C
Catholic_farmer
Guest
I hope there might be some folks on here that have studied colonial American and US history more than I have. There is a question that is bothering me. How did the American colonies develop such a brutal system of slavery? How did it change from the 1600s to the 1800s? I just read an autobiography of a slave woman who escaped to the North in the 1840s. She describes a visit to England and her surprise at the civility in which she was treated in contrast to the US (even in the Northern states).
My own ancestors were among the earliest slaves in the colonies. Of course, the predominately English settlers were accustomed to having servants and so when Cromwell rounded up 50,000 Irish Catholics and sent them on slave ships to be sold on the block in Williamsburg, (he also had another group of Irish Catholics sent to Barbados) they were eagerly purchased. The settlers pressed them into roles that would have been comparable to the ones they were forced into in England. This was before the African slave trade really began, as I understand it. Of course, these white slaves had little trouble assimilating into society once they fell out of favor and either purchased their freedom or were released due to such low ‘value’ compared to the newly arriving slaves from Africa.
Overall, it sounds as if these white slaves were treated similarly to the servants in England. Perhaps they did more outside work, I don’t know, but the contemporary complaints revolve around their refusal to work on Sunday and their adherence to their religion (Catholicism). They were also criticized for drinking.
How did it happen, then, that when the first slave ships arrived from Africa, the colonists somehow decided that these people could be treated much worse? How did they spiral into the thought process that degraded these people and, essentially, descend into the h-ll that became slavery in the early 1800s? Was it a particular generation that reacted to the arrival of Dutch ships selling these very different looking human beings? Was it the sales pitch made by the sellers? Was it a slow process of degradation (I think this is true if you look at the treatment before the cotton gin and after the invention of the cotton gin). This uniquely American tragedy played out over time and you can see that one justification led to the next, which led to the next, etc… Each time a new atrocity occurred, it was as if a little bit of time allowed it to become accepted and the downward spiral continued.
I see parallels of this in modern day downward spirals of morals and justice. Perhaps we could learn a lot from this if we studied the history slavery further.
My own ancestors were among the earliest slaves in the colonies. Of course, the predominately English settlers were accustomed to having servants and so when Cromwell rounded up 50,000 Irish Catholics and sent them on slave ships to be sold on the block in Williamsburg, (he also had another group of Irish Catholics sent to Barbados) they were eagerly purchased. The settlers pressed them into roles that would have been comparable to the ones they were forced into in England. This was before the African slave trade really began, as I understand it. Of course, these white slaves had little trouble assimilating into society once they fell out of favor and either purchased their freedom or were released due to such low ‘value’ compared to the newly arriving slaves from Africa.
Overall, it sounds as if these white slaves were treated similarly to the servants in England. Perhaps they did more outside work, I don’t know, but the contemporary complaints revolve around their refusal to work on Sunday and their adherence to their religion (Catholicism). They were also criticized for drinking.
How did it happen, then, that when the first slave ships arrived from Africa, the colonists somehow decided that these people could be treated much worse? How did they spiral into the thought process that degraded these people and, essentially, descend into the h-ll that became slavery in the early 1800s? Was it a particular generation that reacted to the arrival of Dutch ships selling these very different looking human beings? Was it the sales pitch made by the sellers? Was it a slow process of degradation (I think this is true if you look at the treatment before the cotton gin and after the invention of the cotton gin). This uniquely American tragedy played out over time and you can see that one justification led to the next, which led to the next, etc… Each time a new atrocity occurred, it was as if a little bit of time allowed it to become accepted and the downward spiral continued.
I see parallels of this in modern day downward spirals of morals and justice. Perhaps we could learn a lot from this if we studied the history slavery further.
The history of slavery in America is far more complex than the simple paradigm of evil white guys and innocent black victims. While race was a major factor, it was not the only factor.