06 SLAVERY gandiste. Had it not been for the discovery of America in 1492, it is altogether probable that the African slave trade would never have exceeded the dimensions it had known in an- tiquity ; and it is believed that between 1455 and 1492 that trade had fallen off considerably, and that the number of negroes taken by the Portuguese for exportation did not exceed 300 or 400 a year. In fact, Europe presented no field for the labor of black slaves, the employ- ment of which must have been confined to the houses of the great, as in the classic times, with rare exceptions. The negro trade was verging to extinction, when the success of the great enterprise of Columbus imparted to it new life, and made it one of the most lucrative branches of commerce. Soon after the dis- covery of America the Spaniards began to en- slave the natives, large numbers of whom were sent to Spain as slaves in 1495. The system of repartimientos (slave distributions) was be- gun in 1496. Columbus appears to have had no scruples on the subject, and had indeed been engaged in the Portuguese slave trade. He strongly recommended the trade in the cannibal Indians ; and the Spanish sovereigns, though in general their legislation was kindly toward the natives, did not discourage his proposition. At a later period Isabella sought to make a distinction between Indians who had been sold into slavery after being taken in war, and others who had been seized in consequence of failure to pay tribute ; and she was very angry with u the admiral" for making the - i/uro, and ordered the sufferers to be released an'l returned to America. Under the Spanish rule the Indians perished in immense numbers, until they became extinct in the islands, or were absorbed by the other races. Slavery itself was not unknown in America, and had a well defined system in Mexico. The desire of the Spaniards to have laborers, and the inabil- ity of the natives to perform the labors re- quired of them, soon led to the sending of ne- groes to the new world. Interest and human- ity promoted their rapid increase in the Spanish colonies. They could perform the work to which the Indians were unequal, and throve under it. The government of Ferdinand feared that the sending of many negroes to America would prove injurious, but Charles V. granted a license to a Homing to import negroes into the West Indies. Thenceforth the trade went on vigorously. The demand of the colonists for negroes was supported by the benevolent Las Casas, and by other leaders in the Roman Catholic church, who were desirous of pre- venting the extinction of the Indians. One negro was counted as worth four natives. There was a negro insurrection in Hispaniola as early as 1522. The African slave trade, under such stimulus as was afforded by the American demand, rapidly increased, and Eng- l.iii-l took part in the work of supplying the Spaniards in 1562, previously to which ne- groes had been landed in England, and there sold, in 1553. Queen Elizabeth is charged with sharing the profits made by Sir John Hawkins, the first Englishman who commanded a regu- lar slave trader. The English were far more cruel traders than the Portuguese. In the times of the Stuarts four English companies were chartered for carrying on the African slave trade, and Charles II. and James II. were members of the fourth company. While duke of York, James II. was at the head of the last company. After the revolution the trade was thrown open to all ; and at later periods the royal African company received aid from par- liament. These companies furnished negroes to America; and in 1713 the privilege of sup- plying them to the Spanish colonies was se- cured to Englishmen for 30 years, during which 144,000 were to be landed. The French, the Dutch, and other European nations engaged in the traffic ; and the first slaves brought to the old territory of the United States were sold from a Dutch vessel, which landed 20 at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The culture of cotton began the next year. Slavery soon came into existence in nearly every part of North America, and Indians were enslaved as well as negroes. The son of King Philip was sold as a slave. The trade between North America and Africa was carried on with con- siderable vigor. Some of the colonies remon- strated against the trade, but without success, as the mother country encouraged it. In 1776 it was resolved by the continental congress that no more slaves should be imported ; but when the American constitution was formed, in 1788, congress was prohibited from inter- dicting the traffic before 1808, at which time it was abolished. The state of Georgia prohibit- ed the slave trade in 1798. America was thus in advance of other countries in fixing a time for the cessation of a traffic which has been as generally condemned as it has been persistently pursued for four centuries. In England the slave trade was early denounced by individuals, but it was regarded by most men as a perfectly legitimate branch of commerce. The last act of the British legislature regulating the slave trade was passed in 1788, the same year that the first parliamentary movement for the abolition of the trade was made. The Quakers were opposed to slavery and the slave trade from the beginning of their existence as a body, but neither their influence nor their numbers were large. English lawyers were nearly unanimous in their support of the legality of slavery, and the trade in negroes was in va- rious ways encouraged by law. In the It century a sentiment of hostility to the syst of slavery, never altogether unknown since the Christian era, became very common, and was shared by many literary men, philosophers, and statesmen, who labored with zeal for the suppression of the system. Of these, the most noted was Granville Sharp, who exerted him- self for half a century in the emancipation cause ; and it was chiefly through his labors
