Slavery in the British colonies
Understanding slavery in the context of AP US History
Slavery and its legacies is amongst the most contentious topics in contemporary American history and society; for the purposes of AP US History, you will need to be familiar with: the introduction of slavery into the Americas; the growth and expansion of slavery throughout the colonies and later throughout the southern states; the economic impacts of slavery throughout the colonies and later the United States; cultural, legal, political and social dynamics related to the expansion and eventual abolition of slavery; and slavery’s central role before and during the Civil War. In this chapter, the focus will be on the introduction of slavery into the Americas, particularly into the British North American colonies, the growth of slavery, primarily in the southern colonies, and the reactions of colonial societies and governments to slave rebellions, including in New York in both 1712 and 1741 and especially the Stono River Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739.
1619: A critical year
Without weighing in about the relative merits of sometimes competing visions of early American history and the appropriate curricula, 1619 has traditionally signalled a major shift in American history as the first notices of enslaved Africans being brought into the Virginia colony appeared. John Rolfe, the husband of the ill-fated Pocahontas and one of the wealthiest Virginian tobacco planters, wrote that in August 1619 a Dutch ship imported “not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes” that were promptly purchased by the colonial governor and a merchant in exchange for food; the 20-30 “Angolans” as these enslaved Africans were often referred to were part of a larger shipment of enslaved people that had been raided in the Caribbean. Continuing to roil the ongoing debates about the beginning of slavery in the British North American colonies, these newly arrived Africans were provided contracts for indentured servitude, leading some scholars to argue that these people were not enslaved in the manner to which we are accustomed to thinking. Also of note, during much of the 17th century, slavery was not always permanent; there were often provisions stipulating that an enslaved person would be freed in their early 30s. While undoubtedly less cruel than a lifetime of forced labor and inhumane treatment, it is essential to remember that 30+ years of slavery meant deprivation of the essential liberties and rights that British colonists prized for themselves, particularly at a time when average life expectancy from birth was approximately 40 years.
As tobacco planters and other landowners in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland increased their demand for enslaved labor, they prevailed upon the colonial government to impose increasingly harsh laws and rules; in 1682, Virginia passed the first law stipulating that the children of enslaved women were considered slaves, even when the father, often the enslaver or an overseer, was white. By the early 18th century, slaves in Virginia were legally declared **chattel **property, meaning that slaves could be legally bought, sold, and transported by slaveowners.
Expansion of slavery throughout the colonies
According to data published in 2019, the population of enslaved people, initially overwhelmingly imported into the Americas as part of the Atlantic slave trade, and later combining newly imported slaves as well as the children of enslaved people in the Americas, grew from these original “20. and Odd Negroes” in 1619 to nearly 250,000 enslaved people by 1750. While the vast majority of slaves were concentrated in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland and the southern colonies of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, 40% of New York City’s population was enslaved by 1700; in South Carolina, enslaved people comprised over 60% of the population in 1750, a particularly salient fact in the aftermath of the Stono River Rebellion of 1739.
Resistance to slavery in the colonial period
While slavery’s expansion and growth were sustained and substantial throughout the colonial period, resistance: to slavery was also sustained and substantial. Highlighted by the major slave rebellions in New York City in 1712 and 1741, and most prominently by the Stono River Rebellion in South Carolina in September 1739, resistance to enslavement took many forms, including running away, sabotage, work slowdowns and stoppages, and armed conflict. Enslavers sought to discourage and/or eliminate these forms of resistance through a vast array of inducements, threats, and punishments. In response to the Stono River Rebellion, the largest colonial era slave-led rebellion in the British North American colonies, the South Carolina colonial government passed a new set of laws in 1740 aimed at preventing further slave rebellions. The primary focus of the Negro Act of 1740 was on deterring further slave resistance through harsher punishments for running away and rebellion, but there were provisions nominally aimed at discouraging slaveowners from relying exclusively on whippings and violence against slaves. As with most colonial and later *antebellum *(pre Civil War) laws regarding the treatment of slaves, though, enslaved people and even the few free blacks in the colonies and later states were frequently prohibited from giving testimony against enslavers and white people generally.
From the Negro Act of 1740:
Slavery and indigenous peoples
As mentioned previously, indigenous peoples were sometimes enslaved during the 17th century, particularly as punishment for resisting further colonial settlement during Metacom’s War in New England and Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. In these instances, captured Native Americans were frequently sold to Caribbean sugar planters to prevent further resistance by native communities.