This presentation provides a general history of American slavery (with greater emphasis on its development than on its antebellum incarnation) to give students some understanding of the institution. It is the fourth in a series of presentations designed for college students in a seminar on The Civil War and Reconstruction. Students will spend more time engaging antebellum slavery (the slavery that is more familiar to most Americans) in class.

1. The Civil War & Reconstruction

2.  Get a working definition of slavery as well as a larger, global
history of the institution.
 Develop a very general understanding of slavery’s historical
trajectory and nature in the U.S.
 Although more information on slavery and its role in the Civil
War is provided in other presentations, students who want
more detailed information should take the American Slavery
seminar.
 Students will be reading Frederick Douglass’s A Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass to develop a stronger
understanding of antebellum slavery than they will get
from this presentation.
 In the end, students should have an understanding of
slavery as an institution so that they can understand its
relation to the Civil War and Reconstruction.

3. Slavery was essential to the making of the United
States. The forced labor of at least 12 generations of
black people created substantial wealth for men
and women of the slaveholding class—the
slaveholders and the doctors, traders, lawyers,
bankers, farmers, law enforcement officers,
politicians, judges, insurance agents, saloon
owners, sailors, and merchants—who all
contributed to and benefited from slavery. This
wealth translated into significant political power.

4. The slave trade, the strength—manpower to build
and cultivate, as well as, the products produced by
African slaves—cotton, tobacco, rice, grain, indigo,
and sugar—provided the basis for the nation’s
wealth, underwriting the industrial revolution,
and allowing the U.S. to project its power onto the
rest of the world.

5.  When many Americans think of slavery they imagine:
 Slavery as benign, as in it didn’t harm enslaved people.
 Fatherly and motherly slaveholders.
 Happy, ignorant, dependent slaves.
 Cotton picking as the only type of work that enslaved
people performed.
 For some, extreme physical violence—whipping,
multination, and rape—and psychological violence—
social death, separation of families, etc.
 Some confuse African slavery in British Colonial North
America (the precursor to the USA) with indentured
servitude or present day types of oppression.
 This is incorrect.

6.  Most Americans develop their (mis)understandings of
slavery from popular culture or public history projects:
 Novels—Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gone with the Wind
 Films—“Gone with the Wind,” “Roots,” “Glory,” and “The
Patriot”
 Documentaries—“Africans in America” and “Slavery and
the Making of America”
 Library & Museum Exhibits, National Parks Service
sites, and Historical Reenactments.
 This insight gained from popular culture sources isn’t
wrong, per se. However, a lot of it is incorrect or has
been disproven by researchers.

7. What did it entail in British Colonial North America (BCNA),
or what became the United States?

8. Orlando Patterson, “Slavery and Social Death,” in Goodheart
ed., Slavery in American Society, 3-4.

9.  Chattel slavery, as it developed in BCNA, involved the
outright ownership of another human being, similar to
owning land, goods, etc. for the duration of their life and
that of their children.
 The institution created a “social death” for those who are
enslaved. Social death, as Patterson shows, involves not
only a separation from one’s ancestral birthplace but also
the stripping of basic human rights and social and legal
protections enjoyed by everyone else.
 These two dimensions of chattel slavery are what separate
it from other forms of domination, oppression, or unfree
labor.

10.  To enslave Africans and African Americans, as Patterson, defines
it, Europeans and European Americans had to assert 3 types of
power on a routine basis:
 Social
 Violence or the threat of violence (threat of rape, disfigurement, the
lash, sale, or death to extort compliance);
 Psychological
 Convince someone to accept their subjugated position (often to avoid
violence or death)
 Natal alienation—cast enslaved people out of normal human order &
its protections (life, liberty, family). Isolate them socially, refuse to
acknowledge social roles, deny them the right to perform social roles &
enjoy basic human protections); and
 Cultural
 Establish a larger power system (law and ideology) that forces
compliance and protects the interests of the master.
 Once they have been dishonored, enslaved people have no value
to society, except in relation to the master class.

