Slavery

The institution of slavery in what was to become the United States was established in seventeenth century Virginia. Small units of land that were privately owned produced harvests of crops such as tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and cotton. These crops were very labor intensive. The European immigrants who had come to America to start their own farms were very reluctant to work for anyone. Convicts had been sent from Europe as a labor force but …

…had the sole burden of supervising house slaves, making clothing, planting vegetable gardens, raising children and entertaining guests. All this effort was expended in the shadows of their husbands' infidelities as evidenced by the mulatto children that surrounded them. Despite these hardships these women were staunch defenders of slavery and readily sided with the South during the civil war because they knew the source of their wealth was directly tied to the institution of slavery.