Slavery in the United States

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Men, women, and children work under the control of a mounted overseer on a cotton plantation in the southern United States , circa 1850

The slavery in the United States is the continuation and development of slavery that are already in the 13 colonies consisted of which in 1776 the United States have emerged. The colonization of America from the 16th to 19th centuries went hand in hand with a mass enslavement of Africans who were used as cheap labor in all parts of the sparsely populated double continent. This not only affects the British, Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish colonies from which the USA later emerged, but to an even greater extent Brazil and the European colonies in the Caribbean. On the North American mainland, however, slavery took on forms that were unique on the double continent.

The American War of Independence had already been financed mainly with tobacco deliveries from Virginia's plantations to France. Edmund S. Morgan cited the central paradox of American history that freedom and equality, an emphasis on classlessness as central American values, were essentially based on slavery and the associated racism . In England , on the other hand, individual freedom would have been emphasized more strongly and slavery abolished and combated much earlier. In contrast, the class / class-specific separation remained much stronger there. “ Racism made it possible for white Virginians to develop a devotion to the equality that English republicans had declared to be the soul of liberty. ”( Edmund Morgan , German:“ Racism allowed the white Virginians to develop a devotion to equality that the English Republicans had declared to be the soul of freedom. ”)

Overview

At the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, there were more than 460,000 slaves in the United States. The northern states , in whose economic life slaves had never played a major role, soon began to abolish slavery - a process that proved lengthy and in some cases was not completed until 1865. In the southern states, where slavery was inextricably linked to the expanding economy, the number of slaves rose to more than four million by 1865.

Slavery did not just emerge on the North American mainland with the arrival of the European colonial masters; it was already common in some Indian cultures . With the establishment of the colonies in the 17th century, however, it achieved general distribution for the first time. Slavery then took a steep rise with the emergence of the plantation economy , which arose in Virginia in the 17th century and spread south and west over the next two centuries. Since the sparsely populated colonies could not meet the growing need for cheap labor from their own resources, slaves of African descent were initially brought from the Caribbean, but then in increasing numbers via the so-called " Middle Passage " directly from West Africa.

In the first half of the 19th century, the plantation economy in Virginia and North Carolina fell apart, but expanded further and further into the American west. As a result of this relocation, hundreds of thousands of African-American slaves were deported from the Upper South to the Deep South , particularly to Alabama , Mississippi and Louisiana . This forced mass migration was hardly less traumatic for those affected than it was for their ancestors when they were abducted across the Atlantic.

Slavery, which proponents in the southern states euphemistically often referred to as The Peculiar Institution (German: "the special institution"), found its official end with the military defeat of the Confederation in the Civil War (1865) and the 13th. Amendment to the Constitution . The need for cheap labor was then met by the convict lease system , which kept large numbers of African-Americans in a system of forced labor well into the 20th century (in Alabama until 1928).

prehistory

Colonies without plantation management

Nieuw Nederland

Map of Nieuw Nederland from 1635 (north is on the right)

The settlement of African-born slaves on what was to become the national territory of the United States began when European trading companies took Atlantic Creoles , who had traveled on their ships as seamen, interpreters, and other skilled workers, to the North American mainland. At first it was mainly the Dutch who brought Creoles with them to their overseas colonies. Many of them were free men and women, but others brought with them as slaves by the Dutch pioneers and merchants. Since the West India Company had great need, Nieuw Nederland to populate with workers, the economy of the time was based the colony more than in any other North American colony on the job performance of slaves. In 1640 , around 100 people of African descent lived in Nieuw Amsterdam alone , which at that time had a population of around 300. When the British took over Nieuw Amsterdam in 1665, there were around 300 slaves living there, who made up a fifth of the city's population. Most of the blacks in Nieuw Nederland worked in fort building, transporting goods, hunting and farming, often working side by side with paid workers. The black slaves of this time were often highly qualified and hoped to secure a better position than that of a slave in the as yet undefined social order of the colony. The largest slave owner in the colony was the West India Company, which was always only interested in short-term profits, did not rely on long-term exploitation of slaves and therefore gave them great independence for their lives. When they completed their set workload, the slaves could work for their own account, trade, purchase property, raise families, appeal to the courts , join the military , and find a place in the colony's social, cultural, and religious life. Most of the Creole slaves in Nieuw Nederland spoke Dutch and professed Reformed Christianity . The historian Ira Berlin coined the term “ charter generations ” for this type of slaves who were of Creole origin and were relatively strongly integrated into their white environment . A release of slaves was possible in Nieuw Nederland, but did not lead to a full emancipation of the freedmen, but contained clauses that allowed the former owner to continue to dispose of the former slave to a limited extent. When the Dutch left Nieuw Amsterdam to the British in 1664, around a fifth of blacks had gained freedom.

New England and the Central Colonies

The 13 British colonies. Number of slaves and proportion of slaves in the total population (situation in 1770).

In New England, and even more so in the central colonies of New York , New Jersey , Pennsylvania , Delaware and Maryland , which had been completely British since 1664 , slavery was also widespread, but a plantation economy did not emerge here. Slaves were used here in large numbers in the sea trade ports, in urban handicrafts and business life, as house servants, but also in agriculture. These slaves first came to the north via the West Indies , but soon also came directly from West Africa. The import of slaves from Africa was associated with particular problems, above all with a high mortality rate for these slaves. died of measles and whooping cough . The living conditions of most of the colonists were so modest that they only poorly provided for their slaves.

Most of these colonists kept only a few slaves each and also employed debt servants and black and white wage laborers. Unlike the slave owners in the plantation economy of the southern colonies, they had little interest in enabling the slaves to support themselves as a population from their own means. H. Starting families and giving birth to children. Female slaves were sold at the first sign of pregnancy. This practice had far-reaching consequences for the social life of the slaves, who until the abolition of slavery only occasionally had the opportunity to assume the roles of spouses and especially of fathers.

