Slavery
Capitalism resulted in the enslavement of between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans and 12.5 million Africans
The history of commoditizing humans in the United States begins with the slavery of the Indigenous peoples and later Africans. While humans have enslaved, traded, transported, and exploited each other for centuries, the enslavement and exploitation in the Americas is one of man’s greatest atrocities and tragedies in modern and ancient times. Capitalism resulted in the enslavement of between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans and 12.5 million Africans between 1492 and 1880. The events of slavery in the Americas are often ignored or whitewashed in history books. Marginalized groups, especially African Americans and Native Americans, continue to fight for teaching the truth of slavery in schools and history books.
The rich purchased large areas of land, capturing and enslaving Native Americans and Africans to meet their labor needs for the new settlements.
In the United States, the history of slavery began in the South. The American South divided its land to cultivate crops, mainly tobacco and cotton, between the British colonists who had arrived in Virginia. The divided land set up the plantation system, which included agricultural labor. King James I established the Virginia Company of London in 1606 and offered 50 acres (about twice the area of Chicago's Millennium Park) of land to adult males traveling to America and created the large settlements intended to support 100 persons. The plantations created a social class divide between the small number of wealthy white males and many poor white males. The rich purchased large areas of land, capturing and enslaving Native Americans and Africans to meet their labor needs for the new settlements. The federal and territorial governments could not prohibit slavery in the territories according to the 1857 ruling of Dred Scott, a Black man seeking his freedom. The cartoon “The Political Quadrille, Music by Dread Scott” captured the degree to which race played during the presidential election and placed Native and African Americans on the same side of the page. Lincoln won the election, forcing slave markets like the “The Slave Market, Atlanta Ga.,” and auctions that once sold Black and Native people to shut down. The following pages begin the story of the profit of slavery in the United States, starting with Native Peoples.