Talk:Slavery in the United States/Archive 1

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Misleading

This article is choppy and in some respects misleading. The coverage of various historical periods seems uneven. On the whole, the "Slavery in colonial America" article strikes me as much better than the colonial section here. Perhaps the article needs more links to more specific treatments of slavery in specific times and places?

This is a glittering generalization: "it wouldn't be until the Slave Codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed." -- In fact, each colony passed its slave code in a different year, and many of the New England colonies never passed them at all, leaving slavery to be handled by the courts on a common law rather than a statutory basis.

The bibliogaphy is daunting. Perhaps it can be winnowed and/or divided into subsections by topic and time period. Drfryer 02:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Slavery could, infact, be slavery if it were willing. The definition in the initial sentence states "against their will."

Instead of saying not-so-kind slave owners, how about cruel slave owners?

The idea that slavery ended with the 13th amendment in the United States is a fallacy that should be addressed. Legal slavery ended at this time, but indentured servitude and slavery continues, especially in the garment and agricultural industries, often involving undocumented residents.

http://www.spectrezine.org/resist/FloridaLeft.htm http://www.ciw-online.org

These conditions are not 'approaching slavery' or 'approximating slavery' but are defined by the US government as slavery, as much so today as in the past. To deny this contemporary struggle against slavery in the united states is historically inaccurate and should be addressed.

This is a sadly poor article given the amount of great analysis we have by historians about slavery (Ira Berlin, Leon Litwack, Eugene Genovese, George Rawick, etc.). Particularly poor is the cursory "treatment of slaves" section. Do we have a grad student or somebody who can write this up a little better? This seems like one of the articles in which wikipedia's quality lags much more behind professional quality than usual, on an extremely important topic. Why is this not part of one of the wikiprojects? IceJew 10:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I more than agree, I think this is one of Wikipedia's poorest articles.I can't pinpoint any one thing, but the tone of this article is horribly detatched and cold. I understand the 'neutrality' aspect of Wikipedia, but this garble 'white-washes' and 'glosses' over slavery. It is almost entirely from the perspective of slave owners and northern aristocrats. There is not one single quote from a person actually held in slavery! This article presents a lot of death numbers, but fails to illustrate the true torture of the institution to any real degree. More over it seems to make more point of the economic 'pros', seemingly because it is shockingly against popular perception. While these 'pros' make be factual, they are imbalaced in the article. Aside from that I actually searching for Slave Market. This article failed my search-A Slave Market, the place, should probably have it's own page. Guillotine and Death Penalty aren't on the same page?

I would be too ashamed to contribute to this article, seriously, I wouldn't even know where to begin. This article is an amazing example of how a conglomeration of academic tidbits and cold statistics can make the institution of slavery look historically rational and religiously sanctified. Where is the opposition? Where is the Balance? and MOST IMPORTANTLY: WHERE IS THE TESTIMONY FROM SLAVES THEMSELVES!!!

This article also completely fails to address the continued effects of slavery in this country. I'm really ashamed of Wikipedia right now--Pyrzqxgl 03:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

A black man was responsible for beginning "legal slavery"? Or what?

Was Anothony Johnson the same black slave from the first 20 in america who later gained freedom and bought his first 5 slaves and won a legal case to own a slave, making it legal to have one? Was he back or other race? YOou should detail this a little better, 'cause it implies a slave started legal slavery in America and that's brutal to black people thinking everything is the whites' fault, when they actually have some play on it. Your friendly neighbourhood (SpiderMan~~).

He was an indentured servant (which was commonplace for many whites at that time as well), who after finishing his contract, himself became a landholder and contract holder on other indentured servants (ie, he was a master). The 1662 case in Virginia was brought to court by him, and the ruling effectively made slavery legal in the colony. The other rulings thereafter further define slavery, but the 1662 decision is the most important because it allows indefinite indentured servitude(before a period usually lasting 4-7 years), makes provision so that children are either born into servitude or free based upon the legal status of the mother (whereas previously indentured servitude has been a contract signed between the servant and master), and makes the first specification of slavery based on race (in this case, the servant was a mulatto, not black). It is indeed a sad irony that the first legal slave holder in British colonial America was black, and that the first legal slave was not black, but a mulatto.

slavery

Hey spiderman, you sounded kind of racest there

I think the statement that slavery "ended with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863" is misleading. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederacy. If the war would have ended before the 13th amendment, the Emancipation Proclamation would have been void. Lincoln could only legally issue an E.P. during wartime. Although the Emancipation was an important step, it did not end slavery. --137.151.174.178 18:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

by the time the 13th amendment went into effect (Dec 1865), 99% of the slaves had been emancipated. (there were at most 40,000 left in kentucky--probably fewer). Rjensen 19:26, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

"99% of the slaves had been emancipated" is blatantly false. Unoccupied Southern territories still had hundreds of thousands of slaves each. If you're referring to slaves in the Union territories, that may be true, but I'd definitely still like to see a source on it. In either case the Emancipation Proclamation was the death-blow to slavery but it did not end it immediately, and it was not until the end of the war that slavery was effectively gone, and not until the 13th amendment that it was irreversibly and universally gone. Saying slavery "ended with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863" is definitely a misleading statement 160.39.194.170 10:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

According to this: "Between 1903 and 1944, the Supreme Court ruled on several cases involving debt bondage of black Americans, declaring these arrangements unconstitutional. In actual practice, however, sharecropping arrangements often resulted in peonage for both black and white farmers in the South."...maybe debt bondage & sharecropping is still "illegal" but no one knows it!? So why do colleges & ads teach us to live in debt bondage? It would be nice to find it is actually illegal slavery, so we could end it today. Sundiiiiii 00:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

citation needed

I am concerned about the last revision of this article in which an editor removed detailed information and substituted other information without providing the source. Sources must be cited on these and all accompanying pages because there is a large difference of opinion on the slavery and Reconstruction pages, with some editors ignoring scholarship over the lat 50 years and in some cases, even the last 100 years. Skywriter 13:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed unsourced assertions that were false (slavery was dead in all border states except Kentucky) and and added info on Texas and kentucky. Rjensen 15:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Citations continue to be needed

The central issue with this article is that it violates a central tenet of Wikipedia: verifiability.

Not one alleged fact in this article is sourced. As every historian knows, this is a serious problem. We don't know if sections have been plagiarized. We can't know whether to believe what's in this article because there are no citations at all. Sure there is a bibliography but especially because of its length, we can not know where each section originates. A lengthy bibliography does not substitute for sourcing within the article.

With regard to the last edit, we can't know whether what was written about Baptists was true or whether what was removed on that topic is true because neither was sourced. I believe we should begin flagging all related history pages that lack specific citations. Citing sources will be a service to readers, especially student readers who will know that we don't stand for sloppy research techniques. Wikipedia has standards. They are not being enforced here or on related pages. Skywriter 01:50, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Why Is Slavery's Death Toll Omitted?

Why is Wikipedia whitewashing American history? When it comes to articles on the Holocaust, Wikipedia delves into detail, carefully examining the death toll and offering up various statistics. But, unless I'm missing it, I don't see a single word in any of the articles on slavery in the U.S. that mentions anything at all about the horrific death toll caused by slavery in the New World. I don't have a citation for this, but I believe the figure is in the millions.

The above comment was added at 03:25, June 8, 2006 by 71.86.119.156.

• Perhaps the folks working on the article hadn't thought of this, or don't have the details. If you do, please feel free to add them with citations. It would be a valuable addition. Thanks for helping to improve this article. Skywriter 03:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• If the numbers are available, then please add them. I think any numbers are going to be estimates and difficult to determine. You mention the Holocaust where numbers are cited, but even there many different death tolls have been recorded, and people continue to argue over the accurate numbers. The Nazis destroyed many documents, so this adds to the trouble of determining the numbers. --Kalmia 08:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• It's difficult to measure the death toll of slavery because of the definition of a death caused by slavery. Is a slave who dies of disease of malnourishment while a slave a slavery death? What about a slave who is executed for a crime while a slave? Do Native American populations exposed to disease by slavery count even if they weren't slaves themselves? There's room for an enormous degree of variance. A death toll misconstrues what slavery was; a system of exploitation based on violence, not a series of murders; the everyday violence and exploitation is what's important. The Holocaust, on the otherhand, was devised specifically to kill off a certain segment of the population, which was not the goal of slavery, and it makes a lot more sense to talk of the death toll in this sense. 160.39.194.170 10:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

You don't see much in the article about the death tool because the death toll in the United States was much lower than that in the rest of the New World. The slave population grew naturally, even much more rapidly than in Europe. If you were a black slave in the United States you were much more likely than a free European peasant to survive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.148.148.32 (talk • contribs) 02:39, August 3, 2007

Finding a scholarly way to highlight the death toll sounds like a good addition, but like many other numbers, estimates are all that we can have. Records were kept of slave transactions and deaths, but I wonder how many unnamed, undocumented slaves are in the ground throughout the US. Anyone claiming a close estimate should not be trusted. This is similar to rape statistics and other difficult numbers to quantify. The numbers are much worse than the best scholarly estimates can establish because there are many unknown victims.

List of states

Many states north of the Mason-Dixon had legal slavery, but they outlawed it prior to the passage of the 13th amendment. I think it would be good to have a list of each state and the date that slavery was outlawed. --Kalmia 08:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it would be useful. The "free state" article has a chart with some of the information.

badly organized

this article is badly organized with material appearing in the wrong sections and with overlapping sections. It needs help. Thanks Hmains 18:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

history of slavery in the united states began shortly after "your mom was born"? really? can you get more insensitive and incorrect?! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 160.39.225.98 (talk • contribs) .

