A few Things You Didn’t Know about United States History

The Assumption, when it comes to slavery is that whites went across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa and captured slaves.   This is not how it happened.

Europeans were confined to the coast, and local Africans would capture and bring them the slaves.  They would pay for the slaves and carry them to the “New World’.

Spain and Portugal were the major players in Slavery.

The United Kingdom depended on Indentured Labourers.   These were people in Europe who volunteered to go the the New World, work for a period of years of their indenture, then would be free.

Many of the immigrants to America were indentured servants, people who left Europe voluntarily. During Cromwell’s time, political enemies were transported as indentured servants.

The first Africans in the English part of the New World were Indentured labourers.  They were freed after their period of indenture.   One of them was Anthony Johnson.

Anthony Johnson was an African who had been an indentured servant, now was free, got a piece of land and became a tobacco farmer.

Johnson brought John Casor, an African.   Johnson claimed Casor was a slave, Casor claimed he was an indentured servant.

Johnson brought the matter to Court.

The Court listened to the evidence and ruled that John Casor was a slave.  This was in 1654.

John Casor was the first slave in what would be the United States of America.  His status was determined by the case brought by Anthony Johnson, an African who had been an indentured servant.

The idea of slavery was felt better than indentured labour.   This was because there was only limited land, and when a servant was freed he was supposed to get land.

The land was limited because the Native Americans had only sold a certain portion of their land to the Europeans.

When ex-indentured servants would capture Amer-Indian land, this led to wars.   Hence, it was better to have slaves who would never be freed and remain where they were, then to have wars with the Amer-Indians.

By 1670 the environment of the colonies had changed, and slavery was the basic labour.   Anthony Johnson died,  and his plantation was given to a white man not his  children  as it was deemed that he was “not a citizen of the colony,”  because he was black.