American history

The Terrible Transformation (1450-1750)

The years 1450-1750 brought enormous changes to the North American continent. The native Americans, or Indians, as the Europeans came to call them, first encountered European explorers, and before long, saw their world transformed and largely destroyed by European settlers.

And European explorers not only ventured to the lands and natural wealth of the Americas; they also traveled to Africa, where they began a trans-Atlantic slave trade that would bring millions of Africans to the Americas as well. This slave trade would over time lead to a new social and economic system: one where the color of one's skin could determine whether he or she might live as a free citizen or be enslaved for life.

1. The British Colonies

By the early 1600s, England was eager to gain a colonial foothold on the North American continent. The first enduring settlement was founded at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. Colonies in Massachusetts and elsewhere up and down the eastern seaboard were settled as the century progressed. The English settlers had occasionally friendly relations with the native "Indians" of these lands, but for the most part, the interaction between the two turned hostile. Labor to clear the forests, tend the plantations and farms, and work in the developing seafaring industry became a crucial concern.

From 1619 on, not long after the first settlement, the need for colonial labor was bolstered by the importation of African captives. At first, like their poor English counterparts, the Africans were treated as indentured servants, who would be freed of their obligations to their owners after serving for several years. However, over the course of the century, a new race-based slavery system developed, and by the dawn of the new century, the majority of Africans and African Americans were slaves for life.

Control over the captive population became a significant issue for whites as rebellion and fear of rebellion spread.

2. Europeans Come to Western Africa

Concerning the trade on this Coast, we notified your Highness that nowadays the natives no longer occupy themselves with the search for gold, but rather make war on each other in order to furnish slaves. . . The Gold Coast has changed into a complete Slave Coast. - William De La PalmaDirector, Dutch West India Co., September 5, 1705

The history of the European seaborne slave trade with Africa goes back 50 years prior to Columbus' initial voyage to the Americas. It began with the Portuguese, who went to West Africa in search of gold. The first Europeans to come to Africa's West Coast to trade were funded by Prince Henry, the famous Portuguese patron, who hoped to bring riches to Portugal. The purpose of the exploration: to expand European geographic knowledge, to find the source of prized African gold, and to locate a possible sea route to valuable Asian spices.

In 1441, for the first time, Portuguese sailors obtained gold dust from traders on the western coast of Africa. The following year, Portuguese explorers returned from Africa with more gold dust and another cargo: ten Africans.

Forty years after that first human cargo traveled to Portugal, Portuguese sailors gained permission from a local African leader to build a trading outpost and storehouse on Africa's Guinea coast. It was near a region that had been mined for gold for many years and was called Elmina, which means "the mine" in Portuguese. Although originally built for trade in gold and ivory and other resources, Elmina was the first of many trading posts built by Europeans along Africa's western coast that would also come to export slaves.

The well-armed fort provided a secure harbor for Portuguese (and later Dutch and English) ships. Africans were either captured in warring raids or kidnapped and taken to the port by African slave traders. There they were exchanged for iron, guns, gunpowder, mirrors, knives, cloth, and beads brought by boat from Europe.

When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the continent. However, in his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson points out that slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were vastly different. African slavery was more akin to European serfdom --the condition of most Europeans in the 15th century.

In the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa, for example, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. Most importantly, African slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist notion that whites were masters and blacks were slaves.
African slavery lacked the notion that whites were masters and blacks were slaves.

By the start of the 16th century, almost 200,000 Africans had been transported to Europe and islands in the Atlantic. But after the voyages of Columbus, slave traders found another market for slaves: New World plantations.

In Spanish Caribbean islands and Portuguese Brazil by the mid 1500s, colonists had turned to the quick and highly profitable cultivation of sugar, a crop that required constant attention and exhausting labor. They tried to recruit native Americans, but many died from diseases brought by Europeans, such as smallpox, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. And the Indians who survived wanted no part of the work, often fleeing to the countryside they knew so well. European colonists found an answer to their pressing labor shortage by importing enslaved workers from Africa.

