The “Unthinking Decision”: Slavery

1. The “Unthinking Decision”: Slavery

2. 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)

3. 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 sub-Saharan Africa + establish trading posts for slave trade to Portugal and Atlantic islands

4. 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

5. B. Middle Passage • 4-6 weeks • Poorly fed • 1 in 7 or 1 in 4 died • Depression: suicide, starvation

6. 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)

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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”

14. 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)

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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)

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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