Don Wildman

This is the cash crop of Jamestown at that time.

That, of course, will spread far and wide in different kinds of efforts, like in rice and, of course, in cotton later on.

This begins what becomes the plantation system of production through the 1600s, spreading upwards to the Chesapeake.

The rise of rice, as I say, down in South Carolina depends on the landscape and the geography.

Sullivan's Island in particular was interesting as a tiny quarantine station in the Charleston Harbor, which is a huge harbor and ideal for so much.

This was a point of entry for 40 to 50 percent of enslaved Africans brought to North America during that period, I suppose.

It was likened to an Ellis Island of sorts.

On a typical plantation in this early period, can you describe these enslaved folks, how they would be experiencing this?

How did they live?

What was the experience like?

And at the same time, of course, we can't forget that this was happening up north as well in a whole different kind of way, not on the industrial level, I suppose, but more on a family farm kind of basis.

Is that fair to say?

One needs to build the enslavement story in America.

You can't just accept it, wrote certainly from the movies.

You can't take that sort of naive view of this.

And I'm sure this is what you're teaching in your class, that there was a very progressive systemic process.

path that this took over these periods of time that built with the size of the agriculture that was being cultivated, the industry that was being built.

And so this enslavement happens very systemically and it creates a marketplace, which is where it gets so ugly and so vile, really.

So we'll take a short break.

And when we come back, we'll talk about the legal development surrounding slavery in this period.