Dehumanization Of African Americans In The 1800s

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Slavery dominated the economy of the American Southern states during the antebellum period between 1793 and 1850. The dehumanization of these people resulted in them being viewed only as property by many slave-owners, who relied on their slaves in to support their family and plantation. This reliance produced a fear that the slaves would escape, which called for subsequent laws to arise in the South in which return procedures and punishments were clearly defined for a caught runaway slave. Ex-slaves who were now legally free were also attacked through government policies that strived to find a reason to take the freedman into custody or back into slavery. Some of these regulations can be found in the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850 and the …show more content…

history that differed in the legality of slavery, a common theme of the restriction of African Americans remains evident. Both documents demonstrate an intolerance towards blacks that existed during a majority of the country’s history and a mutual goal to constrain the freedom of the black man. These sources are both written as important legal documents; however, the perspective and content differ greatly from one another. In the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, politicians were attempting to appease the southern states, and maintain a balance between the number of free and slave states, resulting in a document that neglects the rights of African Americans and focuses on temporarily solving the dilemma in order to please the southerners. This policy was created as a response to the Missouri Compromise and encompassed all of the states, which made it so that the document did not hold a shared goal or opinion, and met great opposition from the abolitionists. In comparison, the Mississippi Black Code was created out of infuriation due to the dissatisfactory national policy of slave emancipation, necessitating that freedmen be given specific rights, including the right to property and to protection under the law. This code allows the freedmen to obtain the rights defined by the national government, but also ensures that they are nearly impossible to obtain by establishing restrictions that had to be met in order to not be arrested, fined, or returned to his former master. An obvious need for free labor remained evident in the South through these laws, either obtained by now illegal slavery or a type of servitude, often welcomed by African Americans who could not find work or those who were most comfortable working on a plantation. A controlling nature is obvious within both documents as they are more focused on clearly defining punishments and limitations than on the

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