Slavery in the
Slavery first began in the
On arrival, the Africans were hired for a specific term of service as indentured servants. At first, slaves and servants worked together as equal partners. Sobel, in his book entitled, The World They Made Together quotes Elizabeth Spring, an indentured servant who discusses this relationship: Servants and slaves worked together, drank together, often lived together…sharing the same rough life, the same hardships, the same abuse. Whites, women as well as men, ‘slaved’ under overseers holding sticks, working in the ground, carrying, or fetching of rails or loggs or the like things and beating at the morter” (Sobel, 44).
This relationship, however, soon began to lose change as slaves lost the equality that was once established with the whites, resulting in a change of status. As the two different races became more and more interwoven with one another, the white upper class began to fear a rise in black power. Soon, slaves began to make up the majority of the labor force, while the whites began to take over different positions. (Sobel, 47). No longer were they working as indentured servants, but if seen on the plantations at all, it was to oversee the work of the slaves.
In the early seventeenth century, the number of blacks arriving in the
-Between the years of 1700-1770 the number of blacks grew from 13,000 to 250,000.
-Between the year 1750 there was an estimated 165,000 blacks, mostly slaves, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Civil War, Slavery, and the
It was, however, in 1790 that the soil became depleted from over planting and the strong demand for slaves was no longer an issue, and as a result some blacks were freed.
The relationship between the blacks and the whites was a consistent power struggle, in which the whites felt threatened anytime the Africans gained any sort of recognition. It was, however, in the nineteenth century that the blacks began to make a living as watermen and began harvesting oysters, working on vegetable farms, canning vegetables, picking crabs, etc.
This is an image of freed slaves working with the crabs and oysters brought in by the watermen.
Once again, however, in 1836 the upper class attempted to prevent the blacks from prospering by passing a new bill, forbidding blacks from captaining any vessel large enough it need be registered. The bill also stated that any owner who violates this bill would have their boats seized and sold. The blacks, in response to this new bill, continued to work on the boats as crew, shipbuilding, or captaining by subterfuge, legally or not. (“African-American Watermen: General Information.” 3) Most blacks that continued to work on board, however, usually had the complicity or protection of some whites on board as well.
Although free blacks were still facing extreme discrimination (watermen), there was an attempt to end slavery as early as the late 1700s. As the work force became dominantly black, the colonies began to split into two sections differing by attitudes considering slavery.
This is an image of slavery during a year or so prior to the Civil War.
It was in 1780 that the
Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law providing for the gradual abolition of
slavery. The Legislature argued that
It wasn’t until three years later that the Massachusetts
Supreme Court agreed that slavery did violate “the natural rights of
Again in 1783,
Once the war ended, black labor was still an essential
part of the
These laws, originated from the Black Codes, which were enforced from 1865 to 1866, existing mainly in the South.