11.  These 3 assertions of power created “dishonored” and
“socially dead” people.
 In BCNA, this was done primarily to people of African
descent (some Native Americans were similarly
enslaved but English indentured servants were not), it
was lifelong, and hereditary.
 This treatment of slaves emerged in BCNA over time
and only after colonists experimented with other types
of unfree labor.

12.  Most cultures over the span of human history had
rulers and ruling classes who accepted that some
members of their society might be deemed inferior
and subjected to enslavement or oppression.
Source for the next 7 slides: Paul
Finkelman, ed. Defending Slavery

13.  Legitimacy rested on ideas of warfare.
 Enemies captured in battle could be killed or considered
to be “socially” or “legally” “dead” and thereby enslaved.
 They could be freed once rulers changed or if their side
won a battle.
 Punishment for criminal behavior.
 Punishment for those who fell into debt (might sell
self or a loved one to relieve economic burden or pay
off a debt).
 Any person could find themselves enslaved.

14.  Prisoners of war
 Debtors
 Before the 14th century (aka 1500s) slavery was only
marginally based on race or ethnicity.
 Some enslaved people were from another ethnic group:
Greeks enslaved Persians, Romans enslaved
Carthagenians, etc. and vice versa.
 Others were from the same national group: Chinese
slaves in China, African slaves in different and similar
African clans.

15.  Manumission easier.
 Freed slaves integrated back into society.
 Slavery was never confined to one racial or one ethnic
group.
 In earlier times, any person could be enslaved.
However, in what became the U.S., only Africans and
their descendants could be enslaved for life and have
their children enslaved.
 In the U.S., only blacks could be enslaved for life and
whites, no matter their religion, ethnicity, class, or
national origin could be enslaved.

16.  Enslaved people were not identified by race so there
was no way to identify them by sight.
 Enslaved people (esp women and children) often
integrated into the family of their owners.
 “Socially and legally dead” dimensions meant that in
some places, they enjoyed few legal protections and
could be killed while being punished, with impunity.
 In other places, including some parts of the U.S., they
had a “right to life” and masters could be punished for
killing them.

17.  Old Testament law had rules for the enslavement of
Hebrews and non-Hebrews.
 Rise of Christianity and Islam created a religious rational
for slavery: that the slave was a non-believer, a pagan, or an
infidel and was not protected by the law of God, enjoyed no
protections and could be enslaved.
 According to Paul Finkelman, “so many Slavic people from
eastern Europe were enslaved that the term slave evolved
from the word Slav.”
 Spread of Christianity across Europe limited slavery there
but Europeans purchased slaves and enslaved prisoners of
war.

18.  In the Americas, many Anglo-American masters
believed that spreading the gospel to their slaves
would force them to manumit them so many opposed
the teaching and converting of their slaves.
 Colonial legislatures passed laws that prohibited
masters from freeing slaves on the basis of their
conversion to Christianity.
 Over time, Europeans and European Americans used
Christianity to defend slavery.
 They argued that slavery and Christianity “civilize”
Africans and their descendants.

19. Russian Serfdom American Slavery
 People are tied to the land  People treated as chattel
 Lived on ancestral land  Kidnapped & transported
 Families remained intact from land
 The same race as masters  Families ripped apart
or vassals  Social death
 Masters rarely interfered in  Different race from master
lives of serfs  A lot of master
 Enjoyed more social interference
autonomy  Enjoyed less autonomy
 Cultural practices remain  Cultural practices severed
intact or diluted

20.  Slavery was not a permanent position in other places,
as it became in the Americas.
 Slavery was not hereditary in other places—it was not
inherited or passed down to subsequent generations,
as it became in the Americas.
 Slavery was not based upon race, as it became in the
Americas.

