Slavery
The first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619. Over the next two centuries, it is estimated that around 600,000 enslaved people were transported by ship to America.
Keywords
- beating (n.)
- humiliation (n.)
- abolish (v.)
- emancipation (n.)
- citizenship (n.)
Owned by Others
Enslaved people from Africa did not have rights as citizens; they were considered chattel and could be bought and sold by their owners. The majority of enslaved people lived on plantations or large farms, which meant long working hours under harsh conditions. They were not allowed to learn to read or write, and beatings and humiliation were part of everyday life for many of them.
Working the Fields
The enslaved people were especially concentrated in the South, which came to depend heavily on slave labour in the tobacco and cotton fields. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 meant that more cotton could be processed, and larger and larger numbers of people were forced to work as slaves in the cotton fields in the South.
Changing Times
By 1804, the Northern states had abolished slavery, and in 1808, the U.S. Congress made the import of enslaved Africans illegal. However, slavery still existed in the Southern states. By 1860, there were approximately four million enslaved people in the USA.
During the first half of the 19th century, there were examples of enslaved people rebelling against slaveholders, but not many succeeded in escaping. From around the 1830s, the abolitionist movement started to grow in the North, and during the next thirty years, the USA became increasingly divided on the question of slavery.
The Emancipation
Slavery was a central issue in the American Civil War (1861-1865) between the North (the Union) and the South (the Confederate States), also referred to as the free states and the slave states. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which meant that approximately three out of the four million enslaved people in the USA were emancipated. It was not until 1865 that slavery was abolished and made illegal all over the USA.
The abolition of slavery meant that former enslaved persons now had American citizenship. But in reality, many black people – especially in the South – were not treated as equal citizens for many years to come.