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It has been common for many generations to begin essays on American slavery by noting how commonplace slavery is: It is sanctioned in the Old Testament and has appeared in some form throughout recorded human history, from ancient Egypt to the capture and enslavement of European Christians by Muslims in the Middle Ages to the present. Writers also commonly note that slavery existed in Africa, that Africans sold other Africans into slavery, and—though this is a relatively recent addition to the “stock” essay—that western Europeans ended slavery in a relatively short compass, from about the time of the American Revolution, when northern states began to adopt abolition statutes, through the 1860s.

All of this is true. However, the emphasis has important political implications. For that picture of slavery makes it look natural. It employs the “everybody does it” argument to demystify a practice of immense horror. In fact, those arguments were employed with great facility by proslavery thinkers to justify the continuation of the institution. During debates over the Fugitive Slave Act, Senator John Bell of Kentucky said that slavery has been “contributing in a hundred various forms and modes, through a period of thousands of years, to the amelioration of the condition of mankind generally, though sometimes abused and perverted, as all human institutions, even those of religion, are” (U.S. Congress 1850, 1105).

Senator Bell (who ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States in 1860) found that slavery was “still contributing to advance the cause of civilization through, if you please, having its origins in individual cupidity, still mysteriously working out a general good” (U.S. Congress 1850, 1105). He went so far as to reason from there that slavery was not inconsistent with God’s law.

Moreover, saying that every society engaged in slavery is misleading. The nature of African American slavery was different in kind from slavery in many other societies. This is frequently lost on those who seek to make African American slavery look commonplace and thus minimize the nature of the harm. Grecian and Roman slavery was nonracial and temporary, for example. The children of people enslaved in one generation might rise to the ranks of free people, and slaves were incorporated into the society more generally.

It is now becoming more common to emphasize other parts of the institution of slavery that resulted in the forced migration of 11 million people to America, nearly one-half million of whom came to English-speaking North America from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. (The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in 1808, although some people were imported illegally after that.) The institution built on centuries of European experience with slavery. Slavery survived in parts of Spain through the 1500s; soon slavery spread to Spain’s colonies in America. In fact, in 1495 Columbus brought 500 Native American slaves back to Spain. But there were important differences. The slavery that developed in the Americas was brutally violent and perpetual. Slaves were often isolated from free people and left with no hope of having even their children escape from slavery.

The institution was revived and expanded in light of extraordinary needs for labor. Violence permeated it, including the forced separation of families, wars of conquest in Africa encouraged by the European market for humans, the middle passage to America, and brutalization on plantations in America.

Origins

Many historians debate the origins of slavery: in European practices such as slavery in Spain in the 1400s, in a legal tradition that stretched back to Roman law, in cultural patterns that encompassed slavery in the Old Testament, in economic needs, and in race prejudices. The legal traditions came largely from Spain—and through Spanish law, from Roman law. European-imposed slavery came ashore in the West Indies in the late 1400s and early 1500s, then spread from the Caribbean to the mainland. Historians have spent much time trying to discern how and when slavery came to British North America. The first black people brought to Virginia in the 1620s seem to have had a status similar to that of indentured servitude, where they worked for a limited period of time and then became free. But by the 1660s, it appears that a system of inherited slavery had emerged in Virginia and elsewhere in mainland British North America. Children’s status followed that of their mothers, so the offspring of slave mothers were also slaves. The best answer as to why appears to be that a combination of economic interests, racism, and cultural practices created the American slave system. And while race lies at the center of the institution of slavery, not all blacks were slaves. No whites were slaves, either.

And yet the human spirit longed to be free, even as the system of slavery grew in British North America and statutory laws grew up around it. In 1739 the Stono Rebellion took place along the coast of South Carolina. Something like sixty slaves began the rebellion by stealing weapons along the Stono River. In the wake of the rebellion, the statutory law of South Carolina became harsher and working conditions deteriorated. Shortly afterward, in 1741, there was an alleged plot by slaves in New York City, where 10 percent of the population was enslaved. The extent of the plot remains in dispute, but more than two dozen slaves were executed in the aftermath.