By 1619, more than a century and a half after the Portuguese first traded slaves on the African coast, European ships had brought a million Africans to colonies and plantations in the Americas and force them to labor as slaves. Trade through the West African forts continued for nearly three hundred years. The Europeans made more than 54,000 voyages to trade in human beings and sent at least ten to twelve million Africans to the Americas.

3. New World Exploration and English Ambition

For the English in the New World there are really three labor options. One is to transport people from England to the New World. Another is to employ or exploit the indigenous labor... And the third is to bring people from Africa.
- Peter Wood, historian

At the end of the 16th century, Spain and Portugal dominated the South American continent and parts of the Caribbean. They had also gotten a foothold in Central America and the southern portions of North America, in Florida and the Southwest. England, with colonizing ambitions of its own, was eager to establish a foothold on the North American coast.

Urging their countrymen to join in the race for the colonization of the New World were two men, an uncle and his nephew, each named Richard Hakluyt. In a number of popular pamphlets they made the argument for colonization: England stood to gain glory, profit, and adventure. The younger sons of English nobility, lacking property at home, would have new lands to lord over. Merchants would have exotic products to bring home and new markets in which to sell their goods. The clergy could convert "savages" to Christianity. The landless poor, who burdened English towns and cities in increasing numbers, would have opportunity to rise up from their poverty.

English colonial ambition and the exhortations of the Hakluyts set the stage for England's first lasting settlement in the New World: Jamestown. The colony on Chesapeake Bay was first and foremost a business enterprise. It was funded by investors in the Virginia Company of London, who recruited the men who would settle Jamestown. The investors wanted what all investors dream of: a quick return of profit. The settlers were told to settle on an inland river that might lead to the Pacific and the riches of Asia. Failing that, investors hoped settlers would send home profitable goods, such as minerals, wooden masts, dyes, plant medicines, glass, and tar.

In 1607, 105 colonists landed in Jamestown, and by 1609, 500 settlers had come. However, English ambition was at first dashed by ignorance and an unforgiving land. Famine struck during the winter of 1609-1610. The settlers had arrived in the midst of a severe regional drought, and they had been too arrogant to till the soil. They could have received help from native Americans, but they considered the indigenous people to be savages and, eventually, enemies. The settlers ate their cattle, hogs, poultry, and finally their horses. And then they starved. Some cases of cannibalism were recorded. By the spring of 1610, only 60 were left alive. Nearly nine of every ten colonists had died. The dream of fortune had turned into a deadly nightmare.

Not willing to give up and absorb heavy financial losses, the Virginia Company of London sent more colonists from England. In the next few years, they experimented with various types of tobacco, and by 1617, found success with a variety of seed from Trinidad. Only three years later, a staggering 55,000 pounds of tobacco reached English markets. Jamestown had found a way to survive: by growing and selling tobacco.

But all these new tobacco fields required many hands and hard labor. At first, the men needed in the fields came from the working classes of England. While the world of colonial America was controlled by the wealthy Englishmen, most immigrants were poor men under 25 years of age. At first, the supply of willing conscripts matched the demand. The population of England had swelled from under three million in 1500 to more than five million by the mid-1600s. The homeless and the unemployed turned their hopes to the New World. Throughout the 17th century, between half and two-thirds of all white immigrants to the American colonies came as indentured servants.

In exchange for passage to Virginia or other colonies, these poor English people traded 4-7 years of their labor. They were fed, sheltered and clothed in exchange for their work. After their time was up, these indentured servants received their so-called "freedom dues." This often amounted to a bushel of corn for planting, a new suit of clothes and 100 acres of land. Now these men (and small numbers of women too) were free to labor for a living on their own.

