Slavery in Antebellum Georgia . The allure of profits from slavery, however, proved to be too powerful for white Georgia settlers to resist. By the era of the American Revolution (1. African slaves constituted nearly half of Georgia's population. Although the Revolution fostered the growth of an antislavery movement in the northern states, white Georgia landowners fiercely maintained their commitment to slavery even as the war disrupted the plantation economy. In fact, Georgia delegates to the Continental Congress forced Thomas Jefferson to tone down the critique of slavery in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1. Likewise, at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1. Georgia and South Carolina delegates joined to insert clauses protecting slavery into the new U. S. In subsequent decades slavery would play an ever- increasing role in Georgia's shifting plantation economy. Cotton and the Growth of Slavery. For almost the entire eighteenth century the production of rice, a crop that could be commercially cultivated only in the Lowcountry, dominated Georgia's plantation economy. Hannah, Andrew Jackson’s Slave.1985 SAKKARIS RECORDS, SR 8504; 1985 OUT RECORDS, OUT 3055; 1986 ARIOLA, 607 986, 607 986-213. Tailfer and Thomas Stephens wanted to recreate the slave-based plantation. The Trustees' desire to exert an influence on. Slavery in Colonial Georgia. 7w519 SLAVE TO DESIRE Belgian '85 L'esclave. Chapter 4, Slavery and Empire 1441-1770 Learn with flashcards, games, and more — for free. By Master/Slave Relationship. Listen to The Desire To Castrate Father in full in the Spotify app. Monuments About Slavery. 1985 - Franklin & Armfield Slave Market. During the Revolution planters began to cultivate cotton for domestic use. After the war the explosive growth of the textile industry promised to turn cotton into a lucrative staple crop. This technological advance presented Georgia planters with a staple crop that could be grown over much of the state. Above is a slide show of the Cause And Effect May 1985 Cassette Distribution. 10:00 Master/Slave Relationship - The Desire To Castrate Father 10:38 Dog As. Desire, first American slave ship. Elisabeth, sailing from Jamaica for West Africa. Duc du Maine, along with the Aurore, the first French slave ships that brought. As early as the 1. Georgia were working to acquire and distribute fertile western lands controlled by the Creek Indians, a process that continued into the nineteenth century with the expulsion of the Cherokees. By the 1. 83. 0s cotton plantations had spread across most of the state. As was the case for rice production, cotton planters relied upon the labor of enslaved African and African American people. Accordingly, the slave population of Georgia increased dramatically during the early decades of the nineteenth century. In 1. 79. 0, just before the explosion in cotton production, some 2. In 1. 79. 3 the Georgia Assembly passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves. The law did not go into effect until 1. By 1. 80. 0 the slave population in Georgia had more than doubled, to 5. The 4. 8,0. 00 Africans imported into Georgia during this era accounted for much of the initial surge in the slave population. When Congress banned the African slave trade in 1. Georgia's slave population did not decline. Instead, the number of slaves imported from the Chesapeake's stagnant plantation economy as well as the number of children born to Georgia slave mothers continued to outpace those who died or were transported from Georgia. In 1. 82. 0 the slave population stood at 1. Civil War (1. 86. By the end of the antebellum era Georgia had more slaves and slaveholders than any state in the Lower South and was second only to Virginia in the South as a whole. The lower Piedmont, or Black Belt, counties. Over the antebellum era some two- thirds of the state's total population lived in these counties, which encompassed roughly the middle third of the state. By 1. 86. 0 the slave population in the Black Belt was ten times greater than that in the coastal counties, where rice remained the most important crop. Slaveholders. Although slavery played a dominant economic and political role in Georgia, most white Georgians did not own slaves. In 1. 86. 0 less than one- third of Georgia's adult white male population of 1. The percentage of free families holding slaves was somewhat higher (3. Moreover, only 6,3. Georgia's 4. 1,0. The planter elite, who made up just 1. In other words, only half of Georgia's slaveholders owned more than a handful of slaves, and Georgia's planters constituted less than 5 percent of the state's adult white male population. These statistics, however, do not reveal the economic, cultural, and political force wielded by the slaveholding minority of the population. Slaveholders controlled not only the best land and the vast majority of personal property in the state but also the state political system. In 1. 85. 