Slavery in the Early United States

The first African slaves were brought to English mainland North America in the early 1600s. For the following two centuries few of them grew cotton or even lived in the region in the south that would later form the Confederacy. Historians such as Ira Berlin have broken those 200 years before the invention of the cotton gin and cotton culture into three sections: a Charter Generation made of the first arrivals, a Plantation Generation where the development of staple items and farm production expanded, and a Revolutionary Generation which evolved under the liberation and freedom movements of the late 1700s.

Depiction of the arrival of slaves to the English colonies. 

          Near the end of the 1700s, two trends washed across the thirteen colonies that would change the face of slavery in America. First was the democratic revolution and War for American Independence from England. Second was a religious upsurge that presumed all were equal in God’s eyes. The religious trend overlapped and reinforced the trend of revolutionary ideas and put increased pressures on slaveholders to be able to support their position and beliefs. Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers in particular were at the front of this religious wave of anti-slavery sentiment.

          Unfortunately, the American Revolution ultimately improved the power of the planters and plantation owners in the Southern states. After the war, they reopened the African slave trade until 1808 when Congress permanently ended American participation in international slave trading. After 1808, slave populations grew by way of internal or domestic trading. Male and female slaves would be paired up to produce children who in turn would be slaves. 

-- a brief history of early slavery in the U.S.

from Time Trip #2 

Video of Historian James O. Horton 

discussing slavery in the early years of the United States.

TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 4

KILLING FOR COUNTRY  

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 1

THE JOURNEY TO ANCIENT GREECE 

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 2

A RIDE ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 3

WITNESS TO THE FIRST THANKSGIVING 

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