Were there blacks in the colonies that were not slaves during and before the Revolutionary War?

However, colonists began to see indentured servant as too costly, and in 1619, Dutch traders brought the first African slaves to Jamestown. The first enslaved Africans arrived in what is now the United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526. On October 18, 1526, Ayllón died and the colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans.

14 Many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped enslaved Africans behind in what is now South Carolina. In addition to being the first instance of enslaved Africans in the United States, San Miguel de Guadalpe was also the first documented slave rebellion on North American soil. In 1565, the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida, founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés became the first permanent European settlement in North America, and included an unknown number of free and enslaved Africans that were part of this colonial expedition.

Until the early 18th century, enslaved Africans were difficult to acquire in the colonies that became the United States, as most were sold in the West Indies. One of the first major establishments of African slavery in these colonies occurred with the founding of Charles Town and South Carolina in 1670. The colony was founded mainly by planters from the overpopulated sugar island colony of Barbados, who brought relatively large numbers of African slaves from that island.

For several decades it was still difficult to acquire enslaved Africans north of the Caribbean. To meet labor needs, colonists had practiced Indian slavery for some time. The Carolinians transformed the Indian slave trade during the late 17th and early 18th centuries by treating slaves as a trade commodity to be exported, mainly to the West Indies.

Alan Gallay estimates that between 1670 and 1715, between 24,000 and 51,000 Indian slaves were exported from South Carolina—much more than the number of Africans imported to the colonies of the future United States during the same period. The first Africans to be brought to English North America landed in Virginia in 1619. These individuals appear to have been treated as indentured servants, and a significant number of enslaved Africans even won their freedom through fulfilling a work contract or for converting to Christianity.

18 Some successful free people of color, such as Anthony Johnson, acquired slaves or indentured servants themselves. To many historians, notably Edmund Morgan, this evidence suggests that racial attitudes were much more flexible in 17th century Virginia than they would subsequently become. 19 A 1625 census recorded 23 Africans in Virginia.

In 1649 there were 300, and in 1690 there were 950. Slaves, African and indigenous, were a smaller part of the New England economy and a smaller fraction of the population, but they were present. 21 The Puritans codified slavery in 1641.

The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation off eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders to New Amsterdam (present day New York City), capital of the nascent province of New Netherland,23 which later expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Bergen (in today's New Jersey). Later slaves were held privately by the settlers to the area. 2425 Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact.

Admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers.

When the colony fell, the company freed all its slaves, establishing early on a nucleus of free negros. The barriers of slavery hardened in the second half of the 17th century, and imported Africans' prospects grew increasingly dim. By 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant, John Punch, to slavery.