In addition, these slaves stuck to their African traditions and resisted for many decades e.g. B. also the Christian mission . As recently as the mid-18th century, fewer than a tenth of New York City's black residents professed Christianity. Because the direct import of slaves from Africa never stopped, the slave population in the northern colonies, who were very aware of their cultural origins, were able to revitalize their knowledge of African traditions. These traditions became widely visible e.g. B. when free and unfree Afro-Americans in the central colonies celebrated the Pinkster every year in late spring .

As everywhere in the British colonies, in the course of the 18th century the existing slave laws were further elaborated in the north and tightened to the advantage of the slave owners. B. New York City in 1712 and 1741. The release of slaves was made more difficult. In some colonies, many civil rights were withdrawn from free blacks.

From the 1760s onwards, farmers and artisans in the northern colonies increasingly employed European workers again; H. Debt servants and wage laborers.

Louisiana

Louisiana , which had been a French colony since 1699, was so severely traumatized by the Natchez uprising in 1729 that a plantation economy did not initially emerge there. Also, none of the agricultural products with which the planters experimented here could generate strong demand on the world market. As a result, the import of slaves also stagnated for decades. Rather than farming, the labor of slaves was used in the port of New Orleans . Louisiana was the only North American colony where slavery was an urban rather than a rural institution. The slaves, who were mostly of Creole origin in French Louisiana, performed a variety of jobs, including skilled jobs, had access to horses, were mobile and were allowed to carry axes as lumberjacks: a situation that would have been unthinkable elsewhere. The charter generations continued in Louisiana into the 19th century: those slave generations who enjoyed many advantages such as B. the right to personal property, its own production and exchange economy and thus a comparatively high degree of self-determination remained.

During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the western part of the Louisiana colony fell to Spain, while the eastern part became British. Although the Spaniards liberalized the very strict right of release and self-purchase under the French Code Noir , they also began to re-import slaves in large numbers in the 1770s.

Florida

In Florida , which had been a Spanish colony since the 16th century, an alliance of convenience was established between the slaves, who still belonged to the charter generations here in the late 17th century, and the Spanish colonists, which were unique in American history rightly felt threatened by the British on their peninsula. After the Spanish crown offered freedom to all runaway slaves who converted to Catholicism in 1693 , a sustained flow of refugees began from the neighboring colonies - especially from South Carolina - some of whom the Spaniards re-enslaved but did not extradite to the British . During the campaigns that the British repeatedly undertook against Florida in the 18th century, former slaves from South Carolina repeatedly fought on the Spanish side. The center of black life in colonial Florida became Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose , a place that served both as an escape destination for slaves who had escaped from the British colonies and as a military fortification to protect the city of St. Augustine .

After Florida fell to the British in 1763, many black people fled to Spanish Cuba , an exodus that also led to the disappearance of Creole culture from the peninsula. After the Spaniards withdrew from Florida, planters from South Carolina began to move in. A large-scale plantation economy did not emerge there until the 19th century.

Plantation colonies

In the 18th century, still under British colonial rule, a plantation economy emerged in the American southern states , whose products - initially tobacco and rice, later cotton and sugar cane - became the most important export products of the North American continent and the plantation owners not only got rich, but also became politically influential class of the colonies made. After the founding of the United States and the establishment of a federal government in 1787, they had easy access to key political positions in the new republic. Up until the Civil War, the majority of American presidents were slave owners, including George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , James Monroe , Andrew Jackson , John Tyler , James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor . Slaveholders in Congress tipped the scales, and the politically influential US Supreme Court was dominated by slave owners like John Marshall and Roger B. Taney .

The work of the slaves became the most important work of all and replaced other forms, such as B. Family work, bondage and wage labor . To justify their rule, the slave owners developed an ideology of subordination , based on "natural" or "divine laws"; This often resulted in racial ideologies that were so flexible that the “black and white” difference could be overlooked if necessary.

Virginia

Shirley Plantation, near Clarksville , Virginia. The house built 1723-1738 on one of the oldest plantations in Virginia (founded 1613). Home of John Carter, son of tobacco grower Robert "King" Carter .

One of the first inhabitants of African descent in the British colony of Virginia, which had existed since 1607, was Anthony Johnson, who was brought to Jamestown as a debt servant in 1621 , but was able to buy himself out in the 1640s and later kept slaves himself. The slaves in the Upper South , like their counterparts in Nieuw Nederland, initially displayed all the peculiarities of the charter generation, tried to integrate into the colonial community and professed their support for the Anglican religious community .

The plantation workforce in Virginia consisted of debt servants well into the 17th century. In 1676 they took part in large numbers in Bacon's Rebellion , an uprising against the governor's policies that was ultimately crushed by the planters. Since they had lost their workers with the rebellion, they first tried to use Indian slaves in the plantations , but their population declined sharply during this time. The tobacco growers in particular began to look for slaves of African descent. The previously most important resource for black slaves, the British West Indies , was soon no longer able to meet demand. So the planters finally began to import slaves directly from Africa. The number of "saltwater slaves " that were shipped to Virginia was a good 2,000 in the 1680s, more than twice as many in the 1690s and almost 8,000 in the period from 1700 to 1710. Along with Jamaica , Virginia became the most profitable slave market in British America during this period.

