Question

Why/how did slavery begin in the United States?

Answer 1

Answer:

The first 19 or so Africans to reach the British colonies arrived in Point Comfort, Virginia, near Jamestown, in 1619, brought by British privateers who had seized them from a captured Portuguese slave ship. Slaves were usually baptized in Africa before embarking.

Explanation:

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Answer 2

Answer:

first as a mixture of indentured slavery, African chattel slavery, and native American slavery for economic gain in the Southern colonies.

Explanation:

The Southern colonies, including in the West Indies, had mainly focused on the production of cash crops and plantation agriculture. However, this took a lot of labor, including in dangerous working environments. Indentured servants, often times immigrants from Ireland, were a risky investment, and often died. New diseases from the old world killed off much of the native American population, not to mention they knew the land and had places to escape from slavery to. African chattel slavery had two main benefits: 1) they came from Africa in large quantities (with much immunity due to the longer history of European interaction) and typically had no where to go, making them available, and 2) their children were also born into slavery, meaning there were essentially, in the eyes of masters, and endless "supply" of slaves. Even after new slave importation from Africa was banned, the children of slaves remained and continued on. This economic benefit that slaves carried continued far after the American Revolution in the south, especially after the creation of the cotton gin during the market revolution, as well as western expansion, that made slavery even more practical than it had previously been.