The first Black people in North America were not slaves. Evidence indicates that prior to Columbus's laying claim to the new world in the name of the Spanish Queen Isabella, African explorers crossed the oceans. In addition, several Black people were with Columbus in 1492. By the 17th century, however, most Blacks in the Americas found themselves in the institution of slavery.

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

     Slavery has existed at every period in world history until very recently, but its existence has not always had the same economic character. Two questions must be answered to correctly analyze any particular cause of slavery: (1) what other systems of labor exist in the society in addition to slavery? and (2) what system of labor is dominant?  In this way we can make a distinction between ancient slavery (e.g., in Greece and Egypt where free farmers coexisted with slaves, but slavery was dominant) and antebellum slavery in the United States (which coexisted with free farmers, but was dominated by the industrially-based capitalism of the urban North). The historical dominance of capitalism in the United States made antebellum slavery the most barbaric system of slave labor. Not only did the slaves produce for the direct consumption of their owners, they were also forced to feed the gluttonous machines (textile mills) of both New England and "old" England with their products (cotton). The average productive life of slaves in cotton has been estimated at seven years during the height of King Cotton. The textile mills consumed the cotton and the plantations consumed the slaves!

     Solomon Northup, a slave, described a typical day in the life of a cotton slave: 

     While we are treating slavery as one of the three main historical experiences of Black people, it too developed in stages. The first stage marks a difference between slavery in the upper colonies (New England and New York), where slaves were mainly used for domestic work and some manufacturing, and in the lower colonies, where slaves were used in agricultural work. The second stage marks a shift from the southeastern region where slaves produced rice, indigo, and tobacco to the fertile delta region of Mississippi, central Alabama, and southeastern Georgia where cotton was grown. The third main stage of slavery occurred when cotton became King and dominated the entire economy of the South. It was a fundamental feature of the entire U.S. economy as well. Based on this changing pattern in the demand for slave labor, the geographical distribution of slaves changed from an initial concentration in the southeastern coastal area (e.g., South Carolina and Virginia) to the western part of the South (Mississippi). This stretched the concentration of Black people in a half moon- shaped pattern creating the Black Belt South (which to some limited extent still exists today, though no longer is it the main concentration of Black people). 

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  The social organization or division of labor of slaves during the reign of King Cotton must be considered as well. On the plantation, there was a difference between house slaves an field slaves, sort of like the difference between service workers (maids, janitors, hospital orderlies, etc.) and production workers (workers who produce commodities for sale or goods for consumption, like automobile and steel workers). James Stirling, writing in. 1857, described the differences between house and field slaves:

  There was also a difference between life on the plantation and the life in the city. The structure of the plantation was monolithic ( all power being in the hands of the landowner ) and mostly limited to what was on the plantation. However, in the city there was great diversity and density so that life was more cosmopolitan. In the city, there was a difference between the slaves owned by individuals and those owned industrially by a company (e.g., a railroad). Though industrial slavery was quite limited, it did provide the loosest form of social control and it is here that the emergence of independence and initiative by Black slaves can be seen most clearly.

     These differences were the concrete basis that led to different forms of social and cultural life. Close, constant, and brutal supervision forced field slaves to develop an "underground" social life in addition to a few customs allowed to flourish on key holidays. House slaves were close to the social life of white people so that assimilation could take place (e.g., actual participation in the religious practices of their owners and, when going among field slaves, mimicking "white folks" with clothes, speech, and behavior borrowed from their owners). In the city, since the paternalism of the plantation was impossible, slaves had the time to develop limited patterns of free associate on in illegal institutions that developed in alleys and poorer parts of town (especially in New Orleans and Charleston). 

RELIGION AND SLAVERY

     Thus, the church and religion provided the main basis for the independent development of Black social life: (1) to deal with the bible someone, usually a Black minister, had to read; (2) to deal with religion meant that Black people developed and/or reinforced. Values that dictated forms of family life, interpersonal relations, and a general sense of justice and fair play. In other words, the religion was the moral basis for the development of the first forms of education and indigenous forms and values regarding family life.

