves as possible alive, Middle Passage
mortality rates were high. Although it's difficult to determine how many Africans died en
route to the new world, it is now believed that between ten and twenty percent of those
transported lost their lives.
Culture
Name:___________________________________ Date:____________ Period:______
Go to http://guerdat.wikispaces.com/USHER to link to this web quest. You will find the
link under Class Assignments.
Main article: African-American culture
African-American culture is an amalgam of influences, the most persistent of which has
been the cultural imprint of Africa. The first slaves to arrive in America brought African
languages, music, religious practices, foods and foodways, value systems and other
cultural traditions with them. Over time, these aspects of African culture have blended
with other influences to form a unique culture.
African-American music is one of the most pervasive African-American cultural
influences in the United States today. Hip Hop, Rock, R&B, funk, and other
contemporary American musical forms evolved from blues, jazz, and gospel music,
which themselves evolved from the spirituals sung by slaves. The music of slaves has its
roots in the call and response of West African music. African-American Vernacular
English (AAVE) is a dialect of English commonly spoken by African Americans.
Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by
their experiences as African Americans. Famous examples include Langston Hughes,
James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and
Maya Angelou.
Colonial Culture
The blending of West African cultural traditions with European culture became the basis
of a new African American culture. Some Sfrican words found their way into the English
language, as did certain farming methods, foods, folk literature, and folk art. African
building traditions of multiple small dwellings, front porches, and decorative iron work
influenced southern colonial architecture. Some African musical styles and instruments,
such as the banjo, continued to be incorporated into religious music and work songs.
African musical traditionsl later influenced many forms of American music.