Summary Of American Slavery Peter Kolchin

The book American Slavery by Peter Kolchin provides a detailed history of slavery from its establishment in the 13 colonies to its abolishment in the United States. He analyzes its practices and its effects on the culture of those affected by it, black and white. The topics discussed in the book provide a good amount of insight to the political views throughout the eras discussed. He focuses on three main eras: the colonial era, the revolutionary era, and the post-war era. The practices and influence of slavery are discussed with respect to each of the time periods. The colonial era was when slavery first occurred in what would we become the United States. Originally, the majority of servants in the colonies were poor Europeans who wanted to immigrate to the Americas. They were indentured to a richer person for passage to the Americas. As time progressed, the amount of Europeans interested in coming to America decreased, but the demand for labor increased. Landowners looked for another source of labor just as the African slave trade was becoming larger. Africans had long been imported into other regions of the Americas, but it wasn’t until the mid to late colonial era that African slaves became commonplace in the 13 colonies. As …show more content…
They weren’t just numbers, they had lives of their own. Slaves placed a great deal of emphasis on family, but their families weren’t just their own. Children were pulled by the authorities of their parents and the authority of their masters, and families could very easily be broken up by the selling of one of its members. These families were not solid, and were very different from the families of their white masters. Slaves were also often religious, but at the same time they used home remedies like potions, charms, or rituals to supplement some parts of religion. They had their own culture, but were always under the control of their often violently cruel and controlling