Slavery
American Eras. Vol. 3: The Revolutionary Era, 1754-1783. Detroit: Gale, 1997. p70-72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1997-1999 Gale Research, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale,
Cengage Learning
Full Text:
Slavery
The Slave Trade. The enterprising spirit that was evident throughout the British Empire
and that produced the high standard of living in the colonies also led to the horrifying
trade in human beings. England became the most important slaving nation during the
eighteenth century, establishing trading posts in Gambia and the lower Guinea coast in
Africa. From there English merchants transported slaves to the cities and plantations of
the Caribbean and mainland colonies. The Caribbean was by far the larger market for
slaves, and by the late colonial period about 90 percent of the population there was
black. A substantial proportion of the mainland colonies’ population was also enslaved:
about one in five during the 1770s. From 1761 to 1810 more than three hundred
thousand slaves were imported into the colonies. An estimated 12 percent of those
brought over by American traders did not survive the voyage. Even so, the slave
population on the American mainland rose rapidly due as much to natural increase as to
the trade itself. In South Carolina blacks outnumbered whites as early as 1708 and
continued to do so throughout the eighteenth century. In the plantation districts along
the colony's tidewater, blacks comprised nearly 90 percent of the population by 1740.
Colonial Participation. Colonial merchants participated in the slave trade, although on
a much smaller scale than the British. With its excellent bay, tiny Rhode Island became
the center of the North American trade. In 1764 the colony's merchants argued that poor
farmlands left them no choice but to turn to slaving so that they could afford to buy
British manufactured goods and food from the Middle and Southern colonies. Ships
originating from Rhode Island eventually transported more than one hundred thousand
Africans to the New World. The colony's trade was suspended when the British
occupied the town of Newport during the Revolutionary War, but the trade thrived again
after the war ended and continued until the slave trade was made illegal in 1808. New
Yorkers and even some Quaker merchants also were active in the trade. Apart from the
merchants of South Carolina, Southerners were much less so even though that region
was most heavily dependent on slave labor. Many prominent colonial merchants who
became strong supporters of the Revolution were directly or indirectly involved in the
slave trade. Robert Morris, the “financier of the Revolution” and the founder of the Bank
of North America, had participated in the trade during the 1760s. The revolutionary
statesman Henry Laurens had been a prominent slave merchant in his native South
Carolina.
Slave Labor. By 1770 slaves made up one-fifth of the colonial population and were the
second-largest occupational group after farmers. Most slaves grew staple crops while
others worked as house servants or did full- or part-time artisinal work. In 1780 four
states—Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland—held 85 percent of all
the slaves on the mainland. New York,
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A commemorative painting of the slave ship Marie Séraphique anchored off Haiti
following a transatlantic voyage in 1772–1773 (Musee des Beaux Arts, Nantes)
whose metropolis was active in the slave trade, was fifth. It had the highest proportion of
blacks—about 12 percent—of all the Northern states, and its slaves worked as house
servants, in urban occupations, and on small farms scattered throughout the
countryside. Slavery became much more deeply entrenched in the South because of
the profitability and labor requirements of staple crops, especially tobacco and rice.
Tobacco was grown extensively in the Chesapeake by both small farmers and large
planters. The planters preferred to use slave labor because tobacco required only a few
hours’ work a day during most of the growing season; thus it would have been
significantly more expensive to hire free white laborers, who often demanded a full day's
pay. In contrast, wheat was labor-intensive only during the planting and harvest
seasons, so it made sense to hire free laborers to work for several full days during those
peak times. The differences in the two crops’ growing requirements perhaps explain
why tobacco, but not wheat, tended to rely on slave labor. In the lower South slavery
became an even more important component of the economy. Rice was the region's
primary export crop, and it relied on slavery even more than did tobacco. The reasons
for this appear to lie in the economies of scale—that is, the higher productivity of large
plantations versus small farms—for this crop. Several groups of laborers working in one
large plantation were able to cultivate rice more effectively than could small farm
households working separately. This may explain why rice plantations tended to be
large, with slave populations of fifty to one hundred. The unhealthy climate of the region
also contributed to planters’ heavy dependence on slaves, who seemed better able than
their white masters to withstand the diseases associated with rice plantations. Unlike
tobacco, rice was cultivated using the task system, whereby slaves were required to
finish a prescribed amount of work per day, after which their time was essentially their
own. According to a Scottish observer writing in 1773, lowcountry slaves generally were
done with their assigned tasks “by one or two o'clock’ in the afternoon, and have the
rest of the day for themselves, which they spend in working in their own private fields,
consisting of 5 or 6 acres of ground, allowed
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them by their masters, for planting of rice, corn, potatoes, tobacco, &c. for their own use
and profit, of which the industrious among them make a great deal.” The task system
suited white planters, who preferred not to have to supervise their slaves too closely
and to spend a portion of the year in Charleston, where they could escape from the
dullness and diseases of their plantations.