Slavery and American Revolution

Even as the slave population and the importance of slavery as a labor system were increasing, many in British North America began thinking in the Enlightenment’s terms of a universal right to freedom. American revolutionists gave consideration to the terms of slavery. In a draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included the slave trade as one of the offenses of the English Crown, but that indictment was subsequently removed. Like the delegates to the Continental Congress, Americans at the time of the Revolution were more generally unwilling to act on antislavery values. One of the great paradoxes of American history is the question of how Americans could fight a war based on the idea of freedom while still maintaining slavery. Or, in the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

There was, then, in the ideology of republicanism popular in early America—that conjunction of faith in widely spread property holdings, independence from economic dependency, and political independence as well—a strange relationship with slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe drew out the contradiction in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin when a boy beat his slave. The boy’s uncle asked whether that was consistent with the republican principle that “men are born free and equal.” The boy’s father said that the phrase was one of Tom Jefferson’s pieces of French sentiment and humbug. It’s perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds among us, to this day…. we can see plainly enough that all men are not born free, nor born equal; they are born anything else. For my part, I think half this republican talk sheer humbug. It is the educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have equal rights and not the canaille. (Stowe 1852, p. 74)

Such an exchange pointed out one of the abolitionists’ arguments: that slaveholders cared little for the equality of anyone, white or black. Some abolitionists argued, instead, that the slavery of Africans was but a step on the way to further inequality.

Historian Edmund Morgan’s 1975 book, American Slavery, American Freedom, takes up the paradox of Americans’ claims for freedom in the Revolution and their concomitant respect for slavery. His answer is that slavery provided the social and intellectual setting for whites’ freedom. In essence, slaves made it economically possible for white men to have democracy. Moreover, the presence of slavery alerted white men to how awful servitude might be—and thus led them to be vigilant in the protection of their rights. This draws in some ways from the insight of South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond, who spoke in 1858 about slaves as the “mudsill class” who made white freedom and equality possible. Though Hammond turned to this argument as a basis for continuing slavery, later historians have used his theory for insight into the nature of political ideology and slavery. In essence, they looked to Hammond to decode why slavery, so inconsistent with the American language of freedom, had such a powerful hold on the minds of white men.

Postrevolutionary Changes

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the institution of slavery grew in popularity in the United States, even as the movement opposing slavery also grew. In the northern states, gradual abolition plans began the process of ending slavery. For example, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania passed statutes that would emancipate slaves born afterward, following a period of apprenticeship. The statutes also freed slaves brought into the states. Thus, by about the middle of the nineteenth century, no more slaves would live in those states; those who were enslaved prior to the enactments would have died, and the others would have been freed. One effect of this was to encourage owners to sell their slaves to southern states, where they and their children would continue to be slaves.

The Enlightenment continued to have some adherents. Thomas Jefferson noted in 1784 in his Notes on the State of Virginia that “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of … the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. . I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever” (Jefferson 1984, pp. 288-289). Events elsewhere also contributed to the debate over slavery. In Haiti, Enlightenment ideas and the human impulses to resist slavery led to a revolution among the half-million slaves in 1791, which resulted by 1803 in the end of slavery in Haiti. The free black state was close to alone in the world; the United States would not receive an ambassador from Haiti or even recognize Haiti. The revolution included extraordinary violence. Hundreds of whites died; some white refugees fled from Haiti to South Carolina, where they provided living reminders of what might happen in a slave society. The United Kingdom ended slavery in its colonies in 1833, at a great financial cost, following decades of abolitionist agitation.

Capitalism And Antislavery Sentiments

There remains substantial question about the origins of antislavery sentiments. They grew in conjunction with the development of the market economy, which has led some historians to ask, “What is the relationship between capitalism and abolitionism?” One might think at first that there is some tension, in that the institution of slavery seems to have been a fairly effective way of obtaining (relatively) inexpensive labor. Anyone wondering about how important slavery was in the development of the southern agricultural economy might perform a simple experiment: Spend an afternoon—just an afternoon—working in a field in Alabama in July. Then ask, would anyone perform this kind of labor unless forced to do so?

However, the market economy seems to have had a positive effect on antislavery sentiments; in part it made people aware of their fellow humans, in part it led to competition with free labor. Thus, free laborers had both sentimental and economic reasons for opposing slavery. That did not necessarily mean that white voters always welcomed the idea of recently freed slaves living in their community; but for reasons of self-interest, they often had a desire to end slavery. In these cases, the economic interests of many voters merged with the humanitarian sentiments of others to give strength to the antislavery cause, even as proponents of property rights in the South clung tightly to the institution.

One might also consider that Adam Smith was the author of an important treatise, Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as The Wealth of Nations. As the market economy led the way for the development of middle-class sentiments that recognized the need for promotion of humanity (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a prominent example here), it also led the way for economic competition by free workers with slavery. The Republican Party’s slogan in the 1850s, for example, was “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.”

