The spread of tobacco made Chesapeake planters to move from indentured servants to slaves. There were many reasons for this change. Firstly, by law, blacks had many disadvantages. Such as, they could not claim the protection under the English law. Secondly, while indentured servants had fixed terms, blacks’ terms of service never expired. Moreover, children of slaves would also become slaves and their skin color made them much harder to escape to the outside world. They would be enslaved for forever, with extreme small chances of being released, unless they were deported to other areas. Another reason that helped expand slavery was that, blacks had been used to working on fields with all the hard work. They also encountered many diseases and had developed antibodies to resist to them. Therefore, black population were less likely to be defeated by epidemics, while the Indian population’s death rate was very high due to this reason.…
The settlers´ need for cheap labour to work on their plantations was one of the main reasons why the British colonies began to import enslaved Africans. In the Chesapeake area, successful tobacco cultivation required abundant land (since the crop quickly drained soil of nutrients). Consequently, plantations gradually spread out along the region’s rivers and planters quickly found themselves being land rich but labour poor. At first, indentured servants were used as the needed labour. These servants were mainly young English men who, in…
Plantation labor wasn’t always the same and differed from plantation to plantation, sugar plantations in the Indies was not the same as that on plantations in South Carolina, which was different from what slave’s laborers faced on tobacco farms in the Chesapeake. Those who did common labor, and those who carried technical skills directly, impacted the need for skilled workers to fill the specific type labor need. Whether slaves were building barrels or building fences, making furniture or repairing harnesses people with know-how and skilled capability were in short supply and when found, were very expensive. Slavery was very much a part of the southern economy. The way the South operated made it a necessity to have slave labor to harvest the crops of the fields. When the invention of the cotton machine was introduced to the South, more cotton could be picked and produced.…
The search for a viable labor source affected the southern colonies in many ways. Without forced labor the southern colonies wouldn’t have been able to keep their economy up the way they did. The southern colonies developed with a focus on agriculture as the primary economic activity. Unfortunately the technology to decrease the labor demands such as the cotton gin or spinning jenny weren’t invented during the colonial times. Without that technology the southerners instead took advantage of the immigration and came up with the indentured servants. The indentured servants were I guess you can say happy for having the opportunity for acquiring their own land and freedom for a few years of labor. Even though most of the servants were young and healthy men, most of them died before completing their seven years of labor.…
Enslaved African Americans could never forget their status as property, no matter how well their owners treated them. But it would be too simplistic to say that all masters and slaves hated each other. Human beings who live and work together are bound to form relationships of some kind, and some masters and slaves genuinely cared for each other. But the caring was tempered and limited by the power imbalance under which it grew. Within the narrow confines of slavery, human relationships ran the gamut from compassionate to contemptuous. But the masters and slaves never approached equality. In the lower South the majority of slaves lived and worked on cotton plantations. Most of these plantations had fifty or fewer slaves, although the largest plantations have several hundred. Cotton was by far the leading cash crop, but slaves also raised rice, corn, sugarcane, and tobacco. Many plantations raised several different kinds of crops.…
At first, they believed they could get “pearl and gold… Earth’s only paradise” (Doc A), but they would find “cruel diseases as swellings, burning fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine” (Doc B). Their hopeful beliefs as they sailed towards the new land were thwarted by the reality of the situation. Disease would bring the total population down drastically, while famine coupled with malnutrition and starvation was increased due to the economic importance of tobacco. Tobacco’s prevalence in Virginia started to exhaust the soil, starting a demand for new land, and the need to move westward. This land deficiency would start more conflict with Native Americans, and indentured servants would be angered by the lack of land, because of the inability for Virginia to complete their freedom dues. Frustrated Virginians broke out in Bacon's Rebellion, and although it was subdued, the effects on the tensions between planters and laborers increased. Planters searched for more stable workers, and they would rely on African slaves to be laborers in this plantatin economy. As slavery began, the agriculturally based society escalated to higher production rates. However, after servants were seen as hostile, and became more likely to misbehave, laws were put in order that if "many times negroes... and other slaves unlawfully absent themselves from their masters... shall resist, runaway or refuse to deliver and surrender him or themselves to any person or persons..., it shall... be lawfull for such person and persons to kill and distroy such negroes" (Doc H). These laws suppressed slaves enough to ensure more productive…
For plantations located in the south, slaves didn’t popularize until nearly a hundred years later because of the increased demand for labor and less availability of indentured servants. From an economic standpoint, as cash crops became more of a demand in the south, so were the slaves needed to cultivate the crops (Doc D). Also, social aspects played a role dictating who became slaves. According to Document B, people who didn’t practice a certain religion were taken as slaves. Overall, both social and economic influences played a major role in slavery in the southern colonies.…
