Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Latin american culture history
South america the europeans and imperialism
South america the europeans and imperialism
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Latin american culture history
James Henry Hammond was born in South Carolina on November 15th, 1807 and died on November 13th, 1864. Not only was Hammond a very wealthy plantation owner, but he was also a very successful politician. From 1835 to 1836, he served as a United States Representative. He also served as South Carolina’s Governor from 1842 to 1844. In his later years, he served as United States Senator from 1857 to 1860. Hammond’s voice was very loud when it came to the issue of slavery. He was not ashamed to let everyone know how much he supported it. In 1831, Hammond became the owner of a cotton plantation called Silver Bluff. There were 147 slaves at Silver Bluff when Hammond arrived to take possession of it. They were eager to meet their new master. “Hammond had acquired seventy-four females and seventy-three males, a population with a median age of twenty-five. He would certainly have noted that forty-six, nearly a third of these slaves, were not yet fifteen, too young to be much use in the fields but a good foundation for a vigorous future labor force. Undoubtedly, too, he observed that sixty-four of the slaves were between fifteen and forty-five, the prime work years. These were the individuals upon whom Hammond would rely to plant, cultivate, and harvest the cotton and corn that would generate most of his yearly income” (Faust, 71). The rest were older slaves that couldn’t really do a lot of hard labor in the field, but they could do chores that didn’t require such demanding work ethics like watching over the children whose parents are out working in the fields. Hammond had a longing for complete power and authority over his slaves. He wanted “total domination” (Faust, 72). He tried to control the way they thought, worshiped; everything. In time, Hammond created a “carefully designed plan of physical and psychological control intended to eliminate the foundations of black solidarity” (Faust, 72). Obviously the slaves did not like this. They weren’t used to a master being so obsessed with power and authority. The slaves rebelled and acted up. Some of them even tried to run away. Hammond decided that he needed to “break in” these slaves. “Those who performed unsatisfactory labor, left the plantation without permission, or in any other way challenged Hammond’s authority were lashed, in a public display of the consequences of refusal to comply with the master’s will” (Faust, 73).
Under the previous Fitzsimons control, the slaves were living unsupervised, without a master in permanent residency, and were overall a very unhealthy group. In order to fulfill his dream of turning the plantation into a profitable enterprise, Hammond would have to conquer a complex social order among the enslaved people. In attempt to assert his dominance, Hammond stripped the blacks of many freedoms they once enjoyed. Hammond was threatened by the assembly of slaves who gathered in worship and praise. Hammond wanted to psychologically dominate the slaves and used the regulation of church to enforce that control upon the negroes by emphasizing obedience and tranquility in Sunday afternoon services led by white ministers. Faust says, “slaves…were not accustomed to the rigorous demands made by their new master, and they resented and resisted his drive for efficiency” (Faust,73). Hammond called for physical whippings or lashes to those caught undermining his
Slave owners would do whatever they wanted to do to their slaves. Slaves we’re nothing but a piece of property, like a cow or a plow. The slave owners wouldn’t think twice about the way they treated them. they would beat them, hit them, sale them if they thought they we’re no longer a need or if they were more trouble than they were worth. They would dull them slowly into submission, until there was usually no will or fight left in
There are many contradictions pertaining to slavery, which lasted for approximately 245 years. In Woody Holton’s “Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era”, Holton points out the multiple instances where one would find discrepancies that lie in the interests of slaveowners, noble figures, and slaves that lived throughout the United States. Holton exemplifies this hostility in forms of documents that further specify and support his claim.
Within the letter, Hammond states, “You will say that man cannot hold property in man” justifying that slaves are considered property. In the 1800’s slaves did not have rights to the constitution, and were considered basic property. Although the slave would be breathing and living human being, they were treated like property, resulting in gruesome living conditions and treated like garbage on the side of a street. All in all, the treatment and living condition of slaves on plantations and farms were not civilized and
“For decades Hammond’s slaves were quietly asserting their right to their own religious life in face of his attempts to deny it to them”. (Source-1) Power struggle and conflict for religious autonomy to supervising slaves work patterns was Hammond’s goal to achieve. He thought they were unregulated, undisciplined for long before he took over his plantation Silver Bluff. Hammond was strict and unyielding, punished slaves when they were lazy, whipping and flogging them when they did not shop to work. It seemed instead of mastering over them, he manipulated then with positive inducements like work competitions, like picking contests, diligent hands and arranged barbeques, Christmas, food ratios. The slaves used these privileges as baits to their advantage as their dues, whenever they felt the need and thus too manipulated their master, Hammond too. This kind of arrangement became typical pattern between Hammond and his slaves. “While Hammond sought to assert both dominance and legitimacy, the slave’s T Silver Bluff strove to maintain networks of communication and community as the bases of their personal and cultural autonomy”.