It was vandalism, unfortunately an ongoing problem. I just reverted it. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 07:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

South Carolina (especially Charleston) Jews and the African Slave Trade

I'm in the process of looking in to this, but MUCH more research needs to be done about the VERY prominent role that these Charleston Jews played in the African slave trade, the slave trade which was overwhelmingly centered in the city of Charleston in North America (especially after The North became increasingly abolitionist-oriented) until about 1807, when the slave trade was outlawed (though it certainly continued, albeit quietly).

Also, South Carolina eventually had more African slaves living in the state than non-slaves (as Wikipedia says: "For most of its history, black slaves made up a majority of South Carolina's population.") and the slave owners constantly feared a large slave-uprising or insurrection; indeed, even in modern times African-Americans are about 1/3 the population of the state of South Carolina, possibly a bit more.

It seems that wherever there was a very early North or South American synagogue or large Jewish presence you also find a prominent slave market, both in North and South America (along with the Caribbean and North Africa). All evidence points to the fact that it was a very large role that Jews played -- not to mention the fact that many of these Sephardic Jews hailed from the Netherlands, and everyone knows that the Dutch played a huge part in the African slave trade (History of the Jews in the Netherlands), and that they had been recently expelled from Spain and Portugal (Alhambra decree), but the crypto-Jews remained -- Spain and Portugal were both THE dominant shipping powers around this time. The oldest synagogue in North or South America was established in 1636 (the Kahal Zur synagogue in the Dutch capital of Recife, Brazil). Eventually Brazil had more African slaves than any other place on Earth. There were also many Sephardic Jews living in North Africa (a traditional Sephardi area) which served as a jumping off point where the slaves were gathered (see Triangular trade) by both local Arabs and these Sephardi Jew collaborators and then shipped to North or South America.

There was also an amazingly large slave market in Newport, Rhode Island, which is the site of the oldest synagogue in North America (Touro Synagogue); check out these stats: "As early as 1708 African slaves outnumbered indentured servants in Rhode Island eight to one. In fact, between 1705 and 1805, Rhode Island merchants sponsored at least 1,000 slaving voyages to West Africa and carried over 100,000 slaves back to America. More slave ships would leave Colonial Newport than any other American port of that time. By 1770, one out of every three Newport families owned at least one slave" [1].

Does anyone have any reliable links or book recommendations so that we can write a section about this on the page? I've found many but am looking for more. Thank you. --Pseudothyrum 02:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

From a look at your contribs one gets the sense you wish this theory was true. Good luck in your research; it will take a lot more than correlations like the ones cited to show causation. Not trying to sound dismissive, but even if the correlation of Jewish community and slave trading was true, the connection could be due to any number of factors, such as both Jewish settlers and slave traders being drawn to the same areas for different reasons. Remember that one must be extra diligient in checking one's work on topics one feels strongly about and that correlation does not equal causation. Pfly 07:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Not to troll, Pseudothyrum, but it would seem to me that the comment of this section hardly even refers to a single correleation, just a lot of refrences to various "oldest synagogues in ____". Naturally, when you think about it, cities and ports with a high slave trade would in general be "old" (to give the city time to grow the necessary population, etc.) and hence have the oldest "everything", including Christian churches, Muslim mosques (wherever there was a noticable Muslim population), etc.

Looking at your page and contribs, I'm surprised you didn't play the "I'm ('partially') Jewish"/"I believe Anti-Semitism is alive and well" card(s) at the end of your argument, because I'd otherwise be very tempted to slur you with that one. Oh well. I guess there must be some other mysterious reason you would like there to have been a Jewish-slaveholder thing going on...

Also: In nothing but good faith, I would like to counter Pfly's undoubtedly well-intentioned call for "good luck on your search", and instead emphasize "Good luck on not cherrypicking data." Which is something, of course, we all do every once in a while. --Lenoxus 23:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I looked around on the web a little and came up with this copy of a Washington Post article: http://www.blacksandjews.com/wash.post.html. The article itself has a pretty noncontroversial tone, the problem is the website it's on is clearly antisemitic. Unfortunately it doesn't show up in a search on the Post's website (it's from 1993), and the results in the Google News Archive all require a subscription, so if you want to read it online then you'll have to go there. Point being, some Jewish people, belonging to a specific ethnic group, were involved in the shipping trade. This occupation, at times, was documented to include involvement in the slave trade. The original comment tries to explain the existence of slaves with the existence of Jewish people, so my point is to show that the speculation leads to false conclusions, like believing that Jews were responsible for US slavery. I don't think the page needs a whole section on Jewish involvement in the slave trade, but maybe at least a separate section on the many nations, types of people, and motives involved. It was a complicated set of circumstances. Also, cause I was curious, I checked the Wiki page on Mosques, and the first in the US was built in the 1920s, I don't know about the rest of the Americas.

To be cherry-picking is not going to lead to a good article. Why is all the emphasis on exceptions or small numbers, rather than the main story? To say there was a big slave market in Newport, RI and there was a Jewish synagogue there, so they were responsible is not useful. Newport was a major port city with wealthy merchants and traders. That is the kind of place where markets would flourish and where there would be people with the money to buy slaves. All evidence does not point to the fact that where there was a Jewish population there was a slave trade. --Parkwells 01:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Amazing

Slavery lasted so long but so little has been written about it on Wikipedia.

You could help out! Pfly 08:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Antebellum Period

I think the Civil War antebellum period should be included in this article. From the browsing I've done at the library (yay, Community service), it should be noted that in many places Mulattoes were free and had near equal rights as whites and that slave status was at first determined upon the mother status, (be it white or black). Also, the transition of mulattoes being absorbed into slave status should be added as well. Shakam 07:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Slavery did not end after the emancipation proclamation. Which is why we have the celebration of Juneteenth. There should be mention of the determination to establish slavery in the central america, as well as south america on the part of the disgruntled confederates. snortney 16:04, 15 February

Snortney, the article is about Slavery in the United States. Attempts to establish slavery in Central and South America would not fit into the focus of this article, unless perhaps these efforts were accompanied by attempts to claim territory in Central and South America for the USA. Disgruntled Confederates would not have tried to annex territory for the USA; therefore, the info does not belong in this article, except for at most a one sentence passing mention, perhaps.John ISEM 07:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

What was the Mexican war other than an attempt to seize new territory for the expansion of slavery? That was Lincoln's contention anyway, and he was far from alone. There were quite a few (botched) attempts to buy or seize Cuba and other carribbean areas for additional slave territory. And then their is Bleeding Kansas. It is relevant because it is the counterpoint to the 'containment' doctrine of the Republicans (and many northern-state residents). A short section on the numerous attempts to expand the area of slavery would be useful, with links to more detailed articles on each episode. Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 19:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Emancipation Proclamation

I second the comments about the Emancipation proclamation - in reality it freed very few, if any, slaves. By its terms, it only freed slaves who were held in territories "in rebellion". This excluded any states remaining in the Union, such as Maryland, which held some 87,000 slaves in 1861. It excluded border states such as Kentucky and Missouri. It excluded any territory occupied and controlled by Federal armies, which were occupied and no longer "in rebellion." Thus the only areas in which the Emancipation Proclamation purported to hold sway were territories in which the Federal government held no sway, and could not enforce the EP.

Mr. Lincoln was a consummate politician, and knew that it was critical to his re-election in 1864 to bring the northern abolitionists into the fold. Thus the EP was moreso a political document to place slavery, along with his originally-stated purpose for starting the War, preservation of the Union, at the front and center of Northern purposes in continuing to prosecute the War. Remember that it was prepared at a time the North was taking a beating in at least the eastern theater of the War, and that Lincoln waited for a "victory" in the field in the form of Sharpsburg (an equivocal victory at best) to issue the proclamation at a "positive" time in the War news.

KYHorseman 16:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)KYHorseman

Semi-protection

Well, we serious editors can breathe a little easier for the next two weeks, free of the ongoing assault from anonymous vandals. I'm just sorry I waited so long to make the request! (Something tells me I'm gonna be requesting protection all over again after it expires...) Cgingold 15:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

misreading California

I read the article in J Negro History on slavery in California. It is about the debate in the state whether to allow slavery (the unanimous decision at the convention was no--and the Constitution of 1849 explictly banned any slavery), with only a short section dealing with involuntary servitude of Indians. Somehow none of that got in the section. 04:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

current?

This article has nothing about current slavery in the United States, which is usualy in the form of children, whom are raised as full time maids or laborers, or women in the sex slave trade.-ChristopherMannMcKay 05:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

how many owners?

I think it would be important to add the number of percentage of population that were in fact slave owners. It seems to me many young people today think most european descendants owned slaves when in fact this is untrue. A very small percentage of the population actually owned slaves but I have yet to see any statistics on this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.206.36.126 (talk) 05:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

Historians have done a lot of work on this. One aspect of ownership that is important to understand was that although a minority of whites in the South owned 20 or more slaves, they were a class with many internal ties of relationship and marriage. Historians classified those who owned 20 or more slaves as planters.

Although they were a minority of the population, they were the wealthy class and had disproportionate political and social power throughout the colonial and antebellum periods. In some states there was a high percentage of whites owning slaves, even if most owned fewer than 10. It's not useful to rely on numbers or percentages of slaveholders as the most reliable indicator of the impact of slavery.