The turn-over in indentured servants was rapid, so aspiring planters considered two other options for solving the need for plantation labor. One was to hire or exploit the native Americans. But such workers were susceptible to new diseases and often proved unreliable, as they could always choose to leave work behind and return to their people. There was also a second option. In 1619, a Dutch ship that had pirated the cargo of a Spanish vessel -- captive Africans --anchored at Jamestown in the mouth of the James River. he ship needed supplies, so the Dutch sailors traded the Africans for food. The colonists purchased the Africans, baptized them, and gave them Christian names.

At least some of these Africans, like their white counterparts, were purchased according to the usual terms for all indentured servants. They and other Africans who were transported to America at this time would become free after their years of service.

The English who had settled in Jamestown and, over the rest of the 17th century, in the other British North American colonies soon reached a turning point. Would they continue to hire Europeans and Africans as indentured servants? Or would they rely on Africans as enslaved workers for life, the model that had developed in the Caribbean? The colonists had a choice to make. They could use laborers who were free or who would one day become free. Or they could force people to work their fields for them indefinitely, without any hope of freedom for themselves or their children. To this day, we carry the scars of the decision they made: gradually, over several generations, they chose slavery.

4. From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery

All servants imported and brought into the Country. . . who were not Christians in their native Country. . . shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion. . . shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master. . . correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction. . . the master shall be free of all punishment. . . as if such accident never happened. - Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705

We sometimes imagine that such oppressive laws were put quickly into full force by greedy landowners. But that's not the way slavery was established in colonial America. It happened gradually -- one person at a time, one law at a time, even one colony at a time.

One of the places we have the clearest views of that "terrible transformation" is the colony of Virginia. In the early years of the colony, many Africans and poor whites -- most of the laborers came from the English working class -- stood on the same ground. Black and white women worked side-by-side in the fields. Black and white men who broke their servant contract were equally punished.

All were indentured servants. During their time as servants, they were fed and housed. Afterwards, they would be given what were known as "freedom dues," which usually included a piece of land and supplies, including a gun. Black-skinned or white-skinned, they became free.

Historically, the English only enslaved non-Christians, and not, in particular, Africans. And the status of slave (Europeans had African slaves prior to the colonization of the Americas) was not one that was life-long. A slave could become free by converting to Christianity. The first Virginia colonists did not even think of themselves as "white" or use that word to describe themselves. They saw themselves as Christians or Englishmen, or in terms of their social class. They were nobility, gentry, artisans, or servants.

One of the few recorded histories of an African in America that we can glean from early court records is that of "Antonio the negro," as he was named in the 1625 Virginia census. He was brought to the colony in 1621. At this time, English and Colonial law did not define racial slavery; the census calls him not a slave but a "servant."

Later, Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson, married an African American servant named Mary, and they had four children. Mary and Anthony also became free, and he soon owned land and cattle and even indentured servants of his own. By 1650, Anthony was still one of only 400 Africans in the colony among nearly 19,000 settlers. In Johnson's own county, at least 20 African men and women were free, and 13 owned their own homes.

In 1640, the year Johnson purchased his first property, three servants fled a Virginia plantation. Caught and returned to their owner, two had their servitude extended four years. However, the third, a black man named John Punch, was sentenced to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life." He was made a slave.

Traditionally, Englishmen believed they had a right to enslave a non-Christian or a captive taken in a just war. Africans and Indians might fit one or both of these definitions. But what if they learned English and converted to the Protestant church? Should they be released from bondage and given "freedom dues?" What if, on the other hand, status were determined not by (changeable ) religious faith but by (unchangeable) skin color?

Also, the indentured servants, especially once freed, began to pose a threat to the property-owning elite. The colonial establishment had placed restrictions on available lands, creating unrest among newly freed indentured servants. In 1676, working class men burned down Jamestown, making indentured servitude look even less attractive to Virginia leaders. Also, servants moved on, forcing a need for costly replacements; slaves, especially ones you could identify by skin color, could not move on and become free competitors.

In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to legally recognize slavery. Other states, such as Virginia, followed. In 1662, Virginia decided all children born in the colony to a slave mother would be enslaved. Slavery was not only a life-long condition; now it could be passed, like skin color, from generation to generation.

