Chapter XIII
Slavery
In 1619, a Dutch ship bought Black slaves in the Spanish West Indies and sold them to the English in Virginia. Later, the English began going to Africa to bring more slaves. In the colonies where the climate was warmer, slaves were used to grow tobacco and rice. In all of the colonies, rich people bought slaves to work as servants in their houses.
At the time of the American Revolution, the Americans said they were fighting for freedom. Benjamin Franklin asked the question "How can you be for freedom and keep slaves?" Franklin said it was impossible to be for freedom and at the same time to keep slaves. Benjamin Franklin helped to form a political organization that would work for laws to end slavery. Many people agreed with Franklin and joined this organization. It became a strong organization in all of the thirteen states. This organization was most popular in the northern states. They succeeded in passing laws that ended slavery in some of the states. By 1820, all of the northern states had prohibited slavery. While Benjamin Franklin was alive, he believed that eventually all of the states would pass such laws.
At the time of the American Revolution, cotton was not an important crop. There are two species of cotton. One kind has black seeds that are easy to take out but it can only grow on low land that is wet. It will not grow in most places. This was the only kind that was popular at first. The other kind of cotton will grow almost any place that is warm, but it has sticky green seed. Cotton grows in white balls, and the sticky green seed is inside. It was very difficult to take out the seed by hand. This kind of cotton was not grown because it was so hard to take the seed out. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This machine could take the seed out. With this machine, a slave could clean ten kilograms a day. In a short time, the cotton gin was improved so that it could clean 75 kilograms of cotton a day. After the Industrial Revolution began in England, people in the southern states became very rich by growing cotton. Slaves were used to pick the cotton and put it into bags. More and more people in the South wanted to have slaves.
Slaves were bought and sold. They were regarded as property and not as people. Sometimes slave families were divided up and sold to different owners. Sometimes a father would be sold to a plantation a thousand kilometers away, and his children would never see him again. Sometimes children as young as six or seven would be sold and the mother would never see them again. Children born to a slave mother were automatically slaves for the rest of their life. Often, slaves were sold at public auctions.
Slaves belonged to their owners. They had no rights of their own. Slaves could be whipped if they were disobedient. In most parts of the South, it was against the law to teach a slave how to read and write. Slaves could not travel without permission. They could not meet in public places.
A few slaves worked inside the house. They cooked meals, washed clothing, cleaned the house, and took care of small children. Usually their life was better than that of the other slaves. Most of the slaves worked in the cotton fields. On small farms, the slaves and the slave owner worked together in the fields. But on large plantations, the owners employed overseers. Sometimes the overseers were cruel men who drove their slaves to work very hard.
The people who had fought in the American Revolution were interested in politics and many of them supported Franklin's organization against slavery as long as they lived. But for some reason, their children were not interested in politics. Their children were more interested in making money. Their children were not interested in joining a political organization against slavery. As the revolutionary generation began dying out, the organization against slavery died out with them. By 1820, Franklin's organization against slavery did not exist any more. It was not needed in the North because slavery had been abolished, and it had become unpopular in the South because people wanted slaves so that they could become very rich and have a good life. In the South, the Indians were rapidly pushed off the land to make room for more and more cotton plantations.
By 1830, the third generation after the revolution were adults. In this generation, many people became interested in religion. In Rhode Island, a young man named William Lloyd Garrison began thinking about slavery. He believed that slavery was a sin. He was not interested in politics, but he was very much against slavery for moral and religious reasons. He began printing a newspaper against slavery in which he explained why slavery was a sin. At first, mostly black people bought his newspaper. In the north, the laws passed by the first antislavery organization had freed the black people. After a while, white people in the north began buying Garrison's newspaper. Garrison formed a new organization called the American Antislavery Society. This was for people who were against slavery for moral and religious reasons. It wanted to abolish slavery without paying the slave owners any money. This organization grew very rapidly and by 1840, it had more than 200,000 members. In the North, all of the important writers and poets joined the new organization. The people who wanted to abolish slavery were called abolitionists. They made speeches, collected petitions against slavery and published newspapers.
Black people did not like slavery, but there were few slave revolts. Slaves usually tried to run away. An organization called the Underground Railroad appeared. It helped slaves to escape and travel to Canada where they could be free. Most of the people who helped the Underground Railroad were free Black people or Quakers. Harriet Tubman, a Black woman, was very active in the Underground Railroad. She would secretly go into the South to find Black people who wanted to run away. She would show them how to find the Underground Railroad. She helped more than 300 slaves to escape to freedom in Canada. The plantation owners offered a reward of $30,000 dollars for her capture dead or alive. But she was never caught.