Below you will find the overheads used for this discussion.  Please note that each individual overhead is separated by a solid line.

• To see the excerpt from Roots shown in class, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RvBaUH5u1I&feature=related. You can view the entire series online beginning with Roots Part I at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvAM4tP39KY.

1. To discuss the African origins of slavery in the American colonies.
2. To examine the process by which slavery became a political institution in the “New World.”
3. To discuss the characteristics of slavery as it developed in the American colonies.
4. To examine resistance to slavery as chronicled through the primary documents of slave owners and the slaves – especially through what we read in Voices and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

• Map 1736 Negroland and Guinea with the European Settlements, Explaining what belongs to England, Holland, Denmark, etc at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Negroland_and_Guinea_with_the_European_Settlements,_1736.jpgNote about this map - The Slave Coast is the name of the coastal areas of present Togo, Benin (formerly Dahomey) and western Nigeria, a fertile region of coastal Western Africa along the Bight of Benin. In the pre-colonial time it was one of the most densely populated parts of the African continent. It became one of the most important export centres for the Atlantic slave trade from the early 16th century to the 19th century. Other West African regions historically known by their prime colonial export are Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), Ivory Coast (modern-day Cote D'Ivoire), and Pepper Coast (aka Grain Coast, modern-day Liberia).
• To read details about the domestic slave trade, view maps, and see images, go to http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/landing.cfm?migration=3
• Map of Slave Trade http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_trade.htm Slave Trade, 1500s-1870 at http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/collection/large/G009.JPG
• Other maps of the African Slave Trade: http://college.cengage.com:80/history/west/mosaic/chapter9/images/slave_trade_map.jpghttp://www.unc.edu/wrc/maps/08-Map.png;\

Origins, Culture, and Lifestyles of Africans at the Time of the White Slave Trade

• On the coast and interior of West Africa, about 100 million people lived in hundred of individual tribal nations.
• Most nations were feudal societies based upon agriculture. African farmers were skilled and some were familiar with iron tools.
• While slavery existed within African nations, it initially was comprised of prisoners of war - not on profit or racism.
• Individual tribes shared communal lands and there was little understanding of private property. Communal lands were cultivated for communal needs - not for profit.
• Large urban centers existed - especially in the northern parts of Africa - and these had well established businesses and trade routes.
• African nations had stable and well-defined concepts of law and order, although rivalry existed among nations.
• Muslims comprised 10-15% of all slaves brought to the "New World."

1400s   Portuguese began enslaving West Africans

1502     Slave trade to ìNew Worldî officially began when slaves are introduced to the Caribbean with permission from Spain.

1540     About 10,000 African slaves estimated to be exported annually into the West Indies.

1619     About one million African slaves  had arrived in South America; the first African slaves arrive in North America - Jamestown.

1637    The first American slave ship sailed for Africa in search of slaves.

1660s  The black population of the Caribbean islands outnumbers the white population.

1661     Virginia becomes the first colony to legalize slavery.

1672     Charles II chartered the Royal African Company; between 1672 and 1731, the RAC dominates the world slave market.

1800     Between 10-15 million Africans had forcibly arrived in the Americas - about one-third of the original number who had been kidnapped from their homes.  Of these, about 6% - or about 650,000 - actually came to North America.

1807     Slave trading outlawed by the British Parliament - although in practice, slavery had been nonexistent in Britain for 200 years.

1808     Slave trading was abolished in the US, but the system of slavery remained legal.

1810    The 1.1 million slaves in the US constituted almost twice the total number of Africans imported from Africa during the preceding two centuries.

1860     The almost 4 million slaves in the US constituted six times the number of slaves the nation had imported.

1865     Slavery was abolished in the US through passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

1. The roots of institutionalized slavery were economic.  It was the economic need for slaves that led to the institutionalization of slavery - not the social need to enslave the inferior. (To understand the economic dimensions of cramming as many slaves into a ship to make the largest possible profits, view this image of 1789 - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1h295b.html.
2. The system of slavery was legitimized through four rationales:  racial, economic, legal, and religious.
3. Slavery was not just a regional problem in the south; rather, it was a national problem that shaped the lives of all colonial residents, northerners and southerners, rich and poor, black and white alike. (See African American Slave Population Map, 1800 at http://www.byub.org/ancestors/maps/slave1800.html)
4. Slavery affected all of the colonies by nurturing the growth of several major social divisions that affected all of colonial America.
5. Slaves resisted slavery, both by means of active plots and rebellions, abolition support, enlisting with the North during the Civil War, as well as passive resistance to the day-to-day toil of slavery. (See Map of U.S. Slave Insurrections at http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_insurrections.htm)
6. Despite the physical and emotional brutality of slavery, many slaves retained their African ways, some of their African and Muslim traditions and family names, and their human dignity.
7. Slavery not only oppressed whites and enslaved blacks, it also endangered the rights and liberties of American citizens.

