The history of sexual slavery in the United States is the history of slavery for the purpose of sexual exploitation as it exists in the United States. It is contended by some that as early as the s Christopher Columbus had established trade in sex slaves on Hispaniola , which included sex slaves as young as 9.
However, others consider this contention to have arisen from a misreading of primary documents. Columbus does mention the selling of slaves, but as atrocities of a rebelling faction. He continues with this comment, "I declare solemnly that a great number of men have been to the Indies, who did not deserve baptism in the eyes of God or men, and who are now returning thither.
Because of the power relationships at work, slave women in the United States were at high risk for rape and sexual abuse. Many slaves fought back against sexual attacks, and some died resisting. Others carried psychological and physical scars from the attacks. Wealthy planter widowers, notably such as John Wayles and his son-in-law Thomas Jefferson , took slave women as concubines ; each had six children with his partner: Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Sally Hemings the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife , respectively.
Both Mary Chesnut and Fanny Kemble , wives of planters, wrote about this issue in the antebellum South in the decades before the Civil War. Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their children or other relatives. Slave breeding was the attempt by a slave-owner to increase the reproduction of his slaves for profit. This came at a time when the invention of the cotton gin enabled the expansion of cultivation in the uplands of short-staple cotton, leading to clearing lands cultivating cotton through large areas of the Deep South, especially the Black Belt.
The demand for labor in the area increased sharply and led to an expansion of the internal slave market. At the same time, the Upper South had an excess number of slaves because of a shift to mixed-crops agriculture, which was less labor-intensive than tobacco.