Effects of the Revolution. The slave trade became a casualty of the nonimportation
agreements and the overall disruption in overseas trade. During the nonimportation
movement of 1769 Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina prohibited the
importation of slaves. In October 1774 the Continental Congress prohibited slaves from
entering the United States and forbade any commercial dealings with nations that
engaged in slave trading. The decision was met with strong objections by the merchants
of Liverpool and Bristol and by the Board of Trade in London, which declared that
Britain “cannot allow the colonists to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so
beneficial to the nation.” In 1776 Thomas Jefferson inserted a passage in the
Declaration of Independence condemning the trade. The Continental Congress deleted
it, but the passage had by then become unnecessary because most state constitutions
had abolished the slave trade. The relative importance of slaves in the economy
diminished as importations ceased and the British army freed thousands of Southern
slaves. South Carolina, the state most dependent on slave labor, lost twenty-five
thousand of its bondsmen during the war, while Virginia lost about thirty thousand. Once
the war ended, however, the trade revived. Thousands of Africans were transported to
the colonies between 1783 and 1787, the year the Constitution was written. By 1787
New England, the Middle states, and Maryland once again ceased importing slaves.
South Carolina and Georgia, however, managed to insert a clause ensuring that the
slave trade would remain open for at least twenty years. Those two states imported
more than forty thousand African slaves before Congress made the trade illegal in 1808.
Ironically slavery gained in strength after the trade was made illegal. The invention of
the cotton gin in 1794 made the cotten crop immensely profitable and helped to
entrench slavery even more deeply in the Southern economy throughout the first half of
the nineteenth century.
SLAVE IMPORTS INTO BRITISH AMERICA AND THE UNITED
STATES, 1626–1810
The number of Africans forcibly removed from their homeland during
the four-hundred-year period of the Atlantic slave trade is a matter of
debate. Many historians agree that approximately 10 million slaves
were imported into the Americas and other parts of the Atlantic basin
from 1451 to 1870, but some argue that the numbers were
considerably higher. One historian made the following estimates of
slave imports into British America and the United States from 1626
to just after the trade was made illegal in 1808:
Period Barbados Jamaica Other British N.
British America
Caribbean
Source: James Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History
(New York: Norton, 1981), p. 167.
1626–1650 18,700 ------- 2,000 1,600
1651–1675 51,100 8,000 10,100 3,900
1676–1700 64,700 77,100 32,000 23,000
1701–1720 67,800 53,500 8,800 19,800
1721–1740 55,300 90,100 8,800 50,400
1741–1760 57,300 120,200 22,000 100,400
1761–1780 49,300 149,600 67,000 85,800
1781–1810 22,700 248,900 76,300 91,600
Total 386,900 747,400 227,500 376,500
Sources:
Philip D. Morgan, “Work and Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry
Blacks, 1700 to 1880,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (1982): 563-599;
James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York: Norton, 1981).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Slavery." American Eras, vol. 3: The Revolutionary Era, 1754-1783, Gale, 1997,
pp. 70-72. Gale Virtual Reference Library,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=huds62142&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CCX
2536600487&it=r&asid=ceaa2ce302da8705bbc9328292fca478. Accessed 3 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|CX2536600487
