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Slavery And The American Civil War

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Slavery has been a part of the United States since the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of crops (Slavery in America, 2014, p. 1). Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the fiscal grounds of the new nation (Slavery in America, 2014, p. 1). By the mid-1800s, the westward expansion, along with the abolition movement in the North, provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the gory American Civil War from 1861-1865 (Slavery, 2014, p. 1). Many masters took sexual liberties with slave women, and rewarded obedient slave behavior with favors, while rebellious slaves were brutally punished (Slavery in America, 2014, p. 1). This slavery, although abolished with the ending of the Civil War, continues today. This modern form of slavery, known as human trafficking, poses as a threat to the United States today. Modern slavery can involve using children in the military, whether as combatants, porters, cooks or for other jobs, however, it is often undertaken for purposes of sexual or labor exploitation (New Estimate, 2013, p. 8; Pearson, 2014, p. 363). Targets of this act aren’t based on race, age, or ethnicity but on who are more likely to fall for the trafficker’s false presentation of life with them. The most common form of this human trafficking is for sex slavery, or human sex

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