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The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
African-American history started with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The European colonization of the Americas, and the resulting Atlantic slave trade, led to a large-scale transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic; of the roughly 10–12 million Africans who were sold by the Barbary slave trade, either to European slavery or to servitude in the Americas, approximately 388,000 landed in North America. After arriving in various European colonies in North America, the enslaved Africans were sold to white colonists, primarily to work on cash crop plantations. A group of enslaved Africans arrived in the English Virginia Colony in 1619, marking the beginning of slavery in the colonial history of the United States; by 1776, roughly 20% of the British North American population was of African descent, both free and enslaved.
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References
- ↑ Manning, Chandra (2007). What This Cruel War Was Over. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780307264824.
- ↑ Manning, Chandra (2007). What This Cruel War Was Over. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780307264824.
- ↑ Manning, Chandra (2016). Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780307271204.
- ↑ Green, Micheal (July 21, 2007). "What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (review)". Chicago Tribune.
- ↑ Smith, Mark (2016-08-26). "A Chaotic Birth of Freedom". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660 . Retrieved 2017-08-29.
- ↑ "The OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program: Chandra Manning". OAH.org. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