In 1665, Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland and leased a 300-acre plantation, where he died five years later. But back in Virginia that same year, a jury decided the land Johnson left behind could be seized by the government because he was a "negroe and by consequence an alien." In 1705 Virginia declared that "All servants imported and brought in this County... who were not Christians in their Native Country... shall be slaves. A Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ... shall be held to be real estate."

English suppliers responded to the increasing demand for slaves. In 1672, England officially got into the slave trade as the King of England chartered the Royal African Company, encouraging it to expand the British slave trade.

In 1698, the English Parliament ruled that any British subject could trade in slaves. Over the first 50 years of the 18th century, the number of Africans brought to British colonies on British ships rose from 5,000 to 45,000 a year. England had passed Portugal and Spain as the number one trafficker of slaves in the world.

5. The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage

Who are we looking for, who are we looking for?
It's Equiano we're looking for.
Has he gone to the stream? Let him come back.
Has he gone to the farm? Let him return.
It's Equiano we're looking for.
- Kwa chant about the disappearance of an African boy, Equiano

This African chant mourns the loss of Olaudah Equiano, an 11-year-old boy and son of an African tribal leader who was kidnapped in 1755 from his home in what is now Nigeria. He was one of the 10 to 12 million Africans who were sold into slavery from the 15th through the 19th Centuries..

"I believe there are few events in my life that have not happened to many," wrote Equiano in his Autobiography. The "many" he refers to are the Africans taken as free people and then forced into slavery in South America, the Caribbean and North America.

Along the west coast of Africa, from the Cameroons in the south to Senegal in the north, Europeans built some sixty forts that served as trading posts. European sailors seeking riches brought rum, cloth, guns, and other goods to these posts and traded them for human beings. This human cargo was transported across the Atlantic Ocean and sold to New World slave owners, who bought slaves to work their crops.

European traders such as Nicolas Owen waited at these forts for slaves; African traders transported slaves from the interior of Africa. Equiano and others found themselves sold and traded more than once, often in slave markets. African merchants, the poor, royalty -- anyone -- could be abducted in the raids and wars that were undertaken by Africans to secure slaves that they could trade. The slave trade devastated African life. Culture and traditions were torn asunder, as families, especially young men, were abducted. Guns were introduced and slave raids and even wars increased.

After kidnapping potential slaves, merchants forced them to walk in slave caravans to the European coastal forts, sometimes as far as 1,000 miles. Shackled and underfed, only half the people survived these death marches. Those too sick or weary to keep up were often killed or left to die. Those who reached the coastal forts were put into underground dungeons where they would stay -- sometimes for as long as a year -- until they were boarded on ships.

Just as horrifying as these death marches was the Middle Passage, as it was called -- the transport of slaves across the Atlantic.

• On the first leg of their trip, slave traders delivered goods from European ports to West African ones.
  
  
• On the "middle" leg, ship captains such as John Newton (who later became a foe of slavery), loaded their then-empty holds with slaves and transported them to the Americas and the Caribbean.

A typical Atlantic crossing took 60-90 days but some lasted up to four months Upon arrival, captains sold the slaves and purchased raw materials to be brought back to Europe on the last leg of the trip. Roughly 54,000 voyages were made by Europeans to buy and sell slaves.

Africans were often treated like cattle during the crossing. On the slave ships, people were stuffed between decks in spaces too low for standing. The heat was often unbearable, and the air nearly unbreathable. Women were often used sexually. Men were often chained in pairs, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. People were crowded together, usually forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others.

This meant they often had to lie in each other's feces, urine, and, in the case of dysentery, even blood. In such cramped quarters, diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire. The diseased were sometimes thrown overboard to prevent wholesale epidemics. Because a small crew had to control so many, cruel measures such as iron muzzles and whippings were used to control slaves.

Over the centuries, between one and two million persons died in the crossing. This meant that the living were often chained to the dead until ship surgeons such as Alexander Falconbridge had the corpses thrown overboard.