Although slavery has always been one of the most influential things in shaping what is America today, it was not always like how people picture it in the modern day, aka: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In early seventeenth century Chesapeake region, slaves were kind of treated like indentured servants. They were granted freedom at a certain point in time, whereas slaves in the nineteenth-century were almost never granted freedom by their owners and were treated as property rather than humans due to things like rebellions (such as Shay’s Rebellion or Bacon’s Rebellion). In the early 17th century, slavery was not yet established. Whites would treat slaves and indentured servants almost equally and they weren’t as cruel with them. Slaves in the Chesapeake region were tied to their master just like slaves in the south during the 19th century, but there were certain distinctions between them concerning working conditions and African American culture. In the 17th century, slaves were not put under absolutely terrible working conditions; they were tolerable. A few of the earliest African immigrants gained their freedom and some even became slaveowners themselves. Also, blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake had a somewhat easier lot. Tobacco was a less physically demanding crop than those of the deeper south. However, African Americans in the 19th century had far worse working conditions. Cotton picking before Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was torture and an extreme hazard for the men, women, and even children working in cotton fields. Slaves in the 17th and 19th century also had distinctions in their culture. In the 17th century Chesapeake region, African Americans contributed to the stable growth of a slave culture including: speech, religion, and folkways. They developed a new language called Gullah which used words we still use today like goober, gumbo, and voodoo. They also introduced the ringshot, a West African religious dance and eventually contributed to the development of…
The change of the most common form of forced labor from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century from indentured servants to African slaves took place during the half-century (1680 to 1730) when more colonists were able to afford slaves. This was at the time that servants were in high demand and in low supply. While the supply for servants was decreasing, the supply for African slaves increased. At the same time of the increase supply of African slaves, there was also in increase in demand for labor on plantations, this was good for the planters who needed the increased labor force. Slaves, contrary to servants, were held indefinitely and produced more slaves, while servants were released after their term was completed and would need…
Following the Revolution, came the movement of slavery in the United States. As the states was pushing for the freedom and emancipation of slaves, the economy became heavily dependent on cotton and the demand for slaves was back in action. Although the slave trade had stopped and states were no longer importing slaves, the population of slave communities had drastically increased. As they were put onto plantations, the work remained tedious and their masters stayed violent and powering over them. The slave communities worked through the hardships through two institutions, the family and the African American church and religion, which helped them live through slavery.…
Although white indentured servants remained as the primary source of labor throughout the 1600’s, enslaved Africans slowly took the place of them at the turn of the century. In the mid-1600’s, about half of a few settlements’ population consisted of African Americans slaves. As time went on, more slaves were imported and in some colonies, the black population was even greater than that of the white’s. As more lands needed to be cleared and indentured servants used more rarely, slaves came into play and gave everyone but the slaves economic gain. Slavery had begun to reach its…
When America was born, there was a division between the North and the South. As people immigrated to the colonies for a new beginning, individual perceptions of freedom began to split the North and the South. The South was rich and fertile. The people desiring land moved to this area with a strong sense of independence. These people wanted to be governed more by their state and less by the federal government. Having less federal involvement in their lives protected this independence. The huge cotton plantations formed required a large amount of workers. Once slaves had been utilized to compensate for this demand, an extensive economical system developed and the South became dependent on slavery to continue their way of life. The North, however, moved more towards mercantilism and agriculture. Using products derived from the South and participating in international trade with outside countries, the North began to expand into cities with a variety of people making up the populations. Slavery was not typically used, or at least it was…
The economies of the two biggest sections of the United States, the south and the north, posed as an immense gap between the two. Due to its farm based economy, slaves were introduced to do much of the labor needed to produce cash crops such as tobacco and cotton that the south’s…
Slavery was a key factor in the growth of industry in the northern colonies which generated enormous amounts of weath in the new world. Slavery was important to the northern colonies for many economic reasons. The north was a huge supplier of goods and tools to the west indies. New England land owners thrived off of the trade of sugar from the Caribbean to make molasses and rum. The northern colonies supplied many ships to transport livestock and horses to the west indies for plantation owners and supplied these plantations with slaves making the northern economy completely reliant on slave trade.…
In the Southern colonies, the main source of economic growth was agriculture, specifically the planting and harvesting of tobacco, indigo, rice, and sugar cane, which were the staple crops of the region. These crops were often grown on very large plantations owned by wealthy white men, with little assistance to work the plantations. Not wanting to pay indentured servants for work, they often bought slaves to work the fields. This ended up saving them a lot of money, as they only had to pay for the initial purchase of the slave and, aside from the necessities of life, such as food and shelter, didn't need to invest anything more. The African slaves were also a lot more versatile than the indentured servants. While a servant could work for a pretty good amount of time without taking a break, the…