U.S. History I: United States History 1607-1865 ... - Textbook Equity

It is important to remember, as one African American historian has noted, that “slavery was
old when Moses was young.” Slavery existed from ancient times well into the modern period,
and, sad to say, in parts of the world slavery, or a condition very much like slavery,
still exists today. None of that changes the fact that American slavery is the great paradox
of American history. That a nation “conceived in liberty” could have been built on the backs
of thousands of African slaves is certainly one of the most troublesome features of the
American past.
The legacy of slavery continued long after its ending with
the American Civil War. During Reconstruction and the times
that followed, into the civil rights movement of the 1960s,
the legacy of slavery has remained part of American culture.
Of all the millions of slaves taken from West Africa into the
Western Hemisphere, about five percent wound up in what
became the United States. They came from all parts of the
west coast of Africa, and the cultural differences among
them were certainly as great as those of Europeans and Native
Americans, yet almost all Africans were treated identically,
not much different from beasts of burden.
Most slaves started as prisoners captured in African tribal
wars or raids and were sold to white traders for transport
across the Atlantic. The middle passage was notoriously inhumane, and the conditions in the
slave ships were so intolerable that slaves often tried to commit suicide by jumping over the
side or refusing to eat; anything was better than the horribly painful existence in the slave
ships. (See Middle Passage, Appendix.)
When the slaves arrived in American trading centers, they were sold to the highest bidder,
and to the extent that any human connections remained among the slaves, they were almost
certainly broken. Little or no recognition was given to slaves’ families, let alone friendships.
The institution of lifetime slavery in America did not occur immediately. The first slaves to
arrive in Virginia were treated more or less as indentured servants, and many of them eventually
became free; some became landowners, and some of them, paradoxically, even became
slave owners themselves. But within a few short decades, the lot of slaves had
evolved into one of permanent lifetime servitude from which there was no escape, save by
the voluntary manumission on the part of the owner, which was not likely to occur. Colonial
America was chronically labor poor, and labor was valued highly, so slaves became an economic
commodity whose monetary worth rose steadily as the economic fortunes of America
rose.
One can understand the evolution of slavery by looking at the evolution of the Virginia slave
statutes. By 1669 a code indicated that because corporal punishment was the only means of
chastising a slave, and because no one would willfully destroy his own property, the death
of a slave as a result of corporal punishment could not have been deemed intentional. Thus
the death of a slave was not considered a felony, which meant that slave owners gained virtual
life-and-death authority over their slaves. (See Virginia Statutes, Appendix.)
Religion was no consolation for the slave. Very early it was decided that even though slaves
could be Christianized for the salvation of their souls, the fact that they became Christians
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