21.  The Trade in Africans across the Atlantic system lasted
from the mid 1440s until slavery ended in the Western
Hemisphere when Brazil abolished slavery in 1888. See
the chronology in Goodheart.
 The system took on what scholars have called a
triangular (and sometimes rectangular character).

23.  Began w/ the Portuguese & Spanish in 1400s.
 It was expanded by the Dutch, English, & French in
the 1600s and 1700s.
 “Americans” aka English settlers in BCNA, become
active in the late 1700s-early 1800s.
 The trade ends in the late 1800s, as slavery ends in the
Americas.

25.  Just as historians, statisticians, and economists have
gone from guessing about the slave trade, it is
important for students of slavery to use these research
findings to educate themselves about some general
issues regarding the slave trade. These include:
 How many Africans were enslaved?
 Where did they come from?
 Where did they go?
 How many came to the U.S.?

27.  Scholars have gone from guessing or assuming they
know how many Africans were taken from the African
continent toward exploring the shipping logs,
insurance claims, and other historical records on both
sides of the Atlantic.
 Their research has revealed some general estimates of
9-14 million taken. However, this figure does not
include the people who died either while they were
being captured or marched to the coast nor those who
were killed in the wars activated by the slave trade.
 See the Transatlantic Slave Trade Voyage Database .

28.  Slavery, as Orlando Patterson, Ira Berlin, Peter
Kolchin, Eugene Genovese, and others note, is a very
old institution. It existed in the ancient world and in
different parts of the pre-modern and modern world.
Slavery is illegal today in many places throughout the
world. So, where the institution still exists (sexual
trafficking, exploitation of migrant workers, and in
Mauritania), it operates differently (covertly) than it
did when it was legal.

29.  Slavery existed on the African continent long before
the Europeans arrived and it continued after
Europeans left.
 Africans regularly traded in slaves either for their own
personal servants or selling people who were shipped
north to the Mediterranean region.
 However, it is important to recognize that Africans
were no more homogenous than Asians, Europeans, or
even Americans (North, Central, and Southern) are
today.

30.  Africa is the 2nd largest continent on the globe. Both the
continent and its people are very diverse. Moreover,
Africans did not think of themselves as “Africans;” they saw
themselves by their ethnic group—Ibo, Asante, etc. and
their family clan.
 Indeed, people from Africa today often identify themselves by
nation—Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and then by ethnic group.
 So, when “Africans” traded in slaves, they often sold into
bondage people from other ethnic groups or people who
were their competitors or enemies.
 Africans rarely sold into slavery people from their own
ethnic group or family clan.

32.  These figures represent the number of people taken.
 15th century (1400s) – roughly 50,000 “Africans”
 16th century (1500s) – roughly 300,000 “Africans”
 17th century (1600s) – roughly 1.5 million “Africans”
 18th century (1700s) – roughly 5.8 million “Africans”
 19th century (1800s) - 2.4 million “Africans” (most
smuggled illegally after international sanctions
imposed on the trade)

33.  Taken from West African Coastal Area
 During 1400s-1500s, 90% from region
 1600s, down to 55% from region as other parts of the
continent are tapped as sources for slaves
 1700s, down to 37% from region
 1800s, up to 48% from region
 Taken from the Bights of Benin
 1600s-1800s roughly 35% from this region
 1900s, 25% from region
 Taken from Southeastern Africa
 Rose from 1% in the 1600s to 15% by the 1800s

34.  40% - Coasts of West Central Africa
 modern day Angola, Congo, Gabon
 35% - Bights of Benin and Biafra
 modern day Cameroon & Nigeria
 10% - Gold Coast
 modern day Ghana
 5% - Windward Coast
 modern day Ivory Coast & Sierra Leone
 5% - Senegambia
 Gambia, Guinea, & Senegal
 5% - Southeastern Africa
 Mozambique & Tanzania

