Plantation Slavery essays

Plantation Slavery essays The institution of slavery was a dark time in our countrys past history. The many family members who have been affected by this brutal institution will never forget the scar it marked on our past. Due to the institution of slavery, many people today still feel bitterness because of the harshness these people had to endure and the atrocious way they were treated by their masters. Two conflicting sides on whether or not to keep the institution of slavery was forever prominent since slavery started in the colonies. Due to these two conflicting sides and the many disagreements, it seemed a Civil War was inevitable. To begin with slavery in America stems well back to when the New World was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade - Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The Portuguese showed the English how to raise sugar and introduced them to slavery on a large scale and for a time dominated the exportation and marketing of the crop. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes cooking and cleaning, while men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans, which quickly became known as "The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". This was an organized route where Europeans would travel to Africa bringing manufactured goods, capture Afr icans and take them to the Caribbean, and then take the crops and goods and bring them back to Europe. Planters were able to appropriate about 80 percent of their slaves labor for their own profit a rate exploitation that probably never been reached anywhere else, and because of these great profits slavery was able to continue. This...