The idea that the category of one’s property extends to and includes indentured servants and/or slaves was a popular, widespread belief in colonial times. Personal identity and most, if not all, human rights were stripped at the hands of one’s “owner,” as they were no longer a person of their own free will but an object belonging to someone of a perceived “higher standing.” However, while conditions for indentured servants and slaves hold many similarities, there were also distinct differences pertaining to skin color. In Michael P. Johnson’s Reading the American Past, documents 1-4: “Aristotle on Masters and Slaves,” 5-1: “Elizabeth Ashbridge Becomes an Indentured Servant in New York,” and 5-4: “Advertisements for Runaway Slaves,” all highlight …show more content…
the dehumanization of servants and slaves as well as feature key differences in treatment between black and white laborers. In document 1-4, the selection from Greek philosopher Aristotle’s The Politics describes his perceptions on masters and slaves, which heavily influenced medieval Christianity and were thought to be common knowledge at that time.
One part of this section in particular, Aristotle explains the concept that someone is naturally a slave if they are capable of becoming property of somebody else. Throughout history, women have always been as “less of a person” than a man; therefore, making them easily capable of being considered as property. Going on, Aristotle then states his understanding of the differences between women and “barbarians,” saying that “[among barbarians] the female and the slave occupy the same position—the reason being that no naturally ruling element exists among them, and conjugal union thus comes to be a union of a female who is a slave with a male who is also a slave.” CITE These common ideas support the fact that for a large portion of history, women were thought to be property of man. When comparing these statements with Elizabeth Ashbridge’s indentured servant experiences in document 5-1, the act of which women are naturally considered to be property is not surprising. Her time spent working in the colonies was no different, if not worse, than any other indentured servant due to the fact that she was both a woman and a servant—both seen and treated as property instead of an actual person. “In two weeks time I was Sold,” Ashbridge states, “& Were it …show more content…
Possible to Convey in Characters a sense of the Sufferings of my Servitude, it would make the most strong heart pity the Misfortunes of a young creature as I was.” CITE Elizabeth moves into greater detail, recalling that her first master acted “inhuman,” not allowing her to have decent clothes or any shoes, and put her through “the Utmost Hardship” she was barely able to bear. As her master’s property, he could treat her however he wanted. By him not allowing her clothes to be decent in and making her stay barefoot in all weather/environmental conditions, it is a prominent example of Aristotle’s ideas about women being equal to “barbarians” and therefore being subject to being treated as such. She was unable to really have anything for herself or fight for better conditions because she was no longer treated as an individual person, but an object belonging to someone of higher-standing. In regard to being treated as property, these ideals didn’t stop with indentured servants—instead, they intensified with the ownership of slaves.
While the treatments of indentured servants, like Elizabeth Ashbridge, were degrading, the treatments of African-American slaves were dehumanizing. They were not just treated like objects, they were seen as such. In Aristotle’s The Politics, he states that “the slave is an animate article of property, and subordinates…in general may be described as instruments.” CITE This concept is widely supported by document 5-4, Advertisements for Runaway Slaves. Throughout the different ads for runaways, slave after slave is described with terms relating to objects, not actual people. For example, phrases like “a lusty strong Angola Negro,” and “they are all new Negro’s,” provide an implication that “Negro” is referred to like a brand and “they are all new” being said in likings of a new shipment of stock. Additionally, concluding statements like “whoever will apprehend the said Slave, so that I may have him again,” all suggest that those slave owners saw their slaves as objects that belong to them and nothing more. CITE They were being described as instruments used for another’s personal gain, saying “I may have hum again” further dehumanizing them as people and instead reducing them to basically nothingness owned by a
master. Furthermore, a majority of the advertisements mentioned that their runaway slaves spoke little to no English, which, at that time, combined with their unique skin color suggested that they were automatically inferior and unintelligent beings compared to the “all powerful English white-man.” Because of this, Aristotle’s belief that someone is naturally considered to be a slave if they are capable of being owned by somebody else is greatly exercised. “No one would ever say that someone who does not deserve to be in a condition of slavery is really a slave…” he states, “…this is the reason why they do not like to call such people slaves, but prefer to confine the term to barbarians.” CITE Due to the fact that many slaves were illiterate and unable to speak English, it helped define them as beasts and treated as inhuman—they were thought, by the ideology of The Politics, to be deserving if this treatment and were given nothing more. Slaves were not even seen as actual people, let alone treated as such, leading to incredible dehumanization and perceived inferiority. While the objectification of indentured servants and slaves were widely similar, there are also some major differences between them, vastly relating to race. Aside from the simple factor that indentured servants could eventually buy their freedom whereas slaves could not, for example, even though indentured servants were treated like objects, they were still able to protect their personal identity like, for example, something as simple as their name. However, on the complete opposite of the spectrum, African-American slaves were completely forced to become blank canvases. Indentured servants usually chose to come to the colonies and attempted to make something of themselves while working as a servant, whereas slaves involuntarily came to America and were given a completely new identity. For example, as seen in document 5-4, all of the slaves are referred to with English sounding names, such as “Harry,” “Cyrus,” or “Ruth.” CITE Because they are not only treated as property but also seen as property, their masters had complete control as to what they were called and what they were. Another key difference between the two deals with the indentured servants treatment, while still being terrible, being less harsh as the treatments of the slaves. During Elizabeth Ashbridge’s time as a servant, she describes a moment where her master became angry with her over something she claims she was innocent in. “He sent for the Town Whipper to Correct me. I was Called in; he never asked me Whether I had told any such thing but ordered me to strip,” Ashbridge recalls. Before anything could happen to her, she explains that she started to pray to God and then turned to her master to beg for mercy, saying “’Sir, if you would have no pity on me…spare me from this Shame. And if you think I deserve such punishment do it yourself.” CITE Elizabeth was then spared by her master and walked away without a blow. This encounter completely contradicts what would have occurred had she been a black slave. In fact, several of the advertisements in document 5-4 persuade anyone who find their slave to freely whip them before being returned to their masters, where they will be punished again. In master/ African-American slave culture, this type of punishment was normal as well as encouraged. It was easier for that behavior to become common with masters and their slaves due to the slaves being black, therefore being seen as inhuman beasts, whereas with masters of white indentured servants it was less common due to the similarities in background and skin color. Overall, although there are several parallels in the normalized objectification and dehumanization of servants and slaves, there is no denying that both groups were treated differently to some degree. Indentured servitude objectification more had to do with social and economic class ranking, whereas slaves were involuntarily working and treated based on their “inhuman” like skin color and “beastly” body types. And while both social and racial factors played a large role in treatment, there is no denying that one clearly had the upper-hand.