36.  40% (4 mil) to Portuguese colony of Brazil;
 20% (2 mil) to British colonies in the Caribbean
(Jamaica, Barbados);
 17.5% (1.75 mil) to Spanish colonies on the mainland
and in the Caribbean (Santo Domingo);
 13.5 % (or 1.35 mil) to French colonies in Caribbean
(Saint-Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe);
 2.5 % (or 250,000) to Danish and Dutch Caribbean
(Virgin Islands, St. Maarten, Aruba); and
 6.5% (or 650,000) to Colonial North America --
including British, French, Dutch, and Spanish areas

38. Destination Total Slave Imports
British North America 500,000
Spanish America 2,500,000
British Caribbean 2,000,000
French Caribbean 1,600,000
Dutch Caribbean 500,000
Danish Caribbean 28,000
Brazil 4,000,000
Old World (Europe) 200,000
Source: Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade, 804

39.  Was one part of larger transatlantic system in which
 Ships left Europe for Africa with European
manufactured goods.
 Ships left Africa with slaves and African goods and
minerals.
 Ships left Americas with goods produced.
 However, some scholars have argued the Middle
Passage should also include the capture, trek to the
coast, and the weeks & months spent waiting in the
holding pens for ships to arrive and fill up.

40. Middle Passage
Phrase slave ship
sailors used to
describe the central
leg of their journal
from Europe to
Africa to America.

41.  Kidnapping or Prisoner of War
 Trek to coast in coffles
 Sold to slave traders in coastal areas
 Holding pens (“factories”) on the coast until enough to
fill ships
 Boarding ships
 Arrival in the Americas
 Dispersal to homes, farms, plantations, cities,
businesses, factories

42. Slave Ship
The length of the
journey varied by
weather (hurricanes
or tropical storms),
maritime war, and
point of origin and
destination.

43.  Conditions varied widely per supply & demand, weather,
and the timing of the trade.
 Mortality rates
 15-20% in early trade—because of a lack of systematized
method for transporting enslaved people without losing
many of them to revolt, warfare, storms, illness, or suicide.
 5-10% in later trade—because of better treatment to ensure
more people survived.
 Crew’s treatment—varied by timing of the trade and the
European powers doing the transporting.
 Violence remained part of the process but some people tried
to be more humane than others.
 Resistance and rebellion of enslaved people occurred
frequently while at sea.

44.  The drawing on the next slide was a piece of what
some scholars call a piece of anti-slave trade
propaganda. The drawing is of the slave ship The
Brooks as it was envisioned fully loaded or “tightly
packed” with slaves.
 Though this image did become used as propaganda, it
accurately depicts some but not all slave ships. The
extent to which ships would be packed to the limit
would depend on the slavers, the cost of slaves, the
demands of the Crown, insurance companies, etc.

46.  In the earliest parts of the trade, many enslaved people who
came to BCNA first landed in the Caribbean. This is
because slaveholding took off in the other parts of the
Americas before it took off in BCNA. Colonists in BCNA
first got slaves from the Caribbean (they were “seasoned” or
already trained as slaves and spoke European language).
 Beginning in the late 1600s, Americans got enslaved people
directly from the African continent. This continued until
the U.S. ban on the slave trade went into effect in 1808.
 The illegal importation of slaves continued, resulting in
tens of thousands of enslaved Africans being smuggled into
the U.S.

47.  Scholarly debate:
 Moral reasons
 In the late 1700s, some Englishmen became very concerned about
the horrid conditions of the slave trade and this led them and their
North American counterparts to push for its abolition.
 The image on the next side depicts a case involving the killing of an
enslaved African woman that some British activists used to argue
for abolishing the slave trade (but not slavery).
 Economic reasons
 The British were shifting towards industrial production and did not
need the slave trade. They were also focusing more on colonization.
 With a thriving American born slave population and with some
slave societies and societies with slaves shifting away from
plantation slavery and, in the North, from slavery all together, there
is less of a need for a booming slave trade.

