ABSTRACT
Black slaves first arrived in the British colonies of North America in 1619 at Jamestown, Virginia. During the War of Independence, 1776-83, slavery was abolished in the middle and northern colonies, or states, as they had by then become. The 1776 Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, moreover affirmed that all men were created equal, 'endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights', and that among these were the rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. Despite this seeming promise of freedom, black slavery continued in the southern states of America. Slaves were the principal labour-force in the cultivation of tobacco, sugar and above all cotton, production of which greatly expanded following the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. Although the legal importation of slaves was banned in 1808, a substantial illicit influx of African slaves continued. More significantly, slave numbers within the United States grew by natural population increase and by 1860 there were some 4 million slaves in the South.
