Page 89 - American Stories, A History of the United States

3.1 Watch the Video Series on MyHistoryLab

Learn about some key topics related to this chapter with the
3.2 MyHistoryLab Video Series: Key Topics in U.S. History.

1 and spanish, the importation of african slaves provided
3.3 The age of discovery and slavery led by the Portuguese
the labor supply for the plantation agriculture of the
Caribbean islands and latin america. later, english slave
3.4
traders in north america also transported african slaves
to the new World. This video introduces and examines
the european origins of chattel slavery on the cusp of the
3.5 age of discovery and the slave economy that developed
in the american colonies.
Watch on MyHistoryLab

labor, for that reason individual slaves were not highly valued and brutal practices aimed at producing 2
race slavery Profits and the economic considerations that drove slavery in the americas are discussed
in this video. slave owners and traders were primarily concerned with the wealth generated by slave

the most profit were practiced often at the expense of the health, safety, and humanity of the slaves
themselves. Watch on MyHistoryLab

3 The evolution of slavery in north america The first africans in north america were treated more like
the white indentured servants of the virginia plantations. This video surveys the progression and
development of slavery in the north american colonies from its almost accidental beginnings to the
perpetual, race-based slavery that would typify the british american colonies.
Watch on MyHistoryLab

british colonies. This video examines how slavery differed from colony to colony and the ways, although 4
slavery in the Colonies Most africans who were brought to the americas stayed in the Caribbean.
others after a period of “seasoning,” continued on to north america and were sold throughout the

limited, that slaves had to influence their lives and destinies in the new World.
Watch on MyHistoryLab

dirt house, our spirits quite sunk.” For many years, the Witherspoons feared they would be killed
by indians, become lost in the woods, or be bitten by snakes.
Yet the Witherspoons managed to survive the early difficult years on the black River. to be
sure, the carolina backcountry did not look much like the world they had left behind, but the
difference apparently did not discourage Robert’s father. He had a vision of what the black River
settlement might become. “My father,” Robert recounted, “gave us all the comfort he [could] by
telling us we would get all these trees cut down and in a short time [there] would be plenty of
inhabitants, [and] that we could see from house to house.”
Robert Witherspoon’s account reminds us how the early history of colonial America was an
intimate story of families, and not, as some commentators would have us believe, just of individu-
als. the peopling of the Atlantic frontier—the cutting down of the forests and the creation of new
communities where one could see “from house to house”—was not a process that involved what
we would today recognize as state policy. Family considerations influenced men and women
as they made the important decisions that would shape their new lives in the colonies. it was
within this primary social unit that most colonists earned their livelihoods, educated their chil-
dren, defined gender, sustained religious tradition, and nursed each other in sickness. in short,
the family was the source of their societal and cultural identities.
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