BEGINNING OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
"I do not say who was guilty of this ... but there was the evil, and no
man could see how we were to be delivered from it."
_Frelinghuysen_.
Ayllon, a Spaniard, who attempted to find the northwest passage, landed
in Virginia as early as 1526, near the same place where the English
eighty-one years later founded their colony, and began to build a town,
using negro slaves in the work, but this settlement was abandoned. Negro
slaves were also used in Florida prior to the Jamestown settlement.
These appear to be the first use of negro slaves in territory
subsequently a part of the United States. But we are not concerned with
these events except as curious historical facts, because they had no
influence on the history of the country, and are of no more importance
or interest than the discovery of America by the Norsemen before
Columbus. But toward the end of August, 1620, an event occurred of the
greatest moment to the history and welfare of the country, and which was
to have a far-reaching and lasting effect upon the political and social
life of the United States. In that month, about thirteen years after the
English founded their settlement, a Dutch ship, in great distress for
food, entered the James River, and after some negotiation with the
settlers, exchanged twenty negroes for a supply of food. This was the
beginning of negro slavery in the United States, and thus was the
disturbing element planted which was to distract the nation for so many
weary years, and the opposition to which was finally to culminate in the
founding of the Republican Party.
Not many months after these slaves were landed the Pilgrims established
their settlement on the New England shores and began that political and
social life whose subsequent development made them an enemy to slavery.
If there is one scene or period in American history representing the
very genesis of the Republican Party, it is the landing of the Pilgrims
in December, 1620; just as the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, was
the point from which radiated, by subsequent economical and social
developments, the principles of the Democratic Party. Thus it is seen at
this early period that slavery and freedom were planted almost side by
side to progress along unconsciously until economical conditions and
demands were to make them openly antagonistic; and here began that
remarkable balancing of power between slavery and freedom, which was to
be maintained in later years, after the Union had been formed, by a
series of compromises, and indeed also by a balancing of progress along
economical lines.
The Virginians at first neither sought nor needed negro slaves; this is
proven by the circumstances under which the first slaves were landed,
and also by the fact that slavery grew very slowly. In 1622 there were
only twenty-two negro slaves in the Colony, and in 1648, twenty-eight
years after the first acquisition, there were only three hundred in
Virginia; not that the settlers were averse to using them, but because
another class of cheap labor was obtainable in the great number of
criminals which were sent from England to work out their freedom in the
New World, and by other white persons who voluntarily sold themselves
and became indented or bond servants for a period of years in payment of
their passage to America, or for other considerations. The use of this
class of labor began very shortly after the first settlement, but toward
the close of the seventeenth century the use of indented servants became
less as negro slaves became more numerous.
Negro slaves were introduced into every one of the other Colonies when
they were founded, or a short time afterwards, and to the close of the
Revolution negro slaves were used in every Colony. The North was for
slavery as long as it was necessary and profitable, and the early
settlers in New England found no scruple in using as slaves the Indians
captured in war; and when negro slavery appeared later, the shrewd
Yankees made money in the slave trade along the coast to the South and
to the West Indies. The modern Newport, R. I., was the great slave mart
of New England, and it is said that the first slave ship used by
American colonists was fitted up in a New England port.
Prior to 1715 the number of slaves in America was not so great, but
after that year they increased in large numbers, not only by an active
demand which sprang up for them, but also by the infamous Asiento Clause
in the Treaty of Utrecht between England and Spain, whereby the former
for a period of thirty years, from 1713 to 1743, took the exclusive
right of importing and selling 144,000 negroes into the Spanish Colonies
at the rate of 4,800 per year, and more could be brought in on the
payment of a small tax. This made England the greatest slave nation in
the world, and her interest demanded, and Parliament saw to it, that
nothing adverse to the use of slaves should happen in the American
Colonies. The growth of slavery in America from 1715 to 1775, and the
slave population in the Colonies at these two periods, were as follows:
1715 1775
New Hampshire ........ 150 629
Massachusetts ........ 2,000 3,500
Rhode Island ......... 500 4,373
Connecticut .......... 1,500 5,000
New York ............. 4,000 15,000
New Jersey ........... 1,500 7,600
Pennsylvania ........} 2,500 10,000
Delaware ............} 9,000
Maryland ............. 9,500 80,000
Virginia ............. 23,000 165,000
North Carolina ....... 3,700 75,000
South Carolina ....... 10,500 110,000
Georgia .............. 16,000
------ -------
58,850 501,102
Of the half million slaves in this country at the opening of the
Revolution, 450,000 were in the Southern Colonies. The reasons for this
are found in the difference in economical conditions and political and
social customs which separated the Northern and Southern Colonies before
the Revolution. The Northern group devoted themselves mainly to fishing,
commerce and farming. The soil, especially in New England, was
unpromising for the production of great staples, and the result in the
North was concentration of the people, growth of town life, distribution
of political power, great freedom of speech and press, and a wide
discussion of political principles. The South devoted herself wholly to
the production of three great staples, rice, indigo and tobacco, and the
result in the South was just the reverse of that in the North. Great
plantations were established, few cities of any importance sprang up,
manufacturing did not thrive, the South importing almost every article
of use or luxury. Political power was in the hands of a few, and the
three great staples demanded cheap labor, working under the most
destructive conditions. Thus, influenced almost entirely by environment
and economical and political development, the North became the scene of
freedom to individuals and protection to industries, because these
things were absolutely essential to the existence and happiness of the
people; and the South, by the same necessity, was dedicated to slavery
and free trade.
It must not be thought that the colonial period was without any
development of opposition to slavery. The German Quakers of Pennsylvania
in 1688 took a stand against the use of slaves in their community, and
they subsequently became the most active opponents to slavery and the
slave trade. Their efforts, however, had little effect except in
Pennsylvania, but it is important to mark their action as the beginning
of the abolition movement in this country. There are records in the
Southern Colonies of taxes placed upon the importation of slaves prior
to the decade before the Revolution, but it would appear that these
taxes were more for revenue than as prohibitive means, and that they
were of no value in diminishing the demand and the number of negroes
imported. However, in 1769, a distinct sentiment crystallized in
Virginia against the further importation of slaves, and the Legislature
passed a law prohibiting it, but this was vetoed by the Royal Governor,
acting under orders from the Crown; the same thing occurred in
Massachusetts two years later. In 1772 Lord Mansfield proclaimed the
law, "As soon as a slave sets foot on the soil of the British isles he
becomes free." This decision had a marked influence on the anti-slavery
sentiment, which was now strong in the Colonies, and the approach of the
Revolution, with its spirit of national independence and of individual
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, seemed to promise
freedom to a people who had already suffered three centuries of terrible
bondage.