Analysis Of Middle Passage By Charles Johnson

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Up until December 6,1865 slavery had taken place in the United States. Slavery is the practice or system of owning slaves. People were treated as property, forced into labor and had their freedom taken away from them. Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson is a book containing a story of newly freed, Rutherford Calhoun. This first person journal documentary is set in 1830 and is his personal description of the unfortunate time spent boarding the Republic heading to Africa. Rutherford has first hand experience of being a slave. At the time the book took place, 1830, slavery was still an issue in real time. Even though Rutherford was a manumitted slave, he still spent his time enslaved to the Republic. He was unable to escape slavery in some kind of way. Different ways to look at slavery, in the literal sense, is if they were born into slavery like Calhoun was, or if they were to be forced into it like the Allmuseri was sent to be. Manumission is the act of a slaveowner setting his slave free. This could happen in the case that a slave had worked hard for many years and was dedicated to the slave owner, so he let them be free as a sign of gratitude. This didn 't happen often, but if it did, they were more likely to be older slaves because as …show more content…

Enslavement was around in the United States for many years. Slavery was seen in all aspects of the book Middle Passage. Throughout the journey, Rutherford, though he was a freed slave, spent his time still being enslaved. He couldn’t escape slavery. He was first a slave who was then manumitted, then he was almost forced into a marriage, then hid on the Republic where he was then enslaved to the ship. He spends his life trying to be a free man, but is yet faced with different types of enslavement. Slavery could be experienced by someone who was born into the life or as the Allmuseri were meant to be forced into the life. Some people, as Calhoun was, had the opportunity to be

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