Slavery in America: a historical overview

In 1620 the first Negroes got sailed to the state Virginia on Americas east coast by Dutch merchants. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries the big cargos of African Negros, men, women and children sent over the Atlantic Ocean. Many died because of the subhuman relationship onboard on the ships. The survivors were sold as cattle’s to white planters on auctions, where men often got separated from their wives and kids. The strongest men and women worked in tobacco and cotton fields in the South and at the sugar factories on the West Indian Islands. Only a few - especially beautiful, young Negro girls - worked as house slaves, watched the kids, made dinner and washed for the white family. The Negro families lived in small cabins and had a little piece of land, where they could grow their own vegetables and keep chicken and geese. They were the planters’ property, and he could punish them, sell them or marry them away. Mane Negroes tried to run away to the North, others protested by working slowly, poison disease or by open rebel. Often the slave owners feared their own slaves. It was far between the planters, and there were many more slaves than whites. One of the slaves’ most dangerous weapons was arson. A whole years revenue could go up in smoke, if a barn full of corn or tobacco was set on fire, and is was difficult to find the culprits. In 1830’s and 1840’s many men and women, both white and black worked for the abolition of slavery. More and more people felt, that the slavery was irreconcilable with the beautiful word in the American Declaration of Independence from 1776, it says that all people are created equal, and have certain rights among them freedom. Much progress was donning and in 1865, after a long and bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared that the slavery was abolished and Negroes free.