American Black slavery was not the result of a single overriding factor, but was the result of many and various factors. The institution of slavery itself probably arose at an early period of the world’s history out of the accident of capture in war. In the epic poems of the ancient Greek writer, Homer, slavery is considered the ordinary destiny of prisoners of war. In modern times, the commercial expansion of Portugal in the mid-fifteenth century was the start of the African slave trade. Spain, Great Britain, France, Holland, Denmark and the American colonies entered the slave trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The slave market was the Western European countries and their colonies in America.

The first Blacks landed at Jamestown in 1619. Their status was not that of slaves but of limited servitude. Statutory …