Slaves were very successful for growing sugar cane, so eventually the southern colonies called for them to be bought over. They weren’t expensive to buy, and once owned didn’t need to be paid. A slave code was bought over from the Barbados, stating that slaves had no rights and were completely owned by their owners. Even though it wasn’t intended, slavery flourished in the southern colonies. Originally Georgia and North Carolina didn’t agree with slavery.
While many disregard this system as cruel and unfair, in reality it helped to shape America as it is today. Without the help of this system, economies would not be as developed as they are now. Unfree labor played a very important role in shaping the economy and society of colonial American through the use of indentured servants and slavery. The system of temporary servitude in the New World was established out of practices used in New England. In short, indentured servants were mainly poor British people without jobs.
Also, many Africans knew about farming so they would be accustomed to the work involved. Third, Africans were strangers to the Americas and would know no places to hide from slavery. From 1500 to 1870, when the slave trade in the Americas finally ended, about 9.5 million Africans had been imported as slaves. The Spanish first began the practice of bringing Africans to the Americas. However, the Portuguese—looking for workers for sugar plantations in Brazil—increased the demand for slaves.
The plantations masters thought it was “cheaper to buy than to breed” meaning it was cheaper to buy a new slave and work him to death than it was to allow a slave to live long enough and bear children to increase numbers. The life span for a slave was seven years from purchase to death. The last stage, decadent, was reached when the land had become depleted. There were no longer nutrients in the soil so they turned to less labor intensive produces such as, grains, fruits and vegetables. In turn the need for slave labor was
From Document 2, it shows that the South relies on slavery for their economy. According to Document 3, some people in the South, such as Hinton Helper, did not like that, and thought their economy was weak. The North, according to Document 2, had a better economy and made about $1,345,000,000 more yearly in manufactured goods than the South. The South required more and more slaves in order to keep their economy running. Plantations were a big part of the economy in the South because that’s where they grew their cotton, and without slaves, the plantations would die.
Why did slavery grow to be such an important institution in colonial America? What were the effects of slavery on the Africans who were brought to the New World? What were the effects of the Africans on the New World? slavery was so important to colonial America because of one thing, economical gain, slave labor was cheap and it was socially acceptable then, the Africans were treated not as human beings with feelings, they were literally rounded up, shoved on the middle passage ships, and then arrived at slave trades about 2 months later where they were auctioned off to slave owners to work in plantations for the rest of their lives, if it wasn’t for the huge use of slave labor in the early times of America we wouldn’t be where we are today, it was cheap and extremely effective. 3.
But was needed more for clean up after the machine had come through the fields. Where it would have taken a crew of workers to separate the cotton in a day, it would that the cotton gin only minutes. Large acres of land were found to be filled with cotton, because farmers that grew food were forced to grow cotton. Because of this the food supply had decreased. Most of the South had started dependency on the price of
In my opinon without the cotton gin slavery might not have lasted as long as it did. It began with Eli Whitney when he was born in 1765, he noticed the slaves having a hard time picking the tough cotton from its sticky seed. So when he got older and smarter he invented the Cotton Gin so they wouldn’t have such a hard time with it. The Gin was a simple machine that had a big impact on the South.
The population was estimated to have dropped 50-60%, so the prices of goods rapidly dropped, since there were so few people still alive to buy it. The lower levels of the social chain, like the peasants, serfs, farmers, and factory workers were struck the hardest. (Pollama) Since their living and work conditions were not very sanitary, and their living spaces were often cramped and dirty, they were the easiest targets for the plague. All of the jobs that these people had were now open, and available for people to take. Since the serf population had gotten ridiculously low, plantation owners were forced to start paying workers to tend the farms.
Similar to the Joad family in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath", about 40% of migrant farmers wound up in the San Joaquin Valley, picking fruit and cotton. Life for migrant workers was hard. They were paid by the amount of fruit and cotton picked, with earnings ranging from seventy-five cents to $1.25 a day. Out of these low wages they had to payment rent on their leaky and rough shack that usually had only a dirt floor and no plumbing. Oftentimes the migrants had to buy their supplies