A balanced numerical ratio between male and female slaves was characteristic of the charter generations. Since the planters preferred young men as workers, the gender ratio in the plantation generations that were now emerging became imbalanced, in which it was often hardly possible for the newly arrived slaves to alleviate their uprooting by founding new families, let alone the complex ones re-establish the enlarged households and kinship relationships on which all social life in Africa was based. Since the prices of slaves were very low, neither slave traders nor planters cared about their health, wore them out on transport or with work and poorly supplied them, so that their mortality was high - a quarter of the slaves imported from Africa died within the first Year after arrival - and pregnancies and births were rare. Many also died of contagious diseases that did not exist in Africa and against which they therefore had no immune defense . They submitted to the work for which the planters had intended them only under duress. As early as the 17th century, the slave owners in Virginia used coercive measures such as mutilation, arson, and beatings. With the direct import of African slaves, the level of violence on the plantations rose sharply, and the pillory , flogging and hanging on the gallows were added to new means of coercion . Such punishments were carried out with official approval, and in Virginia from 1669 onwards it was possible for whites to even kill defiant slaves with impunity. Later, as an additional means of punishment, particularly feared by the slaves, they were housed in the workhouse , where intimidation and torture specialists were in charge. In the 17th century, slave owners had called the courts in cases of disobedience; in the 18th century, they decided at their own discretion in everything to do with their plantations. Legislation had expanded the rights of slave owners since the mid-17th century. At the same time, those of the slaves were increasingly restricted, for example their freedom of assembly or their freedom to leave the owner's property without having a passport with them. In the 18th century, Virginia slaves enjoyed fewer days off or hours off than servants there had in the 17th century. From this time on they not only worked in the column system , but also had to dig up tree stumps, clean pastures and repair buildings in winter, which was otherwise a poor time in agriculture.

DE Cronin's painting Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia (1888) shows escaped slaves in the Virginia marshland

Many slaves reacted to the dehumanization and degradation with depression , while others resisted. As early as the first decades of the 18th century, slaves were preparing riots in Virginia, but they were always stifled before they were carried out. Every day slaves offered resistance by playing stupid so that they would not have to carry out certain tasks - ignorance was expected of them . Others ran away and established short-lived maroon settlements in the unpopulated hinterland .

South Carolina and Georgia

The export economy of South Carolina , which was initially based on products such as rosin , turpentine , tall oil and pitch , was given a profitable new basis in the 18th century with the cultivation of indigo and especially rice . Large plantations were created on which the planters used African-born slaves from the start. As early as the first decade of the 18th century, the South Carolina lowlands had more black people than white people. Rice growing expanded faster than labor could be brought in. That is why the planters temporarily resorted to Indian slaves; in the 1710s, South Carolina had a good 1,500 of them. As the need for labor continued to grow and this resource could not be satisfied either, the planters began to ship slaves directly from Africa. In the 1720s, more than 2,000 African slaves arrived in the colony annually; in the 1770s there were already 4,000 per year. During the 18th century, Charleston became the most important port of destination for the Atlantic slave trade and the slave market with the highest turnover on the North American mainland.

The Old Plantation , late 18th century painting

The work in the rice fields was far harder than in the tobacco plantations and the mortality rate of the slaves who received neither sufficient food nor adequate shelter was very high. Common causes of death were yellow fever , pleurisy and pneumonia . Since slaves were not allowed to congregate, burials played a fundamentally important role in their social life and formed the starting point for the development of a community. As in Virginia, the sex ratio of the slaves in South Carolina was imbalanced. Two thirds were men. Women were malnourished and overworked and rarely had children. It was not until the 1760s that mortality fell so low and the birth rate rose so much that the slave population grew naturally.

The level of violence on the plantations was high. Many slaves resisted by force; just as often their resistance was broken by force. In 1739, South Carolina saw the first major slave rebellion , the Stono Rebellion , which was suppressed but so alarmed the planters that the following year the legislature passed a new slave law that gave the slave owners almost unlimited power over their human property .

In Georgia , the British Crown had initially banned slavery, a restriction that was lifted in 1751 under pressure from the colonists. In a short time, extensive rice plantations and an unfree black majority of the population emerged here as well.

The slaves with whom the planters surrounded themselves for their personal comfort in the city villa - including a disproportionately large number of women - enjoyed better living conditions than the plantation slaves, were allowed to move freely in the city and were sometimes even able to carry out economic activities on their own account to unfold. It was also common for planters to rent their urban slaves to other whites. Slaves who did not live in rural isolation, occasionally directed informal food stalls ( cook shops ), farms and grocery stores, where not only other blacks, but to z. B. also took care of white sailors; In the cities, a mixed- ethnic subculture, notorious for its crime, emerged .

The American War of Independence

With the rebellion of British settlers against British rule, the social ties between patriots and plantation owners broke in some of the North American colonies ; in their place came new coalitions, but hardly any with slaves. The slaveholders also disagreed and sided partly with the patriots and partly with the loyalists . Even so, they succeeded in asserting their interests during the War of Independence, and when the war ended there were more slaves on the territory of the young United States than ever before.

The power of the slave owners, which was based on routine, especially in the plantation economy, was severely disrupted when massive troop movements repeatedly occurred during the course of the war. The inhabitants of the affected regions often lost their property through confiscation , including slaves. Concerned plantation owners moved their slaves from one property to the next. Thousands of slaves used this mess to escape. They often found cover with soldiers passing by, whom they like to use as a washer or something similar in their camps; only in isolated cases did slaves who had fled become soldiers themselves.

From the independence of the United States

Slave states and free states and territories from 1789 to 1861

The war-induced erosion of slavery was followed by direct attacks on this institution. In part, these were nourished by the ideas of the intellectual movement that Ira Berlin - together with many other US historians - called the “democratic revolution” and whose milestones were the American Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of Human Rights and Civil rights (1789) and the establishment of the independent Republic of Haiti (1804) apply. In the much-noticed preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness to be inalienable human rights. Slavery was not specifically mentioned here, but came under pressure to justify itself.

The idea that all people are equal in rights has been widely discussed in public. The double standards that allowed the whites to fight for their freedom while the slaves were supposed to remain unfree, initially hardly offended most whites. Only a minority of patriots came to abolitionism through the new political idea of ​​freedom . All the more emphatically, the slaves of this time - the " revolutionary generations " - themselves now pointed out the double standard, measured their strength again with those of their owners and, especially in the north, often achieved that they were released or were allowed to buy themselves free.