While ships were still close to shore, insurrections of desperate slaves sometimes broke out. Many went mad in these barbaric conditions; others chose to jump to their watery deaths rather than endure. Equiano wrote of his passage: "Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much happier than myself."

6. The Growth of Slavery in North America

Is not the slave trade entirely at war with the heart of man? And surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue, involves in its continuance destruction to every principle, and buries all sentiments in ruin! When you make men slaves, you... compel them to live with you in a state of war. - Olaudah Equiano, former slave

Slavery became a highly profitable system for white plantation owners in the colonial South. In South Carolina, successful slave owners, such as the Middleton family from Barbados, established a system of full-blown, Caribbean-style slavery. The Middletons settled on land near Charleston, Carolina's main port and slave-trading capital. They took advantage of the fact that at the end of the 17th century, some of the earliest African arrivals had shown English settlers how rice could be grown in the swampy coastal environment. With cheap and permanent workers available in the form of slaves, plantation owners realized this strange new crop could make them rich.

As rice boomed, land owners found the need to import more African slaves to clear the swamps where the rice was grown and to cultivate the crop. Many of the Africans knew how to grow and cultivate the crop, which was alien to Europeans. By 1710, scarcely 15 years after rice came to Carolina, Africans began to out-number Europeans in South Carolina.

Slavery was rapidly becoming an entrenched institution in American society, but it took brutal force to imposed this sort of mass exploitation upon once-free people. As Equiano wrote, white and black lived together "in a state of war." The more harshly whites enforced racial enslavement, the more they came to fear black uprisings. As they became more fearful, they responded by further tightening the screws of oppression.

Carolina authorities developed laws to keep the African American population under control. Whipping, branding, dismembering, castrating, or killing a slave were legal under many circumstances. Freedom of movement, to assemble at a funeral, to earn money, even to learn to read and write, became outlawed.

At times the cruelty seemed almost casual. A Virginia slaveowner's journal entry for April 17, 1709 reads:

"Anaka was whipped yesterday for stealing the rum and filling the bottle up with water. I said my prayers and I danced my dance. Eugene was whipped again for pissing in bed and Jenny for concealing it."

White fears of the people they kept enslaved were entirely justified. On September 9, 1739, an African man named Jemmy, thought to be of Angolan origin, led a march from Stono near Charleston toward Florida and what he believed would be freedom on Spanish soil. Other slaves joined Jemmy and their numbers grew to nearly 100. Jemmy and his companions killed dozens of whites on their way, in what became known as the Stono Rebellion. White colonists caught up with the rebels and executed those whom they managed to capture. The severed heads of the rebels were left on mile posts on the side of the road as a warning to others.

White fear of blacks was also rampant in New York City, which had a density of slaves nearing that of Charleston. In 1741, fires were ignited all over New York, including one at the governor's mansion. In witch-hunt fashion, 160 blacks and at least a dozen working class whites were accused of conspiring against the City of New York. Thirty-one Africans were killed; 13 were burned at the stake. Four whites were hung.

A few white men, although in the minority, balked at the cruelty toward African slaves. Francis Le Jau, an Anglican minister who oversaw a church built on land donated by the Middletons, spoke against the cruelty of Carolina slavery. Samuel Sewall, a Boston judge, wrote a pamphlet called The Selling of Joseph, criticizing slavery.

Georgia, the last free colony, legalized slavery in 1750. That meant slavery was now legal in each of the thirteen British colonies that would soon become the United States. But the conflict between those who supported racial enslavement and those who believed in freedom was only just beginning.

In the tumultuous generation of the American Revolution, protests against "enslavement" by Britain and demands for American "liberty " would become common in the rebellious colonies, and many African Americans, both slave and free, had high hopes that the rhetoric of Independence would apply to them.

These hopes, however, would eventually be dashed, and it would take a bloody civil war three generations later to finally bring an end to the enslavement of black Americans.