Wherever tobacco, sugar, or short stable cotton grew, slaves worked in large groups or gangs under the strict supervision of white overseers or black drivers from dawn to dusk. Close supervision meant less autonomy and less free time than slaves used in other industries or in growing other crops.
Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) was an anti-slavery advocate and Quaker educator who taught free blacks in Philadelphia. As an ardent abolitionist, Benezet wrote and published anti-slavery pamphlets and encouraged his fellow Quakers to ban slavery from their community.
Venture Smith (1729–1805) was a former slave who, in 1798, published his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself. Smith’s narrative recounted his capture and enslavement, and the hard work and ingenuity he employed in his journey to freedom. Smith lived as a slave for twenty-eight years. By 1765, he had saved enough money to buy his own freedom, and he later purchased freedom for...
Denmark Vesey (ca. 1767–1822) was a former slave who planned a major insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. Vesey, who may have been born in Africa, purchased his freedom after winning the lottery in 1799. Vesey spent more than twenty years living as a free man and working as a carpenter in Charleston. Around 1817 or 1818, Vesey began planning a major uprising of thousands of slaves and free blacks. The insurrection was planned for July 14, 1822, but before it could be carried out, a slave Vesey had tried to recruit informed...
A slave his entire life, Jupiter Hammon (1711–ca. 1806) became the first African American writer to be published in the United States with his 1760 “An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York.”
Absalom Jones (1746–1818) was born into slavery but with his master’s permission attended a Quaker school in Philadelphia. By 1784, Jones had purchased freedom for himself and his family. Jones soon became a leader in the African American community and in 1787 was a founder of the Free African Society. In 1794 he founded St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church. Ten years later he became the first black priest ordained in the Episcopalian Church. Jones was an active abolitionist, petitioning Congress and writing about the wrongs of slavery. In...
![A view of Savanah [sic] as it stood the 29th of March, 1734, engraving by Pierre](http://gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/aggregate-208x148/content-images/01273v.jpg "A view of Savanah [sic] as it stood the 29th of March, 1734, engraving by Pierre Fourdrinier after a drawing by Peter Gordon, c. 1735. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)")
Within ten years of the first North American settlements, Europeans began transporting captured Africans to the colonies as slaves. Imagine the thoughts and fears of an...