Another source from which the idea of ​​equality could draw was evangelicalism , which first reached many slaves after the wave of missions of the First Great Awakening in the 1780s. The decisive factor was that pietism and evangelical missions in the 18th and 19th centuries recognized that the understanding of human beings as children of God is incompatible with slavery. Under pressure from Baptist missionaries, slavery was banned in Great Britain and its colonies in 1834, and the slave trade was prohibited in 1807 . The real breakthrough came in the United States. As early as 1652, slavery was declared illegal in Rhode Island. Parts of the Quakers and the Mennonites also rejected slavery as early as the 17th century. The American Methodists issued a corresponding ecclesiastical ban in 1786, larger groups of Baptists and Congregationalists followed in 1789. Around 1820 the anti-slavery movement (Abolitionist Movement) began with the slogan “Slavery is sin”. A strong political impact of the 1852 published novel was Uncle Tom's Cabin ( Uncle Tom's Cabin ) of the Presbyterian Harriet Beecher Stowe . Particularly appealing to African Americans was the belief that all people are equal in God's eyes. In fact, blacks were accepted as equals in many parishes. Around 1800 about every tenth African-American slave professed the Christian faith.

The plantation owners were not ready to give up slavery. To the extent that the slave owners got on the defensive, the ideas of freedom and equality did not lead to the abolition of slavery, but, on the contrary, to a hardening of the situation. The slaves were liberated in the 19th century in a process that the historian Charles A. Beard referred to in another context as the "Second American Revolution". Also of importance in this development was that from 1789 to 1850 the policy was determined by the plantation owners. No president from the slave-free north was re-elected during this period, while the five slave owners George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , James Monroe and Andrew Jackson each ruled for two terms. The presidents of the 1850s, Millard Fillmore , Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan , came from the north but were advocates of slavery. This dominance continued in the legislative and judicial branches at the federal level: the Speaker of the House of Representatives was a slave owner in 51 of 62 years of this period and in the powerful Committee on Ways and Means this was true in 41 years. Of the 31 justices at the United States Supreme Court during this period, 18 were from the Southern States, as were two Chief Justices, John Marshall and Roger B. Taney .

Countries without a plantation economy: New England and the Central Atlantic

Number of slaves in the northern colonies or states, 1680–1860

The events and ideas of the “democratic revolution” made a greater impression on society in the north than in the rest of the country. The abolition of slavery was first realized in the regions where there were few slaves anyway because the economy did not depend on them here. The first US states to abolish slavery by law were Vermont (1777), Massachusetts (1780), and New Hampshire (1783). In New England, of all things, the rule of law began to be applied to slave issues. In Pennsylvania (1780), Connecticut (1784), Rhode Island (1784), New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804) laws were introduced to gradually abolish slavery. Children of slaves who were born after a deadline should be released there as soon as they were of legal age.

The road to the complete emancipation of slaves was very long, even in the so-called “free states”. The majority of the slaves who had lived in the north of the country at the time of the American Declaration of Independence remained unfree until their death. As recently as 1810, 27,000 slaves were counted in the “free states”. Even slaves who were released often remained dependent on their former owners or their new white employers, sometimes with the approval of lawmakers, and gained no control over their labor or their lives. Afro-Americans - free as well as slaves - could not acquire American citizenship in the north either and were confronted with a multitude of discriminatory laws and practices. Many slave owners released their slaves only on condition that they committed themselves to them as debt servants in the long term. Other freed slaves had to commit themselves as debt servants out of poverty. In the north, too, it took a long time for freed slaves to set up their own households, find independent employment and set up their own institutions.

In New York, a law aimed at the permanent abolition of slavery did not come into force until 1827. Illinois did not even follow until 1848. The fact that the liberation of slaves in the northern states had been widely carried off led Ira Berlin to the verdict that the north had been part of the slave-holding republic until the final break with slavery on January 1, 1863.

States in Transition: Maryland and the Virginia Lowlands

At auctions, slaves were often displayed on blocks of stone. The example pictured here is from Fredericksburg , Virginia.

In Virginia, the British colonial governor Lord Dunmore supported the entry of African-Americans into the British troops, who were supposed to put down American independence movements. These blacks hoped to fight against slavery here. However, in the Battle of Great Bridge (1775) Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment was defeated and the British began to withdraw from Virginia. Although thousands of slaves were freed in Virginia and around the Chesapeake Bay during the Revolutionary War , the institution of slavery was still a long way from disintegrating there; the slaveholders resolutely held on to it.

Since the slave population increased here from their own resources, the slave owners in the Upper South became decided opponents of the international slave trade . At the same time, however, they began a profitable regional trade in slaves, which they sold from Maryland and the coastal region of Virginia to the southern states, especially to North and South Carolina, to Georgia , and to the west ( Kentucky and Tennessee ). In the period 1780-1810, an estimated 115,000 slaves left the coastal region of Virginia alone. Contemporaries referred to this black mass deportation, which was interrupted by the British-American War in 1812 but marked the beginning of what is known as the Second Central Passage , the Georgia Trade .

The tobacco monocultures in the Chesapeake region and the lowlands of Virginia were gradually replaced after the Revolutionary War by mixed farming with a focus on wheat , livestock and milk production, which required far more flexibility and training from the workforce than tobacco growing. As the slaves worked, their living conditions also changed; they gained in knowledge, mobility and independence. They began to earn their own living, were able to accumulate personal property and occasionally even received payment - as manufacturing workers or metal foundries, for example, which gave a minority of the slaves the opportunity to buy them themselves. A new branch of the economy that flourished especially in the cities was the renting of slaves. Overall, the importance of unfree labor decreased in the Upper South, which is why many slave owners either sold their slaves profitably in the southern states or released them. At the same time, however, new forms of dependency emerged such as B. the forced apprenticeship .

