Slavery In Colonial America

American Slavery first began in 1619, when African slaves were moved to the North American colony by a Dutch ship to Jamestown, Virginia. The slaves were brought to North America to support and facilitate the production of profitable harvest, such as tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. All over the American colonies, during the 17th century slavery was being implemented. As the land that was used to cultivate tobacco nearly to exhaustions, the South became confronted with an economic crisis. However, in England the modernization of the fabric and cloth industries was becoming a massive necessitate for American cotton. America had the cotton, but with this crop came the unfortunate complexity of limited production by hand, due largely in
Several masters owned less than 50 slaves and countless slaves survived on sizeable plantations or farms. These masters would manage to make their slaves feel entirely reliant on them, and various arrangements of restrictive set of laws governed life among slaves. Slaves were also forbidden from learning to read and write. Even certain behavior and association was restricted among the slaves to prevent disobedience. Slaves were also not allowed to marry one another as it held no legal basis, but many slaves married in secrecy. Several masters though would encourage slaves to marry and raise a family, so they could trade the members for currency or other articles. Many masters took sexual liberties from their slave women, and would reward compliant and submissive slaves with favoritisms for their behaviors, while those that were rebellious were violently
Born into slavery, Douglas taught himself to read and write and would later teach other slaves to read and write. After rebelling with his owner, Douglas attempted to escape two times and was later recaptured, but escaped on his third attempt. Later, Douglas would become an orator, earning a job as an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Free slaves and antislavery northerners began aiding fleeing slaves to escape from the plantations in the south. Most slaves made there way from South to North by way of the Underground Railroad. With the accomplishment of the Underground Railroad, it assisted in spreading the abolitionist in the North. Eventually over time there would be an enhanced tension between the South and North. The South would ultimately reach their breaking point when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within months the South and North would be divided and be shadowed by the Civil War. Lincoln’s antislavery stance was well-known, but the Civil War was to first preserve the United States. Abolition would later become the aim of the war, due to military requirements, rising anti-slavery reaction and self-emancipation of many slaves who escaped enslavement as the Union troops moved through the South. On September 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation, “all persons held as slaves