Part 1: Slavery and the Founding of a Nation
In this series, Racism in America, I aim to discuss the history of the United States with a focus on the topic of racism, both systemic and individual racism. Through this series, I hope to play a part in fighting the issue of racism that still persists in our society today. This series was inspired by the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
To understand present-day racism in the United States, we must first understand some American history. Slavery can really be considered the first form of “racism” in America (although, admittedly, at the time, the United States was but a small British colony).
In 1607, the first settlers from England arrived in North America, in what is now Jamestown, Virginia. Since slavery was legal in Great Britain at the time, slavery was practiced in all British colonies in America, and at the time of the founding of the United States, slavery was still legal in all 13 states. A black slave was considered the property of the owner and could be bought or sold. The first slaves arrived in British America in 1619, because of the difficulty in attracting laborers to move to America due to harsh living conditions.
The number of slaves skyrocketed during the colonial era. The transatlantic slave trade became very ludicrous, and by 1710, over 23,000 slaves lived in Virginia, one of the largest states at the time. In the North, slaves were usually used as servants in cities, while in the South, slaves were used on plantations and farms, and did most of the heavy laboring.
During the American Revolution of the mid-1700s, the British freed any slaves who decided to join the British army to fight against American independence. Large numbers of slaves fled, migrated, or died during the war.
After the United States gained independence, some Northerners started to call for the abolition of slavery, as slaves were relatively unimportant to the North’s economy. However, when the Constitution was drafted, it did not ban slavery and considered all slaves to be worth 3/5ths of a person (known as the 3/5ths compromise). The reason for the 3/5ths compromise was due to congressional representation: the South wanted all slaves, even though they were not free men, to be counted as part of their population to gain more representation in Congress, while the North didn’t. As such, they settled on each slave to be worth three-fifths of a person.
Because slavery was such a contentious issue, the Constitution never refers directly to slaves, rather using the terms “other persons” and the like. However, one thing the constitution did do was ban the importation of slaves until 1808.
Because of the aforementioned importation ban, after 1808, legal importation of slaves ended and after a brief period of smuggling in slaves via Spanish Florida, ended with Florida becoming part of the United States. The domestic trade continued to flourish, though.
Proponents of slavery, especially those in the South, and known to have been said by Thomas Jefferson, said that slavery was “a necessary evil,” and freeing slaves would have harmful economic and social consequences. John C. Calhoun, a Congressman who strongly defended slavery, even claimed slavery was “a positive good.” (It is quite hypocritical that the Declaration of Independence stated all men had three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Quite evidently, many slaves were men who did not have these rights.)
With the cotton industry rapidly growing in the South, the enslaved population in the United States grew exponentially in the South. By the Civil War in 1860, 4 million slaves existed in the U.S., with more than half working in the cotton-producing states of the South.
On the other hand, abolitionist ideologies began to grow in the North. Many Northern states passed legislation to slowly emancipate slaves. The first Northern states abolished slavery in 1780, and slavery was abolished in New York by 1827.
Slavery was a major issue when admitting states. For example, Missouri wanted to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, but Congress didn’t want to admit them at first because they did not want to disrupt the balance between slave and free states. This, and many other similar issues (like Texas joining the Union), were eventually resolved with a number of compromises. One of these compromises was the Missouri Compromise, where, except for Missouri, all other states and territories that would later join the Union that were north of Missouri’s southern border would automatically be free states.
Throughout the 1800s, the issue of slavery began to become more prominent. Despite compromises and talks, these only delayed the issue, rather than shelving it. With the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1859, where a black slave tried unsuccessfully to gain his freedom as a slave, the issue of slavery caused a huge rift between slave states and free states. Many Republicans, like Abraham Lincoln, considered this decision unjust and declared the Supreme Court overrun by slave power. By this time, the nation was officially on its way toward civil war
In the next post in this series, we will talk about the 1860 presidential election and how it led to the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery, and Reconstruction.
In future posts, we will go over Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and come to a conclusion as to why racism is still very prevalent in the United States today.
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