African Americans In The Seventeenth Century

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, hundreds of thousands of people began to immigrate to America from Europe, some seek to be allowed to follow their own view on religion, while some others seek to be liberated from poverty. Eventually, these small groups of European immigrants settled and created larger governed communities. Since these immigrants come from Europe, their only passage to arrive in America was from crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the East coast of America. Some of them eventually settled in the North, while others settled in the South. In the North due to the weather condition that is somewhat unfit to build plantations, not many people were given big farming lands. However, in the South, where the conditions are …show more content…
Poorer immigrants were able to work as servant for these richer folks. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the arrival of slave trades, which brought African slaves from Africa to the South, follow the same Europe passage that immigrants came from. This gave landowners more choices on using the labor forces. Thus, this marked the beginning of an exploiting relationship between landowners, servants and African slaves. In this mostly farm dependent economy, the depend for farming products was really high. With the abundant of lands, there were no limit to how much profit would satisfy the greed of landowners. They would resolve to extreme efforts to squeeze out every drop of sweat from their servants and slaves. Their efforts to exploit slaves and servant would have brought a long lasting effect of suffering toward servant and especially African slaves and their descendants even till the present day. One of the most extreme evidence of this period is the Virginia State servant and slave laws which supports the efforts of landowners to exploit servants and …show more content…
One of the most extreme law is the law that legalizing the murder of slave committed by their owners. This law mentioned, “if any slave resists his master (or other by his master’s order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accepted a felony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation” (“Virginia Servant and Slave Laws,” in Handout Set, p.2). The law gave slave no chance to voice their opinions. The only thing they could do was to accept the mistreatments from their master. This law is utterly one-sided, as it gave the owner, the absolute power to treat slave however they want, but allow slave to be killed as long as they react. With their fates on the hand of their masters, there was no way to escape for slave, the only thing they could do was to run away with hope they they can never be found. Death would be the only thing that await them if they were ever to be found by their owners. Some slaves try to take more extreme action of revolting against their owners. This rebellious act can only be done in group; these slaves would hope to take back their fates in their own hands. One of the example of these revolts is the Stono Rebellion. This rebellion described as “a group of about twenty slaves attacked a