When a group of people keep repeating as facts, things that have no basis in fact, they soon begin to believe their own rhetoric. For example, recently, a man that indicated he was Black, called a radio station and proclaimed loudly that "hundreds of millions of Blacks lost their lives to slavery in America!"
He was adamant in his testimonial but fortunately he was wrong. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. And yet, none of the on-air hosts challenged his statement. I am therefore sure that many blacks in the listening audience accepted as absolute fact his assertion that “hundreds of millions” of Blacks lost their lives in slavery in America despite the fact that the statement is untrue. So let's try to set the record staight.
To begin with, we must all understand that slavery - no matter where it is practiced and by whom - is an absolute abomination. There can be no mistake about that. Subjugating any human being to the horror of slavery is a repulsive act to be reviled by all. But such has not always been the case.
Slavery had been practiced around the world for centuries before slaves were brought to the Americas; in fact, slavery was fairly common in Africa prior to, during, and after slavery came to the Colonies in the 17th century. For example, gold and silver mines on the African continent - run by Africans - condemned captive blacks to a lifetime of horror working in the mines. Once African captives were put into the mines, they never again saw the light of day. This slavery – practiced by Blacks against Blacks - was in fact far more despicable, far more hateful, far more utterly destructive of its slaves than anything that happened in the American Colonies centuries later. (And weren’t the Jews captured and placed into slavery in Egypt a millennia before the American Colonies existed? I think so.)
So the truth is – and it is the truth - much of the known world at that time and even prior to that time - and certainly much of the Black African continent – considered slavery to be their right of conquest. You captured a tribe, you made the losers your slaves for the rest of their lives. That was slavery at its worse.
Slavery was hardly invented when it was transplanted into the America in the early 1600’s. Nevertheless I repeat, no matter where it was practiced and by whom, or for how long - slavery was and has always been a cruel and vicious abomination.
It has long been believed that in the American Colonies, the place we are about to discuss, it was only Southerners who felt they had a right to own slaves. That is completely untrue. The truth is, many Northerners as well as many people in societies around the world, felt that same way. The real reason slavery was largely confined to the Southern States in the American Colonies was more practical: it was only the South that had an economic system that needed slaves and therefore, it was only in the South that owning slaves could be practiced profitably. That reason was “King Cotton”. In the 17th century, cotton had become the backbone of the new Southern American economy and cotton fields needed cheap field workers; hence, the introduction of slavery.
But owning and "keeping" slaves cost money. Slaves had to be fed and housed and cared for if you expected them to work for you. Therefore if you weren't using them to make you money (i.e. picking cotton to be sold), then where was the money to come from to pay for their upkeep and care and if they just cost you money, what would be the purpose of owning them? There obviously would be none.
That’s why there were so few slaves in the Northern States. It was not some great moral revulsion against owning slaves, there was just no economic reason for the North to want to do so.
Many Americans think the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. That's not true. The Civil War was fought more to hold the Union together than to abolish slavery. Certainly there was a strong - if limited - sentiment against slavery which continued to grow as the war progressed, but it is more accurate to say that the abolition of slavery was a consequence of, rather than a motivation for, the Civil War.
Nevertheless, our primary focus here today is in the slave trade that existed between West Africa and the Americas in the period 1670-1860 when millions of African slaves were shipped across what was then known as "The Middle Passage". What is truth and what is fiction.
Before we get into the actual details of that slave trade, let’s talk about how it actually worked. First, if you think of bunch of White guys got into boats, made their way across the ocean, landed on the shores of Black Africa, stole a bunch of African men and women, marched them across the continent to waiting boats and shipped them to America, you are flat out of your mind. That never happened because it couldn’t have happened.
Back in 1600, two hundred million Blacks lived on the continent of Africa. If a small band of Whites suddenly appeared in native lands, they would have stood out like a sore thumb and likely been killed. They would have been no way they could sneak in, kidnap Blacks and escape across the Continent with being apprehended. They couldn’t do it and they didn’t do it. That’s just not the way it happened.
The way it happened was like this: Africa had many local tribes back then and many tribal chiefs. These tribes were constantly at war with one another and in those wars, the losers – male and female - would be taken away to become lifelong slaves of the winners. That had been going on for centuries in Africa before any White man showed up.
One day, White slave traders from Portugal found their way to the African shore. African tribal leaders learning of the traders’ presence came to the shore to investigate the invaders. There, the tribesmen inter-acted with the traders and a “business arrangement” developed. The traders wanted to know what the leaders had to sell and the leaders had slaves to sell. That was the beginning of the American slave trade.
Tribal leaders would return to their camps on the Continent, put their captives into chains, then march them across the continent to the waiting boats and there, sell them to the White traders. The traders would then transport the slaves across the Middle Passage to the Americas – a very long and dangerous sea voyage – and those that survived the trip would be sold.
That was the slave trade. There were three parties to this evil practice – (1) the Black African tribal chiefs who had slaves and sold them to the traders for money and goods (2) the traders who transported their captured slaves to the Americas (North and South America) and (3) the cotton farmers who bought the slaves to work their fields. Slavery was nothing about color unless it was the color of money.
Over the years, there have been many wild claims about the number of slaves that came to North America (the 13 British Colonies). At one time or other, it has been claimed that as many as 40 million blacks were shipped here in the 190-year period 1670-1860. That is not true and for a lot of reasons. For one thing, the population of the Colonies in 1700 was only 4 million total including Blacks and Whites. For another, importing slaves became illegal after 1807.
