1. Slavery in the Americas
The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage

2. Quickwrite:
If you were to write about your life, what would you write about?

3. Beginnings of Slavery in North America
Disease (smallpox) and warfare eliminated the Native Americans as a source of labor.
Like Equiano, Africans were kidnapped by African kings and warlords.
Then the slaves were forced to march to the coast.

6. Trading Posts Along the coast, Europeans set up 60 forts.
European sailors traded rum, cloth, guns, and other goods for human beings

10. The Middle Passage The transport of slaves across the Atlantic.
Typical slave ships contained several hundred slaves with about thirty crew members.
A typical Atlantic crossing took days but some lasted up to four months

12. Conditions in the slave ships
People were crowded together, usually forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others.

13. Conditions in the slave ships
stuffed between decks in spaces too low for standing.

15. Conditions in the slave ships
slaves packed like cargo between decks often had to lie in each other's feces, urine, and blood.
heat was often unbearable, and the air nearly unbreathable.

18. Additional Cruelty
Because a small crew had to control so many, cruel measures such as iron muzzles and whippings were used to control slaves.

20. Statistics…and the reality
Over the centuries, between one and two million persons died in the crossing. This meant that the living were often chained to the dead until ship surgeons such as Alexander Falconbridge had the corpses thrown overboard.

22. Glimmer of hope?
While ships were still close to shore, insurrections of desperate slaves sometimes broke out.
Many went mad in these barbaric conditions; others chose to jump to their watery deaths rather than endure.

24. If you had to make the choice…
Would you rather choose to endure another day in those conditions…or end your torture and misery?

25. Triangle Trade
The Middle Passage was a big part of the triangle trade.

26. Slavery in the South: Economics
European colonization of North America created a slave dependent economy.
Why the need of force labor?
The Southern crops: cotton, tobacco, sugar, wheat, rice, indigo (for dye)
Indentured servants were freed after a stated period and given supplies and use of land.
This new group meant threat to the wealthy land owners.

28. Slavery in the South: Race
Eventually, the excuse for slavery turned racist.
Whites = civilized; Native Americans and Blacks = barbaric
“Brutes, heathen, naked”
Legal codes gradually made racism an official policy of colonial governments.
(What happens when laws are passed?)

29. Quickwrite:
Institution = an organization, establishment, foundation, society, or the like, devoted to the promotion of a particular cause or program, esp. one of a public, educational, or charitable character: This college is the best institution of its kind.
What are the characteristics of an institution? How do institutions get started?
What are their impact on society?

30. Final Thought:
History exists because it happened. We even have a firsthand account from Equiano.
How is it possible for human beings to treat each other this way? How do we get to this point?