9781422274217

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery and became an important leader in the abolitionist movement. He was a talented speaker and writer.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES In 1619, a Dutch ship brought twenty slaves from Africa to the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The slaves had been captured from a Spanish ship and baptized, so the Europeans opted to use them as indentured servants. Indentured laborers from Britain were a precursor to slavery, but they were only required to work for a few years. Indentured servants would agree to work for a specific amount of time before they were allowed to go free. Essentially, they earned their freedom through hard labor. Eventually, the laws made it such that people brought over from “non-Christian” African nations could be made slaves indefinitely. In the past, customs and laws had made it such that Europeans did not force into slavery anybody who had been baptized into Christianity. This would change as the popularity of slavery grew in the United States. Eventually, European settlers found that African slaves were cheaper than indentured servants from Europe. Before slavery, the colonists at Chesapeake Bay had found it difficult to attract and maintain workers due to the harsh conditions of the frontier. The colonists needed to find a way to attract workers to work on their

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SLAVE LIFE ON A SOUTHERN PLANTATION