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Slave Labor Built America

February 28, 2009 12:35 am

IT HAS BEEN well-documented that the first slaves arrived at the settlement located at Jamestown in 1619. American slavery lasted for an astonishing 246 years until the Emancipation Proclamation was written into law by President Abraham Lincoln.

For three centuries African slaves were transported throughout the Colonies in record numbers. Documentation of slaves as cargo on slave ships and the economic gains from their laborious serfdom didn't begin until 1700, so there is an 81-year gap in statistical data for the number of Africans brought through the Middle Passage.

Initially, American Indians and indentured servants from England and Ireland were to supply the source of arduous labor for yielding a prodigious tobacco crop, but this experiment was short-lived. As their brethren in the Caribbean did, colonists decided to turn their eyes to the continent of Africa for free labor.

Over the aforementioned years they amassed an immeasurable fortune on the backs of West African slaves. Slaves were arriving by the thousands while their owners were enjoying obscene amounts of income. The South in particular became a formidable agricultural society through the expansion of tobacco, rice and indigo plantations and later cotton.

The profits made from the sale of these goods in Europe were used to purchase more slaves. Here in Fredericksburg, the slave auction block is still located at the corner of William and Charles streets. The exact role of the stone itself has been debated over the years, with some saying it might have supported the feet of auctioneers rather than of the human beings they sold.

Blacks aided development

According to "A Different Story: A Black History of Fredericksburg, Stafford, and Spotsylvania," by Ruth Coder Fitzgerald: "Slaves worked on plantations, on the docks, in iron industries, mining and quarries, mercantile businesses, construction, domestic services, and others were skilled blacksmiths, coopers, cobblers, and draymen. African Americans were vital in the development of the area." This was typical of many places in the North and South during this period.

The American Revolution brought forth a new set of challenges. Tobacco exportation to Europe took a sizable hit here in Virginia and Maryland. The North abolished slavery in most of its territories, shifting their focus to an industrial foundation. The South was left to wonder where it would find its next cash crop.

Such men as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, along with their constituents, debated in the House of Burgesses about the potential abolition of the slave trade in the state of Virginia, but Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin opened up a new set of possibilities for the South.

Due to the increased demand for cotton, South Carolina's population grew to two blacks to every one white; only Mississippi rivaled this ratio of whites to blacks.

From the late 1700s to the mid-1800s there were about 12,000 slaves in this area, 14,000 whites and about 900 free blacks, according to Fitzgerald. These numbers indicate how valuable blacks were to the local economy and, to a larger extent, America's economy.

Cotton is big export

"The cotton the slaves produced had become not only the United States' leading export but exceeded in value all other exports combined," says Yuval Taylor, author of "I Was Born a Slave."

"After the slave trade was outlawed in 1807 approximately one million slaves were moved from the states that produced less cotton (Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas) to those that produced more (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas). With the increase in cotton production, the price of slaves went up, to such an extent that by 1860 capital investment in slaves in the south exceeded the value of all other capital worth, including land," he says.

I remember a discussion we had in my 11th-grade history class about how "cotton was king" and the effect it had not just nationally but globally, and how it helped to place the United States on the world stage as a viable economic entity.

Although the North had abolished slavery in its territories, it continued to rely heavily on the institution of slavery in the South. The cultivation of cotton influenced the shipping and financial industries in the North. Cotton provided a cushion for the textile industry in Great Britain as well. As the wealth continued to flow, the banks in the North allocated the funds for the South to keep purchasing land and slaves.

A stipulation in the Constitution called the Three-Fifths Compromise regarded African slaves as three-fifths of a person, thus shifting power to the South from the North in the counting of the national census.

"Recruited as an inexpensive source of labor, enslaved Africans in the United States also became important economic and political capital in the American political economy. Enslaved Africans were legally a form of property--a commodity. Slaves were also used to pay off outstanding debts. When calculating the value of estates, the estimated value of each slave was included. This became the source of tax revenue for local and state governments. Taxes were also levied on slave transactions," says Howard Dodson, author of "Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture."

The total number of slaves who survived coming across the Atlantic Ocean has been debated for decades. Many historians claim the number is between 6 million and 12 million, not counting the individuals who died on the voyage.

The countless hours of blood, sweat and tears from enslaved Africans afforded people such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the like the time to be as great as they were in helping to establish the United States as a prominent nation.

African slaves and their offspring are interwoven into the very fabric that makes us all uniquely American. Their images were even depicted on Confederate currency, which illustrates their significant contribution in the South's ascendancy to economic and political eminence.

Black History Month is the designated time to honor their steadfast monetary contributions not only to the United States, but to the world.

Christopher Williams of Spotsylvania County is a freelance writer. E-mail him in care of
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.