A Sketch of the Religious History of the Negroes in the South
“A Bout the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.” Thus reads the ancient official record which chronicles in those few words one of the most fateful events that has found place in the annals of our country, the introduction of African slavery. The year was 1619, and the place was the little colony of Jamestown, then in the thirteenth year of its existence. The institution at once took root downward and bore fruit upward. The trade rapidly grew and the market enlarged despite many earnest protests, until throughout the thirteen colonies ready sale was found for all the slaves that were offered. The traffic continued for one hundred and eighty-nine years, and when it was finally suppressed in 1808, there was a slave population in the United States numbering considerably over one million. From the first the most popular market was in the South, and ultimately the institution became localized in that section. This was not because of difference of mental and moral attitude in the two sections, but because of different climatic and economic conditions.