49.  The British banned the slave trade in 1807 and the
Americans banned it in 1808.
 More than 2 million smuggled across the Atlantic to the
Americas in the 1800s.
 Of this, 54,000 come to the U.S. from slavers with
Northeastern U.S. ties.
 The last documented slave ship to arrive in the U.S. was
The Clothide, which landed in 1859 with 10 enslaved
Africans from modern day Benin.
 The legal and Illegal trade in Africans continued as long as
slavery existed.
 Slavery ended: U.S.-1865, Puerto Rico-1873, Cuba-1886, &
Brazil-1888.

51. Source: Fogel and Engerman’sTime on the Cross, quoted in Darlene Clark
Hine, et al eds., African American Odyssey, 69.

52. Number of Enslaved people (thousands)
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
1701-1710 1711-1720 1721-730 1731-1740 1741-1750 1751-17601761-1770 1771-1775
Source: R.C Simmons, The American Colonies

53.  Whereas there was a precedent for slavery as a type of
unfree labor during the settlement of British Colonial
North America, the emergence of African chattel slavery
here was not predestined.
 Unfree labor existed throughout the world.
 Unfree labor included indentured servitude and slavery
(however, the two are different and were treated and
understood as different by people who lived in colonial
North America).
 Women, men, and children were included in the class of
unfree laborers across the world. The systems in which they
were denied freedom included slavery, serfdom, and
indentured servitude.

54. Source: Claiborne Carson, et al eds., African American Lives, 60.

55. Source: Claiborne Carson, et al eds., African American Lives, 81.

56.  Unfree labor developed in BCNA in part because
colonists in North America followed the quest for
wealth and prosperity of their counterparts in the
Caribbean and South America.
 Unfree labor was needed to clear land, serve
households.
 Even more unfree labor was needed to cultivate cash
crops (those for which there was a great demand and
those that produced high wealthy yields) that included
tobacco, indigo, rice, sugar and later on—cotton.

57.  High demand for cheap and unfree labor to build the
colonies and create wealth through cultivation of cash
crops—namely tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, etc.
 British gain control of the transatlantic slave trade—
cost of slaves decreases and more colonists can
purchase them.
 Decline in the number of English women and men
who were willing to sell themselves into servitude—
increases the demand for slaves.

58.  Though the number of available English indentured
servants declines (for a variety of reasons—war, horrible
conditions in North America, greater reliance on African
slavery throughout the Americas), the demand for unfree
labor is insatiable.
 Americans cannot enslave English men and women for life
because of English law.
 Native Americans are enslaved in some areas but their
deaths from disease and war as well as their ability to wage
war against colonists makes them less likely to be enslaved
in all but a few places.
 Africans are already being enslaved in large numbers in
Africa, the Caribbean, and in South America. This process
began in the early 1500s, long before settlement in BCNA.

59.  Though indentured servitude and slavery are two types
of unfree labor, they were different in BCNA and
should be treated and understood as such.
 Indentured servitude
 A fixed term of (mostly) voluntary service, some
rights, promised wages and land on end of contract, not
based on race, not passed on to children.
 Slavery
 Lifelong involuntary service, severely constrained
rights, no promised wages, status passed on through
mothers, based on African heritage.

60.  Wealthy colonists in BCNA originally had a need for cheap
and unfree labor.
 They preferred indentured servants from England but
increasingly they shifted toward legalized
African, lifelong, hereditary chattel slavery.
 The historian Peter Wood has called this shift a “terrible
transformation” and others have called it the “downward
spiral.”
 This shift was very slow and as Berlin, Fogel, and Kolchin
note, it took more than a century for this to occur.
Indeed, as Berlin notes, the first black Atlantic Creoles are
recorded as being in Florida as early as the early 1500s.
However, the shift toward full African chattel slavery
doesn’t occur until the late 1600s.

61. Years New Mid- South British Total % of
England Atlantic West African
Indies Slaves in
BWI
1710 2,600 6,200 29,000 148,000 185,000 79.6%
1730 6,100 11,700 79,200 221,000 318,000 69.5%
1750 11,000 20,700 210,400 295,000 537,100 55.5%
1770 15,400 34,900 406,800 434,000 891,100 48.7%
Source: Claiborne Carson, et al eds., African American Lives, 78.

