This research examines the phenomenon of slavery in the United States. The research will set forth the historical context in which slavery emerged in the colonial period and then discuss the degree to which slavery can be considered a direct result of white racism versus the degree to which white racism may have helped cause and perpetuate it.
The readiness of the English colonists in the New World to accept the fact of Negro slavery has been well documented. In his account of the migrations from England to America on the part of people who were seeking to practice their religion in a condition of absolute freedom from state interference, Becker includes the fact that the freedom-loving Puritans and religious dissenters appear to have had little trouble about depriving others of their freedom. This appears to have been a uniquely "American" attitude toward personal independence. First in the colonies and later in the United States as such, slavery appears to have operated as a byproduct of physical conditions and economic structures of the New World. There was a culture of servitude in place in the earliest years of migration. Even before 1619, when records in the colony of Virginia note that "a Dutch man of war[re] with 20 negars" arrived, there were white indentured servants, some voluntary immigrants and some indentured because of debt, in all of the colonies. The arrival of African slaves brought a racial component to that culture. By 1702, New York's the scope of certain slavery laws had a racist tinge because they covered free blacks, who were thought to be willing to foster a slave rebellion. In the 1740s, accusation of slave-set arson fires, called the "Great Conspiracy," led to trials resulting in execution by hanging, burning, and transport of more than 30 blacks. By 1712, black freedmen and slaves alike were prevented from owning property in New York and banned from certain skilled trades (e.g., cooperage or barrel mak...