Essay on 18th Centry Slavery In North America - 922 Words

People crying for freedom and liberty from tyranny built a nation out of greed and unethical acts. The rapacious desires of a nation to gain wealth and possessions lead to the emotional and psychological trauma of West Africans and African Americans. In spite of being taken from Africa, the sweat and blood of these Africans contributed to the birth of the beautiful nation that would eventually recognize their descendants as equals. The Exploration Age commenced in the fifteenth century when European nations decided to expand their power for technological, demographic, and economic reasons. The results of European expansion lead to new discoveries, international trade of goods and people, migration, and rivalry among European†¦show more content†¦With less indentured servants in America to provide labor, the labor force transitioned from indentured servants to chattel slavery. â€Å"Unlike Spain and Portugal, who by the late fifteenth century were already enslaving West Afr icans in their domestic economies, the English had no prior model of slavery to serve them in the Americas.† Britain did not set out to enslave West Africans; they did not have the means to justify enslavement. The English later turned to the bible to justify participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade; The official rationale for enslaving Africans was that they were heathens, but slave traders and slave owners sometimes interpreted a passage in the book of Genesis as their justification. Ham, they maintained, committed a sin against his father Noah that condemned his supposedly black descendants to be servants unto servants. The English related the color black to sin. They justified slavery because the bible stated that Ham and his descendant’s punishment for sinning was slavery. The southern colonies were made up of large plantations that produced tobacco, cotton or rice. In comparison to northern states, the southern economy was dependent on the free labor African slaves provided. The plantation society was divided into four major groups: the wealthy planters, the smaller planters, the poor whites, and the Africans. Plantation owners often trained some