The legal rationale was created to legally define the status and and treatment of slaves.  Slaves were legally restricted to the black race and defined as property, not humans.  Thus, the slave’s racial and property status ensured that he or she would have no legal rights.  The rationale was enforced by the legal standard of treatment enacted in colonial slave codes  that bound slaves to obey their masters and respect all whites.  These codes ensured that

• No slave could leave the plantation without written permission of  master.
• Slaves found guilty of conspiracy, murder or rape would be hanged and their masters compensated by the colony.
• Slaves who robbed a house or store would receive 60 lashes and be placed in the pillory where his ears were severed from his head.
• Slaves would be whipped, maimed, or branded for petty offenses.

The religious rationale was created to convince whites and blacks alike that God sanctioned slavery.  Slaves were told in their churches that God wished them to be obedient to their masters and to do otherwise was sinful. 

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An Episcopal Ministry, 1831

Note:  The following is the text of a Sunday sermon given to slaves in Edenton, North Carolina.  The text is remembered by Harriet Jacobs, a slave in that town, in her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861.

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ”*

“Hearken, ye servants!  Give strict heed unto my words.  Your are rebellious sinners.  Your hearts are filled with all manner of evil. ‘Tis the devil who tempts you.  God is angry with you, and will surely punish you, if you don’t forsake your wicked ways.  Instead of serving your masters faithfully, which is pleasing in the sight of your heavenly Master, you are idle, and shirk your work.  God sees you.  You tell lies.  God hears you.  Instead of being engaged in worshipping him, you are hidden away somewhere, feasting on your master’s substance; tossing coffee-grounds with some wicked fortuneteller, or cutting cards with another old hag.  Your masters may not find you out, but God sees you, and will punish you.  O, the depravity of your hearts!  When your master’s work is done, are you quietly together, thinking of the goodness of God to such sinful creatures?  No, you are quarrelling, and tying up little bags of roots to bury under the door-steps to poison each other with.**  God sees you.  You men steal away to every grog shop to sell your master’s corn, that you may buy rum to drink.  God sees you.  You sneak into the back streets, or among the bushes, to pitch coppers.  Although your masters may not find you out, God sees you; and he will punish you.  You must forsake your sinful ways, and be faithful servants.  Obey your old master and your young master - your old mistress and your young mistress.  If you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly Master.  You must obey God’s commandments.  When you go from here, don’t stop at the corners of the streets to talk, but go directly home, and let your master and mistress see that you have come.”
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*  Ephesians 6:5.

**  The minister is preaching against the established African American cultural practices of using coffee for divination, cards for conjuring, and making balls filled with roots for both divination and conjuring.  This was part of the Kongo civilization which was kept alive and well by many slaves in America. 

Social Divisions Brought About By Slavery

1.    Between the small percentage of wealthy plantation owners who owned the vast majority of the slaves, and the large percentage of Southern whites who owned very little land and few, if any, slaves.

• By 1860, only 2.7% of southern slave holders owned more than 50 slaves and only 0.1% owned 200 or more.  These 2.8% of whites owned one quarter of all the slaves in the South.
• Another quarter of all slaves lived on plantations with between 1-9 slaves, and half on plantations with between 10-49 slaves.

2.    Among black slaves accorded hierarchical positions at the plantations.

3.    Between all whites and all blacks.

4.    Among the discontented classes of Americans - white and black alike.  As Zinn reminds us, “Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies.  That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order.”  (p. 37). 

• In Takaki’s analysis of slavery in America, he finds white and black laborers in Virginia “occupied a common social space - a terrain of racial liminality that had not yet developed rigid caste lines.  White and black, they shared a condition of class exploi-tation and abuse: they were all unfree laborers.”  (Takaki, 55.)
•  
• In Virginia, by the early 1660s, a discontented class existed of white and black indentured servants, slaves, and landless freemen - what the planter elite called “a giddy multitude.”
•  
• Thus, the Virginia legislature -  followed by others - took  measures to deal with such fear, especially the legislative proclaimation that white men were superior to black; and offered white lower class members benefits previously denied to them which made them economically superior to lower class whites.  Dividing and conquering.

Consequences:  American society was divided -  racially between the white, black, and red peoples of North America;  socially between the more privileged and less privileged of white and black society; and economically between rich and poor.