In the days in question, ocean-going ships of the type used in the slave trade held about 400 slaves. The trip across the Middle Passage took three months in each direction so a round trip would take a minimum of six months. Therefore, to haul 40 million slaves with two round trips per year carrying 400 slaves each, would have required 50,000 cumulative years which is longer than man has been on this planet. So you can scratch that idea.
Another problem was the availability of ocean going ships in those days. As an example, the US Navy had only 40 ocean-going vessels in service in 1700 and just four available to patrol the Slave Coast of Africa, which they did for a hundred years. So even if all the ships in the Navy were used to transport slaves it would still have taken more than 1,250 years to ferry that many slaves here. So that never happened either.
The book, "The History of Slavery" uses a number between 8-9 million and that makes much more sense although I think it's still too high. After all, if the entire United States Navy had just 40 ocean-going vessels, how many slave traders could there have been? Let’s see what we can calculate.
I will start with a realistic estimate of transport ships - slave traders. I will use 40 - the same number of ocean-going vessels that were in service with the United States Navy.
So, 40 ships carrying 800 slaves a year between 1670 and 1860 (190 years) = 6,100,000 slaves and to me, that sounds more accurate. So six million slaves were shipped across the "Middle Passage" over that period of time (but none to the Colonies after 1807).
Of these 6 million slaves, 94% (5,640,000) went to South America or the Islands while just 6% (360-400,000 were shipped to the British Colonies of North America.
You seldom hear this but it’s a fact: the great majority of slaves that were shipped from West Africa to the Americas were shipped to South America and to the Caribbean Islands not to the British Colonies. That why Hispanic is defined as a mix of Black, Spanish and Indian. Because so many Black slaves ended up in South America, where they intermarried and created the Hispanic race.
So the total number of slaves brought to North America over 190 years was not counted in the millions at all, it was about 400,000. And these numbers are supportable by slave records. In the British Colonies, slaves had financial value so strict records were kept of who they were, who bought them, who owned them, and what happened to them.
Some Black activists have also claimed that “millions of blacks died in slavery” in the Colonies. That also is untrue. For one thing, there weren't millions of black slaves here. For another, as I just pointed out, slaves were valuable property and there was no advantage to killing them and losing your investment. Quite the contrary was true: they were kept, housed, fed and certainly worked hard but they were taken care of and encouraged to have children because that increased the owner’s net worth. Slaves were worth money alive, they were worth nothing dead. Like the Biblical Jewish slaves of Egypt, the Black slaves in America multiplied. By the end of slavery in 1861, the total population of America was nearly 32,000,000 of which some 4,000,000 were Black. That means the Black slaves here had multiplied from 400 thousand to four million. That’s a multiplication factor of 10 and at that time, they represented approximately 12.5% of the total American population. Despite that, their percentage of the whole had actually shrunk because the number of Whites had exploded too, increasing from 7 million in 1808 to over 30 million in 1862.
Here is a table of Blacks as a percentage of the American population:
YEAR Total .....…... …Blacks ......... Blacks %
1650 50,000 ......…..…..1,600 ........ 3.5%
1700 473,959 ......…....28,000 ........ 6.0%
1760 1,600,000 .....…..328,090 ........ 20.5%
1780 2,780,400 .....…..575,961 ........ 20.7%
1808 7,200,000 .…...1,400,000 ........ 19.4%
1900 249,464,396 .. 31,183,049 ........ 12.2%
2010 309,381,000 .. 38,363,244 ....... . 12.4%
So Blacks did not die in the wildly exaggerated numbers sometimes reported, but many did die so who or what killed them?
Well, most of them died either (1) in Africa where they were captured, beaten, then chained and force-marched across the continent by their African captors to the seaports where they could be sold or (2) on board those dreadful ships in that dangerous passage between West Africa and the Americas. The remainder, those that reached the Colonies safely, actually saw their plight improve considerably.
Blacks have a distorted picture of the number of slaves that came to America as they have a distorted picture of how many Blacks live in America today (2010). In a recent poll of inner city residents, when Black Americans were asked how much of America was Black, they replied 75%. This is completely erroneous of course but quite understandable. Since most Blacks live in Black neighborhoods, all they see are Blacks so they think Blacks are in the majority in this country. But they aren’t. They are just 12.4% as estimated by the Department of the Census in 2010. This is very nearly identical to the 12.2% back in 1900 but almost half of what it was in 1807.
Demographically, Hispanics in this country now outnumber Blacks by a considerable margin. Hispanics in 2010 are estimated to be 14% of our population legally with another 3-4% here illegally. That could give them 18% compared to the Black's 10.4%. Clearly, Hispanics are increasing in numbers as Blacks are remaining dormant or decreasing.
Slavery was a horrendous event in the history of our country and it continues in remote areas around the world even to this day. Wherever it is practiced, it is an abomination to human dignity.
But slavery is evil enough to stand condemned for what it is without resorting to distortions and exaggerations by those who would use it for perceived political or financial advantage. And the basis for slavery has never really been color; it has usually been about the accumulation of wealth and the availability of forced cheap labor.
There is no substitute for truth. To be best of my ability, I have presented the truth here.
JOEY
PS There has really never been a major migration of Blacks from Africa to North America since the day importing slaves was outlawed back in 1807. This means most of the Blacks in America today can trace their ancestry back that far and further.
For many of the rest of us, our ancestry is traced back to the big migrations from Germany, Ireland and Italy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That’s something to keep in mind.
Joey
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