The Arrival of the First Slaves

Historians normally date the start of slavery in the North American colonies to 1619. That year, a captured Portuguese slave ship carrying 50 African men, women, and children, docked at Point Comfort, which served as Jamestown's checkpoint for ships wanting to trade with the colonists. The crew of the ship was starving, and as John Rolfe noted in a letter to the Virginia Company's treasurer Edwin Sandys, they traded 20 African slaves for food and supplies.

Rolfe’s letter is the earliest hard evidence of the presence of slaves; there may have been slaves in the colony prior to 1619.

Indentured Servitude and Slavery

The British were reluctant to institute slavery in their new American colonies. They largely relied on indentured servants in the 17th century. Indentured servants sold their freedom for a period of years in exchange for passage to the New World. At the end of their time of indenture, the freed man was accorded all rights of other free colonials. The Africans from the slave ship were likely put to work as indentured servants at first, in the Virginia tobacco fields.

In 1625, there were only 23 Africans present in the colony of Virginia, according to historian Betty Wood. Thirty-five years later, this number had only increased to 950, just about three to four percent of the colony's population. The colony had many more indentured servants, and historians like Edmund Morgan argue that the living conditions and treatment of indentured servants were largely indistinguishable from that of slaves.During this period, slaves of African descent and white indentured servants often worked, socialized and even ran away from their masters together.

But the big difference between European and African indentured servants was that a European could appeal to their government should a master renege on his freedom. The Africans slaves had no such appeal, and were more likely to be exploited by masters. 

The Entrenchment of Slavery

As Virginia prospered, the need for labor increased, and landowners began to resent the expense of purchase new indentured servants every few years. And freed, landless men were a danger to the ruling class of the colony as well.

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led both white and black men against the leaders of the Virginia colony, in what became known as Bacon’s Rebellion. Fearing this display of unity among poor whites and blacks, Virginia instituted a system of racial slavery and phased out indentured servitude. Masters began to hold Africans against their will, refusing to free them after their period of indenture. This process hardened into racial slavery by the 18th century.

The founding of the United States in 1776 refused to address the issue of slavery, despite the Constitution’s guarantees of liberty for all. By 1860, slavery was the backbone of the Southern economy, and the threat of its dissolution by President Abraham Lincoln led to the American Civil War.

Sources

• Boles, John. Black Southerners, 1619-1869. University Press of Kentucky, 1984.
• Morgan, Edmund. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.
• Wood, Betty. Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.