The first African slaves were brought to the
Americas in the early 1600s, where their labor was
used primarily for agricultural and household
purposes. The institution of slavery in the New
World presupposes not only the existence of slaves
and owners, but also a system of laws in place
which recognized and protected the practice of
slavery. However, laws were not enacted, for
example, declaring slaves the personal property of
their owners and imposing punishments upon those
who aided slaves in escape, until many years later.
If the sentences in the passage above are true, then
they support which one of the following statements?
(A) Arguing that laws needed to be enacted
recognizing and protecting the institution of
slavery before the practice of slavery could
have existed in the New World is to ignore
historical fact.
(B) Prior to 1700, some of the Europeans who
came to the New World enslaved native
Indian populations.
(C) Slavery was practiced in many parts of the
world before Africans were first brought to
the New World as slaves.
(D) The prior existence of a supportive legal
system is needed before an institutional practice
can develop.
(E) One of the reasons slavery developed in the
New World was the tremendous need for
manual labor.