Editing Atlantic slave trade (section)

===United States===
{{Main|Slave trade in the United States|Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States|History of slavery in the United States by state}}
[[File:Advertisement from J.M. Wilson for sale of Maryland and Virginia Negroes.jpg|thumb|Advertisement from [[Jonathan M. Wilson|J. M. Wilson]] for sale of Maryland and Virginia slaves. Maryland and Virginia sold thousands of enslaved people to the [[Deep South]].]]

The birth rate was more than 80 percent higher in the United States because of a natural growth in the slave population and [[Slave breeding in the United States|slave breeding farms]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mintz |first1=Steven |title=Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |website=The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240224234501/https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery |archive-date=24 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Smithers |first1=Gregory |title=Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History |date=2012 |publisher=[[University Press of Florida]] |isbn=978-0-8130-4260-2 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210725061427/https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461 |archive-date=25 July 2021 |access-date=17 January 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland |url=http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |website=The Maryland State Archives |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605182255/http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/pdf/md-slavery-guide-2020.pdf |archive-date=5 June 2024}}</ref> Birth rates were low for the first generation of slaves imported from Africa, but, in the US, may have increased in the 19th century to some 55 per thousand, approaching the biological maximum for human populations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hacker |first1=David |title=From '20. and odd' to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States |journal=[[Slavery and Abolition]] |date=2020 |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=840–855 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2020.1755502 |pmid=33281246 |pmc=7716878}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Withycomb |first1=Shannon |title=Women and Reproduction in the United States during the 19th Century |url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |website=Oxford Research Encyclopedias / American History |date=2019 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.426 |isbn=978-0-19-932917-5 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151117/https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-426 |url-status=live}}</ref>

After the prohibition of the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|trans-atlantic slave trade in 1807]], slaveholders in the [[Deep South]] of the United States needed more slaves to work in the cotton and sugar fields. To fill the demand for more slaves, slave breeding was practiced in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond sold thousands of enslaved people to slaveholders in the Deep South to work the cotton, rice, and sugar plantations. Virginia was known as a "breeder state." A slaveholder in Virginia bragged his slaves produced 6,000 [[children of the plantation|enslaved children]] for sale. About 300,000 to 350,000 enslaved people were sold from Richmond's slave breeding farms.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |title=The Significance of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why it's the wrong place for a baseball stadium |journal=African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter |date=2015 |volume=15 |issue=1 |page=3 |url=https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=adan |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240810183831/https://scholarworks.umass.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/fd3e6c80-e1d7-4065-826b-85645e58c301/content |archive-date=10 August 2024}}</ref> Slave breeding farms and forced reproduction on [[Female slavery in the United States|enslaved young girls and women]] caused reproductive health issues. Enslaved women found ways to resist forced reproduction by causing miscarriages and abortions by taking plants and medicines.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reproduction and Resistance |url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |website=Lowcountry History Digital Initiative |publisher=Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240613202829/http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/resisting-enslavement/reproduction-and-resistance |archive-date=13 June 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Schwartz |first1=Marie Jenkins |title="Good Breeders" |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |access-date=17 January 2024 |magazine=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |date=August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160705/https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/how-enslaved-womens-sexual-health-was-contested-in-the-antebellum-south.html |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slaveholders tried to control enslaved women's reproduction by encouraging them to have relationships with enslaved men. "Some slaveholders took matters into their own hands, however, and paired enslaved men and women together with the intent that they would procreate."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Marks |first1=Katie |title=Exploitation and Resistance, Enslaved Motherhood at the University of Alabama |journal=The Crimson Historical Review |date=2021 |page=54 |url=https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160703/https://crimsonhistorical.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploitation_and_Resistance_Final.pdf |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=West |first1=Shear |last2=Shearer |first2=Erin |title=Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States |journal=[[Women's History Review]] |date=2017 |page=6 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82964048.pdf |archive-date=3 February 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> Enslaved teenage girls gave birth at the ages of fifteen or sixteen years old. Enslaved women gave birth in their early twenties. To meet the demands of slaveholders' needs to birth more slaves, enslaved girls and women had seven or nine children. Enslaved girls and women were forced to give birth to as many slaves as possible. The mortality rate of enslaved mothers and children was high because of poor nutrition, sanitation, lack of medical care, and overwork.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carey |first1=Anthony |title=Sold Down the River Slavery in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley of Alabama and Georgia |date=2011 |publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]] |isbn=9780817317416 |page=178 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160736/https://books.google.com/books?id=bOVtRFum5WcC&dq=an+enslaved+woman+gave+birth+to+20+kids&pg=PA178#v=onepage&q=an%20enslaved%20woman%20gave%20birth%20to%2020%20kids&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Campbell |first1=John |title=Work, Pregnancy, and Infant Mortality among Southern Slaves |journal=[[The Journal of Interdisciplinary History]] |date=1984 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=793–812 |doi=10.2307/203466 |jstor=203466 |pmid=11617354 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |access-date=3 February 2024 |archive-date=3 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203151116/https://www.jstor.org/stable/203466 |url-status=live}}</ref> In the United States a slave's life expectancy was 21 to 22 years, and a black child through the age of 1 to 14 had twice the risk of dying of a white child of the same age.<ref>{{cite web |title=What was Life Like Under Slavery |url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3040 |website=Digital History |access-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223092420/https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3040 |archive-date=23 December 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Slave breeding replaced the demand for enslaved laborers after the decline of the Atlantic slave trade to the United States which caused an increase in the [[Slave trade in the United States|domestic slave trade]]. The sailing of slaves in the domestic slave trade is known as "sold down the river," indicating slaves being sold from [[History of Louisville, Kentucky#"Sold down the river"|Louisville, Kentucky]] which was a slave trading city and supplier of slaves. Louisville, Kentucky, Virginia, and other states in the [[Upland South|Upper South]] supplied slaves to the Deep South carried on boats going down the [[Mississippi River]] to Southern slave markets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |title=The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry |date=2015 |publisher=[[Chicago Review Press]] |isbn=9781613748237 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11 |access-date=23 January 2024 |archive-date=26 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726160706/https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ&q=slave+trade&pg=PT11#v=snippet&q=slave%20trade&f=false |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Fierce |first1=Mildred |title=Slavebreeding in the South's "Peculiar Institution" |url=https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |access-date=17 January 2024 |agency=Our Time Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703062752/https://ourtimepress.com/slavebreeding-in-the-souths-peculiar-institution/ |archive-date=3 July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Kellie |title=The 'Capitalized Womb': A Review of Ned and Constance Sublette's ''The American Slave Coast'' |url=https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |website=African American Intellectual History Society |date=31 March 2016 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240225224735/https://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/ |archive-date=25 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Gandhi |first1=Lakshmi |title=What Does 'Sold Down The River' Really Mean? The Answer Isn't Pretty |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |publisher=[[NPR]] |work=Code Switch |date=27 January 2014 |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726161242/https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/27/265421504/what-does-sold-down-the-river-really-mean-the-answer-isnt-pretty |archive-date=26 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sold Down the River |url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |first1=Leah Preble |last1=Holmes |date=15 April 2018 |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |access-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200706144550/https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sold-down-the-river/ |archive-date=6 July 2020}}</ref> [[New Orleans|New Orleans, Louisiana]] became a major slave market in the United States domestic slave trade after the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. Between 1819 and 1860, 71,000 enslaved people were transported to the [[slave market#North America|New Orleans slave market]] on slave ships that departed from ports in the United States along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans to supply the demand for slaves in the Deep South.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mapping the Coastal Slave Trade |url=https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |website=The Historic New Orleans Collection |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240229165301/https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/purchased-lives/mapping-coastal-slave-trade |archive-date=29 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian Magazine]] |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=29 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240510030022/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-new-orleans-was-center-us-slave-trade-180977532/ |archive-date=10 May 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Gulf of Mexico.png|thumb|The Gulf of Mexico was utilized by privateers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to smuggle enslaved Africans from Cuba.]]

