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The Plantation, ca. 1825, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This painting by an unknown artist depicts fields for cultivating cash crops, a ship for exporting goods, and a large mansion, but enslaved laborers are notably absent from this representation of plantation life. The role of slavery in producing plantation wealth is often erased or romanticized in American popular culture, from during the time of slaveryinto the present.

Enslaved laborers working in tobacco sheds on a colonial tobacco plantation, 1670.

Images of punishment under slavery, from Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself, 1849, courtesy of Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

James Edward Oglethorpe, painting by Alfred Edmund Dyer, ca. 1735-1736, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London, England. James Oglethorpe, the first governor of Georgia, established this colony as an egalitarian settlement for the worthy poor from England. At that time, Georgia was the only North American colony where slavery was prohibited, before Georgia leaders overturned the ban in 1749.

African burial ground, Manhattan, New York, ca. 1700s. The African Burial Ground National Monument currently preserves this site containing the remains of more than 400 enslaved and free Africans buried during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in New York City. Slavery was generally more prevalent and politically supported in New York City than other northern cities such as Philadelphia and Boston.

Map of African American populations in the thirteen English colonies that later became the United States, seventeenth through eighteenth centuries (modern state boundaries shown), by Michael Siegel, 2005, courtesy of Routledge Cartography.

Former site of Fort Mose, Fort Mose Historic State Park, photograph, St. Augustine, Florida, 2008. Escaped slaves from Carolina and Georgia were recognized as free in Spanish Florida, as a military tactic by the Spanish to destabilize the English plantation economy. Free Africans were often taken into the Spanish militia, at sites such as the Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé fort north of St. Augustine (also known as Fort Mose), which was established in 1738 by the colonial governor, Manuel de Montiano. The military leader at the fort was a Creole man of African origin, who was baptized as Francisco Menendez by the Spanish.

A map depicting European occupation of North America in 1702, made in 2010. Areas that are a solid color represent approximate areas of occupation, rather than officially claimed lands, which were generally much larger. Areas with conflicting claims are depicted with color gradation, and may or may not be occupied by either side. Many of these land claims also intersect lands claimed by American Indians, which are not shown.

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Watercolor painting of southeastern American Indians and an African child, Alexander De Batz, French Louisiana, 1735.

Drayton Hall, a former plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, courtesy of Jane Aldrich, 2005.

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