Lecture Slides
Graphic Organizer: Timeline
Lecture Notes
The Great American Paradox
Origins of the Jamestown Colony
John Rolf planted a successful crop of tobacco
Enslaved Africans brought to North America
Sugar drove the slave trade throughout the Caribbean and Spanish Americas.
The British poet William Cowper captured this ethos when he wrote,
Early Slave Experience
We think:
Story of Anthony Johnson
Establishment of Chattel Slavery
Society with slaves → slave society
Conclusion
- Virginia July 30th 1619 - first representative government met at church house of burgesses
- Established the principle of representative government — Virginia is the birthplace of American Democracy
- The same established an institution that mocked America's commitment to freedom
- HUMAN SLAVERY
- August 1619 — ship carrying two dozen enslaved African men women and children arrived at Jamestown --- immediately sold
- American Democracy and American Slavery were born only a month apart in Jamestown Virginia
- Great American paradox — evolved as a society dedicated to liberty and to slavery would persist for another 2.5 centuries to be resolved only in the American Civil War
Origins of the Jamestown Colony
- Founded in 1607 by a private company called the Virginia company
- 1st permanent British colony in North America
- In its early years -- floundered
- 900 settlers arrived, only 60 survived
- Most starved or died of disease
- In its early years -- floundered
John Rolf planted a successful crop of tobacco
- Tobacco soon took off
- Issue: labor shortage
- Indentured servants - sign a contract .. can’t afford to get to America, sign a contract and someone pays their way to Jamestown came from England, Ireland, Scotland… work for 5-7 years to pay off that transportation debt and then ideally get land and start out on their own.
Enslaved Africans brought to North America
Sugar drove the slave trade throughout the Caribbean and Spanish Americas.
The British poet William Cowper captured this ethos when he wrote,
- “I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar or rum?”
- Seized by two British pirate ships
- Ship that arrived brought 20+ Africans
- Immediately traded for food supplies
- More ships arrived carrying slaves in small numbers
Early Slave Experience
We think:
- Slaves are permanently enslaved
- Nearly everybody of African decent is enslaved
- Slavery as hereditary
- Held in place by strict laws to prevent escape and insurrection
- Treated much like indentured servants: held as laborers for a term of service and then granted their freedom
- Africans began to acquire land → plant tobacco
- Jamestown records contained no specific laws regarding slavery
Story of Anthony Johnson
- → arrived as a slave (bound laborer) named Antonio, purchased by the Bennet family, Bennets took a liking, giving land to cultivate on the side, married and had 4 children, allowed to baptise their children
- gained his freedom
- given land for paying the costs of importing indentured servants → sons also given land
- Incomprehensible that Anthony Johnson would buy fellow Africans and hold them as slaves
- WHY?
- Slaves provided invaluable labor, since slavery had no percise legal definition, it’s probable that Anthony Johnson thought his slaves would obtain freedom at some point just like he did.
Establishment of Chattel Slavery
Society with slaves → slave society
- Whites grown to resent the competition from these free African laborers
- Africans were uniquely vulnerable in this circumstance → cut off completely from their homeland → no penalty unlike indentured servant European immigrants
- The slave trade grew in the US → increasing numbers of slaves were purchased in North America. By 1700’s over 16,000 slaves
- White indentured labor proved itself to be increasingly problematic
- Not enough of it
- Proved to be rambunctious
- Change in the law
- They began to fashion a more restrictive form of slavery that was tied directly to skin color
- 1662 - Virginia law declared children born to an enslaved mother would be considered slaves
- Interracial marriages (if a white man and a black woman, that child would be considered a slave)
- Baptism was no longer a means to freedom
- 1669 — slaveholder that killed a slave could not be charged with murder
- You can’t actually murder a slave because a slave is property… it wouldn’t make sense to destroy your own property
- Free blacks could not own indentured servants
- All non-Christian slaves were immediately made slaves for life
Conclusion
- Slavery was established in 1619 and abolished in 1865
- America was a slave holding society to 246 years.
- Slavery is not a chapter in American history… it’s a central element that runs through ALL American history even long after Emancipation
- 2019 is the 400th anniversary of the establishment of slavery in the US.
- Slavery had a lasting impact on the US and continues to impact our culture