Slavery in the colonial history of the United States

The institution of slavery in the colonies of British America developed through a combination of factors, but primarily from a boom in industrialized agriculture and the early existence of large slave labor populations on nearby European-colonized Caribbean islands. Before the 1650s, however, African-based industrial slavery had not developed within the colonies. During this time, Native Americans were the main target for indentured service (a form of enslavement) by British American colonists.

By the 1650s, several Southern colonies were known to have begun enslaving both local Native Americans and African Americans for work on industrial plantations. As indigenous peoples suffered massive population losses due to imported diseases, Europeans turned to the importation of African slaves, initially, from European-owned West Indies (Caribbean) sugar plantations, primarily to work on tobacco plantations.

Ancient methods of European slavery and racist ideologies were handed down to the British American colonies shortly after agriculture became industrialized in the South. Most African American colonists eventually succumbed to slavery and were legally defined by hereditary traits as chattels of property.

There was a period of at least 60 years during which industrialized slavery was mostly absent from the colonies. The Roanoke Colony was the first English colony based in America. The colony was established on a Virginia Island in 1587 by around 112 white colonists. The entire colony is believed to have died of famine or by the hands of Native American tribes. The Jamestown Colony was the second English colony, founded in 1606 by around 214 white colonists. The first documented Africans to arrive in America first lived in Jamestown and were transported on the frigate known as the White Lion in August 1619. The two colonists are described in the 1624 census as an African man and woman named Antoney and Isabella.

Most white colonists were indentured laborers who signed away their freedom to an English investment company known as the Virginia Company. Many were escaping famine and debt in Europe and paid their way to the "New World" by entering into contracted servitude for a paid ticket to America. Known as the Headright System, new colonists were promised 50 acres (0.20 km2) in return for years of indentured labor. None of the early colonists were of the same economic class as European slave owners and never owned slaves. Years after living as colonists, few were able to fully pay their debt and, as a result, never received their promised plot of land. The main barrier was a lack of resources in the colonies and corruption within the Virginia Company. Early colonists were unsuccessful in finding the anticipated gold and proper soil to grow European crops. To cover its losses, originally agreed-upon periods of indentured servitude were often fraudulently extended by the Virginia Company for years without justification. Most early colonists survived by eating native plants and rodents. Over half the population of Jamestown perished from starvation in 1618, still in debt to the Virginia Company. The one crop appearing to be most successful for colonists was tobacco. In 1614, John Rolfe began to raise the tobacco seeds he carried from Bermuda to Jamestown. Over the next decade, tobacco became the colonies' first cash crop and likely opened the door to African American slavery within some colonies in later decades, mainly in regions where tobacco grew successfully.

Estimates suggest, there were under 100 African American colonists, or less than 2 percent of the population, through the 1650s. Up until then, early colonists of African descent came to the colonies mainly under the same Headright System as white colonists and worked alongside their white counterparts as indentured laborers for the Virginia Company. However, African American indentured servants suffered a higher level of mis-treatment than whites and only a handful escaped the Virginia Company's corruption to briefly experience freedom before the Revolutionary War. There are accounts of African American colonists, freed from the Headright System, who later owned African American slaves or worked as slave traders. Anthony Johnson is one of the more well-known accounts of this phenomenon.

By the Revolutionary War, most Southern colonies had developed large slave-based plantation systems, largely based on British-taught methods of slavery. A prohibition on the importation of new slaves from the Caribbean, between 1776 to 1808, had little effect on American slavery, as it was already well established in the South. Slavery in the Northern colonies—which did not have the warm climates and ideal conditions for plantations to exist—primarily took the form of domestic labor, including other forms of unpaid work alongside non-enslaved counterparts. The American Revolution led to the first abolition laws in the Americas, although the institution of chattel slavery would continue to exist and expand across the Southern United States until finally being abolished at the time of the American Civil War in 1865.