Situation in the plantation economy

South Carolina and Georgia

In the north, the independence movement had helped bring slavery into question. In the Lower South, on the other hand, the victorious outcome of the war confirmed the rule of the planters and thus also the institution of slavery. This war had been waged here with particularly desperate means. The plantations became battlefields that were invaded not only by opposing military units, but also by partisans and looters. Many planters evacuated their property and brought their slaves to safety in uncontested regions. The residents of other plantations died in their thousands, and as many slaves took advantage of the confusion to flee. In Georgia, the slave population decreased by more than 10,000 during the Revolutionary War, and in South Carolina by 25,000.

After the end of the war, reconstruction was initially difficult because the planters had not only lost many slaves, but also important foreign markets. The others often only allowed themselves to be forced back into the old order with resistance. During the war they had negotiated with their owners, who were more dependent than usual on efficient cooperation, many eases of their living conditions (work in the task system , cultivation of their own gardens and fields), which they later no longer wanted to do without. Many planters who wanted to do business quickly with their new cotton fields created incentives for their slaves by offering them money for overtime. For most slaves, however, the switch to cotton had more disadvantages than advantages. Thus, the planter replaced in the reclamation of the high state and then to the cotton fields themselves the task system through the column system; The slaves' working days became so long that they no longer had time to cultivate their own land. Riots broke out, including in Georgia, where the militia crushed a group of black guerrillas in 1787 . The planters, who saw their authority waning, became overly sensitive to such incidents, began to sense a possible rebellion behind every insubordination, and enforced new, stricter slave laws throughout the Lower South.

African Americans on Edisto Island, South Carolina drying the cotton (photographed c. 1862/63)
Afro-American slaves operated an early egrenier machine at the end of the 18th century (illustration from 1869)

It was not until the 1790s that rice production in the Lower South reached the level of the pre-war period again, but from then on it continued to rise, as cultivation had meanwhile been completely converted to tidal wet fields. At the same time, a product prevailed in the highlands that until then the slaves had only grown for their self-sufficiency: short-staple cotton . This product became profitable for plantation cultivation after 1793, when the first egrenizing machines became available, which enabled the cotton to be separated from seeds and seed pods.

Cotton production now grew so rapidly that slavery spread more than ever before. The planters in the Lower South, whose plantations were already the largest, most capital-intensive and technically modern companies on the continent at that time, continued to expand their land holdings and displaced all competition. To meet their growing need for labor, they hunted down runaway slaves or bought slaves from the north; after the emancipation, these could be obtained cheaply there. In the mid-1780s and again in the mid-1810s, South Carolina temporarily reopened the international slave trade and imported almost 90,000 Africans in these short periods of time; in the 1780s the majority came from the Gold Coast and in the 1810s from Angola. These "salt water slaves" brought African customs back into the country, wore decorative scars and artistically braided hair . The established slave community was very open to African influences, and many slaves adopted the hairstyle of the newcomers in particular.

In port cities such as Charleston and Savannah , slaves were also used in large numbers in crafts and transportation. Renting out slaves was also widespread there. Slaves with enough money to rent themselves could increase their autonomy considerably. The free black population in the cities also increased significantly through release, self-purchase and immigration from Saint-Domingue . More than in the Upper South, freed slaves in the Lower South were dependent on the patronage of their former owners, took their names and stayed close to them.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Florida

With the Treaty of San Ildefonso , Spanish Louisiana came under French control again in 1800. The French, who had lost their Caribbean sugar cane plantations to the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue nine years earlier, saw this as an opportunity to build a new plantation economy, but lost the area again in 1803, this time to the United States. Plantations were now growing all over the Deep South . This was made possible because during the War of Independence, many planters had brought their slaves south - especially to West Florida and the Anglo-American enclave of Natchez - out of fear of expropriation .

American independence from Great Britain was recognized in 1783 . After this clarification of the political situation, an influx of ambitious white entrepreneurs began in the Deep South, who now massively promoted the development of a plantation economy. In Louisiana, which was under Spanish and sometimes French control for the next 20 years and only fell to the USA in 1803, many new laws came into force one after the other, with which the rights of the slave owners were continuously expanded. For the first time since the 1720s, slaves were reintroduced into the region in large numbers.

The influx of slaves in the Deep South allowed for a brief revival of tobacco and indigo cultivation, which, however, had been supplanted by sugar cane and cotton since the end of the 18th century . By displacing their competition and reclaiming prairie and swampy river landscapes, the planters expanded their plantations and became the ruling class. They met their need for labor by buying up slaves that were already available in the region, by buying slaves from the north and, to an even greater extent, by importing slaves directly from Africa. The living conditions of these slaves were particularly bad. The work was extremely hard, the newly imported slaves died in large numbers of infectious diseases, and the survivors - since the planters were particularly interested in male workers - were mostly unable to start families. After the land was reclaimed, work was carried out on the sugar cane and cotton plantations in a column system, which increased the workload for the slaves, destroyed their remaining free spaces, tied them entirely to the plantations and isolated them socially. These changes could only be enforced by the planters under massive pressure. Many slaves resisted, and from 1791 to 1805 slaves repeatedly prepared major revolts in the south, which the planters, however, always discovered and prevented.

To the same extent that a plantation economy arose on the foundation of the subjugated black labor force, which brought wealth to the planters and made them the ruling class, so did their racial ideology develop into full form. The ideology of white supremacy , which until then had only defined the relationship between blacks and whites, was now differentiated in such a way that all human relationships could be described in terms of superiority and subordination, including the relationships between African Americans. It was during this period that slaveholders began to reward such African-American slaves with the freedom that bore the physical and cultural attributes of European Americans. Such and similar measures led to a deep rift developing within the black population.

The great hike

Number of Slaves in the Southern States, 1770–1860

The restructuring of the slave society, which had begun during the American struggle for independence, was greatly accelerated in the period from 1810 to 1861. There was a great migration movement in the course of which hundreds of thousands of mostly young slaves were separated from their relatives and deported from the Upper and Lower South to the Deep South. The target area of ​​this mass deportation, for which Ira Berlin coined the term " Second Middle Passage ", soon extended from the highlands of South Carolina to Texas, although a large part of this region had only recently been wrested from the Mexicans and Indians by military means. New Orleans became the most important slave trading center in the USA in the 19th century, replacing Charleston. The consequences of the Second Middle Passage were a depopulation of the Upper and Lower South and a revolution in cotton, sugar and hemp production in the Deep South.

