Five Steps from Africa to Slavery: Free Labor Before the Civil War

“Will I sell the heart of another man? Indeed, if the profit is sufficient.” It is sickening to think that any person could answer as such, and yet these heinous words rested on the tongues of many Americans and Africans alike during the 18th century. Selfishness often promises monetary rewards, so when Europeans offered payment to African traders for their criminals and prisoners the traders, of course, accepted. The British colonies, just beginning to spread out and blossom into ripe plantations, were in dire need of large amounts of cheap labor. Slavery, an institution that had been used by the Spanish and French for decades prior, seemed like an easy solution. Take a human, break him, and make him do your work for free until he dies or can be sold for a good price: The British colonies could see nothing but profit flowing from the idea of free labor; thus millions of men and women faced the devastation of the journey from Africa.

The trek began, not through a horrifying, strange new world; but through Africa, their home. Slowly, however, the familiar scenery faded into the shadows of a land left behind, and distance made their homeland seem surreal. It was in their minds that the breakdown of their hearts began. They walked in chains for hundreds of miles, while foreign diseases lurked invisibly in the air around them and hurried traders slaughtered the slow-paced to meet deadlines. Be it by death or life in the unknown, each breaking heart knew he would never return home.

For weeks the land unfurled and unfurled its surreal terror, showing them an Africa they had never fathomed. At last, though, the ocean blocked the trail, and their wandering ended. Here at the coast they found home in a dank prison cell. After being branded and graded by European traders, the slaves were able to seek out their own country men. In each other they found comfort in shared language and memories of the life they used to know. They found a chance to heal their hearts, if only a little bit.

These days, too, ended. The slaves took another step forward into the unknown. The Middle Passage was perhaps the worst aspect of the road towards slavery, and the best chance the traders had to completely shatter the will of their cargo. Bound together and packed into small, stifling, and disease-ridden compartments, the slaves were fed only enough to keep them alive. European traders made sure to keep each slave oppressed by the burden of his own shame: Men and women alike were kept naked, like animals, and consistently suffered sexual abuse from the crew. Africa was nothing but a memory – and perhaps a distorted memory, at that, as images from the unearthly trek lay heavy in their minds. With no home and no control and ethereal recollections of the previous horrors of the past few months, the slaves turned to each other. Creating new languages out of what bits they understood of the men and women around them, each heart clung to what comfort and familiarity it could find.

The men and women who survived the trip were auctioned off. The traders received their money, of course, for selling broken humans as cheap workers to the colonists. Colonists, confident that they had received humans – or perhaps animals – with completely destroyed hearts, eagerly paid. The slaves, though, held to their memories as they were dispersed to various plantations around the New World. The profit for their free labor was indeed great, but they knew the colonists had been swindled. No one in America received a broken, willing human; every slave, in his heart, remembered his home and determined, in his own way, to be free again someday.