Slavery in The Colonial United States

This article is about slavery in the Colonial era. For slavery after the United States were formed, see Slavery in the United States.

The origins of slavery in the colonial United States are complex and there are several theories that have been proposed to explain the trade.

Read more about Slavery In The Colonial United States:  Background, The Development of Slavery in 17th-century America, The Atlantic Slave Trade To North America, Indentured Servitude, Enslavement of Native Americans, The Rise of The Anti-slavery Movement

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    Woman—with a capital letter—should by now have ceased to be a specialty. There should be no more need of “movements” on her behalf, and agitations for her advancement and development ... than for the abolition of negro slavery in the United States.
    Marion Harland (1830–1922)

    It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.
    Jean Genet (1910–1986)

    Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
    Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)

    The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.
    Gore Vidal (b. 1925)