The deep south

The main agricultural products of the southern states (1860)

While the focus of the slave regime during the independence movement lay in a narrow strip between the east coast and the Appalachians , from the late 18th century it shifted further and further to the south-west. In the 18th century he reached the Blue Ridge Mountains , the Shenandoah River , the Cumberland Plateau , Kentucky and Tennessee.

The need for slaves in this region was enormous and could hardly be covered by the "Second Middle Passage". After Congress banned the import of slaves altogether in 1807/08, slaves were imported illegally, particularly through Florida and the Mexican province of Texas. The kidnapping and illegal (re) enslavement of free African Americans were also common in the first decades of the 19th century. The domestic slave trade was, after plantation production itself, the most prosperous branch of the economy in the south.

In the pioneering years, the working and living conditions of the migrant generations were extremely harsh. These slaves not only had to create cultivated land out of pure wilderness, but also cultivated the most labor-intensive plant on the cotton plantations that existed in the contemporary economy. The planters who tried to build plantations in this borderland had the prospect of extremely high profits, but they could only withstand competition by keeping their slaves in the column system and constantly driving them to work. During this period of development, the slaves could not provide for themselves from their own gardens and fields and in the process lost much of the economic knowledge that their relatives who had stayed in the northeast had still possessed. This was particularly true of the cotton plantations, where the slaves - unlike in the sugar cane industry, for example - did not do any qualified work in the fields or in processing. The social life of the slaves also remained threatened, as many plantations went bankrupt during the construction phase. The slaves living there were sold and again separated from their relatives.

The Upper and Lower South

In Maryland and Virginia, after a hundred years of plantation farming, the soil was depleted and much of the labor was sold to the south and west. In order to be able to withstand the competition arising there, the Upper South had already started to diversify its economy in the middle of the 18th century . The plantation economy was gradually replaced by grain cultivation, handicrafts, industry and trade. Slaves continued to be employed in many of these industries; however, these were also exported to the south and west in increasing numbers.

Agriculture also adapted to the changed conditions in the lowlands of the Carolinas and Georgia. The indigo cultivation lost importance, while the short-staple cotton spread. Rice production was even more profitable, which also continued to expand in this region, at the expense of the slaves, whose working conditions here were particularly difficult and led to high mortality. Tobacco cultivation spread again in Kentucky and Missouri in the 1840s.

Civil War and Abolition of Slavery

Proportion of slaves in the total population of each American state and territory in 1860

In the two decades before hostilities broke out between the slave-holding states and the north, the slave market developed in a remarkable way. The price for able-bodied slaves corresponded to that of cotton, but from about 1840 onwards it also reacted to small increases in the price of cotton with significant increases. A bubble of speculation developed , referred to in contemporary texts as the Negro fever . The price increase is at least partially attributed to the impending conflict. In Great Britain, slave owners were compensated when they were abolished in 1833, so that speculation on compensation was also an option in the USA.

The decision of the Supreme Court Dred Scott v. Sandford of 1857 led to a price increase of nearly 5% for slaves. Although the ruling explicitly confirmed and even extended the rights of slave owners, it became clear to the South that conflicts over slavery reached the highest court and would have to continue in the future. When Kansas rejected a slavery constitution in late 1857 , the price rose again about 5%. Abraham Lincoln's nomination as a presidential candidate raised prices a little over 5%. The increases did not stop until Lincoln took office in March 1861.

The departure of the southern states from the Union and the formation of the confederation led to the American Civil War in 1861 . The war had a strong impact on the situation of the slaves from the start. Since their masters were distracted, many managed to escape. Many saw Lincoln as their liberator. After the war began, the prices for slaves fell. Slightly at first, but after the First Battle of the Bull Run , they fell 17%. Though victorious for the south, the battle symbolized that Lincoln was ready to enter Confederate territory militarily. During the war, the Union captured New Orleans with the central slave market of the south in April 1862 , which had a significant impact on the Confederation's economy. Slavery was abolished in Washington, DC that same month . The region was the only area where freeing slaves paid their owners an average of $ 300.

According to scientific analyzes, the fall in prices in 1860/61 was less the result of the direct fear of the abolition of slavery, but rather the result of general uncertainty about long-term development, of conflicts that would lead to an increased burden on agriculture, for example through taxes.

After the end of the war, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution came into effect on December 18, 1865, which finally abolished slavery in the entire territory of the United States. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution formally granted Afro-Americans their civil rights in 1868. However, it was possible for the southern states to join the Union without actually granting blacks the same rights as whites (see black codes ). Many black people continued to work in similar conditions on the plantations, but used their newfound opportunities, among other things, to become politically active and to give their children an advanced education . Another century passed before they were granted full civil rights when the civil rights movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and Senator and then President Lyndon B. Johnson advocated civil rights, or de facto equality, for blacks.

African American slave culture

During the time of slavery, the cultural traditions arose which - despite multiple changes - shape life in the Afro-American community to this day. This tradition includes the cultural traditions in all areas of life: from customs and traditions to music, architecture and narrative traditions to religion. Characteristic of all these areas is an amalgamation of African traditions with the European traditions of the slave owners, which developed under the difficult living conditions of slavery.

Resistance and flight

In order to subdue the slaves, the slave owners separated the families of the slaves, applied discipline through long, hard work and religion, created disagreement among the slaves by distinguishing field slaves from more privileged house slaves, and applied immediate severe punishments at signs of resistance. The dismemberment of slaves was regulated by law as a punishment. B. in the Virginia Code of 1705.

