Identifier: negroinamericanh02crom (find matches)
Title: The Negro in American history; men and women eminent in the evolution of the American of African descent
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Cromwell, John W. (John Wesley), b. 1846
Subjects: African Americans -- History African Americans Slavery -- United States
Publisher: Washington, The American Negro academy
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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nes, then regent of Spain, Las Casas lived to regret thepart he played by his fateful suggestion. To supply this labor the Slave Trade, as it became known,was begun. La Bresa, a Flemish favorite of Charles V havingobtained from the king a patent containing an exclusive rightof annually importing four thousand Negroes into America, soldit to some Genoese merchants who first brought into a regularform the commerce for slaves between Africa and America.^Sir John Hawkins made three trips to America from theWest Coast of Africa between 1563 and 1567, taking with himseveral hundred of the natives whom he sold as slaves. QueenElizabeth became a partner in this nefarious traffic. So elatedwas she at its profits that she knighted him, and he most happilyselected for his crest a Negro head and bust with arms tightlypinioned. It was a lucrative business and though it at firstshocked the sensibilities of Christian nations and rulers, they 1 Bancroft, Vol. T. 2 Spanish Conquest of America, Vol. I.
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Biaiidiiio- a Female Slave. DISCOVERY, COLONIZATION, SLAVERY 3 soon reconciled themselves not only to the traffic, but introducedthe servitude as part of the economic system of their depend-encies in America. That it became a fixture after its introduc-tion in these colonies was due to the prerogative of the HomeGovernment rather than to the importunities of the colonists,especially because it was a source of revenue to the Crown. Within twelve years after its settlement, a Dutch man-of-warlanded in September, 1619, a cargo of twenty slaves at James- ^^Ym,-c>town in Virginia. Beginning with this introduction in Virginia slavery graduallymade its way into all the thirteen colonies, and received thesanction of their several legislatures. Contrary to general belief, Negro Slavery in the colonies never existed nor was it origin-ally established by law, but it rested wholly on custom.* Slavery where it existed, being the creature of custom, requiredpositive law to establish or control inegroinamericanh02crom

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