Slavery, as defined as the “condition in which one human being is owned by another” in Webster’s dictionary, was a heinous crime against humanity that was legal and considered a normality in America from 1619 to 1865. In 1865 the union won the civil war against the confederates and declared that African American slaves be emancipated. Before their emancipation, African American families were split up, never to see each other again. Their rights of political and social freedoms were also stripped away from them, and they were “reduced to a bare life [,] stripped of every right by virtue of the fact that anyone can kill him [or her] without committing homicide… and yet he [or she] is in a continuous relationship with the power that is banished …show more content…
The anti-literacy laws that were in place, slaves were not able to record what life as a slave was actually like. Southern slave holders would describe slavery as a necessary and beneficial institution for African American people due to being said to be biologically inferior to whites and not able to live in a way that was acceptable to society. Any person born and raised in the south had different views and values than a person born in the North. They viewed slavery as a normal way of life. In addition, it was seen as a billion dollar industry that helped stabilize the economy of the U.S with the large amount of cotton being shipped and sold to the north and other parts of the country. Slaves were an investment for a slave master and the value of a slave would vary. From 1840-1845 the average cost of one slave was estimated to be $722 with an average annual rate of return of 18.5%. This cost could be compared in 2007 to about $20,000. For every slave a master owned that much money would have been lost with the emancipation of the slaves. In that there was so much money at stake in slavery, southern slave holders took it upon themselves to protect slavery and their comfortable ways of …show more content…
Slaveholders also had pro-slavery government officials on their side working to keep slavery and advertise its benefits. James Hammond, a senator from South Carolina, introduced his mudsill philosophy in 1858. His theory was that every society must have a low class in order to have an upper class. This being said, Hammond thought slavery was a necessity in the sound. It was often stated that “cotton was king” in the south. It was a driving factor over the economy. The harvesting of cotton requited extensive and brutal physical labor. African Americans were forced to serve as a necessary labor force, and were exploited as that low working class to allow plantation owners to live a life with luxuries. Slaves were not viewed as human beings in the south. They had no political or social role in society and were therefore treated as owned animals. If a slave would not produce enough profitable goods, they would simply be traded away. Southerners thought they would be able to continue their lives with slavery until the abolitionist movement began to gain more power and momentum in the late 1840s and early
During the Antebellum Era, slavery was about one-third of the South’s population. The Antebellum Era was the period before the Civil War broke out. The South’s economy was booming which was credited to slavery. Their argument about slavery was that slaves were necessary and important to their economy. It would kill their economy if they got rid of slavery. Slavery was the foundation of their economy. Without any slaves, cotton would not be able to be produce. Nearly 60 % of their exports was cotton. Southerners would also point out that slaves were better working in plantations than working in a northern factory. According to them, the North had bad workplaces and long hours. They insisted that slaves were cared for and helped when they needed it unlike the North. However, slaves were still treated bad in the South. They would resist slavery in a variety of ways. For example, running away was one form of resistance. The most common form of resistance was known as “day-to-day” resistance which were
A man named Anthony Johnson was a slave who thrived by forging a bond with his owner based on necessity he earned his way to freedom by doing a lot of manual labor. His owner even granted him some land, but then Virginia strengthened their slavery rules, and this land was taken away. Other people like the English believed slave labor was creating wealth for those countries who had them. From the 1600s to the 1700s slavery was very popular amongst the English colonies. African Americans of all ages were captured and separated from families .Many underwent horrible situations where white men could do anything they wanted with them with no consequences. Then they had to drop their last names to erase their family connections. They also worked in dangerous environments such as the rice fields where many of them died due to snakes and diseases from malarial mosquitos. If slaves tried to run away and where caught there were serious consequences. The first time you were caught two toes would be amputated, then the second time your ears would be amputated, and then the third time would result in castration. A lot of what is America today was built by slaves they made the roads, bridges, factories, farms, town, and cities. Above all they created a culture no one could take away them from their food to their music, dances, and
...ry inhuman and corrupt time of American history, although, slavery did play a very large role in establishing our country’s economy. Yes, it was a very terrible time for the slaves and they were treated very inhumanly. Yes, the fact that the slaves were being beaten, raped, and tortured was very immoral, but without them the United States wouldn’t be what it is today. Slavery may have “ended” though President Abraham Lincolns’ signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but we all know that isn’t true. African-Americans may have been considered free, but were still looked down upon as if they were not good enough simply because of the pigment of their skin. Even today living in the 21st century we still have to deal with issues of racism. When all is said and done, slavery was definitely one of the most important pieces of shaping the American culture today.
