Slavery in the American South, 1619-1808

Africans did not come to the Americas as slaves initially.  The first Africans arrived in the Americas as explorers and later as indentured servants.  In 1619, 20 Africans came to Jamestown, Virginia as indentured servants.  Indentured servants worked for a set period of time to earn their freedom and Europeans and Africans served as indentured servants in America.  However, after 1640 the status of Africans began to change from indentured servants to servants for life (slaves). 

Less than one hundred years after the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia the institution of slavery was firmly in place. By the turn of the eighteenth century more than a thousand Africans were arriving each year via merchant-slave ships. Sea routes were established: Sailors voyaged from England to Africa, where they offered goods in exchange for slaves, then departed for the New World colonies where settlers purchased the slaves and put them to work. While colonial America profited from the Africans' labor, the slave trade became a tremendously lucrative business in itself. At the expense of a people held captive, colonial America's plantation economy and the slave trade industry flourished for many years to come.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates fiercely debated the issue of slavery, but ultimately agreed that United States would cease its engagement in the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. While American vessels, as of this date, no longer traveled to Africa in search of human merchandise, a domestic or "coastwise" trade in slaves persisted between ports within the United States.