Slavery in

America

Definition of slavery

Slavery is an important subject for

the history of the United States of
America. First of all for understand
what the word slavery means is
necessary a definition of it.

 Slaveryis the brutal practice

of forcing someone to work
hard without paying them a
fair wage, sometimes without
paying them at all.

For hundreds of years in the United

States, wealthy white landowners
forced millions of Africanslavesto
work their entire lives on giant farms.
The wordslaverycomes from the
Latinsclava, meaning Slavonic
captive, referring to the 9th century
slavery of Slavonic people, but it
came to mean anyone in captivity, not
just Slavs. To be held captive and
unable to pursue your own life is
slavery, and its worth fighting
against.

History of slavery
Origins
Slavery was known in
civilizations as old as Sumer,
as well as in almost every
other ancient civilization,
including Ancient Egypt,
Ancient China, Ancient India,
Ancient Greece, the Roman
Empire and the preColumbian civilizations of the

 Such institutions were a

mixture of debt-slavery,
punishment for crime, the
enslavement of prisoners
of war, and the birth of
slave children to slaves.

 In America all started when

African Slaves arrived in North
American colony of Jamestown for
the first time.
Slave was, unopposed by religionin fact, Christians supported
slavery through the Old
Testament, Muslims supported
slavery explicitly and Jews
supported slavery- ran a lot of the
slave trade.

 A lot of the slaves in the

world throughout
history were white
people or Europeans.

The life of a slave

Daily life for a slave in North

Carolina was incredibly difficult.
Slaves, especially those in the
field, worked from sunrise until
sunset. Even small children and
the elderly were not exempt from
these long work hours.

 Slaves were generally

allowed a day off on
Sunday, and on infrequent
holidays such as Christmas
or the Fourth of July.

 During their few hours of

free time, most slaves
performed their own
personal work. The diet
supplied by slaveholders
was generally poor, and
slaves often supplemented it
by tending small plots of
land or fishing. Many slave
owners did not provide good
clothing, and slave mothers

Thetreatmentof
slaves

Womens slaves specifically

had two different work
areas : either work on the
field or took care of the
house . Life was difficult,
the majority of slaves toiled
from sunrise to sunset on
large plantation conducting
backbreaking labor under

The majority of female

slaves were sexually
abused or raped by their
white master .It was
common and widely
accepted in the white
and black communities
that female slaves were
sexually abused by their
masters in the form as

Slave codes
To help regulate the relationship
between slave and owner,
including legal support for
keeping the slave as property,
states establishedslave codes,
most based on laws existing since
the colonial era. The code for the
District of Columbia defined a
slave as "a human being, who is by
law deprived of his or her liberty
for life, and is the property of
another."

 In Alabama, slaves were

not allowed to leave their
master's premises
without written consent
or passes. This was a
common requirement in
other states as well, and
locally run patrols often
checked the passes of
slaves who appeared to

In Alabama slaves were

prohibited from trading
goods among
themselves. In Virginia,
a slave was not
permitted to drink in
public within one mile of
his master or during
public gatherings.
Slaves were not

The end of slavery

The war ended on June 22, 1865

and following that surrender,
theEmancipation
Proclamationwas enforced
throughout remaining regions of
the South that had not yet freed
the slaves. Slavery continued for a
couple of months in some
locations.Federal troops arrived
inGalveston,Texason June 19, to
enforce the emancipation. That
day of gaining freedom is now