The reasons for slavery

 

Settlers in America wanted slaves. They could force slaves to work for long hours in the fields and of course they were cheaper than white labour. In 1793 Eli Whitney made his simple new machine for separating cotton fuzz from the cotton seeds, and cotton became the great crop of the southern part of North America. As cotton became more important so did slavery. There was a shortage of white labourers. Africans, so it was argued, were used to the extreme heat that is normal in the south of the USA. In addition, some slaves gave birth to new slaves which was an extra bonus for the slave-owners. Sometimes the owner himself might be the father of such a slave child. If he did not need them on his own land then these slave children could simply be sold.

 

Because they were black, spoke strange languages and were not Christian, the white people could claim they were inferior and that it was therefore all right to keep them as slaves. Slave-owners could not admit that blacks were equal human beings to themselves. If they did that they could not defend slavery. For the first eighty-five years of the USA, slave-owners argued that there was no disagreement or contradiction between the ideas of freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the keeping of slaves. In time many farmers came to depend for their prosperity on the work of their slaves. Slavery was very profitable for everybody involved except of course for the slaves themselves.

 

Nigel Smith: Black peoples of the Americas; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 12