Alex Clarke

Mr. Gruskin

AP American History

5 September 2008

The Presence of Slavery

Commercial interest was the greatest contributing factor to the expansion of slavery in

the New World. Proponents of slavery alternatively used legal and theological arguments in the

defense of involuntary servitude; civil predispositions of the time enforced this reasoning. It was

before the Plymouth Pilgrims even arrived that traders began to sell blacks as slaves – it is as if

slavery was a part of America before the country was born.

Although the slave trade was far too expensive for the common man of 1650, the industry

exploded within the next fifty years. It did not take long for the plantation to be the veritable

definition of the South. As the plantations of the southern colonies expanded (most notably in

South Carolina), slavery became popular among landowners. The plantation owners found that it

was far more profitable to have free labor working to cultivate and harvest the land. Furthermore,

caretakers meagerly fed slaves and housed them in incredibly poor conditions, both of which

helped keep profits high.

Whites of the time liked to use legal influence to entrap blacks into slavery. In 1645, The

General Court of Massachusetts ruled that slaves could be lawfully sold by legitimate slave

traders. Then, English settlers from Barbados brought with them the Barbados slave code to the

colony of Carolina in 1670. The original denied all freedom from slaves and gave all possible

rights to the slave owners; the adopted versions were quite similar. Lawmakers of the era wanted

a straightforward rationale to make clear the role of black slaves in the colonies. In order to
 Clarke 2

legally buy, sell, trade, force to work, and abuse slaves, those in charge wanted a lawful base to

do so.

The religious of the period found ways to enforce the bondage of slaves through

theological reasoning. Ministers were especially keen to point out that God blessed Abraham

while he held slaves, in addition to referencing other scripture. Leviticus 25 did tout the

indefinite bondage of foreigners. Even if those quoting scripture did believe their Biblical

allusions, it is most likely that there were also ulterior motives in their defending slavery.

While those supportive of slavery largely based their opinions on the growing economy,

they also felt personally about those they were enslaving. Social attitudes of the time greatly

influenced the feelings of whites in the colonies. It is believed that by the early 1620s, blacks

were already viewed as different from whites. Eventually, the consensus was that blacks were

simply inferior – by any and every reason.

Social values of the time, in tandem with commercial interests were the preeminent

aspects of the average proslavery advocate. Along with legal and religious notions, these

pretenses ushered in an era of hardship for what became an incredibly large population of some

colonies. The majority of contemporaries found no flaw in any of these views, which solidified

the presence of slavery in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

 Works Cited

Bailey, Thomas A., Lizabeth Cohen, and David M. Kennedy. The American Pageant. 12th ed.

New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Daly, John. Proslavery Writing. Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Vol. 2.

Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest

among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Questia Online Library. Questia Media America. 4 Sept. 2008

<http://www.questia.com/>.

Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1996. Questia Online Library. Questia Media America. 4 Sept. 2008

<http://www.questia.com/>.