Throughout the ages, mankind has been enslaved, both willingly and involuntarily. After the Barbary Pirates of the North African enslaved tens of thousands of Christians, King Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, took action.
      He sailed to Tunis to defeat the Arab pirates and free their Christian captives. Curiously, at the same time he sanctioned the African slave trade by European nation-states.
      The first Africans taken into captivity by European slave traders were from the Mandingo tribes that lived along the Niger River in Africa. In fact, the word Negro came from the Portuguese translation of the word Niger.
      Villeinage, a largely unreported source of involuntary manpower, consisted of Scotsmen taken captive on the field of battles of Darwen, Dunbar and Worcester which were sent to the new colonies as involuntary indentured servants.
      In 1672, the Royal African Company was granted exclusive rights to the American and West Indies slave trade. In exchange, the Kings of England Spain were each to receive one-quarter of the profits from this very lucrative business.
      More than 40 slave castles were built on the West African coastline, from Fort Coromantine in Senegal to Elmina in Ghana to Sierra Leones Bunce Island. The first two British colonies in North America were by this time well established.
      The first group, the Company of Adventurers of the City of London, settled in what is now Virginia. The second group, the Plymouth Adventurers, settled in what is now Massachusetts.
      The first delivery of slaves to America occurred on the banks of the James River in August of 1619, when a Dutch Man-Of-War landed at Jamestown and unloaded their cargo, which included 20 African slaves.
      Historian Marcius Willson wrote that Virginia’s first settlers were “gentlemen of fortune and persons of no occupation, mostly of idle and dissolute habitprofligate and disorderly persons,” who had been sent off to escape a worse destiny at home.
      Recognizing the state of affairs in Virginia, the British Lords Commissioners wrote, “The colonists could not possibly subsist without an adequate supply of slaves. Whites were to be considered indentured servants while blacks were to be considered slaves for life.”
      By 1775, there were one-half million slaves in the new American nation: 25,000 in New England; 50,000 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and more than 425,000 in the Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia
      The DeWolf family of Rhode Island sent out at least 88 slave ships to Africa between 1784 and 1807. Historian Samuel Hawkins declared, Rhode Island enslaved more Africans than any other colony.
      On the eve of the Civil War, the three largest slaveholders in the United States in 1860 were: J. Ward, SC, 1,130 slaves; S. Duncan, Miss., 858 slaves; and J. Burnside, Lou.753 slaves. The largest slaveholder in Georgia was J. Butler, Ga., with 505 slaves.