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time. In the 17th century, even the hundred years afterward, the American colonists had occupied a labor intensive work, especially agriculture and farm work. As colonial society developed, this labor intensive farm work formed the plantation system later. Plantation system was based on cultivating and exporting crops like tobacco and corn rose on large tracts of land with a large, cheap work force. In order to solve the labor supply problem, the colonist had experienced a long-term choice. Initially, their labor force was composed with both the blacks and poor whites, what more, a few of Native Americans were included. But why did the blacks become their only choice later? This question was formally answered in 1968 by sociologist Donald Noel. His central idea, which being named the Noel hypothesis, is as follows, “If two or more groups come together in a contact situation which is characterized by ethnocentrism, competition and a different in power, then some form of racial or ethnic stratification will result. If the contact situation has all three of the characteristic listed, some system of inequality between the groups (a dominant-minority group structure) will be created．” (Healey, 75) The New World’s initial social groups mainly were the colonist, white indentured servants, Native Americans and blacks. All three groups objected to the ethnocentric feelings of the colonial elites, and competition of some sort existed between the colonists and all three groups. Noel’s third variable, differential in power, which should be very helpful to understand why Africans were enslaved instead of the other. Firstly, the Native American tribes were very well organized and united, difficult to conquer. The history proved that it took hundred years to defeat Native Americans militarily. Besides, the white indentured servants were thought to be strongly desirous of better treatment and higher payment. Only the Africans were a colonized group that did not enter the British colonies by their own will. “Given their unfreed status, they had no bargaining power. As opposed to Native Americans, they had no nearby relatives, no knowledge of the countryside, and no safe havens to which to escape.” (Healey, 78) Besides the African’s historical disadvantaged position, there is another important reason of the enslavement of African. In the year of 1620, 35 puritans were taken to the northern America by the Mayflower ship. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principle. They established the New England Colony along the Massachusetts after their arrival. These first American Puritans were very radical.” American Puritans came under violent and often virulent attacks for their religious intolerance and bigotry, for their austerity of taste and killjoy way of life, for the very heritage they bequeathed to the new nation. ” (Chang Yaoxin, 13) In one word, the early Puritans established another American tradition — a strain of often intolerant moral, which was of the enduring shaping influences in American thought. Such thought also determined the whites’ attitude toward the people of the other race in the coming days. From this point of view, Puritanism can be considered as another important reason of the enslavement of the African. Thus, the blacks were enslaved gradually.B. The Whites and the Civil War From the beginning many white Americans in the North found that slavery offensive to their philosophy. Thoug