The life of a newly enslaved is stark with contrast between being free then not or waking to the sun and one’s family opposed to waking …show more content…
The Africans taken were people who had been captured in war, convicted of petty crimes, or simply kidnapped. The captain would then sail cargo across the Atlantic Ocean and make stops at one or more ports in the New World. The ship’s captain and crew would exchange the weight of human cargo sold along the slave route and replace it with goods such as sugar, rum, Tabaco, rice, molasses, etc. Then, they would return to Europe, just to undertake the inhumane business of slave trading once another voyage was funded. The Portuguese dominated the slave trade, which was also supported and financed by British and colonial merchants, who also helped bring millions of Africans to the Americas, with a very small percentage disembarking in …show more content…
“For the least fault the slaves received the harshest punishment.( Toussaint Overture)” No mistakes were allowed yet it became progressively harder to work when little care of the slaves were provided thus slowly diminishing their health. Yet they were still forced to work at one hundred percent from the break of dawn to the setting of the moon. In general, punishments delivered was dealt out in response to disobedience or perceived violations, which in many cases wasn’t true. Sometimes the slave owners’ abuse was carried out simply to reassert the dominance as the master/overseer, so the slaves wouldn’t try to act against them. Even if a slave was acting perfect the slaveholders would mercilessly whip, shackled, hanged, beat, burned, mutilated, branded, and imprisoned slaves. Slave women were often subject to rape and sexual abuse and in many cases were just treated as breeders, so more slaves could be produced. Once a slave has had an offspring with any man of any race they were automatically put into slavery. The resulting “breeding” created a large number of mixed race slaves to spread. However, in many Southern societies, it was strongly prohibited for any sexual relations between white women and black men with the reasoning that they wanted to retain their “racial