Why was slavery important to the 13 colonies?

Answer 1

One perspective:Slavery was important to the 13 colonies because, essentially, it allowed free labor to those who practiced slavery. Think of it this way: you're a colonist, you're trying to start a farm to earn a living. It's difficult enough to find land, cultivate it, irrigate it, buy seed, plant crops, tend them, harvest them, take it to market and then start over again. If you could, essentially, have other human beings do a huge amount of the hardest work for you for free you would save an enormous amount of money. It's like starting a business with employees who take no pay: the thousands of dollars you would have spent on their salaries and benefits you can put straight into profit (your wallet). In this way, the 13 colonies gave themselves enormous advantage because it is hard enough to survive on a new continent (America) away from the help of your homeland (England), so if you were able to run successful farms without having to pay your labor force (slaves) you would make much more money and be much more successful. As unpleasant as it might be to accept, a good deal of the success enjoyed by early America was made possible by practicing slavery. That's the very reason why it lasted so long and why so much of the country was reluctant to do away with the practice. The historical view:The short, nonspeculative answer is that Colonial farmers and manufacturers (such as they were) did not have tractors and other machines to do the work. The Industrial Revolution had not fired up at that time, so machines were not plentiful.

The idea that slavery was in any way "free" is a ludicrous supposition. In 1861, immediately before the Civil War, the price of the average slave in the south was in the neighborhood of $1,000.00. To translate that into some sort of context, what cost $1,000 in 1861 equals in excess of $25,000 today. The average yearly pay in 1861 was about half the cost of the average slave. When the Civil War errupted, the Union Army was paying $150 each for horses. That increased to about $200 later in the war when horses were more scarce. In addition to the actual purchase cost, there was feeding, housing, health care, and additional costs of keeping slaves (It may seem a cras comparison, but one does not purchase a Mercedes to enter it into a demolition derby. Primary source material -- not popular fiction or agenda grinding media -- shows that the average slave enjoyed a higher standard of living than the common subsistence farmer during the same time.). Slavery was the industry of wealthy men, NOT the common farmer.

No question, slavery was a heinous institution, as it continues to be (there are currently approximately 3 million people incarcerated in the US who by law can be and are used as slave labor--which is also not free), so there is no need to vilify it more than it really should be.

Answer 2

The importance of the thirteen colonies is to expand the England country and settle in the new land for religious freedom.