Question

Explain the pragmatic as well as the psychological reasons that led white American colonists of the seventeenth century to transform the black servant from a human being to a piece of chattel property.

Answer 1

Why does it need explanation? Slavery existed from ancient times. The prosperity of Athens and Rome rested on the labor of slaves. Furthemore, white Europeans did not directly enslave African blacks -- they just bought black Africans who had already been enslaved by other black Africans. It has been a pernicious institution going back into pre-history. Biblically, the Jews were slaves of Pharaoh. Slaves built the Pyramids. Sheherezade was a slave of Haroun al-Rashid. Tunisian galley raiders were rowed by slaves chained to the oars (you can guess what happened when the boat sank).

There was nothing at all odd about 17th century Americans owning slaves, a good half of the world did so, too. What was unusual about the United States is that slavery persisted all the way into the 19th century, about 150 years longer than it did in the rest of the Western world, until ended by the Civil War.

Apparently slave-owning is pretty much built into human nature, unfortunately. It's an institution that has arisen spontaneously in all known major societies, everywhere, all across history. The interesting question is -- why was it purged in the Western world in the late 17th and 18th century, and why did that process take longer in the US? How were the English, French et cetera able to rise to a higher level of civilization, and what took the Americans longer?