Page 100 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Read the Document Anonymous, A defense of the Slave Trade (1740) 3.1

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slave shiP except for brief excursions on deck for forced exercise, slaves remained below decks, where the air
grew foul from the vomit, blood, and excrement in which the terrified victims lay. some slaves went insane; others
refused to eat. On many voyages, between 5 and 20 percent of slaves perished from disease and other causes,
which was another reason for captains to pack ships tightly.

who lived in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts Bay. The size and density of the slave
population largely determined how successfully blacks could maintain a separate
cultural identity. In the lowlands of South Carolina during the eighteenth cen-
tury, 60 percent of the population was black. The men and women were placed
on large, isolated rice plantations and had limited contact with whites. In these
areas blacks developed creole languages that mixed basic English vocabulary with
words from African languages. Until the end of the nineteenth century, one creole
language, Gullah, was spoken on some of the Sea Islands along the Georgia–South
Carolina coast. Slaves on the large rice plantations also established elaborate and
enduring kinship networks that may have helped mitigate the more dehumanizing
aspects of bondage.
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