0 and 1. More striking, almost a third of the state legislators were planters. Hence, even without the cooperation of nonslaveholding white male voters, Georgia slaveholders could dictate the state's political path. As it turned out, slaveholders expected and largely realized harmonious relations with the rest of the white population. During election season wealthy planters courted nonslaveholding voters by inviting them to celebrations that mixed speechmaking with abundant supplies of food and drink. On such occasions slaveholders shook hands with yeomen and tenant farmers as if they were equals. Nonslaveholding whites, for their part, frequently relied upon nearby slaveholders to gin their cotton and to assist them in bringing their crop to market. These political and economic interactions were further reinforced by the common racial bond among white Georgia men. Sharing the prejudice that slaveholders harbored against African Americans, nonslaveholding whites believed that the abolition of slavery would destroy their own economic prospects and bring catastrophe to the state as a whole. Propping. Since the colonial era, children born of slave mothers were deemed chattel slaves, doomed to . Georgia law supported slavery in that the state restricted the right of slaveholders to free individual slaves, a measure that was strengthened over the antebellum era. Other statutes made the circulation of abolitionist material a capital offense and outlawed slave literacy and unsupervised assembly. Although the law technically prohibited whites from abusing or killing slaves, it was extremely rare for whites to be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes. The legal prohibition against slave testimony about whites denied slaves the ability to provide evidence of their victimization. On the other hand, Georgia courts recognized slave confessions and, depending on the circumstances of the case, slave testimony against other slaves. The relative scarcity of legal cases concerning slave defendants suggests that most slaveholders meted out discipline without involving the courts. Slaveholders resorted to an array of physical and psychological punishments in response to slave misconduct, including the use of whips, wooden rods, boots, fists, and dogs. The threat of selling a slave away from loved ones and family members was perhaps the most powerful weapon available to slaveholders. In general, punishment was designed to maximize the slaveholders' ability to gain profit from slave labor. Evidence also suggests that slaveholders were willing to employ violence and threats in order to coerce slaves into sexual relationships. Over the antebellum era whites continued to employ violence against the slave population, but increasingly they justified their mastery in moral terms. As early as 1. 79. Georgia congressman James Jackson claimed that slavery benefited both whites and African Americans. The expanding presence of evangelical Christian churches in the early nineteenth century provided Georgia slaveholders with religious justifications for human bondage. White efforts to Christianize the slave quarters enabled masters to frame their power in moral terms. They viewed the Christian slave mission as evidence of their own good intentions. The religious instruction offered by whites, moreover, reinforced slaveholders' authority by reminding slaves of scriptural admonishments that slaves should . In 1. 78. 5, just before the genesis of the cotton plantation system, a Georgia merchant had claimed that slavery was . Although the typical (median) Georgia slaveholder owned six slaves in 1. Almost half of Georgia's slave population lived on estates with more than thirty slaves. Most Georgia slaves therefore had access to a slave community that partially offset the harshness of bondage. Slave testimony reveals the huge importance of family relationships in the slave quarters. Many slaves were able to live in family units, spending together their limited time away from the masters' fields. Frequently Georgia slave families cultivated their own gardens and raised livestock, and slave men sometimes supplemented their families' diets by hunting and fishing. Christianity also served as a pillar of slave life in Georgia during the antebellum era. Unlike their masters, slaves drew from Christianity the message of black equality and empowerment. In the early nineteenth century African American preachers played a significant role in spreading the Gospel in the quarters. Throughout the antebellum era some 3. Georgia slaves resided in the Lowcountry, where they enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy from white supervision. Most white planters avoided the unhealthy Lowcountry plantation environment, leaving large slave populations under the supervision of a small group of white overseers. Slaves were assigned daily tasks and were permitted to leave the fields when their tasks had been completed. Lowcountry slaves enjoyed a far greater degree of control over their time than was the case across the rest of the state, where slaves worked in gangs under direct white supervision. The white cultural presence in the Lowcountry was sufficiently small for slaves to retain significant traces of African linguistic and spiritual traditions. The resulting Geechee culture of the Georgia coast was the counterpart of the better- known Gullah culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry. The urban environment of Savannah also created considerable opportunities for slaves to live away from their owners' watchful eyes. Slave entrepreneurs assembled in markets and sold their wares to black and white customers, an economy that enabled some slaves to amass their own wealth. A number of slave artisans in Savannah were . Savannah's taverns and brothels also served as meeting places in which African Americans socialized without owners' supervision. This cultural autonomy, however, was never complete or secure.
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