The “Unthinking
Decision”: Slavery
► How
did economic, geographic, and social factors
encourage the growth of slavery as an important
part of the economy of the southern colonies
between 1607 and 1775? (01)
► Compare the ways in which 3 of the following
reflected tensions in colonial society:
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), Pueblo Revolt (1680),
Salem witchcraft trials (1692), Stono Rebellion
(1739) (03B)
► Analyze the origins and development of slavery in
Britain’s North American colonies in the period
1607 to 1776. (11)
I. Introduction of Slavery into the
Americas
► How
did slavery get
introduced in British North
America when England had
no history of it?
A. Early Slavers
► 1450: Portuguese reach subSaharan Africa + establish
trading posts for slave trade
to Portugal and Atlantic
islands
► By
1502 Spanish bringing slaves to New World to
supplement Indian slavery
 1600: 5,000/year
1700: 30,000/yr
 1750: 75,000/yr
► 1502-19th C: approx. 10 million Africans carried
out
 Vast majority to the Caribbean and South America
► Africans
capture other Africans, take to coast, sold
to Euro traders Middle Passage
B. Middle Passage
► 4-6
weeks
► Poorly fed
► 1 in 7 or 1 in 4
died
► Depression:
suicide,
starvation
C. Varieties of Slavery
► Despite
horrors of Middle Passage, earliest
form of Spanish slavery relatively mild:




Allowed to marry
Work on side
Ability to buy self and family
No sharp color line
►Complex
system of 15 gradations from blanco (pure
European) to negro (pure African) and indio (pure
Indian): mulatto (7), mestizo (5)
► Harshest
system was
Portuguese in Brazil
(1550)
 Sugar plantations
► Others
followed
Portuguese model to
grow rice, cotton,
coffee, sugar, and
tobacco
► Economically cheaper
to work to death and
buy another than to
maintain
II. The “Unthinking Decision” in
Virginia to 1705
► English
did not adopt full scale slavery
overnight
► 3 periods:
 1619-1640: black status poorly defined
 1640-1660: spotty evidence of enslavement
 1660-1705: gradual hardening in statutes
A. 1619-1640: Time of Possibility
► 1619:
1st blacks (20) arrive in
Jamestown from Dutch ship
 Ironically days after 1st meeting of 1st
representative body in America
(House of Burgesses)
 1650: 300 blacks/15,000 VA
► Some
sold to planters (so were
indentures), some severely
mistreated (like indentures), some
enslaved but some set free
Anthony Johnson
► Free
black, property + slave holder, master
of a few white servants
► Owned over 250 acres (enormous for
former servant)
► Best
guess of black status: black indentured
servants served longer terms than whites
B. 1640-1660: A Closing Door
► 1640:
1st clear legal indication of slavery
(life term, biological status passed from
mother)
► 3 indentured servants (Dutch, Scot, African)
run away together:
 All punished: white have 4 years added to
indenture, African indentured for life
 But also shows that lower class did not see
sharp divisions amongst each other
► Increasing
evidence of slavery:
► 1) 1653: 10 yr old girl sold into servitude for
life and all descendants owned by master
► 2) Black male servants cost more than white
 Even larger differential black female and white
female
C. 1660-1705: Crystallization
►
►
Formal laws recognize
nature of black slavery
1669: whites can be
punished by extending
service but what about
blacks? legal to kill a
slave
 Beating necessary to keep
control
 No one would intentionally
destroy their own property
 Therefore, any death of a
slave must be an “accident”
D. Why Enslave Africans?
1) Need labor to work land, makes more economic
sense to have servants for life (once mortality
rates fell)
2) Didn’t use whites because of racism: but chicken
or egg?
 Limited use of Indians: easier to run away and hide,
didn’t survive well
 Winthrop Jordan, White over Black (laws come after
behavior; racism existed for long time)
 Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
(slavery created need for racism to control poor whites)
► Racism
produced initial rationale, but
slavery then degraded blacks and reinforced
notion of difference and inferiority
► Virginians (like NE) initially discriminated
because of religion/culture problem of
conversion loophole racial/biological
status
► Association of black skin and status of slave
grows stronger, laws reinforce divisions
E. Virginia Slave Code, 1705
► But
blacks and whites (esp. poorer) work
together/run away together and are having sex
revulsion isn’t inherent laws against interracial
sex and marriage (miscegenation)
► Blacks banned from: testifying, politics, commerce,
travel, group gathering, land ownership
 Anthony Johnson’s lands in VA were confiscated in 1670
because "he was a Negro and by consequence an alien"
► Restraints
on masters’ actions lifted
F. Atlantic Creoles
► Besides
economic motivation, an important
change was also demographic:
► Early slaves were taken first to the
Caribbean where they learned English
culture and language (Atlantic creole) and
then re-exported to VA seen as less diff.
► As VA’s plantations grew, slave ships came
directly from Africa no cultural
assimilation, seen as more different
III. From Black Pioneers to Full
Enslavement in South Carolina
A. Moment of Opportunity
► Settled 1670s by Barbados Englishmen; bring
slaves w/them (slaves 25-35% from beginning)
► Initially raised cattle: slaves had skills from Africa
► Transition to rice: Africans have skill, whites do
not reliance on African skills, methods, rituals
Black slaves become majority around 1708
► West Africans also resistant to yellow fever and
malaria (killing off whites)
B. Slave Conditions in SC
► 1670-1708:
“black pioneers”: despite racial
distinctions, white + black worked side-by-side,
faced similar conditions great deal racial equality
 Great deal interracial sex, manumission
► Early
generation skilled: rice, cattle, coopers,
boatmen, frontier warfare: they were needed and
skills encouraged
► Task system: slaves allowed to set own pace and
techniques, largely autonomous
 Doomed by rising white anxiety
C. Fear of the (Black) Man
► 1)
Black majority
► 2) Preservation of African traditions (gullah)
greater autonomy and self-assertion
► White backlash: 1) systematic limitation black
economic opportunities + deskilling
► 2) physical degradation
► 3) Stop interracial sex (fantasize black rape as fear
of black revolt)
► 4) new forms of control: slave patrols, whips,
overseers, chain gangs
D. Negro Act of 1740
► Irony:
harder whites clamped down (SC, VA,
NY) more resistance: slow downs, talking back,
conspiracies, uprisings
► Stono Rebellion, 1739: Spanish in Florida offer
freedom to slaves who flee hundreds of slaves
apparently spontaneously leave plantations and
work way South
►  Negro Act of 1740: even more severely
curtailed liberties than VA’s 1705: no literacy, no
meetings, no growing own food
► Gap indentures and slaves growing
IV. Stabilization of Southern Society
► Increasing
gap rich and poor: took $ to buy slaves
to make $
► Increasing landlessness: those who did well early
took the best land (on rivers) and pushed the poor
into the interior Bacon’s Rebellion
► Irony: instability Whites come together to keep
blacks down: race trumps class stability of
power structure
 Poor whites act to maintain white supremacy, which
serves the interests of rich whites to the economic
detriment of poor whites
 Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom