Highlands Ranch High School - Mr. Sedivy
Highlands Ranch, Colorado

- World History -
Colonial America and
The American Revolution

Colonial Development

Why Did They Bring Slaves?
Slaves were cheaper than indentured servants. (They needed slaves to farm tobacco.)

Engraving shows a Virginia planter and clerk overseeing slaves loading tobacco into barrels for overseas shipment. Tobacco was America's first important export.

Sir Walter Raleigh, with his son

Tobacco was so valuable that Walter Raleigh once bet Queen Elizabeth that he could weigh the smoke itself. First he weighed the tobacco leaves, then put them in his pipe, smoked it, and subtracted the weight of the ashes from the original weight of the leaves. The difference was the weight of the smoke, according to Walter Raleigh.

Left: Bound in groups called coffles, slaves were marched from inland jungles to
coastal trading posts. There, traders bought and branded the healthy ones,
then loaded them on ships. Right: A broadside form Charleston, South Carolina
advertises the recent arrival of slaves.

A slaver sometimes took two months to sell a cargo. By 1740, there were 40,000 African slaves in South Carolina.

FRANCIS MEYNELL: Slaves Below Deck of Albanez.
Africans endured the transatlantic voyage on a Spanish slave ship.

Bound in iron cuffs at the wrist and ankle, slaves were tightlty packed below deck in tiers of platforms two- to three-feet high. The women and children remained unchained in separate compartments. Many slaves, desperate about being taken from their homeland, friends, and families, tried to kill their keepers.

Some committed suicide by starving themselves or by jumping overboard. Slaves were fed twice daily on meals of horsebeans, yams, and rice. If they refused to eat, they were force-fed with a funnel. An unbalanced diet, lack of fresh air, and unsanitary conditions caused widespread diseases including: scurvy, dysentery, malaria, measles, and smallpox. About 9.5 million slaves survived the Atlantic journey between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Back to top of page