62. Source: Claiborne Carson, et al eds., African
American Lives, 91.

63.  Before that shift occurred, wealthy (and soon to be
wealthy) colonists relied on unfree labor—primarily
indentured servants and some slaves—and a number
of colonists also worked themselves.
 Slavery existed during this period, roughly from the
1500s through the 1690s, but it was only a small part of
the economy, which is why Berlin describes early
colonial society as the “charter generations.”
 During this period, most colonies are what Berlin calls
“societies with slaves” or what the historian Philip
Morgan calls “infant slave societies.”

64.  Slavery was only a part of the economy, not the driving
force;
 Unfree labor force was mixed—black, white, and Native
American—and consisted of indentured servants&slaves;
 Slaves of African descent were a mix of “seasoned” slaves
from the Caribbean or “saltwater” slaves directly from the
African continent;
 Race relations were flexible—blacks, whites, and Native
Americans co-exist, work alongside each other, fraternize
socially, sexually, politically, legally, etc.;
 Acculturation or exchange of cultural practices, beliefs, and
identities re: race, religion, language, culture very common.

65.  Paths to freedom DID exist and were easily negotiated—
unfree laborers, regardless of their racial
background, weren’t subjected to unfree status for life; and
 Unfree laborers, again irrespective of their racial
status, could
 Gain their freedom and then
 Become valued members of society,
 Usecourts,
 Buy land,
 Serve in the military,
 Buy slaves,
 Participate in social and political system
 This starts to change by the mid 1600s.

66. Source: James Ciment, ed., Atlas
of African- American History, 37
1607 Jamestown founded
1617 Tobacco planted
1619 First Ship of “Atlantic Creoles” arrives in the colony
1623 William Tucker, born in Jamestown, becomes the first African American
child born in the English colonies
1639 Virginia legislature enacts a law that authorizes all adult males to carry
arms, except black males, (signaling the beginnings of racial distinction
in law)
1642 Virginia passes fugitive slave law to penalize those who aid runaways
1649 Virginia’s black population reaches 300
1657 Virginia law establishes a colonial militia to hunt runaway slaves
(signaling the increasing importance of African slavery to the colony)
1658 To encourage slave trade, Virginia lowers import duties for merchants
carrying enslaved Africans to the colony
1661 Virginia legislature formally recognizes slavery

67. Year Crime Offender Punishment
1630 Having sex w/a black servant White servant Whipped for “defiling his body by lying
with a Negro”
1640 Conspiracy to escape 4 white servant, 1 White servants are sentenced to extra
black servant service; black servant is whipped,
branded, and shackled for 1 year
1641 Running away 2 white servant, 1 An extra year of service for whites,
black servant lifetime servitude for black man
1661 Running away in the company of White servant 2 extra years of service
enslaved people
1660s Maidservant becomes pregnant White servant 2 extra years of service
1660s Stealing a hog White servant 1,000 pounds of tobacco or 1 extra year
of service
1660s 22 days absent White servant 3 months of extra service and 1 year’s
worth of crop
1669 Disobeying master Black slave Toes cut off
1707 Killing a slave White master No penalty
Source: James Ciment, ed., Atlas of African- American History, 37

68.  Enslavement only happens to people of African
descent.
 Enslavement is lifelong.
 Enslavement is hereditary.
 This is the slavery that Civil War Americans found
themselves living with and fighting over regarding the
expansion into the western territories.
 The following slides provide a survey of antebellum
slavery, which is very different from the earliest part of
colonial slavery.

