In the first plantations of Virginia a
few of them were found as laborers. In 1619 what was probably the
first slave ship on that coast--it was euphemistically called a "Dutch
man-of-war"--landed its human cargo in Virginia. From this time onward
the numbers of African slaves steadily increased. Bancroft estimated
their number at 59,000 in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 263,000 in 1754.
The census of 1790 recorded 697,624 slaves in the United States. This
almost incredible increase was not due alone to the fecundity of the
negro. It was due, in large measure, to the unceasing slave trade.
It is difficult to imagine more severe ordeals than the negroes
endured in the day of the slave trade. Their captors in the jungles of
Africa--usually neighboring tribesmen in whom the instinct for
capture, enslavement, and destruction was untamed--soon learned that
the aged, the inferior, the defective, were not wanted by the trader.
These were usually slaughtered. Then followed for the less fortunate
the long and agonizing march to the seaboard. Every one not robust
enough to endure the arduous journey was allowed to perish by the way.
On the coast, the agent of the trader or the middle-man awaited the
captive. He was an expert at detecting those evidences of weakness and
disease which had eluded the eye of the captor or the rigor of the
march.
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