Introduction
Slavery in this or that form and in that or other time existed in all parts of the world. Any race did not manage to avoid this terrible form of public development. Slavery is one form of dependence of one person on another, which in anthropology refers to rights-in-persons. Such relations are possible at the most various social and economic structures in any country and during any historical epoch. Their spectrum is very wide: on the one hand are obligations to relatives, spouses, and children, somewhere in the middle relations between a chief and subordinates, and at last on the other hand is the right to dispose of people as some articles of trade – to sell, to buy, and to exchange them.
The United States has from the very beginning arisen as the slaveholding state. Slavery was an integral part of the American way of life. American slave-owning was not a certain similarity of antique slavery. It was formed in the depths of capitalism and has reflected the feature of its coming-to-be in the agrarian economy of Northern America. American planters owing to the extreme narrowness of the market of waged labor, have been compelled to resort to the work of black slaves. But the use of slave labor has not passed without leaving a trace for the planter bourgeoisie, which have turned into a special class in which the features of typical capitalists and slaveholders have strange and at the same time naturally intertwined.
The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783. But despite the proclaimed slogans that “all people are born equal”, the first American Revolution, the War for Independence of 1775-1783, has left the slavery of black people in southern states in inviolability. Moreover, the second American Revolution – the civil war of 1861-1865 has also not led to a radical decision on this problem. The problem of slavery in the USA is a complicated complex of social, economic, political, legal, racial, and other questions, which roots are in-depth the American history.
Colored, white, and black slavery
As we have mentioned above, American slave-owning was not a certain similarity of antique slavery. The “colored” slavery in North American colonies of Great Britain has arisen together with the first settlements on the distant continent. The word “slave” has not at once become a synonym of the word “slave” became the word “black” delivered from Africa on ships of slaveholders. Color of skin had no special value as before the introduction of slave-owning colonial authorities and independent colonists widely practiced slave labor of red-skinned Indians and white people.
To get slaves from among of local population, colonial authorities used various sources, most widespread from which there was a sale of captives during exterminatory wars of aboriginals, their abduction. Kidnapping and the purchase of Indians, who were taken as prisoners by other tribes, were also practiced. Colonists not only seized the lands, driving Indians away in internal areas of the continent but also tried to use the indigenous population as slaves. Frequent wars were accompanied by the sale of captives-Indians in slavery to colonists.
Though the slave labor of Indians has played a certain role in the economy of English colonies (especially in the first decades of their existence), however, it could not completely satisfy the demand for workers. Besides, colonists have convinced that they could not lay their account with locals as a labor force. All attempts of colonizers to use Indians as slaves effectively were unpromising. The principal cause of it consists in the unwillingness of Indians to work for their enslavers. The aboriginal population did not wish to be reconciled to a lot of slaves, which was prepared by newcomers. They offered armed resistance and gave slaveholders shivers by their attacks. Colonists had to refuse from such not reliable and dangerous sources of labor. The resistance of Indians has forced colonizers to search for other sources of the solution to the labor problem.
The peculiar feature of the development of English colonies in Northern America was an attempt of a solution of this task by the introduction of the institute of white slavery when colonial authorities waded into the enslavement of representatives of the white population.
There were two categories of white workers: enslaved for a certain term, so-called servants, and free handicraftsmen and farm laborers. Servants made a great bulk of white workers. There were two forms of enslavement: under the contract and debenture. As a rule, the contract has been established in England. A person who has signed it has lost the freedom, and the “buyer” has got the right to dispose of this person at discretion. Such enslaved people referred to servants under obligation.
A debenture has been established after the arrival to America in English colonies. Entrants were obliged to find themselves an owner who would agree to pay the captain or the businessman the cost of transportation. Immigrants have been obliged to work their ticket for the owner who has paid for their travel.
Such a form of servitude was especially practiced by shipowners. In exchange for passage and food, passengers undertook to pay a certain sum on arrival. In case of non-payment, the owner of the ship sold passengers-debtors.
After the sale, existing distinctions in the position of contract and debenture servants were actually erased. They both became the property of the owner who has bought them, had the right to sell the white slave, to hand over in hiring, to bequeath to successors, feather to concede for a while within the limits of the term of the contract.
At first, in colonies, it was widely applied the work of criminal and political criminals, who have been deported from mother countries for various terms. However, the work of such people did not solve the problem. With the increase in the number of slaves and the increase in the inflow of voluntary emigrants, its value became appreciable to fall. During the seventeenth century, the basic workers were servants. Mainly it was immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, German states, who have been undertaken for work their passage to America during a certain period of time, usually from three till seven years.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, British colonies on the American continent: New Jersey, Northern, and South Carolina, New York has quickly arisen and developed. They also have a sharp shortage of laborers. The reduction of immigration stream from Europe, rise in the price of cost of transportation through ocean led to increasing of the prices on contracted workers. The complication has also been caused by the fact that many servants have the term of their service by contract finished, and it was not easy to replace them.