Because the Southern delegation got the Northern representatives to agree that slaves should be counted for Congressional representation (at 3/5 of the white population), the planter class's political power was magnified. Slaves couldn't vote, but the planters who held them got to use the advantage of their numbers in Southern states to gain more elected seats in Congress, and thus more political power on a national level.

It's misleading to write just about the percentage of slaveholders before the Civil War across the entire United States and suggest that slavery was therefore a small issue because not many whites in the entire country owned slaves.

Someone noted the Historical Census Browser at UVA as a tool. You can do an analysis on a state by state basis for 1860, for instance. --Parkwells 01:13, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right that the state-by-state data is very important. There's a world of difference between South Carolina at one extreme (with half the population enslaved, hardly any free blacks, and the least-democratic state government in the union) and, say, Maryland (with as many free blacks as slaves, and with entire regions nearly slave-free) or barely-enslaved Delaware at the other. I almost think we obscure more than we explain when we use terms like "slave state" and "free state" as if there were only two kinds. DMorpheus (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

white slaves?

didn't see this covered in the article (no, this isn't about pimping)

http://archive.salon.com/books/it/2000/06/15/white_slaves/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.254.20.162 (talk) 23:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC).

Why can't we just say that wage slavery really is slavery too? It's so obvious. And that rich CEO's etc get fired, so they're also slaves? Gerry Spence shows that we're all slaves today in his "Give Me Liberty" & I think David Korten shows we're all slaves in "When Corporations Rule the World". Let's just say "Capitalism is slavery", & end it, & end world poverty & say that all people on earth should own all things. Sundiii (talk) 16:57, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Black slave owners

It should be noted that the following cites no direct sources but a single uncredited personal website (americancivilwar.com). The figures listed have no factual basis, and note that white-owned slaves are referred here as "indentured servants" while black-owned slaves are simply "slaves." The following should be deleted without notice as it is blatantly misguiding about the reality of slavery, wherein the vast majority of slaves were white-owned. Comment from 160.39.136.17 on the 24th April 2007 about the 'Black slave owners section (copied by Ctbolt 01:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC))

"misguiding"? I think you're being misguiding to disreguard the fact that there were blacks that owned other blacks as slaves. 68.239.255.2 17:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Black slave owners are an important aspect of U.S. slavery -- and U.S. abolition of slavery -- to understand. An early examination of this was Carter G. Woodson's 1924 book (later reprinted) FREE NEGRO OWNERS OF SLAVES IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1830: TOGETHER WITH ABSENTEE OWNERSHIP OF SLAVES IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1830. He helped uncover the history of free African Americans buying enslaved relatives and others. There is literature to be used to make a valuable section of this entry and its own entry eventually. Before this book was published Woodson published his research in a journal and the complete text of that detailed article is available via the JStor archive: "Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830" by the Research Department of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1924), pp. 41-85. Katewill 00:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

One of the problems with the section as written is that it does not even mention the fact that many, if not most, black slaveholders had purchased relatives. It also takes a non-encyclopedic approach with its start ("It is commonly believed that all slave owners in the United States were white. However, this was untrue.") and its anecdotal, rather than analytic, approach. Furthermore the footnotes are misleading -- it appears that the editor used the Grooms Internet article for the entire section, yet he used some of Grooms' footnotes as if the editor, and not Grooms, accessed those particular works. The section needs to be rewritten. Tom (North Shoreman) 12:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The first problem with the section as written is that it's WP:COPYVIO. Most of it is copy-and-paste from the Grooms article, which mentions its copyright twice. The second, as Tom mentions, is that Grooms misstates the context of Black slave ownership.

We don't know how Black owners treated their slaves, but Grooms gives hints. Their slaves were allowed to choose their own names. Their slaves frequently worked as artisans. They often freed their slaves in their wills. Free Blacks were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery and choose other free Blacks as their owners.

Aha! Under the various fugitive slave laws, free Blacks could be — and often were — kidnapped and sold into slavery. That might be one reason why free Blacks might have "petitioned to be allowed to become slaves" of Black owners, why they "were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery and had the right to choose their owner." If one had to be a slave, why not choose an owner who might provide conditions similar to those of free people. For all we know, many Black slave-owners may have treated their slaves exactly like free people, except that "ownership" saved them from the risk of being kidnapped and enslaved under harsh conditions.

Finally, who is Grooms? He's not a historian, and this seems to be the only thing he's written. (In another forum, somebody wrote that it's "mainly quoted on ultra-conservative and rascist websites to make a point about the history of slavery," which Google confirms.) Is his essay a WP:RS? There is no question that free Blacks owned slaves, particularly "free people of color" in Louisiana, but I question the veracity of most of his numbers. His essay builds its argument on the facts concerning a single Black slave-owner as if he were typical, but Grooms acknowledges that he wasn't ("Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slaveowner"). As Tom writes, the section needs to be rewritten, but more importantly, it needs to be rewritten using credible sources. — Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) 20:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

This is just too misleading, I agree. There has been far more serious scholarship about slavery in the United States than is obvious in most of these sections. People should be looking at academic presses for citations and sources, not outdated stuff off the Internet. It's misleading to use one black slaveowner to stand for all. Larry Koger's history "Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860", Univ of South Carolina Press, 1985, examines several aspects of the situation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Parkwells (talk • contribs) 00:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Why is it always assumed that "most, if not all" free black slaveholders were only buying their relatives? There is absolutely no way to confirm this with any certainty. Every freedman that owned slaves did not write an autobiography where he listed his reasons and names of every slave owned, so how can anyone assume to know who they owned and for what reason? This is no better than what "Neo-Confederates" are accused of. Slavery in the U.S. was a much more complex issue than people like to think, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The African slave trade is centuries old. They traded their own people before whites even visited Africa. It still happens today in several African countries. Arabs owned slaves for centuries. Why is this always ignored? Why is slavery inherently turned into an issue of modern racism?

Native Americans owned slaves. Blacks owned slaves. Whites owned slaves. Everyone took part in the slave trade, but whites were the majority. Of course whites would be the majority of slaveholders -- they were the majority in everything. That's like saying the majority of people that eat at Burger King are white and trying to draw conclusions based solely on that. If you looked at the Middle East, the majority of slaveholders would have been Arabic. If you looked at Africa, the majority of slaveholders would have been African. Why are the Confederacy and Southern people in general treated differently by so-called unbiased historians? Is it not even remotely possible at least some people viewed slavery in an economic sense, not a racial one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.107.30.155 (talk) 00:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The above comment is bizarre: "Everyone took part in the slave trade" - No, merchants took part in the slave trade. Even Equiano became a merchant before he could amass enough capital to buy his first slave - who was of course himself! North American slavery firstly took on a religious basis, but then a racist basis. Slavery in the mediterranean and middle east took on a religious basis. Yes it is clear that the racism of the confederacy and the Southern plantocracy knew very well that they were making lots of money from their peculiar institution. The question of reparations is precisely a move to take account of this financial motive behind this.Harrypotter (talk) 09:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Native American Slavery

This article should also include coverage of slavery among American Indians. Slavery in North America did not begin with the arrival of Europeans. Various tribes kept slaves. In addition to forced labor and sexual exploitation, some tribes used slaves as human sacrifices in religious ceremonies. Slavery continued in the US as late as 1927 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs forced the Tlingit Indians of Alaska to free their Haida slaves. This aspect of slavery is completely overlooked here. Michaelcarraher 15:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)michaelcarraher

There is a short section on the topic. I added a linked to Indian slavery, which has more info -- although I think you are talking about Indians keep slaves, rather than Indians being slaves. An interesting and little know bit of American history is how vital the Indian slave trade was to the colony of South Carolina's first 50 years or so, and how much it shaped the southeastern geopolitical groundwork. Pfly 05:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I have consolidated three separate groupings of slavery and Native Americans into one consolidated section. This should make it easier to expand the issue, make it easier for a reader interested in the subject to focus on the subject within the article, and smooth the flow on black slavery which is the main focus of the article. Tom (North Shoreman) 14:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Distortions in this article

I haven't looked at this article in quite some time and in the interim, some distortions have magnified. Some folks are over emphasizing slave ownership by other blacks and/or by American Indians. Let's try not to get carried away with this, folks. While it occurred, it was for the most part anomalous. By singling out slave ownership by one black guy and a few Cherokees, this article makes it sound as though those two groups were the majority profiting from slave labor. There needs to be some balance here, some proportionality. Many of the Founders including Washington and Jefferson were slave owners and this article should reflect that. To try to palm slave ownership off on a few fellow blacks or Native Americans is simply dishonest. There's plenty of solid documentation and this article is way short on that.Skywriter 09:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Two ways to fix problems of undue weight are to build up other sections or to shorten the section with the problem. I don't think that the section about Native Americans is overlong, but I added a figure to the footnote so that one can easily see that the number of slaves kept by Cherokee was much less than the total number. I don't know if Cherokee owning slaves is anomalous or not; %7.4 percent of Cherokee families owned slaves according to the source I just cited in the article (1835 Federal Cherokee Census/Mcloughlin). About one quarter of families in the south owned slaves in 1860 (per here), with the number approaching 1/2 in Mississippi. So perhaps %7.4 is small in comparison, but it doesn't seem insignificant. If you think the section is overlong, I think it is ok to shorten/remove it. But, I think it would make more sense to integrate the statistics I just gave into the article to show how the ownership of slaves compared between Cherokee and the general population. Smmurphy^(Talk) 08:06, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Could you link to the exact pages with the stats you are citing?

