The first settlement in Jamestown, Virginia had very high mortality rates. The men that first settled there were incapable of finding their own food and maintaining survival, many were used to receiving the supplies they needed and knew nothing about cultivating their own food. As time went on and the population of the south continued to grow slowly, new sources of profit were being found. There was a vast amount of land in the south and the Europeans kept on dying so they needed more people to work these fields. This is when they looked onto another method of getting the job done, gaining African Slaves. They saw that the Spanish people of the Caribbean’s were utilizing theses African slaves for their sugar plantations so they thought the
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The rebellions as well as religion led the legislators to develop more laws to sustain the distinction between the white lower class and black slaves. By the end of the 1600s, laws passed made it very clear that if an individual was black, he or she were a slave. There were only a few black slaves that were able to buy their freedom, people like Anthony Johnson, but even with that, it was hard for white people to allow them to live their lives as freed men. Those freed slaves always had to worry about the Europeans claiming their freedom as invalid and selling them off to slavery and keeping their lands to themselves. The class arrangement in North America had the lower class whites and the African slaves basically doing the same labors but where this gets dangerous is when the white workers revolt against the legislators and the African slaves join them. This is shown in Bacon’s Rebellion. Bacon’s main strategy was to get all of Virginia’s lower classes to work together to fix the corrupt system. “Leading planters, terrified by such interracial and interclass solidarity, were determined that no such challenge should threaten them again” (80). Bacon’s Rebellion was definitely the turning point for racialization of black people as slaves because the fear that the upper class had for the union between the lower class white and black slaves was enough for them to make sure that the union never happens
The rebellions as well as religion led the legislators to develop more laws to sustain the distinction between the white lower class and black slaves. By the end of the 1600s, laws passed made it very clear that if an individual was black, he or she were a slave. There were only a few black slaves that were able to buy their freedom, people like Anthony Johnson, but even with that, it was hard for white people to allow them to live their lives as freed men. Those freed slaves always had to worry about the Europeans claiming their freedom as invalid and selling them off to slavery and keeping their lands to themselves. The class arrangement in North America had the lower class whites and the African slaves basically doing the same labors but where this gets dangerous is when the white workers revolt against the legislators and the African slaves join them. This is shown in Bacon’s Rebellion. Bacon’s main strategy was to get all of Virginia’s lower classes to work together to fix the corrupt system. “Leading planters, terrified by such interracial and interclass solidarity, were determined that no such challenge should threaten them again” (80). Bacon’s Rebellion was definitely the turning point for racialization of black people as slaves because the fear that the upper class had for the union between the lower class white and black slaves was enough for them to make sure that the union never happens