A Dutch warship brought the first cargo of twenty Blacks to Virginia in 1619.
were torn from their African homes and carried to the New World before the slave trade was ended.
The Africans brought here against their will were not born slaves. In their homelands they were free.
farmers and herdsmen, craftsmen skilled in pottery and weaving, woodcarving and ironworking. They.
were traders and hunters, musicians and dancers, poets and sculptors. Some were princes and.
warriors, rulers of kingdoms large and small. Click on the anchor to view an original English map that .
one merchant used to try and explain the slave trade triangle to another merchant.
In Africa their cultures were rich and varied, as different from one another as were the African peoples.
themselves. Their colors, their languages, their food, their clothing differed in a range as great as the.
difference in size between the pygmies and the giant Watusi of Africa.
They came in chains, brought by men who chose to use slaves because they would bring greater profits.
than the masters could get from their own labor, or from other types of labor.
The Blacks were no better fitted physically to do the hard labor of the agricultural South than were the.
whites. Nor were Blacks better fitted psychologically to live in slavery. In the past, it must be.
remembered, long before America was colonized, whites of many countries had been forced to submit.
to slavery. With the same variety of brains and emotions, the same range of ability and personality,.
Blacks could find slavery no more a blessing than could whites.
As traffic with the New World increased, and the demand for slave labor swelled, the buying and.
selling of Africans gave way to piracy and kidnapping.
Americans did not neglect the profits of the trade. By 1645 a Yankee sea captain was sailing the.
Rainbowe out of Boston on the first American voyage for slaves. Down to the War for Independence .
the slave trade was vital to New England's merchants.