When you say "About one quarter of families in the south owned slaves in 1860" -- do you mean one quarter of white families? The statement about Mississippi is similarly confusing. Thanks. Skywriter 08:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, sorry about that. When I saw your comment I wondered how slave ownership among Cherokee compared to general slave ownership. When I googled it, I found a webpage that seemed a bit sloppy, but it cited this census, so I figured it would be ok for a talk page. It looks like their numbers come from clicking on 1860, then comparing "families" to "total slaveholders." I guess this assumes that only heads of household are counted as owning slaves, and assumption which may be true based on a reading of pages 11-14 of this rather long pdf describing the methodology. I was originally hoping that someone else had a better source for the numbers, but I just found this article, Historians and the extent of slave ownership in the Southern United States. By Otto H. Olsen, from the journal Civil War History, which talks in depth about the different authors' ways of counting. So to answer your question, I was being sloppy and had no particular meaning in mind. The article I link to, however, gives the same figures as that website. Its about halfway down, you can text search for the string "Missisippi with 48 percent" to find the relevant paragraph. That author is clear that he means white families. Smmurphy^(Talk) 15:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. The answer is in the 2006 edition of Historical Statistics of the United States published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press--all five volumes, 29 pounds, 1,900 tables, 37,000 annual time series covering comprehensive aspects of US demographic, economic, political and social history. The previous edition was published by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1975. In 1994, the government told scholars to produce it if the data is wanted. There were many contributors. New added topics are American Indians, slavery, outlying areas, environmental indicators, poverty, nonprofits and the Confederate States of America, along with lots of other data. With a subscription, all data series can be downloaded as Excel files and essays in Word from hsus.cambridge.org/HSUSWeb/HSUSEntryServlet. It also appears in shockingly expensive book version ($800) Many university libraries have subscriptions. I am without access at the moment or I'd provide the updated numbers. I did flip through the sections on slavery and Reconstruction, which are detailed and extensive.

My point about the previous emphasis, since deleted I believe, on anecdotes (x number of blacks and American Indians owned x number of slaves) is that it is imprecise, and fails to show the big picture. It is possible that those numbers from the original Excel file you cited came from the 1975 edition of HSUS but of course I can not know that. Skywriter 00:16, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Skywriter 00:16, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The "Cherokee own x number of slaves is still there, but it is in the references rather than the main text. Putting things in footnotes is a good way to shorten sections without removing encyclopedic, cited stuff. But it isn't always the best thing, so if you think that some of the section or the footnote needs to go, go ahead and cut it. I did change the footnote from talking about the raw number of slaves held by Cherokee to the percentage of white families holding slaves (using the number in the Olsen paper). As for the HSUS report, I think we can get by without delving into the raw data. Best, Smmurphy^(Talk) 07:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Historiography

In the section “Treatment of slaves” an editor has tried to resurrect the white supremacist justifications of slavery, that admittedly did dominate American historiography in the early 20th Century, and treat it as if it STILL represented a valid perspective held by historians today, claiming that “Treatment of slaves is a matter of dispute.” In particular the editor lists the opinions of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips and George T. Winston as if their writings on the myth of the happy slave were still considered a matter of current historical debate. Even worse, the editor leads off the section with these positions and fails to note any of the criticism of their work and its rejection by the current historical profession.

For a source the editor footnotes an URL leading to the first page of an article on JSTOR, “Slavery: The Progressive Institution?” by David and Temin. The article itself places the works of people like Phillips and Winston in their proper perspective. From the article:

The considerable scholarship of Phillips and his followers was devoted to rehabilitating the progressive image of white supremacist society in the antebellum South; it provided a generally sympathetic and sometimes blatantly apologetic portrayal of slaveholders as a paternalistic breed of men. …

The reaction of the late 1930's and 1940's against the sort of racial bigotry which drew support from Phillips' work effected a complete reversal of the moral light in which the question of slavery was viewed. The vantage point correspondingly shifted from that of the master to that of his slave. The reversal culminated in Kenneth M. Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956), which rejected both the characterization of blacks as a biologically and culturally inferior, childlike people, and the depiction of the white planters as paternal Cavaliers coping with a vexing social problem that was not of their own making. The slaveholders, said Stampp, had built the system consciously, bit by bit, decision by decision. They had done so for profit, and they had been duly rewarded. Despite the unspeakable oppression to which the resulting regime had subjected the slaves held within it, American blacks somehow had remained uncrushed in spirit.

Fogel and Engerman, as the article mentions, resurrect some aspects of Phillips et al. However the article criticizes both their methodology and their conclusions:

From the detailed examination of the authors' evidence and methods on the material treatment and the productive efficiency of slaves, presented in the two following sections, we think it will become apparent just how unwarranted it is to accept their empirical "findings" as scientifically incontrovertible. But the closing section of the review takes up the still more fundamental point that many of the defects revealed by a close reading of the supporting, technical volume turn out to be conceptual rather than narrowly methodological. No greater degree of analytical rigor or meticulousness of scholarship on the authors' part could really have redeemed the claim to have arrived at an ethically neutral economic appraisal of the "performance" of a social institution, let alone the institution of chattel slavery. The entire conception of producing a "scientifically objective" or "value free" reappraisal of the economic welfare consequences of slavery seems to us to be peculiarly ill-founded. For the ethical and behavioral premises upon which modem economic welfare analysis rests are immediately inconsonant with the degree of personal involition which remains the defining attribute of the institution in question.

The un-nuanced, simplistic attempt by the editor to present the idea that some historians today think slavery was bad and some think it was good is inaccurate and POV to the extreme. Rather than trying to rehabilitate this section, I have included a separate historiography section towards the end of the article where Phillips et al are discussed AS THEY RELATE TO CURRENT HISTORIOGRAPHY. Tom (North Shoreman) 19:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Fogel is a Nobel economist and his views ARE CURRENT HISTORIOGRAPHY. Your attempts to discredit him as a "racist" are blatantly POV.

Fogel has himself stated that slavery was abandoned because it was morally evil. His argument is that it was an economically viable system and cruel treatment of slaves could not benefit slaveowners economically. His work has been reviewed favorably. http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/weiss

You a strawman of Fogel's arguments in a separate section that is riddled with weasel words. That section is in obvious breach of WP:NPOV. Fogel's view deserves equal consideration in this article. If you don't appreciate the source I used to summarize Fogel's arguments you can replace it. The philosophical arguments are irrelevant as Fogel's analysis was economical. The question whether slavery was philosophically justified should at least be debated in a separate section and in my opinion obviously not at all.

MoritzB 23:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The "Historiography" section which you reverted is fully documented by reliable sources. You also reverted without explanation two other sections, plus bibliographical information without explanation. You have failed to provide any refutation of the reliables sources characterization of Phillips. It is not reflective of current scholarship nor does Fogel, as you suggested, support Phillips or Winston. The characterizations of Fogel that I have included were made by both Kolchin and the authors of the article that you yourself provided. I am adding back the improvements I made. If you have current reliable sources that present different evaluations of Phillips or Fogel, please feel free to add them. I will add the sentence concerning Fogel that you composed to the "Historiography" section when I restore it. Tom (North Shoreman) 23:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The following points are made by Fogel regarding the treatment of slaves:

7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.

8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Source: http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/weiss

This information should at least be included to the "treatment of slaves" section which is now utterly biased as only Genovese's view is represented.

MoritzB 00:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Whoever wrote the original section used Genovese as a documented source. The fact that only one source is documented does not, however, mean that the section is biased -- any number of other historians agree with him on the specific issues described in the section. To show bias, you would need to show (as I did with your sources) that other reliable sources call his conclusions into question. The use of violence on slaves, the existence of slave patrols, forced sex on women slaves, etc. are all non-controversial facts accepted by historians. The case could be made clearer that the omnipresent threat of violence was every bit as significant as the actual violence – the point of a whipping was to impress not just the victim but every other slave who witnessed it.

The same cannot be said for Fogel and Engerman. Historians simply do not generally accept that slavery did not have an adverse effect on slave families. Even the new source you provide shows the widespread disagreement with Fogel and does not discuss, other than listing it, Fogel’s view on the family. I have already documented disagreement in general with Fogel. The following by historian and economist Roger L. Ransom (Agricultural History, Vol. 48, No. 4. (Oct., 1974), pp. 578-585) directly attacks the conclusions about the slave family:

“To counter the argument that the slave trade was terribly disruptive to families, Fogel and Engerman claim that only a tiny fraction (less than two percent) of the slave population was sold each year. This estimate, based on a study of some counties in Maryland during the 1830s is applied to the entire South. On what grounds would one expect a border state like Maryland to be representative of the whole South? Certainly the author of the study made no such claim. To proclaim that all contemporary assessments of the magnitude of the slave trade are invalid on these grounds requires nothing less than an act of faith.”

As far as the material condition of slaves, the best that your new source will allow Fogel is that he has opened up the question that maybe things were not as bad as other historians thought. He still has not made the case as far as historical consensus goes. You wrote, “In a survey 58 percent of historians and 42 percent of economists disagreed with the proposition that the material condition of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers.” What you don’t say is that only 22% and 23%, respectively, actually agreed -- an additional 19% and 35% partially disagreed. Of course, the respondents were not asked to actually analyze Fogel’s findings and they were chosen randomly, regardless of their actual area of historical or economic expertise.