69.  Slave labor cs, quarries, fisheries, factori
es, naval stores
 Unskilled labor (75%)
 Rural-
 Farm & plantation work—
agriculture, tanneries, saltw
cultivating crop
orks, domestics
 Domestic work in
households, personal  Better male-female balance
servants  North American births
 Skilled labor (25%)  Higher than in Caribbean
 Artisans
(blacksmiths, carpenters, sea  Families & extended kinship
mstresses), sailors, etc. networks
 Rural v. Urban/Industrial  A/Am culture
 Urban-
sawmills, gristmills, domesti

70.  New England & Mid-Atlantic
 Domestics, farm hands, work in trades
 Many enslaved people used in urban settings
(artisans, carpenters, shipping industries, etc.)
 Enslaved people’s quality of life varied by British, French, or
Dutch masters.
 Groups are smaller, community more difficult to achieve
 Nature of work (generally in a home or on a farm) meant that
they lived in isolation from other black people.
 The rise in African arrivals in the early 1700s results in a
 Rise in families and communities.
 A greater sense of Africans’ diverse cultures in American life.

71.  Rural Slavery
 Most of these people worked on plantations & farms that were
self-contained units.
 Their labor can be broken down into:
 House Slaves—cooks, maids, personal
servants, nannies, butlers, drivers
 Field Slaves (75%)—crop cultivation, processing of crops, some
skilled work on plantations as butchers, blacksmiths, carpenters
 Fields slaves’ labor was broken down into:
 Gang style labor—on cotton and sugar plantations where they worked under a
driver and/or overseer
 Task style labor—in areas where they cultivated tobacco and rice. These
enslaved people enjoyed more autonomy, general farm work
 Some of these people were hired out to work for
individuals, businesses, and governments that needed cheap
laborers but who could not afford slaves or did not want to own
slaves.
 These were mostly enslaved men with skills in
carpentry, fieldwork, etc.

72.  Slavery was a highly adaptive institution in that enslaved people
could be put to work in virtually in any vocation. Although
antebellum slavery was generally a rural institution, there was
also
 Urban Slavery (6% of enslaved people worked in antebellum
southern towns)
 There were historically large populations of enslaved people in cities
but they declined over the antebellum period—perception of threat
caused by autonomy, growing abolition movement.
 They worked as servants, artisans, laborers, and shopkeepers.
 They enjoyed more autonomy than their rural counterparts.
 Industrial Slavery
 There were also large numbers of enslaved people employed in
industrial labor. They worked in tobacco factories, quarries and
fisheries; they fell trees; operated sawmills; delivered lumber;
manufactured tar & turpentine; worked in chemical factories.
 These people enjoyed even more autonomy and could be paid in
cash, which might allow them to buy their freedom.

73.  Slavery was always what Ira Berlin called a “negotiated
relationship,” with mutual obligations and duties held by
masters and by the people they enslaved.
 American masters expected to have absolute authority over
the lives of the people but they often had to negotiate to
extract the most amount of labor without endangering
their lives or livelihoods as well as those of their slaves.
 Many enslaved people did not participate in slave revolts
because they knew that they could not overthrow the entire
institution on their own or command boats to return to
Africa.
 Nevertheless, it is important to know that they resisted
bondage in a variety of ways.

74.  Purpose? Immediate relief, safety-valve. This resistance is
also a tool of negotiation to get better treatment.
 Withholding Labor
 Negotiation between masters & slaves
 Creating Families
 Strong, flexible extended kinship networks
 Underscoring slaves’ humanity and resistance of chattel status, of
paternalism, etc.
 Conjure or use herbal medicine or spells to punish master
class.
 “Play ole massa”-pay ignorant to avoid work or punishment.
 Feign illness to avoid work.
 Commit arson or destroy equipment, crops, animals, etc.
 Use paternalist ideology to gain more food, privileges, prevent
the sale of loved ones, etc.

