Economics of American Negro Slavery

13 Pages 3223 Words

om Africa ended up on sugar colonies.
The United States accounted for a small proportion of the slave imports to the New World, mainly because the U.S. was not heavily involved in sugar production. Yet the rise in the slave population was due to the natural increase in the population rather than the imports of slaves. As early as 1680 the majority of the slave population was native-born. Even though the amount of foreign-born slaves was shrinking, the amount of slaves imported was rising. Still the natural increase of slaves accounted for most of the rise in the slave population. The opposite was happening in Latin and South America because the death rate of slaves was so high. These regions mainly imported slaves because the population could not sustain itself. The U.S. slave population was naturally growing so fast that the importation of slaves was minimal and most slaves were second, third, fourth and even fifth generation Americans. So even though slave imports were rising, it only accounted for less than half of the increase in the slave population at its height.
Chapter two discusses the occupations and the markets for slaves. The book explains that, “During the last three decades of the antebellum era, slaves were involved in virtually every aspect of southern economic life, both rural and urban.” Slaves actually represented quite well in the skilled crafts. Slaves that were in the skilled crafts were generally small in number. The fact that slaves were well represented in the crafts is quite surprising, but after the civil war the amount of slaves in the skilled crafts had dropped significantly. Yet, slaves were not just laborers and in fact, they had a large array of agricultural activities. “These included the planting, raising, and harvesting of virtually every type of crop, as well as animal husbandry, dairying, land improvement, use and maintenance of equipment and machinery, and the construction...