You have not established in these two areas that Fogel’s opinions represent widely accepted views (there are several areas where his opinions are widely shared, but not areas relevant to this section of the article).

I don’t know yet what I intend to do with your additions – I will certainly give you time to come up with reliable sources that actually support Fogel in these two areas. My inclinations are to either move your statements to the Historiography section or to rewrite (and rename) the current section with more specific and detailed information on slave conditions. Perhaps some other folks would also like to weigh in. Tom (North Shoreman) 11:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Fogel's book is itself a reliable source. If you prefer I can change the citations to refer to Fogel's book. The online source is for the convenience of the reader. And as the review says: "Yet here it stands among those books that still attract attention, a classic in the field. And it was recognized as such by many at the time, especially in the first wave of reviews. Peter Passell, for example, said, "If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don't know about it" (1974, p. 4). Even after the first barrage of criticism appeared, Gary Walton ventured to say that "Time on the Cross was destined to become a classic" (1975, p. 333)."

However, Genovese's Marxist claims have been discredited. It is thoroughly inappropriate to use Genovese's Marxist treatise as a source in an article about general history.

Genovese's claims can be summed in the historiography section or ignored altogether.

MoritzB 16:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Marxist POV

The section about treatment of slaves relies on the 1967 work of Eugene Genovese as a source. Genovese was a staunch Marxist in the 1960s and nothing indicates that the Marxist views of slavery enjoy anything but fringe acceptance today. Genovese's method, historical materialism, has been discredited.

The article gives undue weight to Genovese's Marxist views. (WP:UNDUE)

For this reason Genovese's Marxist falsifications don't deserve to be included to this article. MoritzB 16:15, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I have added material showing the agreement that other historians have with Genovese. Anyone who has done much reading on the subject will find Genovese is often quoted and referenced in footnotes by other historians. Please show where anything attributed to Genovese in the article is false. Tom (North Shoreman) 12:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

@ MoritzB:

Your obvious aversion against Marxism as well as your obvious unfamiliarity with the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese (yes, there two Genoveses and you should have known that) leads you to completely wrong conclusions regarding the Genoveses contribution to our understanding of the nature of southern slavery.

First, yes they are Marxists but their historical methodology is very far from orthodox historical-materialism.

Second, the Genoveses made a groundbreaking "discovery" about the nature of slavery which triggered a whole new wave of research in that field, the "discovery" being, that southern slavery was a "hybrid system" based on a precapitalist mode of production, i.e. slavery but producing for a capitalist world market and accordingly the slaveholders were capitalists themselves quite contrary to their own selfperception and the view of earlier historical interpretation.

These findings still stand and so any bibliography on southern slavery has to start with the Genoveses' work.

Nsonntag from German Wikipedia --80.134.94.226 07:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed category renaming

This article is the main article for Category:History of slavery in the United States. PaulHanson has proposed that this category be renamed Category:Slavery in the United States. The discussion is located here.--HarryHenryGebel 13:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

References

2. The article from Southern History is based on outdated sources and historians whose reputations are considered mixed at best. Recommend use of more current research - much has been done on slavery in the last three decades. --Parkwells 01:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)--Parkwells 17:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Fogel not most reliable source

Even though Fogel's book achieved much attention 30 years ago, historians do NOT agree with all his conclusions, nor with those of Ulrich Phillips. There has been so much research on slavery and how enslaved African Americans resisted and made lives under slavery; why insist on using earlier sources who are not considered part of the current historical consensus? It doesn't provide a more balanced viewpoint; it makes wikipedia look out of touch with generally accepted history.

African-American women themselves, both in contemporary accounts and accounts by former slaves in the 1930's under the WPA, attested to both the real and perceived threat of sexual abuse from white males. Travelers to Virginia as early as the 18th c. noticed all the light-skinned slaves and wrote about their seeing resemblances to the owners, as at Thomas Jefferson's famous table, for one.

Mary Chesnut and Fanny Kemble, wives of prominent planters in South Carolina and Georgia, attested in their published journals to the mixed-race children white men fathered by enslaved women and then ignored. Former slave men attested to the pain of not being able to protect their wives. The prominent historian Nell Irwin Painter's (2002) book of essays "Southern History Across the Color Line" addresses the effects of white men using slave women. This is not a matter of controversy still to be proved.

Whether Fogel thought it made "economic sense" or not is beside the point. Sexual abuse of slave women was part of the power politics. Also, more current economists are making headlines with published research about all the ways in which people don't make "good" economic decisions, because we are not overwhelmingly rational decisionmakers. --Parkwells 15:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the two sentences because (a) they weren't supported by the source and (b) more importantly, they simply aren't true.

Fogel reminds me of some young people I know who tell me that they don't understand how business-owners could have practiced segregation and racial discrimination because it's contrary to their economic self-interests. Whatever economists and their theories say, the fact is that there was segregation and racial discrimination in this country. Likewise, the sexual exploitation of enslaved women was common, despite the optimal value-extraction theories concocted by 20th-century economists.

And despite what MoritzB added, white women were outraged that their husbands were mating with their enslaved Africans. They frequently "took it out" on the lighter-skinned house slaves who were the products of those rapes. Again, that's historical fact, not economic theory. — Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) 04:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Potential Collaboration: Indian Slavery

I've nominated the very short article on Indian Slavery for the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive. The article covers two continents and some 420 years of history, but lacks basic organization and a lot of relevant information. It deserves to be brought up to the caliber of other articles on Slavery, Slavery in the United States, and so on. You can vote for it at the improvement drive page. --Carwil 14:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Slavery in the North

Why is this aspect of slavery in the United Stated ignored? Does it fall into the category of winners writing history? It seems as though we are doing a disservice both to the memory of those who were held as slaves in northern states, and to students in our educational systems when we fail to teach them about the complete history of the country. I came across this website on the subject, but have not had the chance to verify any of the information on the site. http://www.slavenorth.com/index.html

Modern Slavery

I can't believe the ignorance... the article mentions nowhere that the U.S. slave population is growing by as much as 50,000 persons a year—more than during the antebellum period. This doesn't even count the legalized forced labor camps in US territories like the Mariana islands. Most of these people, including children, are forced into sex slavery. 71.251.77.196 00:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If you could find a reference for that fact, it could be added in. θnce θn this island ^Speak! 01:32, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Slavery in America today is everywhere: http://www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/usa/states.html Stars4change (talk) 17:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Slavery in North America?

"The history of slavery in the United States (1619-1865) ": When I read this, I did not bother reading further as I feel it is important to deal with this fundamental issue first. The United States did not exist for most of this period. Perhaps we could retitle the page Slavery in North America.Harrypotter 13:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

1860 Census Slavery by Household

1860 Census - Slavery by Household

STATE	TOTAL POPULATION	TOTAL NO. OF SLAVES	NO. OF FAMILIES	TOTAL FREE POPULATION	TOTAL NO. OF SLAVEHOLDERS	PERCENT OF FAMILIES OWNING SLAVES	SLAVES AS PERCENT OF POPULATION	group
MISSISSIPPI	791,305	436,631	63,015	354,674	30,943	49%	55%	CSA11
SOUTH CAROLINA	703,708	402,406	58,642	301,302	26,701	46%	57%	CSA11
GEORGIA	1,057,286	462,198	109,919	595,088	41,084	37%	44%	CSA11
ALABAMA	964,201	435,080	96,603	529,121	33,730	35%	45%	CSA11
FLORIDA	140,424	61,745	15,090	78,679	5,152	34%	44%	CSA11
LOUISIANA	708,002	331,726	74,725	376,276	22,033	29%	47%	CSA11
TEXAS	604,215	182,566	76,781	421,649	21,878	28%	30%	CSA11
NORTH CAROLINA	992,622	331,059	125,090	661,563	34,658	28%	33%	CSA11
VIRGINIA	1,596,318	490,865	201,523	1,105,453	52,128	26%	31%	CSA11
TENNESSEE	1,109,801	275,719	149,335	834,082	36,844	25%	25%	CSA11
ARKANSAS	435,450	111,115	57,244	324,335	11,481	20%	26%	CSA11
CSA11-total	9,103,332	3,521,110	1,027,967	5,582,222	316,632	31%	39%	CSA11-total
KENTUCKY	1,155,684	225,483	166,321	930,201	38,645	23%	20%	CSA13/ border-slave
MISSOURI	1,182,012	114,931	192,073	1,067,081	24,320	13%	10%	CSA13/ border-slave
MARYLAND	687,049	87,189	110,278	599,860	13,783	12%	13%	border-slave
DELAWARE	112,216	1,798	18,966	110,418	587	3%	2%	border-slave
border state total	3,136,961	429,401	487,638	2,707,560	77,335	16%	14%	border-total
slave state total	12,240,293	3,950,511	1,515,605	8,289,782	393,967	26%	32%	slave-state- total
CALIFORNIA	379,985	0	98,767	379,994	0	0%	0%
CONNECTICUT	460,138	0	94,831	460,147	0	0%	0%
ILLINOIS	1,711,942	0	315,539	1,711,951	0	0%	0%
INDIANA	1,350,419	0	248,664	1,350,428	0	0%	0%
IOWA	674,904	0	124,098	674,913	0	0%	0%
KANSAS	107,206	2	21,912	107,204	2	0%	0%	territory
MAINE	628,270	0	120,863	628,279	0	0%	0%
MASSACHUSETTS	1,231,057	0	251,287	1,231,066	0	0%	0%
MICHIGAN	749,104	0	144,761	749,113	0	0%	0%
MINNESOTA	172,014	0	37,319	172,023	0	0%	0%
NEBRASKA	28,841	15	5,931	28,826	6	0%	0%	territory
NEVADA	6,848	0	2,027	6,857	0	0%	0%	territory
NEW HAMPSHIRE	326,064	0	69,018	326,073	0	0%	0%
NEW JERSEY	672,035	0	130,348	672,017	0	0%	0%
NEW YORK	3,880,726	0	758,420	3,880,735	0	0%	0%
OHIO	2,339,502	0	434,134	2,339,511	0	0%	0%
OREGON	52,456	0	11,063	52,465	0	0%	0%
PENNSYLVANIA	2,906,206	0	524,558	2,906,215	0	0%	0%
RHODE ISLAND	174,611	0	35,209	174,620	0	0%	0%
VERMONT	315,089	0	63,781	315,098	0	0%	0%
WISCONSIN	775,872	0	147,473	775,881	0	0%	0%
Total	31,183,582	3,950,528	5,155,608	27,233,198	393,975	8%	13%

Irish Slavery?

