as a silent partner in these smuggling expeditions, chartering royal warships to the smugglers. Only after the third such slave trading expedition was attacked by a Spanish squadron did Hawkins and Drake turn to plundering Spanish galleons instead.
Once English colonies were established in America, slavery soon followed. The sale of "twenty negars" in Jamestown is reported in 1619, the year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Africans were originally sold as indentured servants as were many English and were freed after a period of years. Soon, however, enslavement for Africans was made permanent.
By the time of the American Revolution, slaves were to be found in most of the thirteen American colonies. In the northern colonies these slaves were primarily house servants of the well to do, and the total numbers of slaves in these colonies were small. In the southern colonies, however, plantation slavery had become a mainstay of the economy. Most of the slaves were therefore
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