The South had always been dependent on slaves to do most of the work. Whether it was planting crops, maintaining farms, or even taking care of their children, the slaves were there. There was a time when all of these slaves were unable to rebel and could not do anything. But, tides soon turned as the small portion of free blacks began to protest. The South tried to justify slavery by saving that it was actually a “positive good” for the slaves and that it was necessarily evil. The blacks, however, could not bear anymore. They revolted
Everyone in modern day America can agree that Slavery was one of the evilest and inhumane acts to ever take place in US History. Slavery in the US was a legal system that allowed humans to be classified as property. Chattel Slaves were owned, bought, traded, and sold amongst slave owner’s to be used on plantations throughout the colonies. After the Revolutionary War, slavery was almost completely phased out in the North because it proved to be unprofitable and was declining in the South because tobacco was no longer considered a “cash crop”. However, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin: a machine that easily separated cotton from it’s seed, there was an increase in the need for slaves to work on cotton plantations in the south because
During the early nineteenth century, some southern states passed laws to prevent slave mistreatment, and their material conditions did improve. Many slaves supplemented the food owners provided by raising crops and livestock, gathering, and hunting. They had better diets than slaves in the West Indies and Brazil. Paternalism contributed to slaves’ material improvements over time. And the increasing price of slaves encouraged planters to care for their slaves’ basic well-being. Yet, slavery was tightened in this period, and states passed laws making it harder for owners to free their slaves and for
Southern sympathizers argue that abolishing slavery would ultimately destroy the southern economy. According to USHistory, “Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos.” Former slaves would struggle to find work and contribute to the economy and landowners wouldn't be able to maintain. After Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, landowners no longer had free labor to maintain their land and since landowners could not maintain their land, the southern economy declined drastically. Since African-Americans were “property” that slave owners purchased, many believed it was completely absurd that President Lincoln freed
In the colonial era slavery was permissible by law in every colony. Blacks were 20% of the overall population of the 13 colonies and only 8% of them were free blacks (www.history.org). Colonists commonly used African slave labor despite the question of whether slavery was morally right. Life for blacks in the revolutionary period was one of slavery and discrimination. Only 8 percent of blacks were free [Edgar A Toppin. “Blacks in the American Revolution” (published essay, Virginia State University, 1976), p 1] and this so-called freedom merely meant that they could own and defend property. They weren’t allowed to mingle with whites and were wholly segregated.
Imagine living a normal life, when suddenly a group of peculiar figures jump out of nowhere and kidnap you; the next thing you know is that you’re on a plantation thousands of miles away from your family. The pure torture that the slaves were faced with every single day made life almost unbearable, while their owners drilled the ideology of slaves being equal to property into society. However, being away from your family and friends was easily the worst part of slavery. Children were often separated from their parents and families were torn apart all over the United States. Despite all of the inhuman torment, the worthless mindset, and of course the depressing anguish felt by the victims, slavery was still thought of as an acceptable way of
The owners did not have to pay slaves. The money, instead of going to labor, was used in other ways. It was used to pay taxes which increased the Southern government or buy land to boost status. Slaves were set to be the lower class on which the middle and upper class could use to grow. Socially slaves were "the bottom of the totem pole."
Slave Life The warm climate, boundless fields of fertile soil, long growing seasons, and numerous waterways provided favorable conditions for farming plantations in the South (Foster). The richness of the South depended on the productivity of the plantations (Katz 3-5). With the invention of the cotton gin, expansion of the country occurred. This called for the spread of slavery (Foster). Slaves, owned by one in four families, were controlled from birth to death by their white owners. Black men, women, and children toiled in the fields and houses under horrible conditions (Katz 3-5). The slave system attempted to destroy black family structure and take away human dignity (Starobin 101). Slaves led a hard life on the Southern plantations. Most slaves were brought from Africa, either kidnapped or sold by their tribes to slave catchers for violating a tribal command. Some were even traded for tobacco, sugar, and other useful products (Cowan and Maguire 5:18). Those not killed or lucky enough to escape the slave-catching raids were chained together (Foster). The slaves had no understanding of what was happening to them. They were from different tribes and of different speaking languages. Most captured blacks had never seen the white skinned foreigners who came on long, strange boats to journey them across the ocean. They would never see their families or native lands again. These unfortunate people were shackled and crammed tightly into the holds of ships for weeks. Some refused to eat and others committed suicide by jumping overboard (Foster). When the ships reached American ports, slaves were unloaded into pens to be sold at auctions to the highest bidder. One high-priced slave compared auction prices with another, saying, "You wouldn’t fetch ‘bout fifty dollas, but I’m wuth a thousand" (qtd. in Foster). At the auctions, potential buyers would examine the captives’ muscles and teeth. Men’s and women’s bodies were exposed to look for lash marks. No marks on a body meant that he or she was an obedient person. The slaves were required to dance or jump around to prove their limberness. Young, fair-skinned muttaloes, barely clothed and ready to be sold to brothel owners, were kept in private rooms (Foster). It was profitable to teach the slaves skills so that during the crop off-season they could be hired out to work. Although they were not being paid, some were doing more skilled work than poor whites were.
Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...
During the 1860’s, slavery was a huge part of life in the South and its effects touch many people and their families. Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves (Wright, 1900). Even though slavery was widespread throughout the South, it varied from state to state as shown in Table 1.
The term slave is defined as a person held in servitude as the chattel of another, or one that is completely passive to a dominating influence. The most well known cases of slavery occurred during the settling of the United States of America. From 1619 until July 1st 1928 slavery was allowed within our country. Slavery abolitionists attempted to end slavery, which at some point; they were successful at doing so. This paper will take the reader a lot of different directions, it will look at slavery in a legal aspect along the lines of the constitution and the thirteenth amendment, and it will also discuss how abolitionists tried to end slavery. This paper will also discuss how slaves were being taken away from their families and how their lives were affected after.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...