Chapter 7: The Early History of Slavery in America

1619-1800

Almost two centuries before Lincoln is born, slavery arrives in America. The year is 1619 when a British privateer lands at Jamestown Colony and exchanges “some twenty Africans” for supplies to continue their voyage. After the Governor of Virginia puts them to work on his tobacco plantation, the practice spreads rapidly across both the South and North.

The slave trade picks up around 1650, and roughly 15 million African will be kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic, mainly to work on sugar plantations in Brazil and the West Indies. A small percentage, some 500,000, filter into America.

By the time the Revolutionary War ends in 1783, the U.S. slave population has grown to 700,000 or 18% of new nation’s total.