Question

Notice that these primary sources are a bill of sale and an announcement of auction. What does this tell you about how slaves were viewed in Colonial America?

Answer 1

This shows that slaves were seen as an object and not as a human being.

Step-by-step explanation:

Slaves were not seen as human beings but as merchandise, objects that were sold in a discriminatory way, within the colonies, for this reason, they were sold at auctions and those who bought them received an invoice, the same way that happens when we buy a cell phone, for example.

This concept of merchandise arose with the European ideas that blacks were sinners and were punished by God for slave beings, moreover, it was common to say that blacks had a smaller skull than whites which made them intellectually inferior beings, leaving them those closest to the intellect of an animal, or without any intellect, as an object.