Slavery

Slavery in the United States was a form of slave labor which continued mostly in the South until the Thirteenth Amendment was created. The first English colony in North America, Virginia, brought over their first slaves in 1819 from a ship that carried about 20 Africans. The practice established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s was expanded into English North America. One thing that most people dont know is slavery was not confined to merely people of black ethnicity. In fact there are many different ethnic classes of slaves.Over decades, many slaves in the Upper South were born of mixed race with white fathers; because of generations of white fathers, by the early nineteenth century, some mixed-race slaves would qualify as legally white under state laws. Some Native Americans and free blacks also held African-descended slaves. even Europeans also held some Native Americans as slaves, including some of African descent. Slave labor was in demand in the areas where there was good-quality soil and climate for large plantations of high-value cash crops with labor-intensive cultivation, such as tobacco, cotton, sugar, and coffee. By the early decades of the 19th century, the overwhelming majority of slaveholders and slaves were in the southern United States.
Before the widespread establishment of slavery much work was organized under a system of bonded labor known as indentured servitude. People paid with their labor for the costs of transport to the colonies. They contracted for such arrangements because of poor economies in their home countries. Between 1680 and 1700, as fewer Europeans migrated to the colonies, planters began to import more Africans as slaves. Recognizing the importance of slavery, the House of Burgesses in Virginia enacted a new slave code in 1705; it brought together a variety of legislation and added new provisions that embedded the principles of white supremacy in the law.[7][8] By the early 18th century, colonial courts and...