Absolutely no mention.

I realize that slaves were black for the most part, but there were other races as well. I thought this was supposed to be non-discriminatory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.52.206 (talk) 16:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

It is more helpful if people know something about Irish slavery in the United States that they add something, than merely the unsigned comment. Certainly Nicholas Ferrar emntioned something about the enslavement of poles by the officers of the London Virginia Company, which is mentioned on the Ferrar page. But for the reasons mentioned above I feekl uncomfortable about adding such information to this page.Harrypotter (talk) 19:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

If you are referring to the indentured servitude of immigrants from Europe in the U.S., feel free to add a section and source the info. Sf46 (talk) 21:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Slave breeding.

This is a major issue. Why does it go unmentioned? Here are some links [[2]],

[[3]], [[4]] 69.29.64.83 (talk) 00:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Section Slavery in the United States#Apologies

This section, the way it's currently written, makes it sound like other states have apologized for slavery, but I'm not aware of any others that have. If any other editors are aware of subsequent states that apologized for slavery, it would be nice if we could add this. Otherwise, we should rephrase this section so it's more clear. Natalie (talk) 01:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Modern Slavery

There seems a vandalism here, why? When I edited a very notable ruling against very rich accused in favor of servants, this court ruling is very rare in Modern history of slavery. Now, an IP address anonymous user made a wrong edit, seemed to make Wiki not neutral. So,[5] -Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) m (102,787 bytes) (Reverted edits by 72.171.0.143 (talk) to last version by Florentino floro) (undo) - in the history, reverted to my edit. Now, Max editor, deleted my edits. I had to revert is lest the article be futher vandalized.--Florentino floro (talk) 08:37, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

All of us editors, whether beginners or advanced, do have equal rights to revert or amend each others' edits in line with Wiki policy. For this reason, there is an article's talk page. Specifically, in the article, Max's reverting is not supported with logic and reason on notability and importance. There is no other jurisprudence in the US convicting or sending to prison, with double damages in federal criminal trial, an accused in a case filed by servants or maids. This is the only one in Modern Slavery in USA. This judgment is not just a daily promulgation in US courts. This is the first double damage award in federal criminal trial. Double damages are only and usually awarded in civil case. Hence, I begged to disagree with your view, and I submitted my opinion in the article's talk page.---Florentino floro (talk) 10:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Actual Volume of Atlantic Slave Trade

From beginning to the end the Atalntic slave trade brought about the involuntary migration of about twelve million Africans to the western hemisphere. Another four million or more died resisting seizure or during captivity before arriving at their intended destination. Basicilly, the Atlantic slave trade alone deprived African societies of about sixteen million individuals, in addition to another sereval million consumed by the continuing Islamic slave trade. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.152.181 (talk) 04:07, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, according to Atlantic slave trade: "Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million Africans arrived in the New World, although the number of people taken from their homestead is considerably higher." — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 04:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

slavery was not abolished

Beyond sharecropping there were in fact families sanctioned to own slaves. This was even in newsweek. Lets add it YVNP (talk) 06:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

i want to know when did the slaves to places in mississippi like florence, jackson, brandon, floria —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.228.244.55 (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

slave origins

would be nice to know which specific african countries or cities were the black american slaves brought from originally. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.7.96 (talk) 02:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Percent of Households Owning Slaves

This article goes along with http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html in asserting the 1860 census produced a tally for the number of households owning slaves. (Table appears above.) In 1860 there was a separate schedule for slaves & slaveholders. Several people in one household could be listed, and then the number of slaves that each owned. The numbers at that site under the heading "Percent of Families Owning Slaves" presumes there is only 1 slaveholder per family (would count as "novel synthesis" [and unwarranted] around here). Taking this into account would reduce the % of households owning slaves - there is no data to determine by how much. This strikes at the reliability of the source -- and, as it stands, the claim should not be presented in the article --JimWae (talk) 21:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

A good point, but how much lower? That would be hard to tell unless there is more accurate census date out there. It's possible that national data with the correct methodology does not exist, but perhaps census data using the correct methodology does exist for a few cities. It might be possible to sample from it a mildly accurate "slaveholders per household" figure. TPaineTX (talk) 23:04, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Slave breeding 2

I agree there ought to be a section on slave breeding. In particular, there is a persistent myth that American slaveowners bred slaves to be stronger; this article would be a good place to discuss the topic. Tempshill (talk) 21:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Where had the atlantic slave trade slaves gone?

This article and Atlantic slave trade agree that around 5% of slaves brought from Africa to the western hemisphere went to the United States. But this article has a cited quote that claims the "overwhelming majority" of these slaves went to Brazil, while the Atlantic slave trade article says about 35% went to Brazil and about 22% to the Spanish Empire. I didn't want to just overwrite a cited quote, so I gave the "overwhelming majority" line a "dubious" tag just now. Tempshill (talk) 21:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

According to Encyclopedia Africana, the source cited in this article, 38.5% went to Brazil and 17.5% went to the Spanish Americas. I'll fix Atlantic slave trade. I also fixed this. 38.5% is the largest group but not an "overwhelming majority". — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 02:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

How much did slaves cost?

I think this would be interesting to put in here. One place said 200$ for an adult and 20$ for a child, although I'm not sure if that's in todays money or whatever money was used in the 1600s or even if it's true at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.234.60.130 (talk) 23:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

[Slavery in the US] continues illegally to this day.

[Slavery in the US] continues illegally to this day. Can we have a reference proof of that statement. I just find it hard to believe that there are slaves in the US in 2009. Even illegal ones. Zealander (talk) 03:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

There are--thousands of them. I added a link to the 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report by the State Department--it includes some discussion and examples of human trafficking in the United States. Several of the reports cited in the "Modern Day Slavery" section of this article also show evidence provided by major newspapers, and there is more information referenced if you follow the Human Trafficking link. Also, look up The Polaris Project for more information. TerryLeeWright (talk) 23:17, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The reference in the intro should explain the context, or people will think slavery of African Americans as it was in the 19th century continues to this day. Maybe add "...to this day in the form of..." and explain more precisely in the intro.

Also, the claim that imprisonment is slavery (modern slavery, toward the end of the article) is an opinion, and it should be stated as such. Likewise, paying off debts as slavery should be stated as an opinion - granted, every definition has a degree of opinion, but it would be helpful to the article to note where there may not be a strong consensus on the issue. You could, for example, say that some lawsuits result in a kind of slavery, but the further you get from the traditional definition, the more you need to indicate that you've done so. 206.116.166.97 (talk) 20:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

The statement "It continues illegally to this day" falsely connotes the continuation of chattel slavery in the United States. This statement in the opening paragraph of the article, repeated in the 6th paragraph, is not neutral and gives the article a decided point of view in violation of Wikipedia's policies. Wikipedia's articles about the history of slavery in other countries which also face modern human trafficking problems equally or more severe than those of the United States according to the cited Trafficking in Persons report either have no mention of slavery "continuing to this day" or are given more favorable treatment. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Manorn wellrock (talk • contribs) 03:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

There is no question that there is a distinction between pre-civil-war era African-American chattel slavery and the kind of slavery we see today; I did not mean to imply otherwise, but they are both Slavery in the United States. That's a fact, unless we define slavery so narrowly that the government must sanction something for it to be slavery. It would be quite misleading to leave any mention of modern-day slavery out of the summary: it's verifiable, researched, and accepted among scholars, our institutions of government, and at times our media, that slavery exists in the United States today and that it has many victims. Regarding your points about comparable Wikipedia articles, firstly, that something may be overlooked on another page does not mean it should be overlooked here; secondly, what do you mean the articles are given more favorable treatment?TerryLeeWright (talk)

The ACLU has done some interesting work on chattel slavery existing today in the US among immigrant workers. 88.147.41.25 (talk) 19:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

eg http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/employ/domesticworkers.html

Possible math error

"Twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas ... Of these, an estimated 645,000 (6.45% of the total) were brought to ... the United States."

