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Unknown Slaves
Virginia was a center of the slave trade after the import of slaves was banned in 1808, and shipped Virginia-born slaves to fast-growing states along the Gulf Coast. Most Virginia slaves were apparently imported from the Caribbean islands, rather than shipped directly from Africa. According to the acting governor in Virginia in 1680, "what negroes were brought to Virginia were imported generally from Barbados for it was very rare to have a negro ship come to this Country directly from Africa.Slavery in America started in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million black slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women. In the 17th and 18th centuries, black slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. After the American Revolution, many colonists—particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy—began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition.
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