American history: Slavery in the American South_美文

American history: Slavery in the American South

One example is the famous American diplomat, inventor and businessman Benjamin Franklin. He owned slaves for thirty years and sold them at his general store. But his ideas about slavery changed during his long life. Benjamin Franklin started the first schools to teach blacks and later argued for their freedom.

Slavery did not become a force in the northern colonies mainly because of economic reasons. Cold weather and poor soil could not support such a farm economy as was found in the South. As a result, the North came to depend on manufacturing and trade.

Trade was the way colonists got the English goods they needed. It was also the way to earn money by selling products found in the New World. New England became a center for such trade across the seas. The people who lived there became shipbuilders so they could send the products to England. They used local wood to build the ships. They also sold wood and wood products. They became businessmen carrying goods around the world.

The New England shipbuilding towns near the Atlantic Ocean grew quickly as a result. The largest of these towns was Boston, Massachusetts. By seventeen twenty, it had more than ten thousand people. Only two towns in England were larger: London and Bristol.

More than twenty-five percent of the men in Boston had invested in shipping or worked in it. Ship captains and businessmen held most of the public offices.

The American colonies traded goods such as whale oil, ginger, iron, wood, and rum, an alcoholic drink made from sugarcane. Ships carried these goods from the New England colonies to Africa. There, they were traded for black Africans who became slaves in the American colonies.