What were the origins of African-American slavery Essay

What were the origins of African-American slavery - Essay Example However, these were not actually the first slave. This is because slave trade had long started before the 16th century i.e. during the Triangular trade or transatlantic trade, which involved the Americans, Europeans and the Africans. In the transatlantic trade, slave traders delivered slaves captured in war from Africa to work in the South America in exchange for sugar and tobacco. After the first batch of slaves in 1641, the colony of Massachusetts made slavery legal and then Virginia followed suit in the year 1660. Slavery intensified in the 17th and 18th century being enforced further in 1787 when U.S constitution was drafted to prohibit congress from meddling with slave trade before 1808 (Berlin, 2003). After the American Revolution War 1775-83, Americans began associating enslavement and oppression of Africans to the manner in which they were manhandled by the British. The slaves had no right to vacation, wages, owning property and marriage. This led to call for slavery ban, acknowledgement of slaves as three-fifth of a person for taxation purposes and recognition of slave as person held under service. Mostly in 1800’s slavery in North America was viewed as oppression amongst many, however, people of South America did not conquer with this opinion. This is because they relied heavily on slave labor and abolition of slavery would amount to loss of much of their wealth (Franklin, 2000). Despite the above progress, South faced Economic crisis in late 18th century as a result continued slavery in contrast to the North America. This was in the European industrialization period and there was high demand for cotton, South America cash crop. Moreover, the invention of the mechanical cotton gin in 1793 required more manpower. Consequently, the south continued slave trade to counter the huge labor demand and to meet their export demands. However, between