Slavery
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" (Thomas Jefferson).
Slavery in America stems well back to when the new world was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade- Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for plantations in that is now called the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America (Slavery Two; Milton Meltzer). The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes, cooking and cleaning, whereas men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops.
Since trying to capture the native Indians, the Arawaks and Caribs, failed (Small-Pox had killed them), the Europeans said out to capture African slaves.
They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans in what was called The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. This was an organized route where Europeans would travel to Africa bringing manufactured goods, capture Africans and take them to the Caribbean, and then take the crops and goods and bring them back to Europe. The African people, in order to communicate invented a language that was a mixture of all the African languages combined, called Creole. This language now varies from island to island. They also kept their culture which accounts for calypso music and the instruments used in these songs.
Slavery was common all over the world until 1794 when France signed the Act of the National Convention abolishing slavery. It would take America about a hundred years to do the same (Slavery Two; Milton Meltzer).
George Washington was America's hero. He was America's first president. He was a slave owner. He deplored slavery but did not release his slaves. His will stated that they would be released after the death of his wife (The Volume Library; 1988). Washington wasn't the only president to have slaves. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "All men are created equal" but died leaving his blacks in slavery.
In 1775 black Americans were sent to fight in the revolutionary army. The British proposed that if a black man was to join their army, they would be set free afterwards. America originally planned not to...