The first documented case of slaves in North America occurred in 1619, when Dutch traders landed twenty enslaved Africans in Virginia. Despite this early beginning, however, racial differences were not fully recognized in colonial law until 1681, in a statute enacted by the legislature of colonial Maryland. The need to create a division between "blacks" and "whites" was largely the outgrowth of a need to reorganize society so that the more numerous free laborers were not placed at odds with the landed class, a status quo which created a precarious security situation. This served the interest of plantation owners by weakening the threat of uprising (the memory of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 sat fresh in the memory of many plantation owners).
The Revolution saw American political leaders struggle with the question of slavery, which, by the eve of hostilities, had become an important part of the agrarian economy of the southern colonies. Smaller numbers of slaves were more commonly used for domestic duties, or as craftspeople, in the north. In 1776, one of out every five people in the thirteen colonies was a slave.
Everyone on the Committee of Five, which was charged with composing the Declaration of Independence, was an imperfect abolitionist. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin both owned slaves while simultaneously decrying the institution. However, attempts at introducing reforming language in that document failed.
http://gorhistory.com/hist110/enslaved.html
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misguided-focus-1619-beginning-slavery-us-damages-our-understanding-american-history-180964873/
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Can someone Explain the development of African slavery in the American colonies from its inception to its dominant features on the eve of the American Revolution. And detail the evolution of slavery and the reasons for significant changes.
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