MECHANISMS STRENGTHENING SLAVERY

   In analyzing the slave system of the antebellum South, it is necessary to make a distinction between those mechanisms that held slavery together, and those that tended to weaken slavery. The slave system was held together by the dominant influence of the slave plantation owners. They had the support of the northern industrialists, as well as the capitalist powers in England, who needed cotton for the textile mills. The local and state governments as well as Congress were dominated by the slave owners. In this way, the slave system was totally protected by the economic and political organization of power. All social and cultural institutions also served the slave system. Except for a few cases (mainly the New England Quakers and the social reformers who became forces desiring the peaceful abolition of the slave system), the churches, schools, mass media, and artists joined in support of the slave system.

MECHANISMS WEAKENING SLAVERY

We must also be aware of the developments that tended to weaken the slave system. They included the following:

Hiring out - This practice enabled slaves to find jobs and pay the bulk of their wages to their owner. This developed initiative and independence in slaves and resulted in a desire for freedom. A few slaves even purchased their own freedom in this way.

Industrial slavery - As pointed out, this practice was the opposite of the close paternalistic supervision of plantation life. Supervision was impersonal and allowed slaves greater freedom, though not necessarily better conditions of life or a higher standard of living.

Manumission - This is simply the process whereby a slave owner willfully freed a slave. Much of this was done to free the offspring of a slave owner and one of his female slaves.

Running away - This was the practice of slaves secretly leaving their owners for a free state in the North or Canada. The most famous pattern was the "underground railroad," a network of people who would provide shelter and assistance to runaway slaves. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were important leaders in this form of resistance to the slave system.

Race mixing -The sexual exploitation of Black women was the usual form of amalgamation of Blacks and whites. This created a color status group of mulattoes, who threatened the rigidity of the color line of Black people on one side and white people on the other.

Slave revolts - This form of collective resistance represented an armed insurrection by the slaves themselves. Most were small and unsuccessful, but a few are of great historical significance. In the summer of 1822, Denmark Vesey organized a slave revolt around Charleston, South Carolina. Between 6,000 and 9,000 were said to be implicated in the plan to attack Charleston. The leaders, however, were betrayed and arrested. When slaves tried to rescue them, state troopers converged upon them. During their executions, federal troops were brought in to protect the city.

     Slave revolts continued throughout this period. In 1831, Nat Turner, a deeply religious man, along with six other slaves began their crusade "to take up Christ's struggle for the liberation of the oppressed." They began by killing Turner's master, and within twenty-four hours they were joined by some seventy slaves who killed all slaveholding whites in the twenty mile area (approximately sixty in all). Soon hundreds of soldiers swarmed the countryside, slaughtering over one hundred slaves and hanging the leaders of the revolt. As Herbert Aptheker writes,

     This did not stop the slave revolts. They took place not only on land but also on the high seas. For instance, Joseph Cinque, a native African, freed a whole shipload of slaves; Madison Washington, a slave bound from Richmond to the New Orleans slave market, rose up with others, liberated the ship, and sailed into Nasseau, New Providence.

Armed attacks - This form of collective resistance represented a militant attack on slavery from outside the slave system. The most famous was undertaken by John Brown, who in 1859 gathered a small band of both Blacks and whites and seized a federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. They were defeated when hundreds of troops moved against them, but their actions, like those of militant slaves before and after them, were a part of a process that ended the formal institution of slavery.

     Many others spoke out militantly over the years. In 1843, Henry Highland Garnet exhorted slaves to rise up in resistance:

Echoing Garnet, Frederick Douglass some fifteen years later exclaimed:

By 1863 Douglass was urging Blacks to rise up and join the war effort:

KEY CONCEPTS

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. What were the main features of the political economy of slavery in the United States during the early 19th century?

2. What experiences did slaves have, based upon different occupations within the plantation system? Of what significance were these differences in influencing or shaping the capacity of Blacks to resist and to struggle to abolish slavery?

3. Compare the factors that tended to strengthen slavery with those that weakened it.

4. What are the similarities and differences in the methods of struggle against slavery waged under the leadership of people such as: Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Henry Highland Garnet?  

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

1. John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

2. Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolutions: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Modern World. New York: Random House, 1979.

3. Nathan Huggins, Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

4. Leslie H. Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

5. William L. Van Deburg, Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture. Madison- University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.