Origin of American Slavery.
Antonio Goncalvez, master of the
the robes to Prince Henry of Portugal,
in a voyage along the Morocco coast in
the year 1441 captured a party of
Moors and carried them away with
him to Spain. The Moors did not like
Portugal, and they told Goncalvez
that if he would take them back to
their native heath they would give
him a ransom in the shape of negro
slaves. Prince Henry, upon hearing
of the proposition that had been made
to Goncalvez, urged its acceptance on
the ground that the Moors were a set
of obstinate heretics, anyway, while
the black men might possibly be converted
to Christianity. Goncalvez,
accordingly took the Moors back home
and returned in the year 1442 with a
cargo of negroes. And such was the
beginning of the African slave trade.
As early as 1445—three years after the
Goncalvez episode—slave marts were
opened in Africa, and the trade took
on the activity which was to last for
centuries. It is estimated that during
the three hundred years from 1445 to
1745 at least 90,000,000 negroes were
stolen from Africa and sold into slavery.
By 1516 a steady stream of Africans
was pouring into the New World
to work in the Spanish and Portuguese
mines, and in 1562 the Englishman.
John Hawkins, made his first
trip to the Gold Coast for the new merchandise.
By 1786 England had one
hundred and thirty vessels engaged
in the slave trade. In the meantime,
the fine climate of the South, aided by
Ely's cotton gin, showed that there
was money in raising cotton, and on
this purely economic principle slavery,
from being co-extensive with the
Union at the time of the adoption of
the Constitution, drifted southward.
In the whole country negro slaves
numbered in 1800, 697,897; 1810, 1,191,364;
1820, 2,009,731; 1850, 3,204,315;
1860, 4,002,996. Slavery in the British
possessions was abolished in 1834, 720,280
slaves being freed, at a cost to the
Government of 20,000,000 pounds sterling.
However, Englishmen, Dutchmen,
Americans and others continued
selling slaves to Southern planters.
In September, 1862, President Lincoln
issued a proclamation to the effect
that, on the following January 1st, he
intended freeing the slaves in such
States or parts of States as might then
be found in hostility to the Government.
He was as good as his word,
and on New Year's Day, 1863, African
slavery ceased to exist for ever in this
country. It cost to free the negro the
lives of a million men and some $10,000,000,000.
In 1870 the Secretary of
State, the Fifteenth Amendment having
been duly ratified by the requisite
number of States, announced by proclamation
that the negro was a fulfledged
American citizen.
