Christopher Cameron - The Abolitionist Movement. Documents Decoded

Titles in ABC-CLIOs Documents Decoded series

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Daniel M. Shea and Brian M. Harward

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Joseph A. Melusky and Keith Alan Pesto

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Aimee D. Shouse

The ABC-CLIO series Documents Decoded guides readers on a hunt for new secrets through an expertly curated selection of primary sources. Each book pairs key documents with in-depth analysis, all in an original and visually engaging side-by-side format. But Documents Decoded authors do more than just explain each sources context and significancethey give readers a front-row seat to their own investigation and interpretation of each essential document line-by-line.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cameron, Christopher, 1983
The Abolitionist Movement : documents decoded / Christopher Cameron.
pages cm. (Documents decoded)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61069-512-1 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-61069-513-8 (ebook) 1. Antislavery movementsUnited States. 2. Antislavery movementsUnited StatesSources. 3. AbolitionistsUnited StatesHistory. 4. AbolitionistsUnited StatesHistorySources. I. Title.
E441.C24 2014
326'.80973dc23 2014007502

ISBN: 978-1-61069-512-1
EISBN: 978-1-61069-513-8

18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

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Introduction

The Rise of Slavery in British North America

African slavery began in the region that would become the United States in 1619, when 20 blacks were brought to the Virginia colony after their purchase from a Dutch warship. The status of all 20 of these individuals was uncertainsome were treated as slaves, while others were indentured servants who ended up gaining their freedom. Despite the presence of these African slaves and servants, Virginia actually relied primarily on white indentured servants before 1680. With land shortages and economic problems in England, many poor whites signed indentures whereby they agreed to work for a specified period of time, often between four and seven years, in return for passage to the colonies and room and board once they arrived. After completing their term of indenture, they might be given a small plot of land and tools and clothing with which to begin their free lives. Some became small farmers and even fewer became large planters, but many became part of a growing landless lower class.

High death rates and the high cost of slaves made indentured servitude more attractive to Virginias planters for much of the 17th century, but things started to change in the 1650s. Around that time people started living longer in the colony, which increased the number of indentured servants who gained their freedom and competed economically with their former masters. The rights of commoners were reduced by leaders, and the courts started handing down harsher punishments for infractions such as running away, increasing the discontent of the indentured servant class. Wealthy speculators also bought up large tracts of land, making it difficult for those who did gain their freedom to achieve upward mobility, as land was the primary means of making money in an agricultural society.

These factors combined to produce widespread unrest among the lower classes, unrest that erupted into Bacons Rebellion in 1676, which was an interracial movement of lower-class whites and blacks rebelling against Virginias colonial government. The rebels were angry that the government did not protect citizens on the frontier, and they were likewise angry at the lack of economic opportunities and political rights. While the rebellion was put down fairly quickly, the interracial composition of the rebels and the rise of class warfare scared colonial elites and helped initiate the transition to racial slavery in Virginia. If there were fewer free and unfree lower-class white men in the colony, leaders reasoned, there would be less opportunity for future interracial rebellions to arise.

In 1680 the black population of Virginia stood at just 7 percent, some of whom were free blacks who had worked their way out of slavery. Twenty years later in 1700 that number had increased to 28percent; however, the labor pool in the colony was still split roughly in half between African slaves and white indentured servants. By 1710, however, 40 percent of Virginias population was enslaved, and the vast majority of the remaining 60 percent consisted of freedmen. A little more than 30 years after Bacons Rebellion, the transition to racial slavery as the basis of the colonial economy was complete.

Slaverys rise in the neighboring Carolina colony developed very differently from the Virginia model. Carolina was settled in the late 1660s, as opposed to Virginia, which was first settled in 1607. But slavery was legal from the inception of the Carolina colony, while it had taken Virginia roughly 40 years to completely legalize the institution there. Carolina was first settled by smaller planters from Barbados, another British colony located in the Caribbean, and these planters brought their slaves with them, employing them primarily as cattle herders and artisans and in other trades until planters began rice cultivation in the mid-1690s. After this point slavery grew quickly in South Carolina, where blacks made up a majority of the population as early as 1708. Thirty years later there were two slaves for every one free white man or woman in the colony, and South Carolina would become a staunch advocate of slavery and slave trading until the American Civil War.

While slavery was strongest in the South, it was by no means strictly a southern institution, even in the colonial period. In fact, Massachusetts became the first colony in British North America to legalize slavery, which occurred in 1641 when the legislature declared that there shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doth morally require. While the number of slaves throughout New England colonies such as Massachusetts always remained relatively small compared to the southern colonies, the numbers do not tell the entire story of how important slavery was to the region. Most enslaved Africans were clustered along the seacoast in major towns, which meant that slave populations were largest where those of the regions political and cultural leaders, the mercantile elite, were likewise heaviest. These were the figures among whom slaveholders were overwhelmingly represented, and gentlemens households were often dependent upon slave labor as domestics. Even though slavery was not absolutely central to the New England economy, it did help to diversify it, partly by freeing masters to work outside the home, and was an important factor in the transition to capitalism during the 18th century.