They argue that the accruing of property by figures such as Johnson meant that they literally did not think of themselves as living within a racist society, and that, despite the decline of this freedom, it is a mistake to consider their opinions as an “aberration” in a narrative of inevitable racial exploitation (Breen & Innes, 112). Rather, they claim that to understand such people as such an aberration inevitably leads to a situation in which the real equality of their freedom is
David Walker describes the fact that slaves are humans just as much as their White American masters are. He states the pressing matter is that “You [colored people] have to prove to the Americans and the world, that we are MEN and not brutes, as we have been represented and by millions treated.” (Page 33) He asks the question “How can those enemies but say that we and our children are not of the HUMAN FAMILY, but were made by our Creator to be an inheritance?” Although nowadays many people agree that black people have the same anatomy as whites do, but back then many people did not view blacks as equals to themselves.
In Myne Owne Ground, the authors argue that it was not inevitable that black men and women were made subordinate to white colonists in colonial Virginia because in the early days there was more about wealth, economic standing, and religion than the color of one’s skin. For example, when a white man, Richard Ackworth, ask John Johnson to give testimony in a suit which Ackworth had filed against another Whiteman (Myne Owne Ground, 16). They were unwilling to allow a black man to testify in legal proceedings involving whites at first, but when they learned that John had been baptized and understood the meaning of an oat, they accepted his statement.
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.
In Aristotle's "Justifying Slavery" and Seneca's "On Master and Slave," the two authors express their opposing sentiments on the principles of slavery. While Aristotle describes slavery as predestined inferiority, evidenced greatly by physical attributes, Seneca emphasizes the importance of "philosophical" freedom as opposed to physical freedom. (p. 58). The authors' contrasting views are disclosed in their judgments on the morality of slavery, the degree of freedom all people possess at birth, and the balance of equality between a slave and his master.
Physical abuse by plantation owners towards both their servants and slaves was common. One account by Thomas Gates in a General Court of Colonial Virginia document about Elizabeth Abbot, an indentured servant, stated that “she had been sore beaten and her body full of sores and holes very dangerously raunckled and putrified both above her wast and uppon her hips and thighs” (General Court of Colonial Virginia). In fact, such abuse towards servants and slaves was so common that the state of Virginia had to make laws for such cases. Unfortunately, colonial governments did not consider corporal punishment illegal. Thus adding to the brutality endured by persons in captivity and servitude during the colonial era. “Moderate corporal punishment inflicted
Walker addresses biases established by Jefferson decades before his time that still significantly shape the way many think about blacks. In doing so, Walker is able to draw attention the problematic logic behind said arguments. Ultimately, in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, David Walker addresses the arguments, presented in Thomas Jefferson’ Notes on the State of Virginia, of race superiority, slavery, citizenship, and Jefferson’s own default validation by means of his authority, to further and strengthen his own abolitionist
In “Slaves and the ‘Commerce’ of the Slave Trade,” Walter Johnson describes the main form of antebellum, or pre-Civil War, slavery in the South being in the slave market through domestic, or internal, slave trade. The slave trade involves the chattel principle, which said that slaves are comparable to chattels, personal property that is movable and can be bought or sold. Johnson identified the chattel principle as being central to the emergence and expansion of slavery, as it meant that slaves were considered inferior to everyone else. As a result, Johnson argued that slaves weren’t seen as human beings and were continually being mistreated by their owners. Additionally, thanks to the chattel principle, black inferiority was inscribed
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.
One of the most notable features in the advertisements for both the indentured servants and slaves is the physical descriptions. The descriptions are given with great detail, however they do not contain a personal tone to them. The descriptions sound very unattached, as if describing an inanimate object. The advertisements almost all begin with “Negro man” or “Negro...
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
[Slaves] seemed to think that the greatness of their master was transferable to themselves” (Douglass 867). Consequently, slaves start to identify with their master rather than with other slaves by becoming prejudiced of other slaves whose masters were not as wealthy or as nice as theirs, thereby falling into the traps of the white in which slaves start to lose their
Beginning in the 1830s, white abolitionists attempted to prove that American slaves suffered physically, emotionally, and spiritually at the hands of those who claimed their ownership (Pierson, 2005). Like those that were seen in our American literature text book. Not only did they suffer from those things, but they also had trouble with their identity once they moved on or was freed from slavery, that’s why we seen a lot of the former slaves changing their identity. Abolitionists were determined to educate the public on how badly slaves were being treated. They even argued the basic facts of Southern plantation life such as slave holders divided families, legalized rape, and did not recognize slave marriages as legitimate (Pierson, 2005). In the interregional slave trade, hundreds of thousands of slaves were move long distance from their birthplace and original homes as the slave economy migrated from the eastern seaboards to Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas (Thornton...
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...