Slavery in the US: a thorny road to democracy

The history of mankind knows many tragic and gloomy moments. On the road to progress and enlightenment, almost all races resorted to such an eerie form of social development as slavery. The United States, too, did not escape this gloomy stage in its event-rich history. Since its inception, slavery in the United States has become an integral part and norm of American life.

Perhaps the most strange form of slavery in history has emerged in the United States. Formed in the depths of American capitalism, slavery reflected its formation in the agrarian sector of the economy of the young country. American planters, because of the extreme scarcity of the labor market, had to resort to the exploitation of black slaves.

The use of slave labor left an indelible imprint on the plantation bourgeoisie, turning it, perhaps, into the strangest and most unusual class of slaveholders in the history of the planet. American planters of that time are an unimaginable and utterly bizarre synthesis of typically capitalist and slave-owning features.

Slavery in the United States is a complex set of socio-economic, civil-legal, ideological, racial and socio-political problems, the roots of which lie in the depths of American history. The emergence of this form of social development is primarily due to the presence in the territory of North America of the vast land areas, which created the most favorable conditions for the development of the agrarian economy and its movement along the path of free enterprise.

No wonder it was here that all the prerequisites for the formation of such a liberal form of slavery as patriarchal slavery, in which black slaves were considered simply disenfranchised members of the white plantation families, were formed. This mainly applies to the northern states. In the south the situation was somewhat different. Classical slavery thrived here. On the eve of the outbreak of the civil war that put an end to this form of social development, 89% of black slaves lived in the south.

The last state to ratify the abolition of slavery was the southern state, the Mississippi. Plantation slavery in the US, being a commercially viable enterprise that brought fabulous incomes to the rising class of American capitalists, existed for almost two and a half centuries and caused sharp contradictions in the economic and political spheres between the North American and southern states. Slavery in the US served not only to enrich and develop the agrarian economy, but also to strengthen the political and socio-social influence of large slave-owning planters.

And it all started with the Dutch slavers. Somewhat later British shipowners also joined this profitable business. The first Dutch ship with "live goods" moored to the coast of the North American continent in the late summer of 1619. He brought twenty black slaves, who were instantly bought by wealthy white colonists. Since that moment, announcements on the sale of "live goods" have regularly appeared in port cities and towns. Until finally, in 1863, the Declaration of Independence was not adopted , where, in particular, it was mentioned the inadmissibility of the use of slave labor.