Why did Slavery faster in the colonies in the last decades of the 17th century than in the previous decades?

Question

For my AP-US History class i need to answer this question:

Why did the practice of slavery in the colonies grow more rapidly in the last decades of the 17th century than in previous decades?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The seventeenth century saw a lot of turmoil in England, first with the battles between king and parliament which led to the execution of Charles I and rule by Cromwell. Then, after the Restoration James II demonstrated Catholic sympathies, leading to his deposition. His sympathizers, the Jacobites, were unwelcome in England. To escape the unrest many people of various political persuasions came to America and took up agrarian occupations. Since farming was labor intensive, they needed cheap labor and slaves were considered the cheapest.

In the late seventeenth century rice from the southern states was a very profitable crop. Rice, not cotton, was the initial driver of the expansion of the slave trade.

Answer 2

The need for manual labor increased greatly with the demand from Europe for American product.

Like cotton and tobacco.

Both seriously labor intensive crops.

Tobacco was a product only from the Americas.

It WAS being grown in the Caribbean Islands but another type of it had been perfected by John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas, in Jamestown, Virginia, with bootlegged seeds from the islands.

So, the North American tobacco was the preferred type in Europe.

As for cotton, there WAS Egyptian cotton available and had been for many thousands of years.

It's a very fine cotton, not the huge fluffy bulk of American cotton.

It doesn't grew well and has to be pampered.

And Egytpian cotton is outrageously expensive.....today AND back then.

American cotton grew full, hardy, easily, almost wild, and in great abundance.

Before the "cotton explosion" people mostly wore WOOL.

ALL THE TIME.

Even the uniforms of Spanish soldiers in St Augustine, Florida was made of WOOL.

(Can you imagine?)

With the sheer abundance of American cotton, a huge trade market for it grew in leaps and bounds.

Business people, merchants, and other people "of means" tended to settle in the Northeast where business and trade WERE.

Farmers tended to settle in the Southeast....where farming land was.

Irish farmers. German farmers. British and French farmers.

Simple farmers.... that figured out very quickly that they could grow rich quite quickly if only they had sold more bales of cotton or more racks of tobacco to sell to Europe.

To do that they had to have more labor.

A bale of cotton could PURCHASE more help...a slave.

That one slave could help you to provide two more extra bales of cotton, therefore buying you even more help.

A dozen slaves with the assistance of the members of your family....could make you rich in a very, very short time.

The demand for tobacco and cotton CONTINUED to increase.

More manual labor was required for planting.

Simple farmers became plantation owners.

Slavery was driven by the Market.

Supply and Demand.

This was the MAIN reason of the American Civil War.

With all the business, factories, and trade merchants in the Northeast....and all the products and this "nouve riche" in the Southeast....and all the profits going in between Europe and the American Southeast, and their free labor intensive industry.......the Northeastern factories were becoming empty, trade was slowly easing off.

Why would the South sell at a cheaper rate to the North when they could get top dollar from great Britain?

The wealthy businessmen of the North, whom most came to this country as people of means, were not pleased.

It was all about greed and money.

The more slaves you had, the more product you turned out, the more money you made. the richer you got, the more control you had.

Slavery had to stop.

Unfortunantly and shamefully, not for the reasons we learned in junior high school.