These three numbers don't work together. If the total is 12 million, then 6.45% would be 774,000. If the number is 645,000 out of 12 million, then the percentage is 5.37%. If the later two figures are correct, then the total would be 10 million. 99.146.14.111 (talk) 00:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC) Jeffster83

Thank you for pointing that out. The math is right, but it's missing an important fact: 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas, but only 10 million survived the journey, so 645,000 is 6.45% of 10 million. I've fixed the article by removing the 6.45%. Thanks again. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 00:58, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

coffles

What're "coffles"? I couldn't find this word in any dictionary. Thanks for your help, --87.78.59.219 (talk) 11:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

coffle |ˈkôfəl; ˈkäfəl|

noun

a line of animals or slaves fastened or driven along together.

ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Arabic ḳāfila ‘caravan.’

Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 13:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thank you again.--78.34.125.153 (talk) 21:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Slavery in Colonial America subsection

The article states that a Dutch ship was the first to trade slaves in the new world. "The White Lion"(ship) was in fact an English ship flying a dutch flag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.36.1.97 (talk) 18:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

garbled text?

The end of the second paragraph currently reads:

Religious differences contributed to this geographic disparity as well.also,this is because 1 and 1 equals 11 so black and black equals black.but,white plus white equals whitish brown becaus white people have frekles.

The latter part of this sentence looks like the result of garbled editing or perhaps vandalism. CharlesHBennett (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

split article(s)

I would suggest doing it chronologically. This article is a very long! --Levineps (talk) 15:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree. This article is 122 kb, and WP:Article length suggests that articles should be split when over 30-50 kb. There's some material here that relates to slavery in what is now the US before the country existed, and it seems reasonable to move that into a separate article; this one could just have a statement to the effect that "Slavery in the region now encompassed by the United States preceded its origin as a nation," with a link. And this would solve the problem of edits that keep deleting material relating to events before 1776. Agathman (talk) 01:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, now that I look at it, there's not that much preceding 1776 here. Still, some sort of division would be appropriate. Suggestions? Agathman (talk) 01:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The US was "the first Western country to have government sponsored abolition of slaves"

The claim in the introduction that the US was "the first Western country to have government sponsored abolition of slaves" as well as the last to free all its slaves does not appear to be correct. According to the wikipedia page on "abolitionism" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism Portugal was first in 1761, the second was the 1772 decision in England, the third was Scotland in 1776, while individual states within the US had abolition between 1777 and 1864. The article on the timetable of abolition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline has a slightly different order, with Portugal first in 1761, England second in 1772, Vermont third in 1777 and Scotland fourth in 1778. It could also be easily argued that England was first (1102, illegal within London), followed by Iceland (1117), Norway (1274) and Sweden (1335). Furthermore, Vermont didn't join the United States until 1791, so it is dubious to even use the 1777 date. Basically, I don't see how this statement can be considered to be factual by any set of criteria, so I removed it. 88.147.25.154 (talk) 08:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

why

why did people do that hanna —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.184.49.48 (talk) 14:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Slavery among the american indians

The idians were technically not US citisens, but I think this should be mentioned too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.94.143.249 (talk) 06:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing bit

I have not read the article very carefully (reason: it's far too long and tedious) but I cannot find any explanation about where the slaves came from. I was always under the impression that Africans enslaved people from other tribes / villages etc and then sold them to European traders on the coast, and that most American slaves came from this route. This is potentially important - if correct - since it undermines the assumption that black people were only victims in the slave trade. Apologies if I have got that wrong. Mr Poechalkdust (talk) 13:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Asian slavery in USA

I've read James Michener's books (like Hawaii and Alaska and Centennial), and seen documentaries about Asian slavery in America on the west coast. They were brought here in the same way Africans were (forced to stay below decks in stench, etc), and I think something should be said about that. Stars4change (talk) 04:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Some info: http://www.asian-nation.org/first.shtml Stars4change (talk) 04:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Barbary States

It's really not clear what this section is doing here. It should either be integrated into the article in a way that makes its relevance apparent, or it should be eliminated. Personally, I think it should be eliminated; for starters, this is an article about slavery in the United States, not North Africa or elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire.--142.1.133.232 (talk) 21:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

References

I do not understand the references in the text. There are a number of references to Berlin, meaning Ira Berlin but it is unclear which quote or citation refers to which of his books as several are listed.

Here's one example. This article contains these words referenced to Berlin-- Between 1810 and 1830 the number of slaves increased from under 10,000 but it is not clear which of his books those words appear in. I went out on the Internets to try to find out and found that phrase copied 20 times, all tracing back to this article, even with the same quote marks, sometimes without even the reference to Berlin. In none of the 21 examples where this phrase appears is the book identified.

Can you/will you help straighten this out?

Thanks. Skywriter (talk) 23:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

My bad -- I wrote that section and the material all goes back to Generations of Captivity" and the chapter "Migration Generations". I've made the corrections and think I got them all. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:03, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much.Skywriter (talk) 01:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Native American Slaves

In another article about Native American's it is discussed that at one time there may have been over 100 million Native American's here as well. It should be pointed out many of them were slaves as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.13.1 (talk) 14:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Neo-slavery??

An IP has several times added material regarding alleged post Civil War slavery. The gist of the argument is that blacks continued to be held in slavery for decades after the Civil War. in fact, there certainly were aspects of slavery in the sytemic denial of basic human rights to African Americans, but to call it literally actual slavery is nothing but a rhetorical flourish and a fringe version of history. The IP should discuss his/her purpose and what the source listed actually claims (no page numbers were offered) and secure consensus before adding some version of the material back. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 11:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Everything is properly sourced to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon of the Wall Street Journal. It is absolutely not a "fringe version of history" to say that blacks were held in bondage halfway into the 20th century. The claims made are supported by the book in toto; hence no page numbers are given--and in any case, I don't see you deleting material that has no source behind it. Are you prejudiced against me because I'm an "IP" and not a Wikipedia member? In any case, many scholars, including Pete Daniel of the Smithsonian, Leon Litwack of Berkeley, Mary Ellen Curtin, and Greta de Jong, all agree. Just because you are unaware of the facts does not make my contributions "fringe." Blacks were forced to work against their will for a variety of reasons and by a variety of methods at least through World War II--this is by definition slavery. I am going to restore my edits, and I will thank you not to dismiss something out of hand as a "rhetorical flourish" when you are clearly unacquainted with the subject matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.70.80 (talk) 21:17, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

IP 68.81.70.80 - please sign your work using a series of four ~ symbols. It might help your comments be taken more seriously. Best wishes. WBardwin (talk) 21:20, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The very fact that three different editors have reverted your edits is SIGNIFICANT -- IP or registered user, you are bound by Wikipedia:Consensus.

And yes -- footnotes do need to be specific and include page numbers. And abbreviations such as "Id." are NOT ACCEPTABLE. See Wikipedia:Citing sources.

In writing articles, you need to differentiate between dominant and minority opinions. You present the case that "slavery continued" as if it were the dominant claim when in fact the significance of Blackmon's work is that it introduced a NEW concept. Anything from his work that does make it into the article needs to be attributed to him in the text, not just a footnote. Check out Wikipedia:Reliable sources

As far as your arrogance in questioning my qualifications to edit this article, your very first sentence in the text ("Slavery in the United States did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation") shows a series misunderstanding of the final end of legalized slavery. Have you ever heard of the Thirteenth Amendment?

I would suggest that you shorten your addition to about a paragraph that describes how Blackmon equates the Jim Crow era with slavery and why. The place for a detailed discussion of racial discrimination in the US after Reconstruction is not this article. No serious historian would deny the conditions of African Americans in the South from 1877 on -- this is not the appropriate article to make that case. The vast majority of historians DO NOT equate Jim Crow with slavery and wikipedia should not adopt a different position by overemphasizing a small minority opinion.

In fact, it appears that the article Jim Crow laws pretty much ignores convict labor and is the appropriate place to discuss the issue in the detail that you want. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Jim Crow laws sounds like a very good location for this material. But an additional sentence or two about reconstruction and its varied impact on white and black relationships would be good too. 'Freedmen and the enactment of Black Codes' in Reconstruction era of the United States looks like a good possibility too. WBardwin (talk) 22:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

You people clearly do not know what you're talking about. There is nothing novel about what Blackmon's saying. Pete Daniel--a historian at the Smithsonian--wrote a similar book over 30 years ago. That slavery existed at least until World War II is a commonly accepted fact among historians. (There's your "consensus." (By the way, editors summarily deleting entire passages without even reading them does not a "consensus" make.)) See, e.g., Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow; Mary Ellen Curtin: Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900; Greta de Jong, A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970. Just because you don't know something doesn't make it new or anything of the sort. In fact, it's deletion of such material from sources like Wikipedia that keeps the public and members thereof such as yourselves in the dark.

Denial of neoslavery is akin to Holocaust denial and is certainly not something I expected from Wikipedia editors.

By the way, Jim Crow is not where this material belongs--neoslavery was a system and wrong all of its own that had little to do with segregation or disfranchisement or all the other things commonly grouped under the Jim Crow umbrella. No one is arguing that Jim Crow equals slavery. I am simply stating that neoslavery was slavery and existed in the U.S. at least until World War II. If you think that the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, you need to disabuse yourself of this notion right quick. Incidentally, the article is not about "legal slavery" per se. You may note that the article continues to discuss post-emancipation "sexual slavery" and enslavement of "domestic workers."

