III.

Distinctive Features of U.S. Slavery

By the mid-18th century, American slavery had acquired a number of distinctive features. More than 90 percent of American slaves lived in the South where conditions contrasted sharply with those to both the south and north. In Caribbean colonies, such as Jamaica and Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), blacks outnumbered whites by more than ten to one and slaves often lived on huge estates with hundreds of other slaves. In the Northern colonies, blacks were few and slaves were typically held in small groups of less than five. The South, by contrast, was neither overwhelmingly white nor overwhelmingly black: slaves formed a large minority of the population, and most slaves lived on small and medium-sized holdings containing between 5 and 50 slaves.

The second distinctive characteristic of slavery in the United States was in many ways the most important: in contrast to slaves in most other parts of the Americas, those in the United States experienced natural population growth. Elsewhere, in regions as diverse as Brazil, Jamaica, Saint-Domingue, and Cuba, slave mortality rates exceeded birth rates, and growth of the slave population depended on the importation of new slaves from Africa. As soon as that importation ended, the slave population began to decline. At first, deaths among slaves also exceeded births in the American colonies, but in the 18th century the birth rates rose in those colonies, mortality rates fell, and the slave population became self-reproducing. This transition, which occurred earlier in the upper than in the lower South, meant that even after slave imports were outlawed in 1808, the number of slaves continued to grow rapidly. During the next 50 years, the slave population of the United States more than tripled, from about 1.2 million to almost 4 million in 1860. The natural growth of the slave population meant that slavery could survive without new slave imports.

Natural population growth also hastened the transition from an African to an African American slave population. By the 1770s, only about 20 percent of slaves in the colonies were African-born, although the concentration of Africans remained higher in South Carolina and Georgia. After 1808 the proportion of African-born slaves became tiny. The emergence of a native-born slave population had numerous important consequences. For example, among African-born slaves, who were imported for their ability to perform physical labor, there were few children and men outnumbered women by about two to one. In contrast, American-born slaves began their slave careers as children and included approximately even numbers of males and females. Masters went through a similar process of Americanization. Those born in America usually felt at home on their holdings. Caribbean planters often sought to make their fortunes quickly and then retire to a life of leisure in England. American slaveholders, by contrast, were less often absentee owners. Instead, they typically took an active role in running their farms and plantations.