Publisher's Synopsis
In the year 1619, memorable in the history of the United States, a Dutch trading vessel carried to the colonists of Virginia twenty Negroes from the West Indies and sold them as slaves, thus laying the foundation of slave society in the American colonies. In the seventeenth century slavery made but little progress in these parts of America, and during that whole period not more than twenty-five thousand slaves were brought to the colonies to work in the tobacco and rice fields of the South or to serve as maids, butlers, and coachmen in the North. The eighteenth century, however, saw a rapid increase in slavery, until the census of 1790, much to the surprise of most observers, showed a slave population of 679,679 living in every State and territory of the country except Massachusetts and Maine.
