Enormous changes swept through nearly every aspect of American society in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, and the institution of slavery was no exception to this rule. Before the Revolution, slavery existed in every American colony. The growing settler population was founded and maintained on notions of inequality, in which indentured servants and slaves provided the labor necessary for the development of a predominantly agricultural economy and the settlement of an ever-shrinking frontier. First- and second-generation whites began to equate race and servitude as white indentured servitude declined and black slaves came to represent the primary source of forced labor in the Americas. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many blacks and whites first negotiated the terms of slavery: new slaveholders sought to define the status of slaves and create a viable workforce from individuals unfamiliar with the language, land or the expectations of their countries. custodians; the new slaves, still intimately tied to their native language and culture, struggled to understand the new status imposed on them in a foreign land. Because each group viewed the other as hostile foreigners, dehumanization and brutality were commonly employed by the new masters to conform African behavior to their expectations and needs. After the American Revolution, slavery underwent significant transformations along with broader changes affecting the nation's political, economic, and religious structure. The spirit of freedom with which the revolution was fought gave pause to whites who had begun to take their slave status for granted and elicited different responses in the North and the South. Gradual emancipation in... middle of paper... different from that of the colonial years: it was a distinctively Southern institution, rooted in the accepted tradition of past generations, bringing masters and slaves into closer contact, and arousing radical opposition in the North for the first time. In other senses, antebellum slavery was the product of its previous incarnation, shaped and transformed by the political, economic, and religious revolutions of the interwar years, just as the rest of society was. By 1861 an even greater revolution would be needed to form a society free from its yoke. Works consulted Douglas, Frederick. An account of the life of an American slave, written by himself. New York: Signet, 1968. Ginzberg, Lori D. Women in Antebellum Reform. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2000. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.