1. Essential Questions - PREMS 1.Why did/does slavery exist? 2.What were the benefits and costs of slavery? 3.Why did slavery end (in the Americas)? 4.Why is America singled out for slavery? 5.Did it really matter where a slave was sent?

2. 'Nowhere in the annals of history has a people experienced such a long and traumatic ordeal as Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. Over the nearly four centuries of the slave - which continued until the end of the Civil War - millions of African men, women, and children were savagely torn from their homeland, herded onto ships, and dispersed all over the so-called New World. Although there is no way to compute exactly how many people perished, it has been estimated that between thirty and sixty million Africans were subjected to this horrendous triangular trade system and that only one third-if that-of those people survived...' The Cost of Slavery

3. Slave Trade Caravan

4. “One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands, and continued to carry us.” Equiano age 11

7. Middle Passage – 5-12 weeks

8. Every morning, perhaps, more instances than one are found of the living and the dead fastened together." John Newton - Slave Ship Captain

9. 'It was not atypical to see a massive school of sharks darting in and out of the wake of the ships filled with human cargo plying the Atlantic. For miles they followed the battered and moldy vessels, waiting to attack the disease-ravaged black bodies that were periodically tossed into the ocean...

13. Slaves on a sugar plantation

14. Negro slaves washing for diamonds in the Serro Do Frio

15. Treatment of slaves varied with the region and owner

16. ClassValue in Dollars, 1857Value in Dollars, 1998 Number 1 men1250-145020,800-24,100 Fair/Ordinary Men1000-115016,700-19,200 Best Boys (Age 15-18)1100-120018,300-20,000 Best Boys (Age 10-14)500-5758,300-17,900 Number 1 Women1050-122517,500-20,400 Fair/Ordinary Women1050-122514,200-17,100 Best Girls500-10008,300-16,700 Families"sell in their usual proportions" Account from an 1857 auction