NOT TREATED AS EQUALS As America was being formed as a new nation still under British control, people strived to make their way prosperously in the new land. Labors were needed clear and farm the earth; originally those labors were indentured servants but as life improved in England less people were willing to make the sacrifice. Therefore, a new labor source was needed; people kidnapped were either kidnapped or bought as slaves in Africa then brought to the Americas or Caribbean Islands to work as labors. America fought for her independence from Britain and formed a new nation, the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence was written during that time and states that “all men are created equal,” but not all men were treated …show more content…
The Africans had prior knowledge in the agricultural methods of both of these crops and were beneficial to the Europeans who were just starting the agricultural process in America. Olaudah Equiano, a former slave born in Africa, tells of his own experience of being kidnapped as a young boy and how the slaves were treated more like animals than human beings in his autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. After being sold multiple times to various African families, Olaudah was then taken to the coast and loaded on a slave ship bound for the white people’s country. Once on the slave ship, the Africans were chained together on deck or taken down to the holds below where they were kept in unsanitary conditions, with little food or water (Equiano, 20-22). Numerous Africans would rather have died than to be sold and enslaved to the white Europeans. For instance, “we had about 12 negroes did willfully drown themselves, and other starv’d themselves to death; for ‘tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again” (Phillips, 1). Slaves were regarded as an inferior race, property at the disposal of their masters and