The Backs Upon Which America Was Built, Research Paper Example

It could easily be said that America was built upon the backs of slaves.  From the very beginning, it was slaves, both white indentured servants from Europe as well as black slaves from Africa, that toiled in the plantations of rich land owners and mined precious ores and metals from dangerous mines in both North and South America. “From the beginnings of slavery in British North America around 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 enslaved Africans to the Virginia colony at Jamestown, nearly 240 years passed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution officially ended slavery in 1865. This means that 12 generations of blacks survived and lived in America as enslaved people-direct descendants of the nearly 500,000 enslaved Africans imported into North America by European traders (Davis 2010).”  Slaves aided in household care in white homes, built houses and buildings, and provided countless services to rich land owners.  While many colonists condoned and championed slavery, there were always those who felt it inherently wrong to “own” another person. It seems like a strange paradox that the same people who came to America enjoy freedom and liberty were so staunchly supportive of enslaving others and taking away their civil liberties and rights.  “A goodly number of the colonists had come to these shores for the express purpose of enjoying political and religious liberty (Muzzey 91).”

Many colonists were horrified at the idea of slavery, and since most of the colonists in the early part of the 1600’s used indentured servants as opposed to African slaves (African slaves were mostly destined for the plantations of central and south America), they saw no reason for this horror to continue.  “The horrors of the middle passage moved the colonists at times to pass bills prohibiting the slave trade.  But the British crown vetoed the bills (Muzzey 248).  Slavery was economically viable and was protected by merchant traders.  However, not all the colonists saw slavery as evil and many condoned it.  The reason that many were able to condone slavery had to do with the attitude of the British colonists. Though some were rich, some were poor, and most were of varying Christian faiths, they all held a superior view of themselves due to the privileges they had enjoyed by being born English.  “The American colonists cherished these ‘immemorial rights of Englishmen’ with what Edmund Burke called a ‘fierce spirit of liberty.’ (Muzzey 91).”  While most colonists were of the Christian faith, some were more pious than others. However, it being Christian did not make the colonists any more opposed to slavery.  While “all colonies had negro slaves, few had them in numbers in comparison with the southern colonies.  Probably there were not more than 15,000 slaves in all New England, of whom Massachusetts and Connecticut has the majority.  Indentured servants were slow in coming to New England, and when they came, their rights were guarded by salutary laws (Elson 1904).”  The strict Puritan laws that governed much of New England did not allow slavery in the fashion that it was allowed in the southern colonies.  Even though the settlers came to the new land to escape prejudices and policies they scorned, many of the problems followed them to America, and began to manifest in the form of slavery.  Well before the Civil War, and even before the Revolutionary War, tensions due to slavery were already strong between the northern and southern states.

While the American Revolution united the colonies in a war against a common enemy, Britain, the years leading up to it saw much in-fighting between the colonists, especially between those that populated the area known as New England and those that populated the Chesapeake area.  The New England colonies were settled mostly by Puritan Christian families.  These communities sought to emulate the society they had come from, and set up class systems that resembled the ones they had left behind in Europe.  This was in stark contrast to the people who settled the Chesapeake colonies.  This region, which was mainly farmland, was settled mostly by single males who came to seek their fortune as plantation owners, growing either tobacco or cotton as a crop for export to England and other European countries. The Chesapeake colonists brought with them indentured servants, poor European immigrants who worked hard to pay off the debt to their masters for their passage to the New World.  When indentured servants became scarce, the plantation owners looked to Africa and black slaves to fill the need for labor on their vast plantations.

Slavery began to become less necessary in the northern colonies, due to a general trend towards manufacturing of goods instead of raising of cash crops.  In the south however, the need for slaves increased, especially after 1676.  “For complex reasons, the value and presence of enslaved workers from Africa began to grow after 1676 in the Virginia colony. For one thing, white indentured servants could easily run away. They also demanded to be treated like Englishmen.  Importantly too, the supply of white indentured servants began to decline as more working-class whites found employment back home in British industries, commerce, and shipping. And the increase in the life span of indentured servants in the new world meant that many of them began to live long enough to claim the share of lands promised to those who had labored the full terms of their indenture-usually six years. Enslaved Africans, on the other hand, could not easily blend into the surrounding white population by escaping-and Native Americans were often employed as slave-catchers. Nor could they make demands upon their masters for humane treatment, justice, or land Davis 2010).”

