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African Americans in Slavery

Some five hundred years ago, ships began transporting millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. This massive population movement helped create the African Diaspora in the New World. Many did not survive the horrible ocean journey.

African Homelands

Africa (1KB)Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa. (map)

The Triangle Trade

Triangle Trade Map (2KB)The demands of European consumers for New World crops and goods helped fuel the slave trade. Following a triangular route between Africa, the Caribbean and North America, and Europe, slave traders from Holland, Portugal, France, and England delivered Africans in exchange for products such as colonial rum, sugar, and tobacco. Eventually the trading route also distributed Virginia tobacco, New England rum, and indigo and rice crops from South Carolina and Georgia.

The Growing Rift Between Slave States and Free States

Even though slavery existed throughout the original thirteen colonies, nearly all the northern states, inspired by American independence, abolished slavery by 1804. As a matter of conscience some southern slaveholders also freed their slaves or permitted them to purchase their freedom. Until the early 1800s, many southern states allowed these manumissions to legally take place. Although the Federal Government outlawed the overseas slave trade in 1808, the southern enslaved African-American population continued to grow. (map)

Families on the Auction Block

Auction (22KB)A strong family and community life helped sustain African Americans in slavery. People often chose their own partners, lived under the same roof, raised children together, and protected each other. Brutal treatment at the hands of slaveholders, however, threatened black family life. Enslaved women experienced sexual exploitation at the hands of slaveholders and overseers. Bondspeople lived with the constant fear of being sold away from their loved ones, with no chance of reunion. Historians estimate that most bondspeople were sold at least once in their lives. No event was more traumatic in the lives of enslaved individuals than that of forcible separation from their families. People sometimes fled when they heard of an impending sale.

Image (18KB)Selling South

To meet the growing demands of sugar and cotton, slaveholders developed an active domestic slave trade to move surplus workers to the Deep South. New Orleans, Louisiana, became the largest slave mart, followed by Richmond, Virginia; Natchez, Mississippi; and Charleston, South Carolina. Between 1820 and 1860 more than 60 percent of the Upper South's enslaved population was "sold South." Covering 25 to 30 miles a day on foot, men, women, and children marched south in large groups called coffles. Former bondsman Charles Ball remembered that slave traders bound the women together with rope. They fastened the men first with chains around their necks and then handcuffed them in pairs. The traders removed the restraints when the coffle neared the market.

Labor (18KB)Types of Labor

By 1860 some 4 million enslaved African Americans lived throughout the South. Whether on a small farm or a large plantation, most enslaved people were agricultural laborers. They toiled literally from sunrise to sunset in the fields or at other jobs, such as refining sugar. Some bondspeople held specialized jobs as artisans, skilled laborers, or factory workers. A smaller number worked as cooks, butlers, or maids.

King Cotton

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries enslaved African Americans in the Upper South mostly raised tobacco. In coastal South Carolina and Georgia, they harvested indigo for dye and grew rice, using agricultural expertise brought with them from Africa. By the 1800s rice, sugar, and cotton became the South's leading cash crops. The patenting of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made it possible for workers to gin—separate the seeds from the fiber—some 600 to 700 pounds daily, or ten times more cotton than permitted by hand. The Industrial Revolution, centered in Great Britain, quadrupled the demand for cotton, which soon became America's leading export. Planters' acute need for more cotton workers helped expand southern slavery. By the Civil War the South exported more than a million tons of cotton annually to textile manufactories in Great Britain and the North. Short-staple, or upland cotton, dominated the market. An area still called the Black Belt, which stretched across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, grew some 80 percent of the nation's crop. Cotton Gin (17KB)Simultaneously cotton expanded into the new states of Arkansas and Texas. In parts of the Black Belt enslaved African Americans made up more than three-fourths of the total population.


This small plant made slavery economically viable in the American South. Ginned cotton, shipped to the textile mills of the North and Great Britain was turned into millions of yards of cloth that, at an extremely cheap price, clothed the rapidly growing populations of Europe and North America.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (16KB)Harriet Beecher Stowe

When President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he reportedly remarked, "So, this is the little lady who wrote the book that made this great war." Stowe's best-selling Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852, focused national attention on slavery. She based her novel on runaway slaves' memoirs including Josiah Henson's and abolitionist reports.

Slavery: A Chronology

circa 1450


First European contacts with West Africa



A Dutch ship transports 20 Africans to Jamestown, Virginia.



Colony of Massachusetts Bay legalizes slavery.



Virginia legalizes slavery



Delegates to Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopt the Declaration of Independence, July 4.



The states draft the U.S. Constitution, which forbids Congress from interfering with the slave trade before 1808. Enslaved persons are counted as three-fifths of a person for the census



The U.S. Congress enacts the Fugitive Slave Act to protect the rights of slave owners for retrieving runaways.



Haitians achieve independence from France after a 13-year rebellion and abolish slavery.


Abolitionist: an individual who held strong anti-slavery views
African Diaspora: the dispersal of Africans in the New World
Bondsperson: a person held in servitude as human property to another
Coffle: a group of enslaved individuals transported together for sale
Conductor: one who helped escaping persons move from station to station on the Railroad
Enslave: to force another into bondage
Manumit: to free
Maroons: runaways who escaped
Middle Passage: the name Africans gave to the trip across the Atlantic Ocean to New World enslavement

Underground Railroad
African Americans in Slavery
In Search of Freedom



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Last Updated: February 8, 2001