Your accusing me of "arrogance" is also quite incredible, considering that you delete facts wholesale without even reading what's written, while throwing around such inflammatory insults as "fringe . . . history" and "rhetorical flourish," &c. Oh, and "serious" is spelled s-e-r-i-o-u-s, not s-e-r-i-e-s.68.81.70.80 (talk) 04:45, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I went on JSTOR and looked at 7 reviews of the Curtin and de Jong books you mention. Somehow the reviewers missed the part where they said that slavery continued into the 1950s -- the reviewers certainly didn't see it as a major theme since they failed no make any mention of it. I have the Litwack book and he also DOES NOT claim that convict labor constituted a continuation of legal slavery. Perhaps you can supply some actual quotes and page numbers that support your claim.

I now have a copy of Blackmon's work in my possession and have several problems with your claims. For example, while he does refer to convict labor as slavery, he also uses the terms "quasi-slavery" and "neo-slavery" and the largest category in the index is "forced labor system." He also makes it clear that convict labor, in his opinion, was not a total reinstatement of slavery but was a version of slave leasing that originated in the 1850s as the South, to some extent, entered the industrial age. In the intro to the book Blackmon describes his work in the context of traditional historiography on the topic. Rather than claiming, as you do, that his thesis "is a commonly accepted fact among historians", he argues that he is presenting a case ignored by most historians. As far as your claim that this has nothing to do with Jim Crow, Blackmon argues that historians have ignored "the new forced labor, including the centrality of its role in the web of restrictions put in place to suppress black citizenship, its concomitant relationship to debt peonage and the worst forms of sharecropping ... ." Wasn't suppressing black citizenship the main purpose of Jim Crow?

As far as your point that this article is "not about 'legal slavery' per se, the fact is that the article is 99% about legal slavery and the end of it. As I've stated, there is room in the article for a paragraph that clearly identifies the info as Blackmon's opinion. As part of that paragraph, you should probably emphasize how the implementation of the policy violated federal and state laws -- a point that Blackmon makes.

Your reference to Holocaust denial is absurd. It should be clear to any reasonable person that the disagreement does not in any way involve the denial of anything regarding the abusive and discriminatory convict labor system -- it is about whether terminology used by one writer should be presented as if it were the mainstream view and whether this article is the appropriate place to discuss this subject in detail. That charge, along with your other ad hominems, pretty much relieves other editors from any obligation to assume good faith on your part. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 16:58, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

• What happened under Jim Crow was not slavery in the same sense, though in many ways it was similar to and little better than slavery. Slavery was not again legal. This was more like False Imprisonment on racial grounds. There were no "slave-owners", as you state, at least not in any legal sense. It can only be confusing to readers to present this as if it were a continuation of the same institution. --JimWae (talk) 05:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
• The judiciary is not exempt from slave-ownership, as you say with: "Although slave ownership by private individuals and businesses has been illegal in the United States since 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution specifically exempts the judiciary, permitting the enslavement of individuals "as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted" --JimWae (talk) 07:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
• Nevertheless, this topic does deserve some presentation within the article. It certainty is rooted in the previous history of slavery. It has to be made clear that calling this slavery is stretching the meaning at least a little bit. Nobody truly owned these convicts. If Blackmon calls it "ownership", I hope he had enough sense to use scare quotes.--JimWae (talk) 08:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right and you're wrong, JimWae. Coal and lumber companies and plantation owners did not "own" convicts per se--they leased them from counties and states. They also traded them among themselves, just as antebellum slaveholders bought and sold antebellum slaves (despite the fact that postbellum laws prohibited such trading). Furthermore, the lease was not the only form of neoslavery. At least two others existed. One of which was peonage (aka debt slavery, or the forcing of a person to labor to pay off debts (most of which were, in fact, spurious)). And the other of which was pure chattel slavery, without any trappings of crime or debt. More specifically, a significant percentage of so-called "prisoners" held by private enterprises in the New South had never been convicted of anything, and were owned body and soul until death.

In any case, "ownership" is not a sine qua non of slavery (though it is, by definition, a necessary element of CHATTEL slavery). Slavery is forced labor. There is absolutely no question that convicts, debtors, and people who were neither convicts nor debtors were forced to labor in the New South following the Thirteenth Amendment. It is equally clear that many, if not most, so-called "convicts" were either (a) afforded no due process and so were not properly found guilty of anything, (b) not convicted of anything worse than, e.g., talking loudly in the presence of white women, or (c) both. In short, slavery very obviously and openly existed in the South at least up until World War II.

One can try to minimize this by saying that chattel slavery, for the most part, ended with the Civil War. But to do that is to narrow the definition of slavery far too far. (It's worth noting here that the conditions that debt slaves and so-called "convicts" labored under were far worse than those typical of antebellum slavery. See, e.g., Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900 (University Press of Virginia 2000).) 68.81.70.80 (talk) 08:34, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Convict labor

Based on the above, I did some searching and found that there is actually an article on Convict lease which covers (or should cover) exactly what we are talking about. I added a brief subsection (under the already existing section "Reconstruction to present") in this slavery article that has brief summaries from Blackmon and Litwack and identifies where the main article is. If anyone wants to elaborate on the subject, they should probably do so in the main article (using much more NPOV language than employed by the IP in this article).

I also believe, if anyone is interested, that a brief statement such as the one I added here might be appropriate to the following articles:

Nadir of American race relations

Reconstruction era of the United States

Redemption (United States history)

Jim Crow laws

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)

History of the Southern United States Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 01:32, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Outrageous Lede

You should be ashamed of yourselves whoever jammed all that crap in there. 71.186.135.89 (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Agricultural Slavery in Florida

As this article http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes demonstrates, there is in fact still agricultural slavery going on in the United States, specifically in the florida tomato industry. Undocumented laborers are brought in from Mexico with the promise of jobs and then imprisoned on private property and forced to work for essentially zero wages and threatened with death if they try to leave. If there are no objections I'll add a sentence to the article about it137.165.247.81 (talk) 07:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Moved from lede - some off-topic for article - some might go back to article

Historian Ira Berlin "begins with what he calls the 'charter generations.' These 17th-century black settlers entered areas like Dutch New Netherland, the English Chesapeake, French Louisiana or Spanish Florida with an indeterminate status that only gradually evolved into slavery. Their debasement was driven by the European demand for workers who could be used to exploit the economic opportunities offered by the New World."

On the economic value of slaves, historian Eric Foner has written:

On the eve of the Civil War, the economic value of slaves in the United States was $3 billion in 1860 currency, more than the combined value of all the factories, railroads and banks in the country. Much of the North's economic prosperity derived from what Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, called the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil. Lincoln was asking Americans to consider the obligations created by slavery. The first of those obligations is to acknowledge the full truth.

An account of the slave trade was written by Aquillana Okojio in 1784:

I was taken aboard the boat "stallion" by a man called Egbert E. Bones who was a cruel slave dealer from Europe. There were 500 of us crammed aboard the vessel. We was chained down to the floor and we were only alowd a tiny bit of excercise per day. The food was disgusting and the stench was unbearable. So many died on the journey to Havana. Once we arrived we were cleaned and scrubbed with water and cocoa butter utill we shone. Then we were put up for auction. The auctioneer bragged about how healthy we were and what sort of work we could do. When it was my turn I was scared out of my wit. In the end I was sold to work on a Plantation in Cuba. The conditions at the plantation were even worse than the ship. All 50 of us were cramped into a tiny room to eat and sleep. When we were woken up at 5 in the morning we were set to work all day until sundown. We had no breaks apart from a small break to eat our measly ration of dry bread and bacon. The work was back aching and very tiring. The scorching heat did not help and many slaves died on the plantation. This was our daily routine for 10 years. Every day all day we worked and sweated for our master. Those who stepped out of line were whipped with a cat o' nine tails. It took 10 whips and you were dead. The whippers were so cruel that they even whipped some who were doing nothing wrong for the sake of it. Some people got deadly diseases and were immidiately killed. The number of slaves who died on the plantation was huge. However as soon as slaves started to die our master got more so he was never short. Some people also committed suicide in all manner of ways including starvation, self hanging and one even cut off his own hand in front of the plantation manager. Life there was horrible, vile and cruel and we all would have done anything to escape that.

This contributed to the decline of the postbellum Southern economy, but it was most affected by the continuing decline in the price of cotton through the end of the century. That made it difficult for the region to recover from the war, as did its comparative lack of infrastructure, which kept products from markets. The South faced significant new competition from foreign cotton producers such as India and Egypt. Northern industry, which had expanded rapidly before and during the war, surged even further ahead of the South's agricultural economy. Industrialists from northeastern states came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and some aspects of political affairs. The planter class of the South lost power temporarily. The rapid economic development following the Civil War accelerated the development of the modern U.S. industrial economy.

According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal. Of all 8,289,782 free persons in the 15 slave states, 393,967 people (4.8%) held slaves, with the average number of slaves held by any single owner being 10. The majority of slaves were held by planters, defined by historians as those who held 20 or more slaves. Ninety-five percent of black people lived in the South, comprising one-third of the population there, as opposed to 2% of the population of the North. Despite being an efficient economic system, slavery did not spread northward due to the nature of the soil in the region and the types of crops typically produced there. At the time, principal importers of slaves were sugar and cotton growing regions. Both of these crops were more suitably farmed on plantations and in the soil of the southern regions. Thus, when land more suitable for these crops was discovered towards the west, slavery spread westward and not to the north. The wealth of the United States in the first half of the 19th century was greatly enhanced by the labor of African Americans.

JimWae (talk) 20:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

207.233.49.21 (talk) 21:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)10/29/2009

so if im not mistaken , from the looks of this article the basis of african american origins in brazil began when that 645,000 slaves from america were shipped to brazil and over time that whole population of brazilians became party africanized?