Colonial businessmen on searching a way out have set their eyes on Africa. Soon they could make sure that Africans, in a greater measure, than Indians and white slaves, satisfy the needs of manufacture. The increased inflow of black slaves in comparison with the decreased import of enslaved servants has led to a reduction of prices on black slaves by the end of the seventeenth century.
Black slavery was developing up to the end of the seventeenth century rather slowly. There are a number of reasons: in colonies, they still did not understand what economic benefit gives the use of work of Africans; during all the seventeenth century, the trade of African slaves was a monopoly of Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese merchants, which kept high prices for their “goods.”
In 1713 Great Britain got the right (asiento), the right for import of slaves from Africa to Spanish colonies. English, and after also colonial merchants of New England have received a monopoly on transportation of black slaves in New World.” African slaves were accustomed to a change of masters. Slavery, therefore, to them, was certainly no new thing; with it they were familiar, but a voyage across the vast Atlantic, whither they knew not, was indeed appalling” [1].
The absence of agricultural machines and instruments led to that them began to replace machines with black slaves, which in this case acted as just means of production. Work on plantations did not demand any special knowledge or skills. Here only the physical strength of a slave has been necessary. The planter has been interested in the living conditions of slaves, their feed to that measure in what it answered the preservation of their ability to work.
The development of the economy has led to differentiation also among black slaves. The poorest were those from them who have directly lived and worked on plantations. In a better position were domestic servants. In favorable position also appeared black slaves, who had any specialty: carpenter, smith, etc. Such slaves have been often handed in hire by their owners that displeased white handicraftsmen and hired white workers. Handover of black slaves in hire did not mean the occurrence of black hired workers. These people still remained slaves; only the owner has changed. Slaves, in this case, represented neither more nor less than goods, which can pass from the hands of one owner to the hands of another.
Conclusion
American slavery has arisen as a way of exploitation of labor force within the framework of capitalism, but it was gradually reformed in the independent social, economic, and political institute, based on original distinct from capitalist “political economy.” Being originally an “appendage” of the British capitalism, American slavery after the War for Independence, having kept communications with the capitalist market, has turned into an “aristocratic” system, defining the basis of which became not only private-capitalist accumulation but also a slaveholding way of exploitation of the black population of the South.
Gradually capitalist systems of the North and planter slavery of the South have become to act as two diverse, from the point of view of contained tendencies of development, public systems.
Comparison of industrial capitalism and planter slaveries from positions of historicism does not leave any doubts that the market of wage labor, free competition, and coming from the industrial and social relations (economy, politics, and culture) were historically more progressive and are incompatible with the system of slavery.
The civil war in Northern America has destroyed slavery, but the ideological bases of this institute till now influence the political life of the USA. Having absorbed in itself the experience of slaveholding aspirations of the colonial period, the southern society has generated a huge quantity of various racist theories. Horace Greeley writes: “Many of people of the United States regard Slavery, if not in the abstract a blessing, at least as now existing, a condition of society best for both white and black, while they exist together; while others regard it as no evil, but as the highest state of social condition” [2]. These ideas have been skillfully ground and used in the works of defenders of the slaveholding system in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The racial wars, which have flashed in the USA in the twentieth century, in many respects were the consequence of these ideological concepts, which have substantially strengthened the mentality of not only people from the South but also inhabitants of the North. Moreover, the reflection of these ideas we also can find in the American legislation: at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we may observe the case of not only “black” but also “white” racism, when the white population of the United States has fewer rights, than “color” does.
Bibliography:
- Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
- Buell, Tonya. Slavery in America: A Primary Source History of the Intolerable Practice of Slavery. New York: Rosen Central Primary Source, 2004.
- Greeley, Horace. A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States, From the Declaration of Independence to the Present Day. Mainly Compiled and Condensed from the Journals of Congress and Other Official Records, and Showing the Vote by Yeas and Nays on the Most Important Divisions in Either House. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co, 1856.
- Price, Thomas. Slavery in America. Detroit: Negro History Press, 1836
- Thornton, Thomas C. An Inquiry into the History of Slavery; Its Introduction into the United States; Causes of Its Continuance; and Remarks Upon the Abolition Tracts of William E. Channing, D.D.. Washington: W.M. Morrison, 1841.
- Thornton, Thomas C. An Inquiry into the History of Slavery; Its Introduction into the United States; Causes of Its Continuance; and Remarks Upon the Abolition Tracts of William E. Channing, D.D.. Washington: W.M. Morrison, 1841, p. 38.
- Greeley, Horace. A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States, From the Declaration of Independence to the Present Day. Mainly Compiled and Condensed from the Journals of Congress and Other Official Records, and Showing the Vote by Yeas and Nays on the Most Important Divisions in Either House. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co, 1856, p. 111.