Growth, Slavery, and Conflict in Colonial America, 1710-1763

Chapter 3

African Americans in the Colonial Era Chapter 3-3

The Atlantic Slave Trade

• Slaves had been traded internally within Africa for centuries, but the demand for agricultural labor in the Atlantic world created a dramatic increase in the transatlantic slave trade.

• In the 17th century the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese were the main slave-trading nations, but by the 18th century Britain came to dominate.

• The entire experience of Africans taken from their homeland and transported across the Atlantic was a brutal and traumatic experience (detailed in the images and graphics that follow), but the most traumatic experience of it all was the middle passage – the horrific leg of the journey across the ocean.

“West African Slave Trade”

“Abolitionists Pamphlet Diagram of Inside of a Slave Ship”

“British Empire Museum Exhibit Depicting ‘Tight Packing’ in Slaver Vessel”

“Slaves Working in Sugar Plantation on Island of Barbados”

“Broadside Advertisement for Slave Auction in Charleston 1769”

“Abolitionists Pamphlet Depiction of Slave Auction”

“Freedman’s Bureau Photograph Depicting Brutality of Slavery, c. 1870s”

Southern Slavery

• Slavery was a brutal and exploitative labor system, but the experience of individual slaves varied greatly from region to region.

• Two regional subcultures existed in the colonial south – the lower and the upper – and each had distinctive slave labor systems and cultures. • Slavery in the lower South became an integrated part of the labor system as lower

Southern states introduced rice and indigo production. Slaves worked under a task system that gave them considerable autonomy and free time which allowed them to foster their native culture.

• Slavery in the upper south came to replace the previous labor system that relied on indentured servants. The growth of tobacco required more oversight so slaves were organized into work gangs with white overseers which gave them less autonomy an freedom.

“Slave Quarters, Mulberry Plantation, South Carolina”

Northern Slavery and Free Blacks

• Slavery was less important to the colonial economy outside of the South. Nevertheless, it was important in some areas.

• Slaves in the rural North worked as field hands. Urban slaves worked as domestics, in manufacturing, or as assistants to artisans. In seaports, slaves worked in maritime occupations.

• A small community of free blacks emerged and settled in northern cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. • Some gained freedom by being released by their masters, others purchased their

freedom.

• The Great Awakening took root in many free African American communities as well as among slave populations throughout the colonies.

Slave Resistance and Rebellion

• Slave codes grew increasingly oppressive during through the colonial period.

• Slaves developed strategies for coping with the horrors of slavery and escaping the domination of their masters – pretending sickness, destroying tools, mutilating livestock, or running away

• At times, large scale rebellions broke out such as slaves used violence to resist the institution of slavery. • The Stono Rebellion – the largest African American uprising in the colonial

era, led to harsher punishments for slaves breaking slave code restrictions and greater control over slaves lives.

“The Stono Rebellion, South Carolina, ”

An African American Culture Emerges under Slavery • Many slaves resisted the institution of slavery simply by establishing

families, building an African American community, practicing their own religions – in other words, maintaining their humanity.

• All of these were difficult to achieve under the constraints imposed by the institution of slavery. • Families were often broken up by slave masters, for example.

• Slaves drew on their native African traditions, maintaining naming patterns for children and creating distinctive music and dance forms.

“Slaves Dancing and Playing Banjo, ”

Questions:

• How did the experience of slavery differ between the upper South and the lower South?

• How did the experience of slavery differ between the North and the South?

• How did slaves resist the authority of their masters?