Differences And Drapetomania

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Differences and Drapetomania
Drapetomania is a mental illness used to describe why slaves “ran away.” Drapetomania was created by a southern physician named Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851. The invention of Drapetomania occurred during a controversial time for the north and the south. The north and the south did not agree on the institution of slavery at this time. The northerners identified slavery as unjust and southerners saw it as a means of support. The northern states had many free blacks because they chose to abolish slavery. Northerners enforced personal liberty laws to aid fleeing slaves from the south so they could not be recaptured, and the southern states got the Fugitive Slave Act to help in getting runaway slaves returned to the south. During the antebellum period, southerners were desperate to continue the institution of slavery. The demand for cotton increased between 1830 and 1850, and Southerners depended on slavery to support their cotton-based economy. Southerners use drapetomania as a way to define blacks and dehumanize them. There were many motives to why Southerners would suddenly agree upon the discovery of drapetomania. The antebellum plantation society commonly looked for measures to explain slavery. [Preview of points]Southerners used Drapetomania as a logical excuse to continue the institution of slavery.
Drapetomania was devised to explain the fleeing behavior of slaves. It was treatable and preventable. Dr. Cartwright’s definition of the illness was based on biological background and the need for management among slaves. It was found within people with African decent and based widely off the need for management among slaves. Drapetomania was also defined as a disease of the mind. Drapetomania was a rac...

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...seem helpless without slavery was a way of gaining the public’s acceptance of Drapetomania. The problem with this was that the evidenced of the mental illness did not stretch north. Northerners did not believe that there was such an illness because it was only being diagnosed in the south on slaves who were not free. They had not seen or heard of African in the north having Drapetomania. Also, it Dr. Cartwright was contradicted by claiming that the illness was within African people when Dr. Little knew it to had been more prevalent among whites than negroes. The evidence of the mental illness was questionable because of its setting, its founder, and its symptom contradictions. Drapetomania gave southern slave holders an excuse for the continuation of slavery and their lively hood, while taking away the lively of every slave in the south by keeping them in bondage.

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