In the literature, however, there are hundreds of attempts by slaves to shake off white rule through rebellions . Without any exception, these attempts were either uncovered in the preparatory phase or suppressed during the execution, the latter always violent and with many deaths on the part of the slaves. Even the largest slave uprisings - the Stono uprising (1739) and the Nat Turner uprising (1831) - did not bring any slaves free.

The everyday resistance that slaves opposed to the exploitation of their labor on the plantations is well documented in the research literature, and it took many forms. Slaves used violence against their keepers and their overseers just as they used the whip against their slaves. Slaves avoided work, feigning illness or stupidity and clumsiness, sabotaging their work equipment and mutilating workhorses in order to avoid unpleasant work or to have to work less overall.

Thousands of slaves escaped their owners by fleeing, although this was easier than at any other time in the turmoil of the American Revolutionary War, in which runaway slaves were able to find shelter in enemy military units. In times of peace, fugitive slaves were mostly recaptured. In the 19th century, the Underground Railroad , a network of white and black abolitionists, emerged who helped slaves escape to Canada, especially from the north of the southern states.

Abolitionism and Attempts at Reform

Beginning in the 17th century, the legality of slavery was increasingly being called into question among parts of the American population. This attitude was primarily caused by a new image of man as children of God and as individuals, which emerged in pietism , puritanism and related Protestant currents. Enlightenment ideas also played a role among intellectuals . Under the leadership of Baptist Roger Williams , the Rhode Island Colony declared slavery illegal in 1652. The Mennonites and parts of the Quakers also rejected them for religious reasons. In 1785, the Methodists passed an ecclesiastical ban on slavery because it contradicted the law of God and nature. Southern Baptists joined in 1789 on similar grounds. From around 1820 the slogan "Slavery is a sin" (Slavery is a sin) introduced abolitionism - the abolition of the slave trade and the liberation of slaves. The clashes were so intense that the church split up. What was new was that for the abolitionists the spiritual freedom of the children of God had to have an effect in the social order as social and political freedom. There were close ties to the anti-slavery movement in Great Britain . There, through the commitment of Quakers, Baptist missionaries and prominent personalities such as the Anglican parliamentarian William Wilberforce, the slave trade was prohibited in 1807 and slavery itself for the motherland and the colonies in 1834. However, British and American abolitionism had little effect in the southern United States. The movement, led in the north by personalities such as William Lloyd Garrison , John Greenleaf Whittier , Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass , operated under difficult conditions because it not only opposed the constitution but also threatened consensus within the Union. Abolitionism only got political backing after the election of Abraham Lincoln , who had never been an abolitionist himself, but had campaigned against the spread of slavery in the American West.

In addition to the efforts of the abolitionists, there have been various attempts to reform slavery even in the south . These efforts came from groups as diverse as churches, legislators, courts, doctors, and planters. Their goals, however, were so different - partly about the Christianization of the slaves, partly about improving their working and living conditions, partly about increasing their work performance, partly about calming the opposition in the north - that the attempts at reform had hardly any effect spawned.

memory

August 20, 1619 is seen by some historians, civil rights activists, and politicians as the beginning of slavery in North America. Corresponding commemorative events took place in August 2019. On that day an English pirate ship docked at Old Point Comfort (now in Hampton , Virginia ). Of the people on board who had been abducted from the African kingdom of Ndongo (now Angola ) and transported across the Atlantic by a Portuguese slave ship , more than 20 were sold to a white colonist. However, slavery had existed in North America for a long time.

See also

Subject in literature and films

Novels

Memories of former slaves

Non-fiction

  • Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, Maya Sen: Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2018, ISBN 978-1-4008-8997-6 .
  • Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 .
  • Douglas A. Blackmon: Slavery by Another Name. The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Doubleday, New York 2001, ISBN 0-385-50625-2 .
  • Norbert Finzsch, James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton: From Benin to Baltimore. The history of the African Americans. Hamburger Edition, 1999, ISBN 3-930908-49-2 . (German)
  • John Hope Franklin, Alfred A. Moss Jr .: From Slavery to Freedom. The history of black people in the United States. Ullstein, 1999, ISBN 3-548-26550-2 . (German) (English original edition: From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. Knopf, 2000, ISBN 0-375-40671-9 )
  • Saul S. Friedman : Jews and the American slave trade. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ 1998
  • Friedrich Kapp : The history of slavery in the United States of America . Hamburg 1861.
  • Joachim Meißner, Ulrich Mücke, Klaus Weber: Black America. A history of slavery. CH Beck, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56225-9 . (German)
  • Dominik Nagl: Dominik Nagl, No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions. Legal transfer, state formation and governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630 - 1769. Berlin, 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11817-2 . (German)
  • Patrick Rael: Eighty-Eight Years. The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865. University of Georgia Press, Athens 2015, ISBN 978-0-8203-3395-3 .
  • Junius Rodriguez: Slavery in the United States. A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-544-5 .
  • Calvin Schermerhorn: Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018, ISBN 978-1-107-02766-4 .
  • Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies. Routledge, New York. Trade journal since 1980. (quarterly)
  • Kenneth M. Stampp: Peculiar Institution. Slavery in the Antebellum South. Vintage, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72307-2 .
  • George William Van Cleve: A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic . University of Chicago, Chicago 2010, ISBN 978-0-226-84668-2 .
  • Heather Andrea Williams: American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-992268-0 .
Document collections
  • Thomas R. Frazer: Readings in African-American History. Wadsworth Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-534-52373-0 .
  • Willie Lee Rose (Ed.): A Documentary History of Slavery in North America. University of Georgia Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8203-2065-X .

