Slave breeding in the United States

**Slave breeding** was long a part of slavery. As in other slave countries, its purpose was to make more slaves. Slave breeding became more important in the United States the 19th century when the Atlantic slave trade ended. As with other commodities, scarcity caused the price of slaves to rise. More slaves meant more money for their owners. Pregnancy was encouraged. Many slave masters raped their own slaves to make more slave children. It produced mulatto children. White men who owned slaves would often rape black women to increase the number of people they enslaved without the cost of purchase, and to fill labor shortages caused by the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.

## History

For some states such as Virginia and North Carolina it was an export industry; they sold slaves to places where the price was higher, such as Alabama and Arkansas. Slave breeders favored woman slaves who could have large numbers of children. As with other livestock, breeders tried to improve the health and productivity of slaves. Breeders were approved in slave states because slaves were considered to be less than human. Human rights did not apply to them. They were livestock, like horses or dogs.

## Slaves became things

By the end of the 18th century,  the forced reproduction of enslaved people was a common practice. Some experts suggest that several factors led to  this development. The most important of these was that several laws had been passed, that changed the nature of slaves: they were seen as things, and could be bought and sold as chattel. This no longer was against the religious beliefs and social norms of society. The owner of the slave had all rights. The slave did not have a right of self-determination either to their own person, spouse, or children.

Enslaving people began to assert that slavery was grounded in the Bible. This view was inspired in part by an interpretation of the Genesis passage "And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." (Genesis 9); Ham, son of Noah and father of Canaan, was deemed the antediluvian progenitor of the African people. Some white people used the Bible to justify the economic use of slave labor. The subjugation of the enslaved person was taken as a natural right of the white enslavers. The second-class position of the enslaved person was not limited to the relationship with the enslaver but was to be in relation to all white people. Enslaved people were considered subject to white persons.

## Natural Increase vs. Systematic Breeding

Ned Sublette, co-author of The American Slave Coast, says that enslaved women's ability to have children was crucial to America's growth—not just for labor, but as a kind of wealth. Because there wasn’t enough silver, gold, or reliable paper money, enslaved people and their children acted like savings accounts. Babies born into slavery were seen as interest, helping to back money and credit in an economy built on slavery.

On the other hand, historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman disagreed in their 1974 book Time on the Cross. They said there’s little proof that slave owners regularly forced people to have children just to sell them. They made a distinction between systematic breeding—where slave owners tried to control reproduction to get certain traits—and pronatalist policies, where large families were encouraged through better treatment and rewards. They also argued that when slave owners interfered too much in enslaved people's personal lives, it could actually reduce population growth.