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Pundits many times blame the United States for starting slavery. It may surprise some that slavery has existed since the beginning of civilization. First historical references are from Babylon in King Hammurabi's code that was written in the city of Mesopotamia, about 3500 years ago, or the beginning of civilization.
Slavery didn't start here. Were Africans the only ones who were slaves throughout the world and the United States? Absolutely not. We have to look at this through the eyes of the time period. What were the mores, (the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community)? What was going on at the time? How were things looked at? Who started this, and was it accepted or rejected at that time in history?
We cannot look at just a sliver from our time period. Slavery was an institution that has been around forever and unfortunately still is in some countries. As an example, the countries of Eritrea and North Korea still have slavery. But in the earlier day and age, that is what people knew, and it was accepted because there had been no alternatives as they saw it.
When it first happened on this continent, we were not British or American -- it goes back to when the Spaniards were here. Another interesting note is that in North America from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slave to the Americas.[1]
This article deals with slavery, but not as we generally hear. Rather, it is rather important to understand some of how it evolved, came to our country, when it first began to be outlawed and then resolved by President Abraham Lincoln with his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation at the cost of 620,000 American lives in the Civil War, followed by the 13th Amendment to our Constitution prohibiting slavery on Dec.r 6, 1865. We are going to explore slavery, not from every television pundit opinion, but from someone who actually experienced it and lived it, firsthand.
Many of our Founders did not like the institution of slavery, nor did many of the southern soldiers in the Civil War. From an excerpt in James McPherson's book; For Cause & Comrades; "The prototypical unwilling [southern] soldier...would have preferred to be at home, was a nonslaveholding, southern married farmer with small children who was drafted in 1862 or enlisted only to avoid being drafted." [2] Slaves were held mostly by the landed gentry (plantation owners). The majority in the South were having a hard-scrabble life as they were trying to eke out a living as best they could. They could not get, nor afford to own a slave and many wouldn't have. This also becomes known from journals and writings during the Civil War by Southern soldiers. The momentum was to end this horrific practice for all races.
Often overlooked is the fact that slavery began to be eliminated in America much earlier than most realize. Here are the states that eliminated the practice and the year they ended it. Keep in mind that our Declaration of Independence wasn't signed and accepted until 1776, but also remember, the Revolutionary War for the most part, ended with the British surrender at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781. Those states ending the practice early on and the year (timing of details make these dates somewhat different), were
From 1777
to the Civil War
Vermont was early but not yet a state; Pennsylvania 1780; Massachusetts 1783; Connecticut 1848, and Rhode Island 1784; New York 1789; Ohio 1802 New Jersey 1804; 1816 Indiana, New Hampshire 1857. By 1804, all Northern states had voted to abolish the Institution.[3]
"The debate over which powers rightly belonged to the states and which to the federal government became heated again in the 1820's and 1830's fueled by the divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories forming as the nation expanded westward." [4]
The institution continued to boil, culminating in the Civil War, which started over states' rights to succeed from the union, and they were doing it because of the slavery issue. Pushing closer to the Civil War was the passing of the Missouri Compromise, but the southerners who opposed it did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery. [www.history} that managed to keep peace temporarily. It was a fragile peace.
While we had black slaves in the colonies, there were also white slaves and not just those who came over as indentured servants. Indentured servants were those who borrowed money for passage with a promise to work off the debt for a certain number of years. What I am referring to are those whites captured and enslaved. They too were slaves.
Did we have black slaves in the south? Yes. Did we fight a war over slavery? Yes. While we hear some say it was over states' rights, it still boiled down to the same thing.
One who had first-hand experience in the 1700's is Olaudah Equiano. Many don't know him from history or by name. He was enslaved by a sea captain, Michael Henry Pascal, who gave him the name Gustavus Vassa. We learn about Olaudah Equiano and his slavery, which started in Africa, in present day Nigeria. He was captured, along with his sister, and sold into slavery at the age of 11. We learn this directly from him because he kept a personal detailed journal of his life. Among other things, he tells us that his enslavement started in Africa, in present day Nigeria. It is a slavery revelation we should all know.
So the stage is set. Olaudah was born on Oct. 16, 1745 and wrote his memoirs in 1792. He grew up in what we might call a common geographical area for members of families to be taken as slaves. Olaudah was captured, as mentioned, at the age of 11. He states, "One day, when all our people were gone out to their work as usual, and only I and my sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment, seized us both, and without giving us time to cry out, or to make any resistance, they stopped our mouths and ran off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers stopped for refreshment and spent the night." [6] Their mouths were unstopped, and they were allowed to eat.
They were carried away the next day when they came to a road he knew, and he cried out to some people he saw on the road that could be of assistance. Unfortunately, they did not hear him, and he and his sister again had their mouths stopped up so as not to be able to speak or cry out.
Olaudah and his sister were captured by a neighboring African tribe. When their tribes or nations fought each other, prisoners were taken and sold into slavery or as a replacement for those lost, (much as Indian tribes did), but many times sold to an African slave trader who would then sell them for cash to other countries' ships for shipment. A cash crop.
His second biggest sadness was when he had his sister taken away and sold to another. He would never see his parents or his home again and would only see his sister one more time. At his young age, he lost his entire family as did his sister and their parents.
He writes, :...we were soon deprived of even the small comfort of weeping together. The next day proved one of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated." "She was torn from me and immediately carried away. I cried and grieved continually." [7]
He was put into the hands of a chieftain and his two wives and some children...
He planned to escape even though he was treated well because he wanted to go back home. To his surprise, he was carried away again, arriving at a village where he first saw cocoa nuts and sugar cane. He was sold for 172 white shells "the size of a fingernail". [8]
He had no idea what the future held or if he would be staying there or not, but it was a place he liked and worked. The answer was not long in coming. He was not to stay there. He was sold again to a ship's master to set sail soon.
Olaudah is carried to his first sighting of the sea and to a slave ship. At this point, he is convinced he is to be killed, seeing large copper pots boiling, while all the other blacks on board were chained. It was at this point he felt he would be killed and passed out, only to be revived and given an alcoholic drink to bring him around. Taken below deck, he refused to eat, hoping for death. He was thrown over the windlass (describe) with hands and feet secured and flogged severely.
He had never been treated as such and never expected it. He then saw some of his own countrymen who would tell him that they were to be sold into slavery. Of interest was that upon his going up on deck: "One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, was flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me fear these people the more..." [9]. However, Vassa was one to be on deck for working the ship and was not harmed anymore. He vividly described the stench and the deplorable conditions on the slave ship below deck. He describes how, "Three slaves jumped overboard, preferring drowning to continuing on in their situation. Immediately they put out lifeboats, but two were lost, the third was recaptured and they 'flogged him unmercifully, for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery'" [10].
In the second article on (now) Gustava Vassa, we will see how he deals with slavery and where it takes him. As I think about him, I wonder, we know he had a good place or two to stay, but that was prior to a slave ship. How do you think his life will be from this point forward? Until next time...
Footnotes:
https://news.osu.edu/when-europeans-were-slaves access 10/20/24
James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, Why Men Fought in the Civil War, Oxford Univ. Press, 1997 p102
https://archivesfoundation.org/newsletter/the-long-road-to-abolition/ 10/18/24
https;//battlefields.org/learn/articles/states-rights#. Accessed 10/18/24
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ed, The Classic Slave Narratives, (The Life of Olaudah Equiano...) Signet Classics, 2002 p.48
Ibid. p49
Ibid. p52
Ibid. p53
Ibid. p59
Ibid. p61