9781422274187

indigenous populations of the Caribbean and Central and South America, turned to Africa as a source for the labor required to grow valuable cash crops that would bring wealth to the mother country. As colonies sprang up in North America, Spain, France, and England all played a role in the expansion of slavery into lands that would one day become the United States. The system was legal in all thirteen British colonies on the eve of the American Revolution, and by 1775, when the war for independence erupted, an estimated 500,000 slaves of African origin or descent lived in the colonies. From Virginia to Georgia, where the agrarian economy flourished and the plantation system brought wealth and power to white slaveholders. New York City also boasted a high concentration of slaves, similar to that of Charleston, South Carolina. The exploitation of enslaved Africans resulted in brutal treatment, both physically and mentally, to maintain total control over the slave population. Slavers sought to dehumanize those they held in bondage, severing family ties for the sake of profit and

Scan here for a brief overview of American slavery.

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CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR