What were the basic rules of who can be a slave in the United States? Did the slaves have to be black? Could a white guy own another white guy as a slave? I know most the slaves were carted over from Africa, but say you owned a white slave before you moved to the states? Could a black guy own a white slave? Could native Americans be slaves?
I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’ve never known of any whites or American Indians that were held in slavery in the U.S. – with the exception of criminals who imprison women to make them work in their business. (This still happens.) It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some American Indians were sometimes slaves.
The closest thing to legal white slavery in the U.S., I think, would be indentured servants. A man (or woman?) would agree to work for someone for a period of time (maybe seven years) in return for passage to America.
Sometimes coalminers were virtual slaves because they would get in debt to the company store and couldn’t pay their debts. So they would have to keep working.
Actually there were a lot of white slaves, depending on how you define the term. Probably the worst aspect of slavery was the regular practice of slaveowners having sex with their slaves. The result of this was inevitably mixed race children (and the prospect of fathers owning their own children as slaves - how’s hell treated you, guys?). Later, these half black slaves might be simularly abused and become the mothers of three quarters white children, and so on. Mark Twain, I believe, wrote a story about a young woman who was 15/16th’s white but was considered to be a “black” slave because of her ancestry.
And free blacks could own slaves, although it was a rare occurence for it to actually happen.
Could a white guy own another white guy as a slave?
All the Slave codes that written in Colonial America as Slavery formed were based on race. “own” is the key because indentured servitude and penal shipping led to situations in which the labor was forced. But they were not “owned” like African slaves as we have come to know them in the US.
I may be corrected on this esp. the indentured servant stuff. I see it as their labor, but not “person”, could be bought and sold & maybe a consensus has developed that is different on that than I have stated?
*I know most the slaves were carted over from Africa, but say you owned a white slave before you moved to the states? *
Only Turkish Ottomans “owned” white people from 1610 to 1865 (In 1783 the Russian conquering of the Crimea shut off the trade in whites at least) Though as late as the 1860’s the Ottomans were still buying and selling white slaves inside the empire.
If an Ottoman Turk showed up and tried to keep his slave I sincerely doubt he would be able to – the laws were meant for blacks. The very Idea of a Muslim man keeping a white guy (or gal) in slavery would be a non-starter I would guess
Could native Americans be slaves
They were slaves in the Spanish empire. Columbus brought some back to Seville as slaves on his first voyage. In ‘America’, when it was tried very early it didn’t work out so well and was abandoned very early in favor of African labor. By the time the codes were formalized Native Americans were not made slaves – though thier blood ran thru many “black” slaves
Some free blacks owned other black slaves, but U.S. slavery would not have permitted the enslavement of whites, certainly not by blacks. Some American Indians also owned black slaves.
Wallace and Minerva Willis, who wrote “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” were black slaves who were owned by Choctaw Indians, and had to go along with them on the Trail of Tears. There could not be a lower rung on the social ladder than that, could there?
The percentage of free blacks who were slaveowners in the South prior to the Civil War may have been substantial, perhaps even higher percentagewise than whites.
John Hope Franklin, a noted African American researcher and historian, himself black, apparently claimed that in 1860 the city of New Orleans had about 11,000 free blacks, over 3000 were slaveowners. The reasons blacks owned slaves included why whites did, financial, and also to improve the living conditions and as a means of someday freeing them from slavery.
The total number of slaves owned by blacks would have been rather small, as there weren’t many free blacks.
Chang and Eng, the celebrated “Siamese Twins” (they were ethnically Chinese), when they retired from show biz, settled on a farm in North Carolina and owned slaves. Just one more racial twist to the situation.
I’ve read that Indians were owned as slaves, but possibly not after the United States became a separate country. You mght want to read Loewen’s book ** Lies Across America** regarding Sutter’s Mill – the place where gold was discovered in Califrnia. Sutter had a going concern with Indian slaves, sanctioned by the Mexican government (California wasn’t U.S. Territory at the time, of course). I’ll bet the situation lasted after California changed hands, though.
I’ve read that Indians were owned as slaves, but possibly not after the United States became a separate country. You mght want to read Loewen’s book ** Lies Across America** regarding Sutter’s Mill – the place where gold was discovered in Califrnia. Sutter had a going concern with Indian slaves, sanctioned by the Mexican government (California wasn’t U.S. Territory at the time, of course). I’ll bet the situation lasted after California changed hands, though.
I know from my own research that Weequehela, the Delaware Indian sachem in New Jersey, owned black slaves. I’ve talked to some Iroquois, who say that whites misunderstood the situation, and the blacks were actually adopted into the tribes, but I suspect the positions of the blacks back then were pretty ambiguous.
Cal:
It’s been some time since I read the book “California Conquered”, but IIRC in 1846, Sutter was about to be prosecuted by the Mexican government (such as it was there at that time) for many things, including the maltreatment of the Indians. My guess is that the Mexican government there wasn’t as much concerned with Indian rights as they were with the consequences of an organized Indian reaction to Sutter’s abuses of them. It was for this reason (impending prosecution) that Sutter quite actively welcomed the pro-American Bear Flag Revolution of 1846, thinking that it would at least get him off the hook and at best allow him to keep persecuting the local Indians for money. While it prevented him from being prosecuted by Mexico, it didn’t keep him out of serious troube. He went broke after the labor shortage (beginning in 1848 caused by the labor pool all heading out to look for gold) rendered his all business ventures irrelevant.
AFAIK, slavery was a hot issue when CA applied for admission to the union in 1849. The union of course didn’t want it, but the idea of entering the union and then “converting” to a slave state was only narrowly defeated. While some expatirate southerners saw slavery in CA as a means to relieve the labor shortage, other anti-slavery people rightly saw it as a block to immigration and economic development.
While the Dred Scott decision allowed slaveowners to bring slaves into non-slave territories, I don’t know how many actually were performing involuntary labor in CA. It would appear that it was not at all common.
Also, I understand that until somewhere near to the end of the 19thC. it was possible in CA to “adopt” an Indian “orphan” child for a fee so that he or she could be “apprenticed” to your trade or business. The rights to this “orphan” could be transferred to another holder as desired. (No I don’t have a cite offhand. I read it in the bio of a California Indian.)
IIRC the first person actually to be declared a slave in the united states was a white person. he was an indentured servant who ran off from his master and the court ordered him to a lifetime of servitude. . i think that it was in massachusetts, but i have lost the cite. it was in my college history book from 1984. any person could own a slave oF any color at the beginning. an anthropologist friend of mine said that the cherokees and other tribes of american indians had quite a few slaves before and during the europization of the americas. also, i think that most of the slaves were born here, but they had quite a few progenitors imported.
Some colonists experimented with enslaving Indians captured in the various Indian wars, but they could escape and blend into the free Indian population. After the Pequot War, many of the survivors were sold into slavery in Bermuda which made escape much more difficult.
Tituba, the first woman to confess to being a witch during the period of the Salem Village trials, was an Arawak Indian:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/ASA_TIT.HTM