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Essay on The Anti-Slavery Struggle and Black Methodism
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of slavery and how it split the early American Methodist church and the growth of the black Methodist church as a result of this split.
America's first slaves, about 20 blacks, arrived in 1619 as "permanently indentured servants." As "indentured servants" the new residents created little difficulty throughout the 1600s. Many white colonists obtained passage to America by coming as indentured servants, thus making it acceptable to employ both Caucasians and Negroes as such.
Slavery quickly became important to southern agriculture. Southern plantations grew three major crops: tobacco, rice and indigo. Indigo comes from the inner core of a fibrous stalk. Planters soaked the stalks for at least two weeks to extract a rich blue dye from the pith. The British textile industry prized the dye and offered a bonus for every pound produced. Most planters hated the smelly unpleasant work with the rotted stalks so they forced slaves to handle it. In time the indigo trade depended entirely on slave labor.
Cotton was not King during the 1700s. Good American long staple cotton grew only on Sea Islands off the Georgia coast. Manual laborers easily removed seeds from long staple cotton making it highly desirable. Mainland planters only grew uneconomical short staple cotton. Its tighter bolls made seed removal difficult and workers usually tore out fibers trying to get at the seeds. When "Yankee" Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, short staple cotton stock shot up rapidly. The gin made seed removal easy without damaging the fibers. Whitney's invention made cotton the south's major cash crop. Planters, those who owned at least 20 slaves, used slave labor to plant, care for, harvest and prepare the cotton crop for shipping. By the time cotton planting moved into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and east Texas southerners viewed slavery as essential......
