A minor correction to James Brother's otherwise excellent post:

Chattel slavery (that is, plantation slavery) was, on the whole, sufficiently brutal that slave populations did not reproduce themselves.  As a statement about the "plantation complex" as a whole, this is undeniably true.  But of course, global assertions break down when we look at particular cases.  

While it is true that, for most of the world, plantation slavery required fresh importation of slaves from Africa in order to remain viable, this is not the case for plantation slavery in the late 18th and 19th century United States.  There, for a variety of reasons, the slave population did reproduce itself.  Americans imported very roughly about 350,000 slaves legally prior to 1808, and roughly another 50,000 illegally between 1808 and 1865.  As we know, these numbers expanded dramatically through natural reproduction, so that by 1865, at the time of emancipation, several millions of slaves lived in the United States.

As a consequence, emancipation in the United States did not follow straightforwardly from British and American efforts to stop the importation of slaves by embargo in the 19th century.

None of which violates the spirit of the argument James Brothers makes--which strikes me as quite correct.  Nat Turner's insurrection matters--but it matters far more for the consequences it produced in Virginia politics narrowly, and in United States politics more broadly.  The politics of slavery and anti-slavery most certainly were effected by slave insurrections--and it is those politics, or perhaps more aptly the failure of those politics, which produced the war that culminated in the 13th Amendment.  

All best,
Kevin   

>And slavery was ended not by homicidal maniacs like Nat Turner, but by  
>the British and US Navy who imposed an embargo of the W. African coast  
>(at the urging of abolitionists). It continued unabated in E Africa  
>until it became European colonies. And continues to this day in some  
>interior parts of Africa and de facto in parts of Asia, including the  
>Middle East. It was only outlawed in much of the Middle East in the  
>last 40 years.

Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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