Slave trade existed in the colonial days. Its origin was because of the shortage of labor. The first people to be slave were Aboriginals but they were not many. They had incentives like free access to land and indentured servitude. The demand for labor increased forced the Europeans to turn to West Africa. The Europeans exchanged the slaves for manufactured goods. This continued and it became a trade. The trade occurred in open markets. The markets opened daily and sometimes weekly. The black people were the slaves. Anybody in the North who could afford to buy slaves had cheap labor. Millions of Africans worked in the North as slaves. The slaves used ships as a means of transport.
The Africans worked in rice plantations because they knew how to grow the crop. The whites were brutal to the blacks and they exploited them. The also brought into practice racial enslavement. The blacks could not access better services like their masters. This led to the Africans becoming fearful and this allowed the whites to continue oppressing them. Laws that controlled the population were in place. The laws include castration or killing of the slave. The owners of the slaves misappropriated the earnings that slaves were entitled (Kechur & Schwarz, 2006). The slaves had no freedom of movement, to assemble, or even to read and write. Cruelty was the order of the day and whipping was a common thing in the North. This was possible because slavery was legal in the thirteen British colonies. On the eve of uprising, the trade was the backbone of England economy.
The slave trade gave work to tanners, sail makers and rope makers. The insurers, agents, lawyers handled the paperwork for the slave traders. The adverts on the sale of slaves earned the colonial newspapers money. There were distilleries that produced millions of gallons of rum. This rum was for local use and most of its production was for the slave trade. Large quantities went to Africa and exchanged for slaves. The abolishment of slave trade in the North did not stop the trade; there were ships of the New England that continued carrying thousands of Africans to the South. They got money from shipping and this was directly through transporting the slaves and indirectly from the activities that pertained to the slaves (Donald, 2007). The transport of slave- grown cotton to England earned revenue to the slave traders. There was also the transportation of the wheat and rum to the slave colonies in the Caribbean.
The North also benefited from slavery through taxes. The taxes were lower in the North. This was because the tariffs collected on import of goods financed by cotton export. Slavery was a profitable affair. The Northerners benefited from this trade up to the eve of civil war. The slaves worked in the cotton farms. Cotton provided the North with many earnings from export. The earnings accounted to a lot of revenue. The ships carried agricultural products to Africa and they took slaves back to Europe. The ships could then be loaded to ferry agricultural products produced by cheap slave labor to Africa. The ships took advantage of the winds and currents that ensured that they had no problems in the ocean.
Slaves allowed the owner to have more free time for ceremonies, leisure and other aspects of lifestyle that they could afford. Slaves also contributed to the status of their masters. Slave ownership earned a person a title in the society. The slaves took part in the ceremonies that their masters engaged in. they served the foods and drinks to their masters and the visitors. This continued until revolution age when abolishment of slave trade took place.
References
Donald, L. (1997). Aboriginal slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kachur, M., & Schwarz, P. (2006). The slave trade. New York: Chelsea House, an imprint of Infobase Pub.