Movies

Documentaries
  • The Civil War (1990; 9-part television documentary)
  • Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery (multi-part television documentary)
  • Prince Among Slaves (2007, directed by Andrea Kalin, Bill Duke)
  • Meeting David Wilson (2008, directed by David Wilson, Daniel J. Woolsey)
Feature films and series
  • The Bride of Hate (1917, directed by Walter Edwards)
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927, directed by Harry A. Pollard)
  • A world at your feet (The Foxes of Harrow) (1947, directed by John M. Stahl)
  • Band of Angels (1957, directed by Raoul Walsh )
  • Roots (1977; multi-part television film)
  • Torches in the Storm (1985, 1986, 1994; multi-part television film directed by Paul Freeman, Robert Papazian, Hal Galli)
  • Queen (1991; TV series)
  • Amistad (1998, directed by Steven Spielberg)
  • The Help (2011, directed by Tate Taylor)
  • Django Unchained (2013, directed by Quentin Tarantino)
  • 12 Years a Slave (2013, directed by Steve McQueen)
  • The Birth of a Nation (2016, directed by Nate Parker)
  • Roots (TV series, 2016) (remake)
  • Harriet - The Path to Freedom (2019, Director: Kasi Lemmons)

Web links

Commons : Slavery in the United States  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files
Wikisource: Slavery  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edmund S. Morgan: Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox. In: The Journal of American History. Vol. 59, No. 1, June 1972, pp. 5-29, Organization of American Historians JSTOR 1888384
  2. ^ A b Edmund Morgan: American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. 1975, p. 386.
  3. ^ Douglas A. Blackmon: Slavery by Another Name : The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
  4. ↑ Ira Berlin, pp. 23-36.
  5. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 81-84, 88.
  6. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 86f; Pinkster ( January 10, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 85f; New York: The Revolt of 1712 ; Edwin Hoey: Terror in New York –1741. ( Memento from February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 88.
  9. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 39-42, 89-92.
  10. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 39-42, 88, 93-95, 140-142.
  11. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 43-48.
  12. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 49, 68, 129.
  13. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 13-15.
  14. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 10.
  15. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 10 f.
  16. ↑ Anthony Johnson
  17. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 39.
  18. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 55 f.
  19. ↑ a b I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 56-64; Virginia Slave Law Summary and Record. ( Memento from March 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 211.
  21. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 64-66.
  22. ↑ Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions - Rechtsstransfer, Staatsbildung und Governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630-1769. Berlin 2013, p. 646f. de.scribd.com
  23. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 67-69.
  24. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 72-75.
  25. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 72-74.
  26. ^ Slavery in Georgia ; Berlin, p. 68.
  27. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 77-80.
  28. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 99 f.
  29. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 100-103.
  30. ↑ Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 11, 103.
  31. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 11, 100-104.
  32. ↑ see also en: Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (entered into force on August 1, 1834).
  33. ^ Heinz-Dietrich Wendland : Slavery and Christianity. In: The religion in the past and present. 3. Edition. Volume VI, Col. 1010-102.
  34. ^ Peter Bromhead: Life in Modern America. 4th edition. Langenscheidt-Longman, Munich 1981, p. 127.
  35. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 11, 100f, 117 f.
  36. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 11.
  37. ^ William L. Richter: Historical Dictionary of the Old South . 2nd Edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-7914-0 , pp. 10 f.
  38. ↑ See Brom and Bett versus Ashley and Walker versus Jennison .
  39. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 102-104; for details see: Chronology of Slavery in the United States
  40. ↑ Berlin, 104 f.
  41. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 231; Emancipation in New York ; Slavery in Illinois ( Memento of the original from February 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.freedomtrails2legacies.org
  42. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 233.
  43. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 111-113.
  44. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 113, 168.
  45. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 113-117.
  46. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 123-127.
  47. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 123-132; Maroons in the Revolutionary period
  48. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 127-131.
  49. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 131-134.
  50. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 135-137.
  51. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 39-43, 140.
  52. ↑ Berlin, St. 146.
  53. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 146-150, 154; The Pointe Coupée Conspiracy (1795)
  54. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 144, 152.
  55. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 161-164, 170.
  56. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 163-165.
  57. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 167 f.
  58. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 177, 184-192.
  59. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 209-213.
  60. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, pp. 210-212.
  61. ↑ a b Unless otherwise stated, the presentation of the slave market before the Civil War is based on: Michael Todd: The Financial Meltdown of the New Orleans Slave Market. In: Pacific Standard. November 12, 2013.
  62. ↑ a b Jürgen Heideking: History of the USA. 2., revised. & exp. Edition, Tübingen et al. 1999, p. 168 f.
  63. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States. Harper Perennial, 2005, ISBN 0-06-083865-5 , p. 199.
  64. ^ A b Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States . Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 35.
  65. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, various passages in the text.
  66. ↑ Glenn FaFantasie (Ed.): The Correspondence of Roger Williams . Vol. 1, University Press of New England, 1988, pp. 12-23.
  67. ↑ Clifton E.Olmstead: History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1960, p. 115.
  68. ^ Dee E. Andrews: The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2000, ISBN 0-691-00958-9 , pp. 125f.
  69. ↑ Craig Calhoun: Epilogue: The Many Powers of Religion. In: Eduardo Mendieta, Jonathan VanAntwerpen (ed.): Religion and the public. Frankfurt am Main 2012, p. 174.
  70. ↑ Allen Weinstein, David Rubel: The Story of America: Freedom and Crisis from Settlement to Superpower. New York 2002, p. 224 ff.
  71. ^ Heinz-Dietrich Wendland: Slavery and Christianity. In: The religion in the past and present . 3. Edition. Volume VI, Tübingen 1962, column 103.
  72. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead: History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1960, p. 362 ff.
  73. ^ Karl Heussi : Compendium of Church History. 11th edition. Tübingen 1956, pp. 424-425.
  74. ^ I. Berlin: Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. 2003, p. 203.
  75. ↑ Dorothea Hahn: Slavery - Foundation of US Capitalism , taz of August 21, 2019.
  76. ↑ The Washington Post : Slavery's bitter roots: In 1619, '20 And odd Negroes' arrived in Virginia on August 24, 2018, accessed August 21, 2019.