Jason Chavez
HIST 290
Prof. Belsky
Historians normally date the start of slavery in the North American colonies to 1619. That year,
a Dutch ship carrying African slaves docked at Point Comfort, which served as Jamestown's checkpoint
for ships wanting to trade with the colonists. The crew of the Dutch ship was starving, and as John Rolfe
noted in a letter to the Virginia Company's treasurer Edwin Sandys, the Dutch traded 20 African slaves
for food and supplies. John Rolfe was one of the earliest English settlers in America. Rolfe has been given credit for growing the first tobacco crop for exportation in Virginia. The African slave trade has been alive for centuries. The earliest records of the African slave trade in America date back to the beginning of the 17th century, when racial slavery was a punishment for servants who broke the law. In the 18th century, slaves were mostly used in the South to work in plantations and farms, especially by rich landowners who could afford the extra expense in order to maximize their profits. By the start of the Civil War in 1860, there were approximately four million slaves of African origin in the US.
The early to mid 19th century was known for drastic economic and technological change in the United States. People were communicating with each other faster than ever before and the demand for products was as high as it’s ever been. Inventions like the steamboat, railroad, and telegraph all contributed to the economical and technological changes that occurred in the years to come. With all these advances we should of had a conjecture that the need for a slaves would compress because mechanical devices were being produced to increase productivity with the decreasement of human labor, but the irony was that these machines elevated the exigency for slaves. Slavery was once again becoming a controversial topic in American politics, deciding whether this institution of slavery should be allowed to spread, to be contained,...