Essay On Slavery

Between 1500 & 1890, millions of slaves were taken from Africa. Approximately11,863,000 Africans were shipped across the atlantics, bound with iron shackles and driven by the string of the whip. These slaves were loaded into the decks by for hundreds, the stench was so horrifying. Many lives were lost from disease, abuse and killing on the middle of the passage, as a result the death rate during the passage reduced the number by 10-20 percent. Between 9.6 and 10.8 million Africans arrived in the America. The slaves were forcibly imported into the America and they were sold at auctions and their families were torn apart forever. Du Boise works talk about the mental and physical sufferings of slaves that delivered severe damage to the Negro psyche. African slaves were forced to give up their language, culture and identity and adopt white customs, this disconnection from their source of self-concept and identity made them suffer from sub-conscious inferiority complex. They were psychologically so depressed and they started believing that they deserve the treatment they are receiving. If you are told something enough times, you would come to believe that what you were being told is true. The practices such as castration and removal of limbs for small infections made those slaves physically incapacitated who were already suffering from psychological torment and indoctrination. There were practices called battles royals where one group of slaves had to fight against other group of slaves just for the entertainment of slave owners.

James Ramsay a doctor who was working in St. Kitts for several sugar plantations, was terribly shocked by the treatment the slaves were receiving there. Ramsay shares his experience in

We can think about...

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...ution to the movement was the leadership he inspired in others. There are others whose names are lost in the obscurity but who are no less important in the history of freedom.

"The fugitive slave law of 1850 was a needed law for the owners of slaves, to keep those who were opposed to slavery from running the slaves away. The penalty attached to that law was all the hope the slave holders had of ever recapturing their fugitive slaves" A. P. Stewart. The fugitive slave law 1850 called upon non slave, black and white to help in capture and return the fugitive. if a man is walking by the street and a fugitive runs by and the man chases or catches the fugitive, that man can be deputize on the spot and the person would be forced to help and return the fugitive under penalty or fine or imprisonment. The fugitive slave law was extremely effective because it was too harsh.