Slavery in New England

Essay by badboy4lyf102 December 2004

download word file, 2 pages 2.0

Downloaded 13 times

Slavery is the enslavement of people by other people. Slaves were primarily African-American in New England, though there were some Native American slaves. They were forced to do what they were told. Their owners could make the slaves hang themselves if they wanted to and it would still be legit. This is exactly what happened to Venture Smith. Slaves had no rights besides the rights that were given to them by their owners, and sometimes their owners didn't give them any rights. They did not have very good working conditions. This went on for many years until we were the only state left in the North with slaves. Soon we started gradual emancipation, which meant that the slaves that were born after 1784 would be slaves until they were twenty-five. Not much later, slavery in Connecticut died along with the last slave, Nancy Toney.

Most of the slaves in the North all had the same kinds of jobs to do.

They mostly did housework or outdoor work. Colonists that only owned a small portion of land generally had one or two slaves just to help out around the house. Housework could be washing dishes, doing laundry, sweeping floors, or anything of that nature. Colonists that owned plantations generally had eight or nine slaves because they had much more land to work. These slaves did work outside. One thing they might do is harvest whatever their masters are growing. Slaves were given many hard jobs and the colonists justified themselves by saying that the slaves were inferior. This is also known as racism. They did not just say the slaves were inferior, they were treated inferior also. They were the least important of all the animals in the farm and they were considered property.

Although it is not that...