With the Democratic presidential campaign heading into debates
the next two days the issue of slavery and reparations is bound to come up so I
thought I would report on the history of slavery in America in order to make
certain our many candidates have the truth. In this article I will
trace the roots and history of slavery in the U.S. including those responsible
for the slave trade in North America.
Long before Columbus ever discovered the Americas slavery was
a vital component of society and culture throughout the known
world. In historical Africa slavery was practiced in many different
forms.
There was indentured
servitude, Debt slavery, enslavement of captives, military slavery, slavery for
prostitution criminal slavery. African
slaves were shipped throughout the world well before America was even
discovered.
In truth, there were over
sixty million slaves taken from Africa.
Of that number, ten to twelve million were sold to slave traders for
shipment to the Americas. Over one
million died in captivity in Africa or during the ten-week ship journey to the
New World.
Slightly less than ten
million made it to the Americas from the first Portuguese shipment of the
Atlantic African Slaves between 1503 and 1519, and the end of slavery in
America in 1865.
No slaves were sold to the
North American colonies until 1619. Of
the ten million arriving in the Americas over the years, the North American
colonies of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Dutch received a total of
388,000 slaves, twenty-six percent children, as definitely established in the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade Database.
The same five European
empires were in vicious competition to colonize both the Americas and Africa, so
led by the Portuguese they established and owned the African Slave Trade in
partnership with the African kingdoms.
With the discovery of the Americas in 1492 the Trans-Atlantic African
Slave Trade evolved rapidly with shipments to Central and South America where
Spain and Portugal had colonies.
By the time North America was
first being settled in 1608 the five European empires began diverting some African
slaves to North America to service their new colonies. When the citizens of the thirteen British
colonies in North America revolted and defeated the mighty British empire, then
adopted a new Constitution in 1789, the new Republic signaled that the African
Slave Trade must end.
In 1808 both the US and
Britain banned African slave trade.
Individual states banned slavery leading up to the American Civil War in
1860. By that time America had grown
from thirteen states to thirty-three states, and eleven seceded from the Union
and formed the Confederacy.
Though
President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, it was not until the defeat of the Confederates in 1865 and
notification given in the state of Texas, that slavery officially came to an end.
During the period of 1619
when slaves first arrived in North America until the end of slavery and freeing
of all slaves in 1865, there were about five million slaves in North America,
of which 388,000 came from Africa. Half
of the slaves were men, one third were children, and one eighth were elderly or
crippled.
The vast majority of the
growth in the number of slaves in North America was primarily natural increase,
in which the population of slaves grew an average of 28.7 percent a year from
1790 until 1860.
In the U.S., on average, a
slave mother gave birth to between nine and ten children, more than twice the
birth rate of the West Indies in Central America. Throughout most of the New World the European
practice of children born to slaves became slaves.
Driven by a huge demand for
sugar, cotton and tobacco in Europe, the Southern states became plantation
states. After the US banned African
slaves in 1808 the demand for workers on the plantations became so severe that
over a million slaves were moved from Northern states to the Southern plantation
states.
When Abraham Lincoln was
elected president in 1860 there were thirty-three American states. Eleven seceded from the Union and started
their own nation, the Confederacy. At
the time there were about 3.9 million slaves in the US, both the North and the
South. During the Civil War over 500,000
Southern slaves were freed by the Union troops, and all the slaves in America
were freed by 1865.
In 1860, the population of
the entire Republic was 31.5 million, including 3.9 million Black slaves. Most were located in fifteen Southern states,
of which eleven did secede from the Union.
Ironically, more than
seventy-five percent of the Southern population did not own slaves in 1860.
Summary
African
slave trade began almost 200 years before America was discovered.
From
1519 until 1860 ninety-seven percent of the African slaves brought to America
and sold went to Central and South America, the Spanish and Portuguese
colonies, just three percent went to North America.
The
African Slave Trade was established by the European empires of Portugal, Britain,
France, Spain and the Dutch.
African
Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a European undertaking to supply manpower
for development of the European colonies in America.
When
Americans revolted and defeated the British empire and adopted the US
Constitution in 1789, the young nation was surrounded by the British, French
and Spanish colonies still in America.
In
1808 the new Republic banned the African Slave Trade to the US.
It
took further wars with Britain, 1812, Mexico in 1846-48, and Spain in 1898
to finally free the US from the stranglehold of the remaining European
colonies surrounding the Republic.
By
1865 the Confederacy was defeated and the Southern states were reunified
into the United States.
From
the birth of the nation in 1789 until the 1865 defeat of the Confederacy
and freeing of all slaves was a total of seventy-six years.
In other
words, it took 400 years to build the system of slavery in the United States
and within seventy-six years after becoming a Republic, slavery was
abolished and all slaves freed.
Now, there is still much work left to do to bring about the racial equality guaranteed by our Constitution. Bias and discrimination are among the most difficult of all deadly sins to overcome.
Yet we still faced the power
of evil in our history of imposed slavery and were able to stop it, then
destroy it, for all time. At great cost
America resisted the dark forces of slavery, the greatest abomination of sin
against the Creator, our God. Of that we
should be proud.
