Ancient Ways Shaped Future Days
Having existed throughout the world since the beginning of mankind, slavery was by no means an American invention. During the Atlantic slave trade, slave ships transported more than 10 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas in what today is called the largest forced migration of people in world history. The first enslaved Africans arrived in the New World in 1518, and over the following three centuries lived in the Caribbean and Brazil. The enslaved were forced to grow sugarcane and harvest crops in Europe's newly born Caribbean colonies. It wasn't until 1619 that the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Most of the slave ships that set sail for North American colonies landed along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland. Shortly thereafter, slave ships set sail for other southern states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The economy in the South was starting to flourish because of booming farming opportunities, and Southern plantation owners thought they needed slaves to plant and harvest their crops. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 drastically increased dependency on those who were enslaved. More and more southerners were beginning to grow cotton and slavery quickly became a way of life in the South.