75.  Purpose? Immediate relief, safety-valve.
 Theft
 Of time, money, food, or goods for personal use or to sell on the
slaves’ economy.
 To alleviate hunger and deprivation, to defiantly take back goods,
food, or money that their unpaid labor had created or purchased.
 Running Away—relief, visit kin, seek freedom
 Murder of master, mistress, overseer, masters’ children—
relief from or retaliation for abusive treatment.
 Commit suicide, infanticide, abortion—to escape the horrors
of slavery or to spare loved ones the horrors.
 Everyday resistance is the most common form of resistance
in U.S. because enslaved Americans were outnumbered and
outgunned.

76.  Rebellion—the highest form of resistance.
 Purpose? Throw off the shackles of slavery & use
violence--the weapon of the master class--if necessary
to achieve it.
 Rebellions are rare in BCNA because of the larger
white population, controls of population, resident
masters, militia, bans on arming blacks (in
comparison to the Caribbean).
 The very possibility of them terrified the master class
and all white Americans.

77. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 594

78. Source: James Ciment, ed., Atlas
of African- American History, 65
1663 Enslaved Virginians join white servants in a planned revolt. Plot discovered, black conspirators
beheaded & their heads displayed in village square.
1712 21 enslaved people executed in New York City for their alleged role in an uprising.
1739 50-100 enslaved people at Stono, SC, flee south with stolen arms heading toward Spanish Florida.
They kill whites who interfere, are captured and executed.
1741 31 enslaved people are tried on sketchy evidence for burning down several NYC buildings and
executed.
1741 Enslaved Bostonians caught trying to escape to Florida in a stolen boat.
1800 Enslaved man Gabriel plans an attack on Richmond. Most enslaved people in the region know about
the plan, someone informs authorities, Gabriel and several conspirators are tried and executed.
1811 Enslaved people in Orleans Territory engage in the largest revolt (re: participants). They kill 2 white
men before officials put down the revolt. They late try and execute participants.
1822 Denmark Vesey, a free black man, plots to attack Charleston, SC. When plot is discovered, Vesey and
more than 40 others are executed.
1831 Nat Turner, an enslaved Virginian, leads a group of conspirators to strike at slaveholders in
Southampton County. Turner et al kill more than 60 whites before the rebellion is put down. Whites
retaliate by killing more than 100 blacks.

79. Claiborne Carson, et al eds., African American Lives, 191).

80.  Anne Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade
 Vincent Caretta, Equiano: The African (author discovers new
evidence that forces us to rethink Olaudah Equiano)
 Philip D. Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade (Curtin was one of the first
to attempt a “headcount”)
 Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade
 Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains (study of the campaign to
end the trade)
 Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade
 Marcus Rediker, Slave Ship: A Human History (excellent analysis
of the ships, the slaves, the crews, and captives)
 Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery (great study on the
cultures of African captives)
 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade

81.  Ira Berlin et al eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation; Families &
Freedom; Free at Last: A Documentary History
 David Blight, Race & Reunion & American Oracle;
 W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction;
 Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering & Mothers of Invention;
 Don Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case;
 Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial; Free Soil, Free Labor and Free Men; & Forever Free;
 Gary Gallagher, The Union War & The Confederate War;
 Henry Louis Gates, Lincoln, Race & Slavery;
 Peter Kolchin, American Slavery;
 Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long;
 Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War was Over;
 Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning;
 James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom;
 Allen Ward, The Slaves’ War.

82.  Slave Coffle: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/150
 Abolition of the Slave Trade in England:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/the-transatlantic-
slave-trade-and-the-civil-war/
 Slave Ship Description:
http://www.charactercincinnati.org/faith/qualities/diligence/wilberfor
ce%20and%20friends.htm
 Triangular Trade Map:
http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/section/volA/maps.aspx
 Rice and Indigo Plantation:
http://www.grandstrandmga.com/OldRiceIndigoPlantations2.html
 Transatlantic Slave Trade:
http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/section/volA/maps.aspx
 Interior of Slave Ship:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/images/1inte0131b.jpg

83.  The Sectional Crises
 Why A Lincoln Presidency Meant War
 Confederate Ascendancy