One of the darkest moments in American history is that of slavery. Started in the early colonies of Virginia and Maryland in 1609 up until the final surrender of the Southern Confederacy in 1865, slavery was a part of the American way of life. From indentured servants, and Native Americans to Africans brought over on boats, the slave played an integral part of the colonization and expansion of the United States. John W. Blassingame’s The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South focuses mainly on the African slave in the south, and the affects they had on the United States. He tries to give insight and information on not only the physical inequalities of the African slave but also how they mentally survived the ordeal that will come to define the history of the South as a whole. Through Blassingame’s book we will try to answer questions on what is slave culture, and how and what did it do to the people in the South. So let’s start with the first question; what is Slave culture and how did it affect the development of the South? Blassingame comes right out…show more content… Many were weary of slave revolts or the loss of the labor. On method of control was the use of religion, which played a large part in the Americanizing of Africans. Ministers would often come to plantations and preach about following orders and obeying, to Africans. This was never popular among the slaves but Christianity did get a foot hold. Africans took to religion in the south, “Because creation stories, Supreme Beings … were central in African religions, the native Africans enslaved in America found it relatively easy to understand similar features in Christianity.” Religion thus became a tool for Planters to use for obedience. Slaves would never assimilate to it completely, making it like everything else a bit of their own. Slave preachers became the “true shepherd of the black