W E. B. Du Bois discussed this in his 1935 book Black Reconstruction, one of the most important works ever written on slavery and its aftermath. The book was an important corrective to the then-dominant school of historical scholarship that relegated slavery to the sidelines in the discussion of the Civil War and that decried the domination of the South by corrupt and lawless Yankees and blacks during Reconstruction. Du Bois dealt with the differing meanings of slavery for white workers—the impact of slave labor on driving down wages, as well as the presence of free black workers in driving down wages. Du Bois wrote, for example, that white immigrants “blamed blacks for the cheap price of labor. The result was race war; riots took place which were at first simply the flaming hostility of groups of laborers fighting for bread and butter” (Du Bois 1935, p. 18). Du Bois pointed out the complex relationship between white workers and slaves and free blacks, which made it sometimes difficult to tell how voters would define and express their preferences.

Growing Tensions Over Slavery And Antislavery

In the United States there was other action. Congress outlawed the importation of slaves from outside the United States in 1808 (the earliest date permitted under the Constitution). That had the effect of increasing the prices of enslaved people and also encouraging better treatment because of their increased value. The controversy over the extension of slavery to newly acquired territories continued as well. The Northwest Ordinance of 1789 had prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory (including Ohio and Michigan), which Virginia had ceded to the United States. Southern states worried that if free states were admitted, the South would gradually lose political power. In 1820, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery in territories north of Missouri’s southern border. For a while that contained discord over slavery. Thomas Jefferson wrote—with great foresight—about the compromise that “this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.” He predicted that although sectional divisions over slavery were quelled for the time being, “a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper” (Ford 1904-1905, vol. 12, pp. 158-160).

Subsequent events proved Jefferson correct. By the early 1830s, the politics of slavery grew more divisive. Nat Turner’s August 1831 rebellion in southern Virginia led to the deaths of at least fifty-five white people—and to a serious debate in the Virginia legislature about a gradual abolition plan. The plan failed, narrowly; in other southern states, there was growing reluctance even to discuss the possibility of termination of slavery. In 1835, when abolitionists attempted to use the U.S. mail to deliver abolitionist literature, southern states further closed ranks. After 1835, there was little serious antislavery talk in the South; the nation was on a course toward Civil War and then, emancipation.

After 1835, southern congressmen imposed the “gag rule,” which prohibited discussion of the abolition of slavery (or even the receipt of abolitionist petitions) in Congress. Southerners seem to have made an already degrading slavery harsher as well, for instance, by taking seriously statutes prohibiting the teaching of slaves how to read and by generally policing slaves more closely than they had before. Moreover, in the nineteenth century southern states moved to make emancipation of slaves harder and in some cases to require them to leave the states shortly after receiving freedom. College professors in southern institutions wrote important proslavery tracts, including Thomas R. Dew and Mary, Albert Taylor Bledsoe of the University of Virginia, R. H. Rivers of Alabama Wesleyan College (now the University of North Alabama), and William Smith of Randolph Macon College. Staples of the proslavery argument were that slavery was ubiquitous in history and that slave societies profited greatly from the institution. They concluded that slavery was not a drag on society but a principle cause of civilization. Moreover, they argued that economic and social stability required slavery. They pointed to Haiti and suggested the dangers to white society from the abolition of slavery.

In 1850, Congress again passed a comprehensive compromise (known as the “Compromise of 1850”) that, among other things, required northern states to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. But that could not settle the issue for long. The Supreme Court invalidated the Missouri Compromise in 1857 in the Dred Scott case, as it attempted to install southern constitutional thinking on slavery as the law of the land. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won election, and shortly thereafter South Carolina, fearing for the future viability of slavery, seceded. Other southern states followed and the Civil War began in 1861. During the secession discussions, southern politicians frequently spoke about the importance of preservation of slavery, and some advocated the reopening of the slave trade.

Differences Of Spanish And French Americas

Slavery was present in Spanish and French America, as well as in English-speaking America. In Spanish and French America, unlike English-speaking America, there seems to have been intermarriage between owners and slaves, and slaves seem to have had more formal legal protection. That has led to much discussion of whether the slave systems of Spanish and French America were more benign than in English-speaking America. There was, as many have pointed out, extraordinary violence in the slave systems throughout the Americas. After the Civil War finally ended slavery throughout the nation in 1865, slavery continued for a few more years in other parts of the Americas. Brazil finally ended slavery in 1888, which marked its termination in the Americas.

Bibliography:

Davis, David Brion. 2006. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Russell and Russell.
Ford, Paul Leicester, coll. and ed. 1904–1905. The Works of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 12. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Gross, Ariela. 2000. Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Harris, Leslie. 2003. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jefferson, Thomas. 1984. Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Merrill D. Peterson. New York: Library of America, Literary Classics of the United States.
Jordan, Winthrop. 1968. White over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550–1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Morgan, Edmund S. 1975. American Slavery–American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton.
Roediger, David. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London and New York: Verso.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. Boston: John P. Jewett.
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Williams, Eric. 1994. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.