While Phillips may be criticized for his racial beliefs and lack of interest in the social dynamics of slavery, in this book he is a product of the times. The fact that he wrote in the interest of scholarship, attempting to produce a work based upon historical evidence makes this book very valuable and is still useful in its basic descriptive findings.
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...
Although he differentiates the practices of economic policy between the North and the South accurately, Fitzhugh fails to interpret what is best for the working future for the American negro due to his lack of insight on slave life. He proposes that there needs to be a protective and governing body over slaves that is not provided in the corrupted North. Fitzhugh considers the freedom and capitalistic influences in the North are responsible for preventing negroes from having the shielded and guaranteed quality of life that the South already allows. George Fitzhugh asserts his reasoning, declaring, “But our Southern slavery has become a benign and protective institution, and our negroes are confessedly better off than any free laboring population in the world” (Fitzhugh, 21.4). His rationale for the best course of action for negroes fails to incorporate education, health care and civil rights that the North promotes in their society. Fitzhugh is absolutely wrong with his anti-abolition opinion; however, he does include a pro-black position intended to financially satisfy the black population. Including an incentive to blacks in this piece reflects the unorthodox approach of Southerners who tend to usually not consider the livelihood of negro slaves. Indeed his appeal is somewhat effective, it
Owning a person to work for less or no money has been practiced for years. Like other countries, people in the United States also owned slaves. Since the north was mostly industrial, they didn’t need slaves. On the other hand, southerners owned thelarge plantation and they needed cheap labor in order to make profit. Slavery was a backbone of south’s prosperity. Yet, arguments on whether to emancipate slavery divided the nation in half. To keep the country united, both sides tried to convince each other why slavery is right or wrong. There were many documents written about slavery. One of the document that talks about why slavery is beneficial to our society is the excerpt of Cannibals All by a slave owner, George Fitzhugh. While there are document that support slavery, there are also documents written by fugitive slave that talk about their life as a slave. One of them includes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass. He was born in
Throughout the novel Douglass shows the damaging effects of slavery on the slaveholders. The excessive and corrupt power that the slaveowners impress on their slaves not only physically abuses the slaves, but morally abuses the slaveholders. Douglass shows this to depict that slavery is unorthodox for all involved. In America’s democratic society that we see today, no one branch of government should have unlimited power. There are checks and balances to keep this from happening. Power corrupts, the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely” perfectly depicts what Douglass is trying to express. This absolute power is what corrupts the slaveowners. Slaveowners view their slaves as property and have absolutely zero respect for them. The slaveowners
Between 1800 and 1860 slavery in the American South had become a ‘peculiar institution’ during these times. Although it may have seemed that the worst was over when it came to slavery, it had just begun. The time gap within 1800 and 1860 had slavery at an all time high from what it looks like. As soon as the cotton production had become a long staple trade source it gave more reason for slavery to exist. Varieties of slavery were instituted as well, especially once international slave trading was banned in America after 1808, they had to think of a way to keep it going – which they did. Nonetheless, slavery in the American South had never declined; it may have just come to a halt for a long while, but during this time between 1800 and 1860, it shows it could have been at an all time high.
In the well-written narrative The Life of Fredrick Douglass, the author, and former slave known as Fredrick Douglass, uses multiple examples of brutal whippings and severe punishments to describe the terrible conditions that African American slaves faced in the south. Douglass’s purpose for writing this narrative was to show the physical and emotional pain that slaves had to endure from their owners. According to Fredrick Douglass, “adopted slaveholders are the worst” and he proves his point with his anecdotes from when he was a slave; moreover, slave owners through marriage weren’t used to the rules of slaveholding so they acted tougher. He also proves that Christian slave owners weren’t always holier, they too showed no mercy towards their slaves and Douglass considered them religious hypocrites.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
In Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, one of the major themes is how the institution of slavery has an effect on the moral health of the slaveholder. The power slaveholders have over their slaves is great, as well as corrupting. Douglass uses this theme to point out that the institution of slavery is bad for everyone involved, not just the slaves. Throughout the narrative, Douglass uses several of his former slaveholders as examples. Sophia Auld, once such a kind and caring woman, is transformed into a cruel and oppressive slave owner over the course of the narrative. Thomas Auld, also. Douglass ties this theme back to the main concern of authorial control. Although this is a personal account, it is also a tool of propaganda, and is used as such. Douglass’s intent is to convince readers that the system of slavery is horrible and damaging to all included, and thus should be abolished completely. Douglass makes it very clear in his examples how exactly the transformation occurs and how kind and moral people can become those who beat their slaves and pervert Christianity in an attempt to justify it.
Douglass’s slave owner, The Colonel owned around 3-4 hundred slaves on his plantation where they grew tobacco, corn and w...