How did slavery start in the us and why did slavery continue throughout?

Answer 1

Slavery began in the United States with the tradition of indentured servitude. People would sign up with a patron to be brought to America, free of charge, and then would agree to work off the price of that ticket for a certain amount of years. Once fewer people came to America as indentured servants, the available manual labor workforce dwindled and the farming industry turned to using African slaves for this purpose. The industry and economy of the South especially grew to depend on slaves, which is why it continued in the South long after the practice stopped in the North.

Answer 2

The Colonial South was populated by younger sons who immigrated from England who were disinherited by the ancient tradition of primogeniture, inheritance of estates by the eldest son. Those younger sons sought to recreate the aristocratic lifestyle they remembered from home. The only way to do that was to acquire large tracts of land and establish "estates" (i.e., plantations) that could support a life of aristocratic leisure that mirrored aristocratic life at home in England. The trouble was they didn't have the cash to fund their estates and the only option was to establish a system of slave labor.

That need for cheap labor was a major factor in the emergence of slavery in the American South. The incomes of the wealthy plantation owners depended the forced labor that was performed by enslaved men, women and children. The cotton and tobacco economies in place at the time would have collapsed without the benefit of unpaid labor. Owners could pay their slaves nothing and yet reap the benefits of their labor. There were ongoing profits made by selling their children.

Slavery supported many business interests besides plantations. There were profitable slave trade networks that included the procuring, transporting, selling and financing of slaves.