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SLAVE RESISTANCE

Plots, rebellions, and riots. 

• Historian Richard Maxwell Brown found from 1663-1866, 45 significant actual or aborted slave revolts, plots, or uprisings.
• Winthrop Jordan’s (1993) study of diaries, census data, and plantation records from Adams County, Mississippi at the beginning of the Civil War uncovered a slave conspiracy to organize a large-scale revolt.  After the plot was uncovered, slaves were hanged and another 40 arrested and beaten.
• Herbert Aptheker chronicled about 250 incidents where at least 10 slaves joined in a revolt or a conspiracy. 

Individual resistance.  Paul Blassingame (1972:107) argued that resistance was not limited to planned or aborted uprisings.  Indeed, “hundreds of slaves...ran away from their masters, assaulted, robbed, poisoned and murdered whites, burned their master’s dwellings,” and “hundreds more fought whites in self defense.”  Zinn argues that individual resistance began in Africa, and was also common in the Spanish Caribbean colonies prior to English colonization.

Guerrilla war.  Brown and others provided evidence of “Maroon bands” of runaway slaves who conducted “a guerrilla war against their erstwhile white masters.” Herbert Aptheker found that between 1672 and 1864,  at least 50 maroon communities existed in the United States, primarily in the forested, mountainous, and swampy regions of South Carolina, Northern Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. 

Abolition efforts.  Ripley, et. al. (1993) wrote 5 volumes that include documents selected from thousands of newspaper and manuscript collections from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada that illustrate the efforts of black persons - both free and slaves - to abolish slavery and fight racism.  

Enlistment in the Civil War.  Berlin, et. al. (1993) documented the enlistment and military service of almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, most of whom were former slaves.

“Though slaves were kept in bondage, slaves were far from passive.  They were not stripped of their identities; they were rarely emotionally attached to their masters; they seldom forgot their African culture.  Instead, they were locked into a dynamic relationship with their owners in which, despite the grotesquely uneven distribution of power, they demonstrated extraordinary ingenuity in setting limits on the master’s ability to coerce them.  However brutal the power held over them, slaves were actively and continuously involved in carving out psychological “space” for themselves.  Survival was their immediate goal, but freedom was their ultimate hope...Slaveowners could not obliterate slave family life without threatening the efficient and profitable management of the plantation.  Often they encouraged slaves to live together and take up the role of parents, for masters found that slaves were more dutiful and productive when tied to spouses and offspring.  If not concerned about the morality of their slaves, they were interested in maximizing the output of labor and minimizing insubordination.  Also, slaves themselves refused to give up the right to family association.  Though strictly confined within “the peculiar institution,” they still managed to forge affective ties.  Overcoming formidable obstacles, slaves fashioned intimate bonds between man and woman, parent and child.”

...Gary B. Nash (1979:128-29)

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• Images related to Harriet Jacobs' Life at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Jacobs/hj-images.htm
• Timeline of Events related to slavery and Harriet Jacobs' Life at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Jacobs/hj-timeline.htm
• Runaway Notice for Harriet Jacobs at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541t.html

Conclusions
“The Enslaved - The Origins of Slavery”

1. It was an economic need that led to the institutionalization and legalization of slavery, not the social need to enslave the inferior.
2. Enough good will and shared experiences existed between white and black servants in colonial America to make masters fearful of a united resistance.
3. By the end of the 1600s, colonial society was racially divided between the white, black, and red peoples of North America and socially divided between the privileged and less privileged of white and black society.  In some cases, such divisions were the result of a divide and conquer mentality deliberately designed by white, Protestant elites to maintain their economic, social, and political empowerment.
4. Slavery was not just a regional problem confined to the southern colonies.  Rather, slavery was first a colonial problem and then a national problem  that shaped the lives of all residents, northerners and southerners,  black and white alike.
   • Its economic and political effect were greater upon southern whites and blacks because slavery was directly tied to the economy, which was not the case in the north.
   • Its social effects, directed by the racial justification for enslavement, were equally as influenced throughout all the colonies.
5. The vast majority of slaves were discontented with their lives under slavery.  However, despite the cruelties of the system, many slaves were able to retain a great deal of their African identity and culture as well as preserve their basic human rights. Slave families showed a “stubborn resistance” to the pressures of family and cultural disintegration.
6. While actual slave revolts were rare, the fear of such rebellion was constant among white slave owners.  Ironically, the institution of slavery also enslaved the white owners.
7. Resistance was a regular byproduct of the institution of slavery - running away, not working too hard, collective strikes, and rebellion.  Slaves were not contented with their situation and most, when given an opportunity, resisted in any way they could.

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