"Okay, dude, you laid it out that slavery in America started with whites being sold, but at what point did it become like they say, that it was only blacks that could be bought and sold?"

-Steevo

Steevo, there was a thriving trade in white slaves up until the 1840s, when so many starving Irish flooded New York and other ports that a person no longer bothered to buy a man, when he could rent an Irishman. However, up until the 1850s whites were still being bought and sold, if in tiny numbers. The ownership of another person would not be outlawed until 1865.

Below is the process:

1783: White settlers in the Northwest Territory [now the Midwest] passed a law forbidding slavery or the recovery of runaway slaves.

1787: The U.S. Constitution nullified this ordinance in Article 1, section 9, paragraph 1, and in Article 4, Section 2, paragraph 3

1808: According to the above document, importation of un-free people into the United States was to be reviewed at this time, with an eye on curtailing or ending it. The doctrine of African racial inferiority comes into play at this time now that an indigenous source of forced labor must be found. The white population was now heavily armed and more than half free, which was not the case in 1787, in which year over half of Pennsylvanians were still unfree and few white men in the South, who had served their country in the Revolutionary War, had been permitted to retain their weapons.

1865: the 13th amendment, prohibiting slavery in all its forms [except for industrial, child labor], was proposed on January 18 and ratified on December 6th, effectively nullifying Article 1, section 9 and Article 4, Section 2, paragraph 3 of the Constitution.

Keep in mind, that Andrew Johnson, president at the time the 13th Amendment was ratified, was a former escaped servant himself, and before becoming Vice President under Lincoln, the only Southern legislator to vote against Secession from the Union.

With the flood of tens of thousands of poor and escaped whites into the Ohio Valley—beyond effective military control—in 1783, slavery would become a predominantly and then overwhelmingly black experience in America until it was finally abolished 82 years later. By that time it did not serve the pride of free whites, the racial guilt game plaid by elite whites or the martyr status of African Americans to recall that America had been, from 1617 through roughly 1800 a place where most people, of all races, were owned by the tiny ruling elite.

Some details may be found in the articles below:

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