Many of America’s Founding Fathers, even landowners like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Randolf, who were themselves slave owners, found shame in the practice of slavery and sought to remove it from America during the latter part of the 1700’s, shortly after America won its independence from Britain.  “Thomas Jefferson, for example, the most pronounced of the antislavery slaveholders suggested in his “Notes on Virginia” (1784) that the slaves be purchased by the state and sent to from a colony in the West Indies.  He also, the same year, tried in vain to persuade Congress to exclude slavery from all the territory west of the Alleghenies (Muzzey 249).”  However, there were too many powerful men who benefited from slavery who would not allow it to be ended just like that, however immoral they might have found the practice to be. While many anti-slavery activists felt like slavery would gradually die out, there were many signs that it was an institution that was here to stay.  In 1793, the federal Fugitive Slave Act was passed, allowing slave catchers to cross state lines in the pursuit of runaway slaves. Then there was the Three-Fifths Clause, which allowed every slave to count as 3/5 of a person in order to give slave states more representation in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.  Sadly, America saw “the continuation of the slave trade with Africa until 1808, which brought thousands of slaves to America in a rush of slave-trading activity (Davis 2010).”

After 1808, no new slaves were allowed to be brought into America.  This did not slow the rate of slavery in south.  Plantation owners, realizing the value of their laborers, only took better care of their slaves.  They allowed them to live in family units, and the slaves had children and prospered as best they could, with a birth rate that equaled the birth rate of their white masters.  “With no new slaves allowed to enter the nation legally after 1808, the enslaved African Americans on hand were bound to increase in value in proportion to the increase in demand of the cotton they produced.  As the western states opened up to cotton production, a great new market for slaves increased the value of slaves even more in the upper-South (Davis 2010).”

There is a critical point that cannot be overlooked in regards to slavery in America.  This is the point that although America began as being an “equal opportunity slave employer”, allowing both white indentured servants as well as negro slaves to labor in the fields, it eventually was only the black slave that survived.  There was a rebellion in 1676 known as “Bacon’s Rebellion”, and it “was the largest and most consequential slave revolt in the history of the continent (Scott 2010).” This revolt consisted of not only white indentured servants but also black slaves, united side by side to fight for their freedom and rights.  Bacon rebellion, which “shutdown all tobacco production for 14 straight months (Scott 2010)” was led by Nathaniel Bacon, a militant opponent of Virginia land policy.  At this time there did not seem to be a class distinction between the “white” and the “black” slaves.  However, after the incident, there appeared to be a campaign to create a black subclass.  White servants were allowed to go free, and slavery was limited to the black slaves. By creating a racial distinction between blacks and whites, it was assured that blacks would be looked at as second class citizens and the institution of slavery would be allowed to continue indefinitely, much to the satisfaction of southern land owners.

Eventually the tension of slavery divided the northern and southern states  to the point that war broke out, ending in the Civil War.  Though black slaves eventually won their freedom, their role as second class citizens continued through modern times.  After the war ended, there was the “quick overthrow of Reconstruction and the restoration of white supremacy; a brutal century of lynch law; the endurance of Jim Crow, the “white backlash” against the civil rights agenda; the re-segregation of public schools (Scott 2010)”, the list goes on and on. While America was built on the breaking backs of slaves, and to this day America feels the repercussions of those early actions.  It brings new meaning to the idealized slogan “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.”

References

Davis, Ronald L.F. “Slavery in America: Historical Overview.” Slaveryinamerica.org.  Web. Retrieved July 24, 2010 from http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm

Elson, William Henry. “History of the United States of America.” New York: The Macmillian   Company, 1904. Transcribed by Kathy Leigh, web.  Retrieved July 24, 2010 from http://www.usahistory.info/colonial/Navigation-Acts.html

Muzzey, David Saville. “An American History.” New York: Ginn and Company, 1920.

Scott, Jonathan. “PBS Says American Slavery was Natural: Eradicating Bacon’s Rebellion from Popular Memory” Web. Retrieved July 24, 2010 from  http://www.blackcommentator.com/129/129_guest_pbs_slavery.html