[[Texas]] participated in the illegal slave trade and imported enslaved persons from Cuba to [[Galveston Island]] which was the main illegal slave port in Texas. Texas was part of Mexico from 1821 until 1836, and Cuba continued to supply African slaves to many Latin American countries. After 1821, the smuggling of slaves into Texas increased because of slaveholders' demand for additional enslaved labor. Galveston Island is located in the Gulf of Mexico and is 800 miles away from the slave ports in Cuba and between 60 and 70 miles away from the Louisiana border. Smugglers utilized these geographic locations to their advantage and illegally imported enslaved Africans from Cuba and made a profit by selling Africans to slaveholders in Texas and Louisiana. For example, French pirate and privateer [[Jean Lafitte]], established a colony on Galveston Island in 1817 and participated in privateering for four years and made a profit by smuggling in slaves and sold over 200 Africans to slaveholders in the United States. Lafitte used intermediaries such as the Bowie brothers, John, Resin, and James who contracted with slave traders and planters from the United States who had an interest in buying slaves. From 1818 to 1820, Lafitte and the Bowie brothers made $65,000 smuggling Africans into the Southern states and selling them to planters in Louisiana and Mississippi.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Robbins |first1=Fred |title=The Origin and Development of the African Slave Trade in Galveston, Texas, and Surrounding Areas from 1816 to 1836 |journal=[[East Texas Historical Journal]] |date=1971 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=154–156 |url=https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1231&context=ethj |access-date=9 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180628015504/https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1231&context=ethj |archive-date=28 June 2018}}</ref>

Historian Ernest Obadele-Starks estimated that after 1807 the number of enslaved Africans smuggled into the United States annually averaged as low as 3,500. New Orleans, Louisiana and Florida were centers for the illegal importation of slaves in the United States because of their close proximity to Cuba and the other Caribbean islands that provided Southern states enslaved labor.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Head |first1=David |title=Slave Smuggling by Foreign Privateers: The Illegal Slave Trade and the Geopolitics of the Early Republic |journal=[[Journal of the Early Republic]] |date=2013 |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=438–439 |doi=10.1353/jer.2013.0061 |jstor=24487048 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |access-date=7 March 2024 |archive-date=18 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518130357/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487048 |url-status=live}}</ref>