When did slavery start in the north america?
In 1619 a Dutch ship pulled into the port at Jamestown and purchased some tobacco. To pay for the tobacco, the ship’s captain unloaded 20 Black Africans that he had probably taken from a Spanish slave ship bound for the Spanish West Indies. Slavery did not take hold in the American colonies immediately. It was not until after 1700 that slavery became the main labor force in the Southern colonies. The development of the cotton and tobacco crop as a major profit crop saw the increase of “that peculiar insitution” as the plantation system was developed to grow more and more cotton and tobacco.
