Slavery In America

Essential Elements

Slavery in North America lasted for centuries, affected millions of lives, and contributed to every political, legal, social and economic institution fundamental to our country’s identity. Because the topic can be so overwhelming, the narrative of slavery taught in schools is often oversimplified: Owners of enslaved people become the bad guys; enslaved people become the victims; and Abraham Lincoln becomes the hero who saves the day.

The reality was much more complicated. While not a comprehensive list, the five dimensions of slavery listed below will help you approach this difficult subject in more depth. These often-overlooked areas focus on the people involved, the choices they made, and the context within which they made those choices.

The Institution

The term slavery did not always hold the institutional meaning it did in colonial America and in European colonies. Enslaved people in ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and parts of Africa, for example, were closer to what we now think of as indentured servants or prisoners of war. The trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people drastically redefined slavery in a number of ways. Enslaved people became the property of their owners for indefinite periods of time; ownership of enslaved people could be inherited; and the children of enslaved people automatically became the property of the family who owned their mothers. The perception of enslaved people as property that could be bought, sold, traded or inherited was marked by use of the term chattel slavery.

Slavery in European colonies also became racialized in a new way. There is evidence of Africans living and working in the American colonies as free men and indentured servants from the early 1500s. But once Virginia entered a period of rapid economic development, the British began importing enslaved Africans in massive numbers. There were no white enslaved people by the end of the 17th century, and being black automatically equated with being enslaved.

Economics

Like other European colonizers, the British relied on the forced, unpaid labor of Africans to create infrastructure and wealth where there had been only land. The tobacco, rice and—eventually—cotton plantations in the South supported developing industries in the North. This expanding economic reliance on the labor of enslaved people required the complicity of the nation. Similarly, the tightly bound “triangular trade”—cyclical importing and exporting of enslaved people, raw materials and manufactured goods among Africa, the Americas and Europe—was a system wholly dependent on forced labor.

The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made this labor even more valuable, as producing cotton became faster and more efficient. The explosion of the cotton industry opened a new era of slavery in the United States, during which hundreds of thousands of people—mostly from the Carolinas and Virginia—were sold to plantation owners farther southwest. This so-called second middle passage, the second-largest forced migration in American history, tore apart innumerable families that had been stable for generations.

Maintaining these systems required more than just importing bodies and exporting goods. The rise of chattel slavery was accompanied by a widespread campaign of cruelty, degradation and cultural myth-making intended to dehumanize Africans. Historical accounts of auctions provide vivid illustrations of this dehumanization, as the process of buying enslaved people directly mirrored the process of buying animals. Enslaved people were bound with chains, physically examined, bid on and—in many cases—torn from their families, friends and communities.

Culture

Despite slave owners’ attempts to strip enslaved people of their cultures, identities and relationships, Africans in the American Colonies and later the United States persisted in expressing elements of their myriad home cultures. Food, music, dance, storytelling and religion are all areas of life in which enslaved people blended their individual cultural memories (inherited or personal) with their experiences in the New World. Many of these cultural elements would go on to influence American society as a whole. From Southern cuisine and jazz music to call-and-response worship, the cultural contributions of enslaved people changed the cultural face of the United States.

Resistance

From slowing their work to breaking tools to eating food from the fields, enslaved people found subversive ways to exercise power and control their daily lives. Escape was a means to steal back freedom. As Frederick Douglass famously said, “I appear this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.” There were also coordinated demonstrations of rebellion—such as assaults against plantation owners—and even organized, violent revolts. The 1739 Stono Rebellion and Nat Turner’s Revolt of 1831 were ultimately quelled; the Haitian Revolution succeeded. News of such revolts was terrifying to many American colonists, particularly in the South.

The American Revolution had brought hope to many enslaved people who heard, discussed and passed on the rhetoric of liberty and independence. Twenty thousand black loyalists took the risk of bartering loyalty to the king in exchange for promises of freedom, only to receive little support after the war was over. As the fight for American liberty was won, the system of slavery grew ever stronger.

Despite state laws forbidding the formal education of enslaved people, literacy spread within subsets of the community. Under threat of severe punishment, enslaved people actively built consciousness within both white and black populations about the horrors of slavery, the struggle for liberty, the abolitionist movement and organized resistance efforts. They often used liberation rhetoric that appealed to Christian beliefs.

Protections for Slavery

Slave codes enacted across the southern American colonies and states legally established the absolute power of those who owned enslaved people over their “property.” These codes defined consequences for—among other violations—violence against enslaved people (none), violence against owners of enslaved people (severe, usually death), educating enslaved people and traveling without permission.

Protections for the institution of slavery and states that sanctioned slavery were also written into the U.S. Constitution. The fugitive slave clause guaranteed owners the right to pursue and capture an enslaved person in any state or territory. In fact, a powerful Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress in 1850, partially in response to increased abolitionist activity.